FROM COLD WAR TO COLD PEACE: NEOLIBERALISM AND MORAL REALISM IN THE NEW WORLD DISORDER

Thornton William H.

The end of the Cold War offered unprecedented opportunities for human rights diplomacy. While the UN was under pressure to enlarge its humanitarian operations, the U.S. had a chance quite literally to bring its foreign affairs "in from the cold. "This could have produced not only a post-Cold War "peace dividend" in terms of reduced military spending, but also a moral dividend as some realists began to reconsider the efficacy of Cold War strategies in the absence of a first-order military adversary. It was now possible to get back to "basics," ethically speaking.
Unfortunately the end of the Cold War was also the triumphant moment of one of liberal idealism's worst enemies. This time the arch-nemesis was not some militant foreign power or "ism," but the global ambition of America's own (newly dominant) ideology, neoliberalism. Along with a matching "lean and mean" version of American corporatism, neoliberalism lends legitimacy to a post-nationalistic strain of realism: multinational "globalization." Once again liberal "basics" have been expelled in the name of a specious realism. Formerly the contest between idealism and realism was justified in terms of Cold War exigencies. While Kennan and Kissinger still regard humanitarian policies as unaffordable luxuries, less doctrinaire realists are start-ing to appreciate the vital role of "soft power"--Joseph Nye's term for moral force as opposed to raw coercion. In line with Kofi Annan's call for a broader sense of national interest--one that unites human rights and power politics--moral realism seeks what fifteen years ago would have seemed a complete oxy-moron: a moral geopolitics. To sacrifice this objective on the altar of neoliberalism would be, in soft power terms, to lose the world by conquering it.