INTELLIGENCE ROGER COHEN
NEW YORK

I sat recently with a State Department guy and a former Marine officer who’d met in Falluja, become fast friends, and had years of painful experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We’re not paid to be optimists or pessimists,” the diplomat said. “We have to be realists.”
He’s on his way back into Baghdad. His life’s on the line for his country, as it has been since 2003. I reckon he has a right to sober realism at the White House and the Pentagon rather than the Freedom’s untidy!” bravura of the Rumsfeld years.
We’ve had too much gut-driven, Goddriven, gazing-into-eyes-and-seeingthings foreign policy these last eight years. We’ve learned that beyond shock and awe, there’s insurgency. And beyond stocks and awe, there’s recession. And beyond a pale blue Russian gaze, there’s repression.
A couple of phrases from John McCain leapt out at me in a recent New Yorker piece. “I believe in American exceptionalism,” McCain said. “I do. I can prove it by reviewing our history. I want the 21st century to be the American century.”
Wanting is not enough.
At some point, as this apocalyptic ending to the Bush administration illustrates, reality steps in. The 20th century was the American century. The United States prevailed in World War II, triumphed in the cold war, and established the far-flung garrisons of the Pax Americana we still live.
The 21st century will not be the second American century.
I say this not because I foresee some imminent American decline or because I believe the American idea cannot resonate again or because I no longer regard the United States as an indispensable nation - indispensable, that is, to global security and the advance of liberal, democratic societies. I say this simply because power and wealth are shifting. We have entered the Asian-Pacific century.
The rise of India and China is a transformational event. And in this century most problems - be it global warming, nuclear proliferation, gas prices or terrorism - can only be solved in concert with other nations.
What we need from our next president is more listening and less posturing, more understanding and less us-or-them polarization, more consistency between words and deeds.
The in-box of the new president will be daunting. Soldiers are going to be in short supply. Materiel is going to be in short supply.
Money is going to be in short supply. One thing not lacking is U.S. diplomats. It’s time to use them. We must talk to Iran. We must talk to Syria.
We must understand that no insurgency ends with killing every insurgent; it ends when insurgents are lured in from the cold. We must engage with Russia while making clear it cannot intimidate us.
Above all, we must show our allies that dependability is back.
McCain says he can “prove” American exceptionalism. But the McCain-Palin version of exceptionalism seems full of a damn-the-world anger. The only way America can have an exceptional and beneficial impact on today’s world is through intense interaction and realism based on the power shifts occurring.
The American diplomats and soldiers in harm’s way deserve no less. When leadership fails, front-line grunts pay. They’ve already paid enough for White House whimsy, and so has the world.