Thinking about the Future

Index

Introduction

This book is about the future. I have always felt that you can learn about the future—or at least relate to it—by studying the past and identifying principles that have continuing application to our lives and our world.

Take the idea of accountability, which inspires my first chapter. The American people love sports because they always involve accountability. If you catch a pass, you gain some yards; if you drop it, you’ve lost a down. Accountability applies in the marketplace, politics, governance, and throughout daily life. The idea has been on my mind for a long time, and a few years ago I applied it to the problem of terrorism in a lecture in London at the invitation of Lady Margaret Thatcher. Going forward, accountability will take on new dimensions. How should governments think about accountability as digital communications give instant information to citizens everywhere?

Then there’s the importance of trust. When you don’t trust someone, you have a hard time dealing with them because you don’t know if they’ll deliver on their part of a deal. When you know they will deliver, you trust them, and then you can deal with them. Trust is the coin of the realm, the foundation of all transactional behavior and in fact all productive human behavior.

The idea of trust is illustrated in my account of my relationships in Israel, contained in chapter 2. As related in that story, there was a dramatic moment when Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was to give his decision on an American proposal. Everyone expected a long period of negotiations, but he said simply, You know our dreams, you know our nightmares. We trust you. Go ahead.

I learned a lot from my relationships with Israelis. This is set out in a relatively new essay, but the US-Israel relationship has been central for many years. I described it at length in 1985 at the Annual Policy Conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Some forthcoming questions were not flagged quite so clearly in the past, but there are still enough old principles and practice to guide us into the future. As I describe in chapter 3, big technological changes are afoot in the world, and some of them will create stunning changes in the way we work and where we do that work, as well as in warfare. I mentioned information and communications, and that is joined by emerging revolutions in machine learning, in manufacturing, and in our ability to manipulate biology and our environment. Obviously, we need to analyze these developments with abundant care, so as to understand how to take advantage of what they allow us and how to deal effectively with the problems they pose. I wrote on this topic recently in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (America Can Ride the 21st Century’s Waves of Change, June 27, 2018).

But we also need to remember that this is hardly the first time our society has seen major change. Not that long ago, a large proportion of the population worked on farms. With the growth of efficient agricultural practices, only a small number of people are now running America’s farms. About six decades ago, I was a young man on the MIT faculty. The buzzword then was automation, and everyone thought it implied that huge changes were on the horizon—and they were. But what I wrote then could apply to the world today, mutatis mutandis. That means we should understand the new developments and find ways of adjusting to them, mainly through education and training. But we need to have the right balance of taking advantage of the good and dealing with the difficult.

Some quandaries endure. Chapter 4 considers the drug problem, for instance, which simply won’t go away. In many respects it seems to be getting worse: more Americans now die from drug overdoses each year than were killed during the hostilities of the Vietnam War. In America, we started working on the issue in the Nixon administration. The idea was that if you prevent supplies from coming into the country, people will not have access to them. I remember one incident when I was director of the Office of Management and Budget—a story I retell in the chapter. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and I were heading to Camp David, and Pat is exuberant. Pat says, Don’t you realize? We just had the biggest drug bust in history! Congratulations, I say. Pat continues: We confiscated fifty tons of cocaine! I say, Great work. Pat: Don’t you realize? We’ve broken the French Connection. Finally he comes around: I suppose you think that as long as there is a big and profitable demand for drugs in this country, there will be a supply. I look at him and say, Moynihan, there’s hope for you. The supply-oriented approach has simply not worked, so it is time to try something else. I have been suggesting that change for a long time, and I will keep doing so.

I admired the late great economist Gary Becker, so when I was invited to give a talk at his eightieth birthday, I accepted and took as my topic the war on drugs. I put it all in the context of some of Gary’s suggestions on the subject interspersed with my own views. I wrote again on this topic more recently with my friend Pedro Aspe, who saw this same issue from another perspective as secretary of the budget and secretary of the treasury in Mexico.

