It's Foreign Policy, Stupid
the weekly Standard It's Foreign Policy, Stupid "Your planet seems to be in good condition," Secretary of State John Hay once serenely reported to Theodore Roosevelt. One wonders whether Warren...
...There is always one fundamental test for American foreign policy: Is it safer to be our friend or our enemy...
...Warren Christopher has spent more time with Syria's Hafez el-Assad than with most of our European allies...
...That was the mood in the country in 1980 when Ronald Reagan ran against Jimmy Carter...
...When added to the administration's accommodating approach to China, the Clinton administration's policies have sent a clear message to the world: If you're a Communist dictatorship, if you've got a long record of anti-Americanism, then you're just the kind of friend we've been looking for...
...And Clinton did such a good job convincing himself of the irrelevance of foreign policy that, as president, he passed the job to his subordinates...
...And in Cuba and China, his accommodating policies are more likely to perpetuate dictatorship than to foster democratic reform...
...Clinton's proudest accomplishment was bringing Yasser Arafat to the White House lawn...
...Dole should do the same...
...Instead of criticizing each Clinton policy as it comes up-today Cuba, tomorrow the Middle East, the next day China-Dole should use the whole panoply of foreign policy issues to spell out clearly the large doctrinal differences between the party of Reagan-Bush and the party of Carter-Clinton...
...But it probably won't wash...
...Sound familiar...
...But worse than that, this attitude threatened to make the GOP the party of pessimism...
...That means abandoning the Republican party's anti-foreign policy stance of the past three years and arguing that our country has an active, and vital, global responsibility...
...Thanks to some gutsy decisions last year, however, Sen...
...Standing by our allies...
...It might not be long before the foreign policy pundits start talking about a dangerous world that is out of control and about a declining America that can no longer shape the course of events...
...When disasters failed to materialize, both in Haiti and (so far) Bosnia, Clinton could declare victory and leave Republicans grumbling...
...There probably won't be any breakthroughs in Northern Ireland...
...Where once Ronald Reagan offered a vision of optimism and confidence about America's leading role in the world, Republicans talked about the limits of our power and the difficulties of using it to accomplish anything worthwhile...
...Last December Dole single-handedly saved the party from driving over a cliff on the issue of supporting the deployment of troops in Bosnia...
...Clinton has actually done comparatively little to spread democracy around the world...
...This ought to be about the time Bill Clinton sheds his "foreign policy president" outfit and starts telling us how well the economy is doing, stupid...
...But it was a mistake to cede this ground to the Democrats...
...In 1996 Dole needs to set forth the broad principles of Republican internationalism that made Ronald Reagan such an effective foreign policy president and such a strong candidate...
...Reagan responded not by carping about the failures but by expressing confidence in American power and promising to shore up American strength...
...At least three broad themes stand out...
...One wonders whether Warren Christopher can say the same to Bill Clinton about his planet these days...
...The Middle East "peace process" will be stalled as the Israelis see to their security and then go to elections...
...Let's sum up the past few weeks: Fidel Castro shot two unarmed planes out of the sky, killing three U.S...
...The truth is, Republicans have allowed their natural advantage in the area of foreign policy to atrophy since 1992, when Bill Clinton managed to convince everybody that foreign policy was a political loser in the post-Cold War era...
...The result, ironically, was to give Clinton a free ride on policies of questionable merit...
...and, perhaps worst of all, Christopher's beloved Middle East "peace process" collapsed and now lies motionless at the bottom of the charred bomb craters left by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists...
...the IRA ended a U.S.-backed truce by setting bombs off in London...
...The result was two years of vacillation and incompetence in the management of foreign affairs before the world intruded itself upon Clinton's consciousness and forced him to grab the wheel now and then...
...in a second term, it will be normalization of relations with Castro...
...He had to make that case, of course, because if foreign policy mattered, then George Bush was obviously the better candidate...
...One of Clinton's top priorities was normalization of relations with Vietnam...
...In the coming months, Clinton is likely to look more and more helpless to solve the world's problems...
...Clinton also did a good job convincing the Republicans, and the result was the GOP's dangerous three-year flirtation with neo-isolationism and the near abandonment of its successful Reagan-era internationalism...
...Before every intervention, leading figures in the party cried "quagmire," warned of "another Vietnam," predicted disaster, and then waited for the "body bags" to start coming home...
...China began firing missiles around the edges of Taiwan like a knife-thrower at the circus...
...Castro just might decide to let loose another exodus of rafters-if only to remind the occupant of the Oval Office, whether Dole or Clinton, that he still holds this weapon...
...Expressing confidence in American power...
...China's ominous behavior around Taiwan will continue...
...With all the bombs and missiles going off around the world, there's a good chance foreign policy is going to be a big part of the 1996 campaign...
...Clinton couldn't have planned a better dirty trick, for the Republicans came close to squandering one of their most important electoral advantages: the American people's confidence in their ability to lead America forcefully and effectively through just the kind of international thickets that have recently sprouted up around us...
...And, worst of all, Russia may elect the Communist leader, Gennadi Zyuganov, president in June...
...citizens...
...Dole should take back the ideological issues that Reagan employed so successfully but that Republicans have ignored for three years...
...The bedrock principle of Republican foreign policy in the Reagan-Bush years was that our staunch allies in the world come first, but the Clinton administration, like the Carter administration, has been more interested in accommodating old enemies than protecting old friends...
...In doing so he defied the common wisdom, slavishly followed by ex-candidates Gramm and Alexander and by Steve Forbes, and proved that supporting an activist policy overseas does a candidate no harm...
...The events of recent weeks and the problems that inevitably lie ahead-with Cuba, the Middle East, and China-should remind voters that the conduct of foreign policy is a uniquely large element of a president's job description...
...And that's good news for Bob Dole, if he seizes the opportunity to remind the voters of what they already know: that Republicans have proved more reliable custodians of the nation's foreign policy these past 20 years than the current generation of post-Vietnam Democrats...
...Dole is well positioned to pick up the Reagan standard in foreign policy and bring it to bear against Clinton's anemic internationalism lite...
...Now he can move on to define the Republican internationalist agenda and thereby capitalize on the party's longtime strength in foreign affairs...
...Dole should borrow a page from the Reagan foreign policy handbook and speak out about the American-led democratic revolution that has been sweeping across the globe since the 1980s...
...If there are democratic governments in almost every country in this hemisphere today, if there are democracies in Central and Eastern Europe, this is the direct consequence of the Reagan Doctrine...
...The word "democracy" fell out of the Republican party's vocabulary when Clinton sent troops to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the presidency in Haiti...
...Russia moved a step closer to an election that may put a Communist back in the Kremlin...
...Standing by our ideals...
...With his mishap in Somalia, his intervention in Haiti, and his on again, off again approach to Bosnia, Clinton managed to maneuver many Republicans into the corner once occupied by the McGovernite wing of the Democratic party...
Vol. 1 • March 1996 • No. 26
