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CONTENTS
THE AMERICAN INTEREST • VOLUME 1, NUMBER 1 (AUTUMN 2005)
47 by Zbigniew Brzezinski
Essays
68 Warrior Honor
by Robert D. Kaplan
The American soldier fights for freedom, and for God. An “embed-
ded” view of the code of personal conduct that motivates America’s
warriors.
Toolbox
Reviews
117 Letters from James Hoge, Jr., Moisés Naím, Richard John Neuhaus,
James Kurth, Tod Lindberg, David Goodhart, Steven Lagerfeld and
Colin Powell
Autumn 2005 3
DEFINING
THE AMERICAN INTEREST
The American Interest (AI) is a new and independent voice devoted to the broad theme of “America in the world.”
Our agenda is threefold. The first is to analyze America’s conduct on the global stage and the forces that shape
it—not just its strategic aspects, but also its economic, cultural and historical dimensions. American statecraft is
not simply about power but also purpose. What is important to the world about America is therefore not just its
politics, but the society from which those politics arise—including America’s literature, music and art, as well as
its values, public beliefs and its historical imagination.
The AI ’s second aim is to examine what American policy should be. It is our view that the challenges and
opportunities of our time transcend the assumptions and vocabulary used by both the Left and Right in recent
years, and that we need to move beyond the defense of obsolete positions. We therefore seek to invite the best
minds from a variety of professions to engage in lively and open-ended debate founded on serious, sustained
arguments and evidence. We wish to provoke and enlighten, not to plead or to please the guardians of any ide-
ology. We take a pragmatic attitude toward policy problems, privileging creativity and effectiveness over con-
tending orthodoxies.
Third, though its name is The American Interest, our pages are open to the world. The simple and inescapable
defining fact of our era is that America is the foremost actor on the world stage. For good or ill, the United States
affects the lives of billions because of its dominance in military, economic and, ever more so, cultural affairs.
Hence, the AI invites citizens of all nations into the American national dialogue, convinced that Americans have
much to learn from the experience and perspectives of others.
There is of course no single or simple “American interest.” The United States is what novelist Tom Wolfe once
labeled our “wild, bizarre, unpredictable, Hog-stomping Baroque country”; it is a complex society that not just
foreigners but Americans themselves often do not well understand.
Therefore, The American Interest will not represent any single point of view. The names listed on our editorial
board and global advisory council form an eclectic group, though not infinitely so. As the pages below attest, we
share many first principles, but we often disagree energetically on their application. Both through what we share
and what we contest, we mean to enliven and to enlighten the public debate.
We therefore invite adepts of all political schools and persuasions, and those too busy thinking to concern them-
selves with labels, to join the fray. In our five annual issues we want to provide the premier forum for serious and
civil discussion on the full spectrum of issues—domestic and international—that shape America’s role on the
world stage. We seek a discourse characterized by mutual respect, humility and a passion for useful truths. Please
join us.
—Francis Fukuyama, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Eliot Cohen & Josef Joffe
* * *
The harbor shared by Los Angeles and its neighbor Long Beach is
arguably America’s most important seaport. Its marine terminals
handle more than 40 percent of all the ocean-borne containers
shipped to the United States. Its refineries receive daily crude
oil shipments and produce one-quarter of the gasoline, diesel and
other petroleum products that are consumed west of the Rocky
Mountains. It is a major port of call for the $25 billion ocean
cruise industry. Just three bridges handle all the truck and train
traffic to and from Terminal Island, where most of the port facil-
ities are concentrated. In short, it is a tempting target for any
adversary intent on bringing its battle to the U.S. homeland.
Yet no one in the Pentagon sees it as his job to protect Los Angeles
and the nation’s other busiest commercial seaports from terrorist
attacks. Oakland, Seattle, Newark, Charleston, Miami, Houston and New
Orleans are America’s economic lifelines to the world, but the U.S.
STEPHEN FLYNN is a retired U.S. Coast Guard officer and a senior fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on
Foreign Relations.
–2–
Autumn 2005 93
to what American taxpayers spend every day on domestic airport
security, or every few hours on military operations and recon-
struction in Iraq.
But the fallout from a terrorist attack on any one of the nation’s
major commercial seaports would hardly be a local matter. For
instance, should al-Qaeda or one of its imitator organizations
succeed in sinking a large ship in the Long Beach channel, auto-
dependent southern California will literally run out of gas with-
in two weeks. This is because U.S petroleum refineries are oper-
ating at full throttle and their products are consumed almost as
quickly as they are made. If crude oil shipments stop, so do the
refineries.
The limited exceptions to the general lack of port security rule are
San Diego and Norfolk, which are homeports for much of the Navy’s
fleet. There the Defense Department has financed substantial secu-
rity upgrades, including underwater detection of swimmers, a state-
of-the-art closed circuit TV system, and a joint operations center.
This is crazy. We should have learned from the 9/11 attacks and the
more recent July 2005 bombings of the London Underground that we
cannot count on forever keeping the threat of catastrophic terror-
–3–
–4–
Autumn 2005 95
• Fourth, the Navy needs to construct and deploy two new minesweep-
ers to the West Coast. In the interim, the existing fleet should be
used to complete bottom surveys of all the major U.S. commercial
seaports. This baseline information is indispensable in quickly
spotting mines should an adversary deploy them. Without it, the cen-
turies of junk at the bottom of most harbors has to be examined by
divers to determine if it poses a risk. This examination could take
many weeks or even months, and that is unacceptable.
• Fifth, you must double to $1.5 billion annual funding for the Coast
Guard so that it can replace its ancient fleet of vessels and air-
craft, and bring its command and control capabilities into the 21st
century. Many of its cutters, helicopters and planes are operating
long beyond their anticipated service life and routinely experience
major casualties. Under the current delivery schedule, it will be 25
years before the Coast Guard has the kind of assets it needs today
to perform its mission. This, too, is unacceptable.
• Finally, you should order the Executive Branch of the U.S. gov-
ernment to develop a national port plan that takes into account
long-term trade and security trends. Relying on a patchwork quilt
of locally-based decisions for managing this critical infra-
structure is just not acceptable.
–5–