American foreign policy must evaluate new priorities

American foreign policy stands at a crossroads. The two main players, Pres. Clinton and Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher, have to decide whether to follow what has been labeled neo-Cold War orthodoxy.

This approach is based on the contention that the end of the Cold War has not reduced the need for an interventionist U.S. foreign policy. Proponents assert that the collapse of communism has created global instability and that more, not less, American political and military leadership is required. They have discovered justifications and rationales for maintaining the existing national security establishment and a virtually undiminished military budget in humanitarian and peace-keeping missions that are unrelated to the national interest, like the one in Somalia, and in such new rationales as "limited sovereignty" or the "law of democratic intervention." Anything else is stigmatized as isolationism, "1930s' appeasement," a "failure of will," or a "poverty of concept" that risks the rise of a new Hitler, such as Russia's Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

America's allies tend to subscribe to the neo-Cold War orthodoxy. For example, European diplomats at the Brussels NATO conference and the meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Geneva in December, 1992, pressed outgoing Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger for more, not less, American engagement in world affairs. Their motives for such enthusiasm are self-serving - taking advantage of the end of the Cold War to decrease defense spending. The Dutch and Germans announced cuts of up to 45%. In light of public opinion polls showing broad demand for even less defense spending, there is no guarantee that the European states will not cut back even more. Combined defense expenditures of the European members of NATO are shrinking by 23%. The last thing Washington's allies want is for the U.S., which consistently spends more than 150% of the combined expenditures of the other members of NATO, to insist on enjoying its own peace dividend.

If the U.S. did claim its share of the peace dividend, its allies might have to take more responsibility for crises in their backyard, such as the Bosnian conflict. The Europeans, principally the British and the French - all too conscious of being pilloried in the U.S. for what is perceived as their lack of leadership in the Yugoslav crisis - increased their troop contributions to the UN forces in Yugoslavia. Nonetheless, they show no signs of wanting to accept the entire responsibility.

In addition, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's ideas about diminished national sovereignty have introduced a new rationale for American interventionism. His proposal for a permanent UN force that would include U.S. units, acting under a UN mandate, would create new arenas for American military involvement.

More important, statements by members of the Clinton Administration have indicated that they share the inherited Cold War mindset. In his inaugural address, the President stressed that the world is "less stable." Rather than greet a new era, he spoke of the "old animosities and new dangers" resulting from communism's collapse and indicated America's readiness to intervene with force, not only when U.S. vital interests are challenged, but also when the "will and the conscience of the international community are defied."

At his first press conference, Secretary of State Christopher, while calling for a fresh approach, showed that he, too, embraced many of the tenets of the old thinking, citing a "new and vastly more complicated era." Although he pointed to the increase in religious and ethnic conflicts in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, he made no attempt to relate those conflicts to U.S. interests. CIA director R. James Woolsey has commented, "This world that we are beginning to see looks more and more like a more lethal version of the old world that existed before 1914 when a range of nationalist sentiments produced the holocaust of World War I."

Prospects for meaningful reform appear bleak. Indeed, spending on some aspects of national security even may increase. Defense budget reductions are relatively modest and will be scattered piecemeal among the services, additional evidence that the Clinton Administration is following the bureaucratic principle of "equal pain," rather than a new security strategy recognizing that the world has changed.

In a bureaucratically inventive twist, the national security community is asserting that the collapse of the superpower bipolarity has made the world a more complex place and that global threats will emerge unpredictably. That development, they insist, precludes any significant cuts in the national security budget.

The dangers of ill-considered, seat-of-the-pants decisions in response to television pictures of man's inhumanity to man are likely to increase dramatically. The U.S. will be the functional equivalent of a global policeman, whether or not the nation's leaders choose to use the term.

That raises important questions of resource allocation. Expenditures for foreign policy mean less for domestic investment or more added to the deficit. For sensible financial planning to take place, it is necessary to devise a framework for determining how, when, why, and in what form U.S. defense forces will be called upon to intervene overseas.

Neo-Cold War orthodoxy would establish a U.S. police precinct in every country of the world. It would entail a defense tab of nearly 1.3 trillion dollars over the next five years and spending of an additional $150,000,000,000 for intelligence collection. It would seem that the impetus to change and, with it, the potential to articulate more rational national security commitments and spending plans melted like snow under the klieg lights of network television illuminating the Marine landing on the beaches of Somalia.