Well, there is hope, and we can look at examples such as the success of Portugal in dealing with drugs. Portugal maintains the illegality of drugs but decriminalizes their use so that people can go to treatment centers without the threat of being apprehended and incarcerated for their use of illegal drugs. New technologies and business practices will continue to reduce the costs to discover, manufacture, and distribute illicit drugs, just as they have throughout other legal consumer sectors. Governments should look carefully at the creative experiments in dealing with this problem offered by Portugal and other countries or states. Otherwise they will simply repeat the failures of the past.

Another important topic is the use of force. Our future echoes the past as we must once again seriously contemplate our defense capabilities and interests in comparison to peer powers. Chapter 5 gives a framework to think about that problem. In the Reagan period, as brought out in the talk I gave at the Marine Corps University in 2017, we were very careful in the use of force. But we nevertheless developed great strength. Strength is what gives you the results you want. When you use force successfully, it gives you strength, as in our small-scale invasion of Grenada. But when you use force unsuccessfully, as in Afghanistan, that strips you of strength because it shows that you cannot accomplish what you set out to achieve.

At any rate, it is important to understand the interplay between force and strength because if you’re ever in a position to make decisions about this issue, it is well to have learned from experience and to know how to use force successfully. But one should appreciate the basic importance of strength.

Force also has an ethical dimension, as I brought out in an address at the convocation of Yeshiva University in New York in 1984. As President Eisenhower said in his 1958 State of the Union address, Military power serves the cause of peace by holding up a shield behind which the patient, constructive work of peace can go on.

Right now, in the United States and practically throughout the world, we are struggling with problems of governance—the focus of chapter 6. How do we solve the problems and take advantage of the opportunities before us? This issue is of overriding importance, and I have thought about it for many years. In 1970, as secretary of labor, I gave a talk titled The New Federalism at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. I argued for greater reliance on states and cities to administer whatever programs were agreed upon. We see similar trends today, given the diversity of interests and capabilities even within our own country. What might a New, New Federalism look like as this country takes on a variety of new governance questions in a fast-changing technological environment and with close personal impacts? In a speech titled Steady as You Go to the Economic Club of Chicago in 1971, I emphasized the importance of strategy to the success of any plan, be it related to the economy, governance, or other areas. Today, leaders in democratic countries are increasingly distracted by short-term reactions to this or that. Into the future, deliberately setting out a strategy—working from one’s own agenda—will only become more important for effective governance.

As our traditional global partners struggle with their own domestic crises of governance, the world is likely to look to a strong United States for guidance. But chapter 7 shows that effective foreign policy doesn’t just happen. You need a strategy, and to implement that strategy, you need resources. I explained all this in testimony before the US House Appropriations Committee in 1987, but the argument is just as relevant today; for instance, in the question of how to deal with refugees. Of course migration pressures are likely to grow, as global demographic growth shifts toward areas with lower productivity. Will the movement of peoples across the globe follow the path of mobility in goods and finance from recent decades? I also testified on this issue, explaining how the Reagan administration approached the subject.

Chapter 8 addresses one tricky new sort of governance problem for this generation and those that follow: the changing environment. I have been working on the issues of climate change for a long time, and I set out my concerns with a nod to past experience in a Washington Post article, A Reagan Approach to Climate Change, in March 2015.

For many years, I have advocated for a revenue-neutral carbon tax, for instance in an op-ed I wrote with James Baker, titled A Conservative Answer to Climate Change, which was published in the Wall Street Journal in February 2017. Since that article appeared, the idea has been gaining ground, and many companies have signed on to it, giving it traction. I think these ideas will take on increasing relevance as the scale of the emissions problem becomes more obvious and demonstrates the need for a strategic framework toward this problem that is compatible with our other economic and social interests.

Another issue of overriding importance to the United States and the world is, like climate change, being passed from my generation to those yet to be born, and I conclude with that. This is the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The damage that can be done by any nuclear exchange is incalculable.

