Geography Reference
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spent. Education, health programs, shelters, social services—these are vital components of
stable and well-functioning communities. The international system already has a great deal
of this infrastructure—institutions and networks that promote cooperation over public health,
refugees, and emergency aid. But as the scale and scope of potential problems grow in the
twentieth-first century, investments in these preventive and management capacities will also
need to grow. Early warning systems, protocols for emergency operations, standby capacit-
ies, et cetera—these are the stuff of a protective global infrastructure.
Second, the United States should recommit to and rebuild its security alliances. The idea
is to update the old bargains that lie behind these security pacts. In NATO, but also in the
East Asia bilateral partnerships, the United States agrees to provide security protection to the
other states and bring its partners into the process of decision making over the use of force.
In return, these partners agree to work with the United States—providing manpower, logist-
ics, and other types of support—in wider theaters of action. The United States gives up some
autonomy in strategic decision making, although it is more an informal restraint than a leg-
ally binding one, and in exchange it gets cooperation and political support. The United States
also remains “first among equals” within these organizations, and it retains leadership of the
unified military command. The updating of these alliance bargains would involve widening
the regional or global missions in which the alliance operates and making new compromises
over the distribution of formal rights and responsibilities.
There are several reasons why the renewal of security partnerships is critical to liberal or-
der building. One is that security alliances involve relatively well defined, specific, and lim-
ited commitments—which is attractive for both the leading military power and its partners.
States know what they are getting into and what the limits are on their obligations and liabilit-
ies. Another is that alliances provide institutional mechanisms that allow accommodations for
disparities of power among partners within the alliance. Alliances do not embody universal
rules and norms that apply equally to all parties. NATO, at least, is a multilateral body with
formal and informal rules and norms of operation that both accommodate the most power-
ful state and provide roles and rights for others. Another virtue of renewing the alliances is
that they have been useful as “political architecture” across the advanced democratic world.
The alliances provide channels of communication and joint decision making that spill over
into the wider realms of international relations. They are also institutions with grand histories
and records of accomplishment. The United States is a unipolar military power, but it still
has incentives to share the costs of security protection and find ways to legitimate the use of
its power. The postwar alliances—renewed and reorganized—are an attractive tool for these
purposes.
Third, the United States should reform and create encompassing global institutions that
foster and legitimate collective action. The first move here should be to reform the United
Nations, starting with the expansion of the permanent membership on the Security Council.
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