1 00:00:00,260 --> 00:00:06,540 When it comes to U.S. foreign policy, Americans must sometimes feel like Goldilocks 2 00:00:06,540 --> 00:00:08,760 in the three bears’ house. 3 00:00:08,760 --> 00:00:13,420 The porridge that was President George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda” -- promising 4 00:00:13,420 --> 00:00:20,390 democracy for everyone from Karachi to Casablanca -- was too hot. The mush constituting President 5 00:00:20,390 --> 00:00:25,690 Barack Obama’s foreign policy -- deeply ambivalent about the uses of U.S. power -- 6 00:00:25,690 --> 00:00:26,870 is too cold. 7 00:00:26,870 --> 00:00:34,490 How can the U.S. enforce basic global norms of decency, deter enemies, and reassure friends 8 00:00:34,490 --> 00:00:38,130 without losing sight of our national interests? 9 00:00:38,130 --> 00:00:43,250 There is a proven model that has nothing to do with foreign policy. 10 00:00:43,250 --> 00:00:47,770 It has to do with policing our toughest inner cities. 11 00:00:47,770 --> 00:00:56,080 In 1990, New York City had a homicide rate of more than 30 murders for every 100,000 people. 12 00:00:56,080 --> 00:01:04,120 By 2012, it had fallen to a rate of 5 per 100,000. A similar, if slightly less 13 00:01:04,120 --> 00:01:10,500 dramatic story, unfolded in every other major U.S. city -- despite the fact that many of 14 00:01:10,500 --> 00:01:17,899 the factors often cited to explain crime -- bad schools, broken homes, poverty, the prevalence 15 00:01:17,899 --> 00:01:22,039 of guns, unemployment -- remained largely the same. 16 00:01:22,040 --> 00:01:23,540 What happened? 17 00:01:23,540 --> 00:01:30,040 In 1982, George Kelling, a criminologist at Rutgers, and James Q. Wilson, a political 18 00:01:30,049 --> 00:01:36,619 scientist at Harvard, wrote an essay titled “Broken Windows.” It had long been known 19 00:01:36,619 --> 00:01:42,170 that if one broken window wasn’t replaced, it wouldn’t be long before all the other 20 00:01:42,170 --> 00:01:50,159 windows were broken too. Why? Because, they wrote, “one unrepaired broken window is 21 00:01:50,159 --> 00:01:57,759 a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.” 22 00:01:57,759 --> 00:02:02,999 Municipalities that adopted policing techniques based on the broken-windows theory 23 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:08,160 -- the strict enforcement of laws against petty crimes and policing by foot patrols -- 24 00:02:08,160 --> 00:02:14,500 registered sharp drops in crime and major improvements in people’s quality of life. 25 00:02:14,500 --> 00:02:18,680 Could it be that this “broken windows” approach would work 26 00:02:18,680 --> 00:02:22,500 in our increasingly disorderly world? 27 00:02:22,500 --> 00:02:28,920 Absolutely. But, of course, only if the approach is applied. 28 00:02:28,920 --> 00:02:35,200 After the dictator of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, used sarin nerve gas to murder more than 1,000 29 00:02:35,200 --> 00:02:43,740 people near Damascus in August 2013, President Obama warned that “if we fail to act, 30 00:02:43,740 --> 00:02:48,720 the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons.” 31 00:02:48,720 --> 00:02:56,680 And after Russia seized Crimea in 2014, he denounced the Kremlin for “challenging truths 32 00:02:56,680 --> 00:03:03,840 that only a few weeks ago seemed self-evident, that in the 21st century, the borders of Europe 33 00:03:03,840 --> 00:03:07,260 cannot be redrawn with force.” 34 00:03:07,260 --> 00:03:11,580 Two broken windows. Two eloquent warnings. 35 00:03:11,580 --> 00:03:18,100 Yet the warnings didn’t amount to much. Bashar Assad stayed in power, and continued 36 00:03:18,100 --> 00:03:23,640 to use chemical weapons. And Russia's invasion of Ukraine carried on. 37 00:03:23,640 --> 00:03:31,900 This is how we arrive at a broken-windows world: Rules are invoked but not enforced. 38 00:03:31,900 --> 00:03:41,460 And when rules aren’t enforced, more rules will be broken. One window breaks, then others. 39 00:03:41,460 --> 00:03:47,200 How do we arrest the slide into a world of international disorder? 40 00:03:47,200 --> 00:03:54,260 As I write in my book, America in Retreat, we do it by invoking a broken windows foreign 41 00:03:54,260 --> 00:04:01,420 policy that sharply punishes violations of basic geopolitical norms, such as the use 42 00:04:01,420 --> 00:04:08,600 of chemical weapons, by swiftly and precisely targeting the perpetrators of those attacks. 43 00:04:08,600 --> 00:04:16,209 The emphasis should be on short, mission-specific, punitive police actions, not on open-ended 44 00:04:16,209 --> 00:04:23,530 occupations with the goal of redeeming broken societies, as was tried in Iraq. 45 00:04:23,530 --> 00:04:28,690 A broken-windows foreign policy doesn’t try to run every bad guy out of town. 46 00:04:28,690 --> 00:04:33,580 Nor does it demand that the U.S. put out every geopolitical fire. 47 00:04:33,580 --> 00:04:39,800 But it does prevent big fires and it does punish the worst dictators. 48 00:04:39,800 --> 00:04:46,240 Just one cruise-missile strike against just one radio tower in Rwanda during the 1994 49 00:04:46,240 --> 00:04:52,240 genocide could have helped to prevent the Hutu killers from broadcasting instructions 50 00:04:52,240 --> 00:04:58,440 for murdering Tutsis, potentially saving tens of thousands of innocent lives 51 00:04:58,440 --> 00:05:00,480 -- and at minimal cost. 52 00:05:00,480 --> 00:05:07,500 Similarly, at a minimal cost to America, US led bomb strikes by NATO were decisive in 53 00:05:07,510 --> 00:05:14,900 lifting the seige of Sarajevo in 1995, turning the tide of the war in the former Yugoslavia 54 00:05:14,900 --> 00:05:19,580 against Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. 55 00:05:19,580 --> 00:05:26,360 Perhaps it is time for a strategy that enshrines the principle that preventing tragedy 56 00:05:26,360 --> 00:05:31,080 should enjoy greater moral legitimacy than reacting to it. 57 00:05:31,090 --> 00:05:33,550 I’m Bret Stephens.