Predictions

Long-time readers of the bulletin will no doubt recognize that with this issue the magazine returns to the use of Sabon as its text font. Sabon was and is a real favorite–we would never have dropped it had a digital version been available when we shifted to electronic typesetting in 1989.

In other words, a change that may seem radical to one person may be just a return to the status quo ante to another. So, while you're paging through this newly redesigned, gloriously full-color Bulletin, please remember that in at least one sense, the magazine is decidedly retro. (Nonetheless, I predict that some readers will complain that it is now so ugly or so frivolous that they cannot bear to bring themselves to read it.)

Months ago I asked a group of specialists if they would, in this issue, offer gratuitous advice to the next president–whoever he might be–on issues of national security. I confidently added that because we would know who the president-elect was by the due date for their first drafts, they could tailor their advice to the winner.

Instead, my sure-thing statement turned out to be a very poor prediction of events to come. November 15, the due date, came and went, and the disputed election drama continued to play out through November and beyond.

Still, the authors have managed to produce very sound advice that would bring credit to any president who followed it: Theresa Hitchens leads off, suggesting that the next president could make a real break with the Clinton administration just by having a nuclear weapons policy. Daryl Kimball and Sen. Alan Cranston argue that it is about time to follow through on nuclear treaties. Bill Hartung and co-authors John Isaacs and Dan Koslofsky add important cautions on defense matters, as does Lisbeth Gronlund, who gives us the skinny on national missile defense. Michael O'Hanlon talks up the Atlantic alliance, and Bruce Cumings looks to the Pacific. Finally, Mike Moore examines U.S. ambitions in space.

It would be unnatural if I had no advice to add, so I'll put my two cents' worth here:

First, Mr. Next President, try not to hang around with guys who hanker after the good old Cold War days.

Second, recognize good stuff when it comes along. If, for instance, the Russians offer to reduce their nuclear arsenal by more than half, don't try to convince them, as the Clinton administration did a year ago, that they should instead maintain a large, hair-trigger nuclear force into the indefinite future.

Or if the warming trend between North and South Korea makes it look like peace might break out there, don't listen to any of your advisers who argue that a divided, still-at-war Korea is the only thing standing between an “inevitable” Sino-Japanese conflict that would be sure to draw in the United States. (Even hard-headed realists can be too devious for their own good.)

My final prediction is that advice like mine won't be followed. But I'd like to be wrong.