Clinton was absolutely right to decry attempts to overhaul foreign policy simply to raid the defense budget to finance "domestic wish lists." Doing so would be to play fast and loose with national security and should have no part in any responsible planning. Foreign policy - especially the maintenance of the conditions requisite for democracy, free trade, and open markets will continue to involve vital American interests and demand resources. None of that means that reform is either dangerous or irresponsible, however.

Consequences of

status quo thinking

Three main themes sounded by the foreign policy establishment to buttress their arguments in favor of the status quo are worth examining:

Nothing fundamental has changed. Many members of the foreign policy community argue that, despite the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. faces a similar array of threats from new sources. Chester A. Crocker, a former Assistant Secretary of State, for instance, wrote in the Washington Post that "historic changes since 1989 have profoundly destabilized the previously existing order without replacing it with any recognizable or legitimate system. New vacuums are setting off new conflicts. Old problems are being solved, begetting new ones. The result of this process is a global law-and-order deficit that is straining the capacity of existing and emerging security institutions."

On the same theme, CIA director Woolsey has remarked: "We have slain a large dragon, but we now live in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes and in many ways the dragon was easier to keep track of." Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer has maintained that there is a new Comintem, with headquarters in Iran, that will support Islamic fundamentalism and orchestrate a new monolithic threat to U.S. security.

Such arguments are based on a revisionist image of the Cold War. The notion of equivalence between the threat to the U.S. presented by the ballistic missiles and massed armor of the Warsaw Pact and the issues that have dominated the headlines since the Soviet collapse needs critical examination.

Clearly, the ultimate threat to the U.S. during the Cold War was total destruction in a global holocaust brought about by the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. Despite START II, that threat remains alive, albeit in a less virulent form, since Russia retains the technical capability to destroy this country. It is ironic that the traditionalists seem to be able to live with that residual threat with relative complacency at the same time they find pre-1914 parallels with conflicts that, for all their local savagery, do not endanger American lives or livelihoods directly.

Nuclear proliferation, anti-democratic movements, Islamic fundamentalism, narcotics trafficking, ethnic tumult, economic imbalances, and population and environmental pressures are real problems, but they share an interesting common element - not one carries the immediate physical threat of annihilating the U.S. that was present every day of the Cold War. There is a discretionary quality about the new threats. Unlike a direct Soviet attack on Germany or South Korea, to which the U.S. would have been obligated to respond immediately, today's problems can be debated at length. There is time to consider the merits and disadvantages of intervention. The uncontested and leisurely six-month military buildup between Operations Desert Shield (August, 1990) and Desert Storm (January, 1991) proves the point.

Today's threats do not present a systemic challenge to American interests. Even those - such as former Pres. Richard M. Nixon - who warn of the dangers of a collapse of democracy in Russia speak in terms of increased ethnic tensions. They do not anticipate any renewed peril of nuclear Armageddon. The new threats may affect American interests tangentially or by extension and thus validly may command American attention or intervention, but that is very different from the situation that existed during the Cold War. At that time, policymakers and defense planners did not have the luxury of choice. Now they do. It is quite wrong to argue that nothing fundamental has changed.

The world is more unstable. The second argument holding that the removal of fear of a nuclear holocaust has made the world safe for conventional war. Foreign policy experts from the Cold War era have forgotten their history if they have come to believe that the Cold War was a period of stability during which both sides played a bloodless and painless version of the "great game" by a mutually agreed-upon set of Marquis of Queensbury rules.

In fact, the Cold War was not a bit like that. The Soviet Union really did try to starve West Berlin, subvert Greece and Afghanistan, and put missiles into Cuba, Iraq, and Syria. It really did snuff out freedom in Hungary and Czechoslovakia; prop up dictatorships in Cuba, Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique; bankroll the Communist Parties of Western Europe and Latin America; and supply military hardware to all and sundry, including state sponsors of antiAmerican terrorism. Iraq's surface-to-air missiles that threaten allied aircraft today are Soviet-made. None of that was or is a dream. To contain Soviet power, the West really did live on the nuclear high wire.

