Formative Peacetime Engagement Workshop Report

摘要

Critics of recent U.S. foreign policy are using the end of the Kosovo crisis as a time to reevaluate America's interests and how it should use its armed forces. Pundits feel the timing is especially propitious since many of the current crop of presidential candidates are just beginning to formulate their own foreign and defense policies. According to The Economist, four lines of criticism are receiving the most attention. First, the United States 'has spent too much time seeking to shape other countries' internal politics.' Second, it 'has spent too much time on ad hoc humanitarian interventions and not enough on the traditional concern of great powers- relations with other powers.' Third, quoting Henry Kissinger, 'The armed forces have become the instrument of choice' in conducting foreign policy. Finally, even those who are 'broadly sympathetic to the principle of humanitarian intervention... think it has been too crudely applied.' If these trends represent a growing consensus among politicians, then the military should expect to be involved in fewer Kosovo-type interventions in the near term; thus, begging the question, 'what will the military be doing.'.