Right now, I think the way forward has to be reestablishing the ability to talk sensibly with the Russians about this subject. In the speech I gave at the Marine Corps University, I pointed to the Pershing moment (the deployment of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in Germany despite a great effort by the Soviet Union to block such deployments) as a turning point in the Cold War. It was preceded by a strategy. I discussed that strategy in my testimony, reproduced here, at a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

Suppose we have a modern Pershing moment with Russia sometime soon and it becomes possible to once again establish a sensible dialogue with them. Is there any hope of reaching an agreement to severely limit the number of nuclear weapons or even eliminate them altogether? There is a slight basis for hope and for a program to follow up if the idea materializes.

In a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club on October 19, 2017, Russian president Vladimir Putin said the following:

The world has entered an era of rapid change. Things that were only recently referred to as fantastic or unattainable have become a reality and have become part of our daily lives.

The . . . issue is that ICAN [International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons] has brought forth a new attempt, or a new path towards bringing about a world with less, with fewer, or with no nuclear weapons. This is one of the few new initiatives on the horizon at a time where many of the established policies are bogged down and are not moving at all. And I do not think anybody should be surprised that the Norwegian Nobel Committee focuses on nuclear weapons. No single issue has been singled out by the Nobel Committee more often than nuclear disarmament. Ten Nobel prizes has [sic] had this in its rationale, so nobody should be surprised.

Fyodor Lukyanov: Then I will have to try to convince you, Mr. President. If they have awarded ten Nobel Prizes; and even in our time, our country—then the Soviet Union—put forward the idea of a complete ban, maybe we should return to it?

Vladimir Putin: Our colleague from the Nobel Institute is partly right.

If you ask me whether nuclear disarmament is possible or not, I would say, yes, it is possible. Does Russia want universal nuclear disarmament or not? The answer is also yes—yes, Russia wants that and will work for it. This is the good part.

However, as always, there are issues that make you think. Modern high-tech nuclear powers are developing other types of weapons, with higher precision and only slightly inferior to nuclear weapons in their destructive force. Nuclear weapons include bombs and missiles that hit large areas, carrying a powerful charge that affects a huge territory with the power of both the explosion and radiation. Modern high-tech armed forces are trying to develop and put into service high-precision weapons, which come close to nuclear weapons in their destructive power; not quite, but close.¹

Not long afterward, in February 2018, the United States produced its latest Nuclear Posture Review. It begins with this statement:

The United States remains committed to its efforts in support of the ultimate global elimination of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. It has reduced the nuclear stockpile by over 85 percent since the height of the Cold War and deployed no new nuclear capabilities for over two decades.

Nevertheless, global threat conditions have worsened markedly since the most recent 2010 NPR [Nuclear Posture Review], including increasingly explicit nuclear threats from potential adversaries. The United States now faces a more diverse and advanced nuclear-threat environment than ever before, with considerable dynamism in potential adversaries’ development and deployment programs for nuclear weapons and delivery systems.²

These two statements show the difficulties of nuclear disarmament, but at least they give a basis for hope. How do we go about realizing that hope? If we get back to constructive dialogue with the Russians, we should address with them the subject of nuclear disarmament.

Previous efforts have always been confined to the United States and Russia (or the Soviet Union)—understandably, since these two nations hold most of the world’s nuclear weapons. But this time, we should reach out to other states with nuclear weapons and invite them to join us in an attempt to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Such an enterprise might later gain support from the recent UN effort by the non–nuclear weapons states for the elimination of nuclear weapons, as noted in Putin’s comments. This work should proceed with care and energy.

Henry Kissinger, Senator Sam Nunn, Bill Perry, and I have given a lot of thought to this problem, and we have written several opinion articles on the subject. Two of these pieces, reproduced here, are A World Free of Nuclear Weapons (Wall Street Journal, January 2007) and Deterrence in the Age of Nuclear Proliferation (Wall Street Journal, March 2011).

To pull all of this together, I also include a powerful sermon on the subject of nuclear weapons by Bill Swing, former Episcopal bishop of California and current president of the United Religions Initiative. For years I have attended Bill’s sermons in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, just down the hill from my home. Its eloquence underlines the urgency of the problem today.

CHAPTER 1

Accountability