As for the supposed absence of conventional war, has the neo-Cold War orthodoxy forgotten Vietnam, Biafra, Chad, the Iran-Iraq war, successive Arab-Israeli conflicts, the Indo-Pakistani war, Nicaragua, Chile, El Salvador, the abortive communist coup in Indonesia, China's annexation of Tibet, the ethnic massacres in Sri Lanka, and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus? To those who do remember those events, today's disputes in Yugoslavia, Armenia, Georgia, Tajikistan, South Ossetia, the Trans-Dniester Republic, and other trouble spots of the former communist empire seem strikingly familiar.

None of those conflicts - not even the one in Yugoslavia or the Hindu-Moslem confrontation in India, both of which have the potential to spill across borders - threatens a global crisis, any more than did regional wars, such as the 1974 Greece-Turkey and 1980-88 Iran-Iraq conflicts during the allegedly stable Cold War period. Strategic rocket forces are not going to move to a higher state of readiness as a result of any current disputes.

It is bad analysis to equate minor, regionally containable problems with threats to world peace. That sort of bloated language may be tolerable in UN resolutions, but it should find no place in American thinking. Belgrade is not Munich. The disputes filling today's headlines are local. Eventually, they will find local solutions, albeit after what may be prolonged and painful struggles.

In contrast, the world is much more stable at the global level. What is confusing analysts is that the relaxation of the iron hand of communism has allowed many ancient local animosities to boil over. Parts of the world, whose alleged stability during the Cold War in fact resembled a pressure cooker on the point of explosion, have blown off their lids.

The world as a whole, however, is not more dangerous. Indeed, it is a much safer place than it used to be. Foreign policy traditionalists such as Senators Sam Nunn (D.-Ga.) and Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.) rightly draw attention to the continuing existence of a Russian nuclear capability, but concede that the danger of a nuclear holocaust is at an all-time low or has receded to the vanishing point. The START II agreement confirms that assessment.

The number of nuclear powers inevitably will increase. The end of the Cold War may prompt some of Washington's allies, freed of the need to seek American protection from the Soviet Union, to go it alone. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the increasing accessibility of weapons technology may facilitate the export or the indigenous manufacture of nuclear devices, thus bringing closer the day when a nuclear weapon may pass into the hands of an unstable dictator. That danger is exacerbated by Moscow's uncertain ability to control the vast arsenal of the former Soviet Union.

The trend is clearly troublesome, and there are no easy solutions. Superficially attractive proposals for coercive policies backed by the threat of U.S. air strikes against emerging nuclear-weapons states fail to address more than a small portion of the problem. They may work in the case of relatively small rogue regimes, such as those of Iraq or Libya, but what if the new proliferators are larger countries, such as Brazil, Nigeria, or Indonesia? The present American stance, which in' theory condemns and seeks to prevent all proliferation, but in practice turns a blind eye to Israel's nuclear activities, should be reevaluated. Perhaps the most urgent need is for the widest possible dissemination of knowledge about the safekeeping and control of nuclear materials and technology.

Despite legitimate concerns about proliferation of nuclear weapons, it is an overreaction to assume that the U.S. must worry about international instability per se. Most conflicts in the post-Cold War period will be parochial. They may pose problems for neighboring powers, but only rarely will threaten American security.

Only America can solve the world's problems. The third error of the neo-Cold War orthodoxy is to assume that mere identification of problems is enough to justify extensive intervention. Proponents of orthodoxy take as a given that the U.S. must become involved in universal problem solving because, as they frequently assert, only it has the military might to take the necessary actions. National Security Adviser W. Anthony Lake came close to taking that position when he said that the U.S. should use "its monopoly on power" to intervene in other countries to promote democracy.

It is obvious that, if one nation (the U.S.) is willing to tax its citizens to pay for unpleasant and dangerous actions that benefit other nations (e.g., Japan and the members of the European Community), irrespective of whether they help pay the costs, it is in the economic interest of those other nations to prolong that situation as long as possible. In economic parlance, they are "free riders." Foreign nations are only too happy to see America as the protector of last resort - and too often that of first resort. It saves them money, which they then can spend on domestic priorities. Clinton's statement that "it is time for our friends to bear more of the burden" will cut no ice until America's allies see U.S. soldiers embarking on planes to leave Europe, Japan, Korea, and other parts of the world.

