You can call it the Hart Manifesto. Former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart, after several years of remaining largely under the radar of American politics, has been taking off the gloves of late and espousing his views on the state of the nation, particularly its security.
In 2004, Hart published “The Fourth Power: A Grand Strategy for the United States in the Twenty-First Century,” in which he stressed that America’s inherent values, as set forth in the Constitution, should form the basis of our foreign policy.
Then, last year, he published a lengthy essay on the revival of religion in American political life titled “God and Caesar in America: An Essay on Religion and Politics.”
Now he’s back with, “The Shield & the Cloak,” a comprehensive, clear-eyed polemic on how this nation – along with the rest of the world, not in spite of it – should provide security for its people. He makes a concise, articulate argument, minus the shrillness of much of today’s discourse, that he believes it is imperative that we provide that security and that the manner in which the current crop of powers-that-be are going about it is wrongheaded.
In his introduction, Hart says that the world of this century is three-dimensional with the U.S. as one dimension, the nation-states a second dimension and the third dimension of so-called stateless nations or “nonstate actors.” It’s that third dimension that is so worrisome and poses the biggest problem now that the Cold War is over.
The nonstate actors, or terrorists, don’t play by any rules and do not adhere to principles of statecraft or diplomacy; therefore, protecting us from them requires a new security that “will be both national and international, defensive and offensive,” Hart says, noting that it will depend more on intelligence services than on armies. And, rather than “massive weapons in massive numbers,” the new security will depend on “special forces, individual warrior teams, searching for terrorists in tunnels and caves.”
In addition, Hart says that “genuine security now requires military (shield) and nonmilitary (cloak) components,” and that they can be obtained only through international cooperation.
Moreover, says Hart, “Security now must mean, at the very least, security of livelyhood, security of the community, security of the environment, security of energy supplies, and security from terrorist or other attacks.”
Hart is critical of how we as a nation have approached foreign policy: “There has been no clear pattern to U.S. policy since the end of the Cold War, principally because we have yet to comprehend the rapidly changing world of the new century,” he writes. “We are unaccustomed to a world of disintegrating states, tribalism, fundamentalism, terrorism, chaos, and religious and ethnic warfare.”
He argues that our policies toward other countries often work against our own security needs. “Oil dependence, the goodwill of a Russian oligarch, the hunt for bin Laden on Pakistan’s border, debt, consumption, and borrowing from China all make us insecure,” he says. “Therefore, there is a direct and dramatic connection between limits on our ability to promote freedom, the unsupportable addictions we have developed, and our national security.”
According to Hart, the war in Iraq is a mistake and that although the administration “cling(s) to the hope that war can be kept at a distance, few thoughtful experts believe this can be done,” he said. And that many people believe that war carried out in the Muslim world increases the threat to America rather than decreases it.
He is all for openness, or transparency, in government and says it is vital to all aspects of our national security, including energy independence and our foreign affairs.
We can beat terrorism, he says, by being quicker and smarter. But we cannot beat it by massed armies and massed weapons. “Terrorism is not a belief system nor an ideology espoused by a nation that can be defeated in conventional combat. It is a method of coercion that cannot be defeated by traditional military means.
It can be confined, he says, by anticipating its moves, restricting opportunities, denying them funding, penetrating the organizations, denying them access to weapons of mass destructions and killing their leaders faster than they can replace them.
Finally, Hart establishes what it would mean for Americans to be truly secure. “When every child in America is secure,” he says.
Is it possible? In essence, Hart says all we lack is the political will. And where there’s a will …
Staff writer Tom Walker can be reached at 303-820-1624 or at twalker@denverpost.com.
The Shield & The Cloak
By Gary Hart
Oxford University Press, 194 pages, $22
