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Peter W. Rodman

The Nixon Center, Washington, DC

1996

Foreword by Henry Kissinger

Executive Summary

Introduction

A Strategic View

The Clinton Philosophy: Wilson Agonistes

Conservative Responses

I. Europe

    The Enigma of Russia
    The German Question
    The Security of Central Europe
    Bosnia: Its Long-Term Significance
    Issues for the Future

II. East Asia and the Pacific

    The Challenge of China
    Japan and the American Alliance
    Korea
    Quadrangular Relations

III. Middle East and South Asia

    Regional Trends
    U.S. Policies
    U. S. Strategy
    The Region in Broader Context

IV. The Economic Dimension of Strategy

    Trade and the Democracies
    Economic Development
    Environmental Degradation

V. Political/Military Issues

    Problems of Military Intervention
    The Revolution in Military Technology and Its
    Foreign Policy Implications
    Counterproliferation and Ballistic Missile Defense

Conclusion

Notes

The American debate over foreign policy has taken an ominous turn. Democrats proclaim their rediscovery of their stake in Presidential (and American) leadership, but they still bring with them some attitudes colored by Vietnam. Republicans are succumbing to the temptations of opposition, as well as to a grass-roots mood oblivious to international concerns. The danger is a national consensus on strategic escapism.

The expansive humanitarianism of the early Clinton years is now discredited. Conservatives have offered a variety of intellectual alternatives, from global activism to isolationism. But activism lacks public support and isolationism is a false option. To rescue American internationalism, given the popular mood, the best medicine now may be a dose of strategic realism -- an approach that focuses on the main pillars of the international structure -- to reassure the American people that their leaders can tell the difference between what is important and what is not. These pillars are: our traditional alliances, relations with other major powers (Russia and China), and key regional threats. Weaning the West away from dependence on American leadership looks like an impossibility.

The Administration has downplayed the importance of Europe, citing statistics on trans-Pacific trade. Its Europe policy has focused on Russia, gambling on the experiment of Russian democracy. This gamble now appears a losing one. The failure to hedge against a reemergence of Russia by consolidating the post-1989 status quo in Central Europe -- by NATO membership -- may someday be seen as a historic blunder. Events vindicate the vital importance of NATO, and of new strategic goals like a Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Area.

The Administration has lavished attention on East Asia and the Pacific, but has mishandled the central strategic problems: A more geopolitical approach to China is called for, including building counterweights. This should mean, inter alia, greater priority on our strategic alliance with Japan. Instead, our Asia policy has been dominated by economic disputes and domestic politics. Japan-bashing has produced a nationalist reaction in Japan, as shown by the behavior of Japanese politicians over the Okinawa rape case. For the first time since the 1950's, moreover, Russia and China have better relations with each other than with us, which deprives us of much of the geopolitical leverage

In the Middle East, U.S. policy has been basically sound but erratic. Containment of both Iran and Iraq is essential, and is vindicated by events. Despite terrorism in Israel, Islamist radicalism may be weakening as a regional force. In South and Central Asia, an important new geopolitical competition is developing.

The Clinton team has laid great stress on the economic dimension. However, economic relations among the democracies (U.S.-EU, U.S.-Japan, EU-Central Europe, EU-Turkey) are not being managed well and are in fact impairing Western cohesion. In the developing world, U.S. foreign assistance policy has, until recently, been strangely oblivious to the prevailing economic thinking about the importance of free-market reforms. The Administration has also flirted with notions of environmental determinism, to the point where its environmental policies have complicated Congressional passage of important trade-liberalization measures.

In the political/military dimension, the Administration was an early subscriber to a doctrine of "humanitarian interventionism" that has now clearly forfeited public support. Problems of implementation were not simply accidental: Its early resorts to force consciously attempted to resurrect a Vietnam-era strategy of incrementalism, which almost invited failure. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is another critical issue, but the Administration's suspicion of ballistic missile defense (BMD) is another doctrinal blind spot. Congressional Republicans, however, are misreading the strategic landscape in their own fashion, in their neglect of space-based BMD systems and in the risk they run of turning the BMD debate into an avoidable brawl with the Russians.

In conclusion, on major issues concerning the most important world powers, U.S. foreign policy has gotten it badly wrong -- especially in the neglect of the primary importance of our traditional alliances. Beneath the surface "successes," serious structural damage is being done to the international system. The American people, for their part, are not now enamored of international engagement, but they still expect their President to have some mastery over these issues -- and if things go wrong, they hold him to account. On the other hand, the Republicans will need demonstrate more convincingly that they have the strategic view the Administration lacks.