An undifferentiated list of the world's problems is not a valid argument for the maintenance of status quo thinking in the foreign policy and national security arenas. A rigorous effort is needed to relate the problems to U.S. interests and resources. Too many people are resorting to the discredited domino theory for analysis of current situations. For example, advocates of American involvement in the former Yugoslavia paint a picture of seamless escalation of fighting from Bosnia via Kosovo, Macedonia, and Albania to a general Balkan war involving Greece, Turkey, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania - with the Iranian mujahideen thrown in for good measure.

One scenario even foresees a general Balkan war with the U.S. and Germany supporting one side and France, Britain, and Russia supporting the other. Little effort is made to show that such a progression is probable; even less is made to demonstrate that American involvement would achieve, rather than thwart, a solution.

Just as there are domestic issues that fall outside the purview of the Federal government, so there are overseas problems that are addressed better by local or regional entities than by outsiders, who, however pure their motives, may have neither the long-term knowledge nor sufficient interest to bring an appropriate solution. Indeed, outsiders may complicate matters. That was the message that the UN and EC mediators in Yugoslavia - Cyrus Vance and David Owen - originally sought to project.

Africa provides a good example of the failure of outside intervention. Foreign aid to African nations has lurched from support for large capital projects through commodity stabilization and favorable loans to drastic International Monetary Fund-led deflation. Despite all the billions of dollars that have been poured into that continent, the experiences of Somalia, Sudan, and Liberia demonstrate that outside intervention, however well-intentioned, can not achieve its goals unless those most affected adopt constructive policies.

Identifying the problem is not enough. A vital next stage - a rigorous demonstration that it could be addressed by U.S. intervention and that solving the problem is important to American interests - is required.

Strategic support for

democracy

When the history of the 20th century is written, there is little doubt that America will be praised for the role it played. The defeat of two totalitarian systems - fascism and communism - will be recorded as an immense contribution to human freedom. The U.S. will be remembered even more for having helped to put something better in the place of the two defeated systems. The establishment of the institutions of the post-World War II order, particularly the liberal trading system agreed on at Bretton Woods in 1944, and the fostering of democracy in Western Europe and Japan were profoundly creative acts for which later generations are deeply in America's debt. In comparison with those achievements, less honorable episodes - such as the Vietnam War and the persistent coddling of authoritarian, albeit friendly, dictators - will recede into the background.

With democracy triumphant as both an idea and a system, today's challenges are very different. Even if the commitment to democracy in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is only skin-deep; even if China continues to cling to an authoritarian political system while liberalizing its economy; even if religious Islam continues to offer an alternative view of man's relationship to society - none of those systems inherently threatens democracy. Unlike communism or fascism, they do not postulate the overthrow of or opposition to democracy for their continued existence. There is no, systemic challenge to American or Western ideas.

In this new context, strategic support for democracy takes on new meaning. Although it clearly is still in America's interest to encourage the spread - democratic countries tend not to make war on each other and, over the long term, be more stable than alternative forms of political organization - appropriate ways of doing so have changed. No longer are the world's established or aspiring democracies threatened by physical challenges that they would be unable to meet without American assistance. Those they face today come from internal tensions such as distorted distribution of wealth or limited economic opportunities. For instance, in Egypt, Islamic fundamentalism is gaining ground among the masses of the poor and dispossessed; in Peru, an indigenous terrorist movement is taking advantage of a population alienated from the political process; and in India, chronic economic underperformance is prompting Hindus to seek scapegoats in the Moslem population.

It is not easy to see what contribution American armed forces might make to the resolution of those tensions. To the contrary, overt U.S. interference in such internal conflicts most probably would make difficult situations much worse by allowing the disadvantaged side to appeal to antiforeign nationalism. In such situations, the use of armed force, threatened or actual, is not a viable option. It is abundantly clear, for example, that, despite the Bush Administration's fire-eating attitude toward Iran, a military response would have produced exactly the opposite result of that desired.

The U.S. can make its greatest contribution to global stability through an intelligent trade policy. As do morality and economics, trade policy has little to do with military strength. Support for democracy can not be used to justify the continuation of the national security status quo.

The structures erected for the Cold War can and should come down. In their place, new arrangements that allow the U.S. to protect its interests in a multipolar political and economic environment should be erected. By judiciously realigning American commitments overseas and sensibly transferring American responsibilities to regional structures, it should be possible to guarantee U.S. core security, maintain an active American engagement in world affairs, and retain the capability for U.S. global power projection, if that were to become necessary.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Society for the Advancement of Education
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group