A better set of tools

ADOPTING NEOCONTAINMENT WILL not only help us frame our issues but also help us select the proper tools to solve them.

Currently, the Department of Defense receives the lion's share of our resources, making it the de-facto primary arm of US foreign policy. However, the military is only one tool - a hammer - and it is unlikely to be decisive in the long run. Our 2008 economic assistance budget was $36 billion, less than 6 percent of defense spending. The Foreign Service corps numbers a paltry 11,500, and USAID has only 1,200 officers (in 1970, it had 1,900 for South Vietnam alone).

A well-articulated strategy that emphasizes all tools of national power would create a framework to address this imbalance. For instance, Congress could pass a war parity act requiring that supplemental money allocated to support the wars be matched by an equivalent amount funding other instruments of national power. We could put these resources to work in stable nation-states of our choosing, but we could also use them to work more actively "behind the wall" to promote the principle of individual freedom to select groups abroad. We should, for example, reconstitute the United States Information Agency (disbanded in 1999), charter it with its former mission (informing and influencing foreign publics in promotion of the national interest), and restore it to at least its Cold War levels (10,000 personnel, with a $1 billion budget).