Panel Held on Foreign Relations

Five foreign-policy experts presented their views on the future of international relations in a panel discussion entitled "The World Ahead" at the ARCO Forum last night.

The event was held in honor of the 75th anniversary of Foreign Affairs, the influential bimonthly published by the Council on Foreign Relations. About 150 people, mostly graduate students, attended.

"The organizers of this forum... asked us to address the future of the world in five minutes," said one of the panelists, Weatherhead University Professor Samuel P. Huntington.

In addition to Huntington, the panel included Graham T. Allison Jr. '62, Dillon professor of government; James F. Hoge Jr., editor-in-chief of Foreign Affairs, Jessica T. Mathews '67, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Richard Pipes, Baird professor of history, emeritus. The panel was moderated by Joseph S. Nye, dean of the Kennedy School of Government.

Hoge said the world will face two main issues in the immediate future: incorporating rising powers into the world order and liberalizing trade.

Allison said he envisions two starkly different possibilities for the future.

"Looking forward I would offer you two scenarios, one of which is more positive and one of which is more negative," he said.

In Allison's first scenario, the "United States faces no direct threats to international security." In his second scenario, the country is pushed into a "new dark age" by threats of nuclear terrorism.

"Imagine that weapons of mass destruction come to be relatively accessible to... terrorists and criminal groups," he said. "Replay Desert Storm."

Huntington said the future will see "new patterns of alignment and antagonism" and questions about the "role and purpose of the United States."

Mathews argued that the future will bring "enormously increased power to non-state actors." She said that the increased powers of these "new entities" was highlighted by the recent land-mine treaty.

Pipes said that as a historian he is "queasy" talking about the future. He said the failure of American intelligence to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union should be "a cautionary tale" for future analysts.

"I am struck by the dismal failure of Sovietology in predicting the Soviet Union's collapse," he said.

Following the prepared remarks, the panelists answered wide-ranging questions from the audience.

The speakers were asked about Russian-Chinese relations, the relevance of the military in the post-Cold War world, and the trade-off between economic growth and long-term stability.