The Shape of Elite Opinion on U.S. Foreign Policy, 1992 to 2004
Research has demonstrated considerable diversity in the evolution of foreign policy beliefs of elite opinion leaders. Holsti and Rosenau's three-headed eagle, Wittkopf's four-headed eagle, and Rosati and Creed's six-headed eagle produced a number of categories that help to explain the significance of this diversity since the collapse of the Cold War consensus. This article expands upon this research by observing even greater complexity and diversity in the shape of foreign policy beliefs of elite opinion leaders since the end of the Cold War. Using a content analysis of national opinion and foreign policy journals between 1992 and 2004, it identifies and details nine foreign policy orientations (missionaries, hegemonists, globalizers, global capitalists, narrow realists, progressive internationalists, anti-imperialists, neighbors, and disengagers) held by elite opinion leaders. It also suggests that elites are altering their foreign policy orientations by absorbing profound global changes into their belief systems.
Clash of Globalizations
What is the state of international relations today? In the 1990s, specialists concentrated on the partial disintegration of the global order’s traditional foundations: states. During that decade, many countries, often those born of decolonization, revealed themselves to be no more than pseudostates, without solid institutions, internal cohesion, or national consciousness. The end of communist coercion in the former Soviet Union and in the former Yugoslavia also revealed long-hidden ethnic tensions. Minorities that were or considered themselves oppressed demanded independence. In Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Haiti, rulers waged open warfare against their subjects. These wars increased the importance of humanitarian interventions, which came at the expense of the hallowed principles of national sovereignty and nonintervention. Thus the dominant tension of the decade was the clash between the fragmentation of states (and the state system) and the progress of economic, cultural, and political integration -in other words, globalization.
Analysis: The Agenda 2007 Proposals: Evolution or Revolution?
On 10 February 2004 the Commission published its proposal for the financial perspective 2007-2013. A week later it adopted the third report on economic and social cohesion. These two documents form the basis of the so-called ‘Agenda 2007 reforms’. They will be the greatest challenge for the enlarged EU after the intergovernmental conference, since they will determine the financial basis for EU policy-making until the middle of the next decade. The Agenda 2007 proposals certainly hint at courageous reforms, because they place a previously unheard-of emphasis on performance and quality. Under the proposals, structural operations should generate value for money, and the funds should focus on projects which generate added value at a European level. Overall the Commission’s proposals point in the right direction, because they balance, on the one hand, solidarity for the new Member States and weak regions in the old Member States with, on the other hand, investments in future tasks. Moreover, they constitute a paradigm shift. For the first time, the Common Agricultural Policy will not be the dominant expenditure category. Now it is up to the Member States to examine the proposals politically and find a compromise between sometimes very divergent interests. It is to be hoped that, during the debate over expenditure limits and division of funds, national interests do not outweigh European interests.