Kosovo and the Republican Future
KOSOVO AND THE REPUBLICAN FUTURE Republicans say they want to make foreign policy and national security a big issue in the 2000 campaign. But when Republican senators voted 38-16 against NATO...
...And the good news is that a few prominent Republicans have stepped forward to uphold the Reagan mantle...
...frightening Japan...
...allowing sales of advanced military technology at the behest of big corporate donors...
...We suspect the air campaign may be more successful than panicky critics are now forecasting...
...It is a reason for us to help convince Milosevic that the United States, the greatest force for good in history, will no longer stand by while he makes a mockery of the values for which so many Americans have willingly given their lives...
...it has weakened America's defenses, demoralized America's military, and undermined America's standing in the world through inconstant and incompetent leadership...
...Clinton's record is dismal...
...The Clinton administration has been reduced to paying huge bribes to Pyongyang for the privilege of visiting sites where the North Koreans once were building nuclear weapons but which they have long since cleaned out...
...International support for the "containment" of Saddam is evaporating...
...ignoring Beijing's crackdowns on democracy activists...
...it has elevated money over morality, and traded away national security for corporate interests and campaign contributions...
...His policy of engagement toward China is, finally, widely understood to be little better than a policy of appeasement and venality...
...It reflects a fundamental failure to understand what is good for the country...
...If one consequence of such a strategy is the independence of Kosovo, so be it...
...And the Clinton administration does not even pretend to have an answer...
...In any case, now is the time for Republicans to show some courage...
...That's quite an accomplishment...
...peacekeeping force in Kosovo if one is eventually needed, as about 80 percent of House Republicans did recently, and instead of opposing the bombing campaign, as about 70 percent of Senate Republicans did last week, the GOP should be the party of American leadership and American victory...
...All these failures and more make a ripe target for a Republican party that is willing and able to offer a coherent alternative...
...William Kristol and Robert Kagan, for the Editors...
...For example, Senators Jesse Helms, Richard Lugar, and others have introduced legislation to make the goal of American policy the removal of Milosevic from power and to provide some of the means necessary to accomplish that objective...
...Right now, it's hard to tell...
...leadership in NATO...
...They won't be able to unless a few party leaders—and in particular key presidential candidates—repudiate much of the Republican talk we've heard over the past couple of weeks...
...Senators Mitch McConnell and Joseph Lieberman have introduced a bill that would provide $25 million to arm the Kosovars...
...Here again, the word that best describes Clinton administration policy is appeasement...
...Behaving like McGovern Democrats is not just bad politics, damaging to Republican hopes in 2000...
...Instead of warning hysterically about the possibilities of failure in the current mission, Republicans should be supporting the military action, warning that the Clinton administration is likely to do too little, not too much, and pressing for additional policies that will lead to victory...
...undermining Taiwan's security...
...In theory, the outline of a Republican foreign policy platform for 2000 practically writes itself: The Clinton-Gore administration has appeased dictators from Baghdad to Beijing to Belgrade...
...Helms put it last week, Milosevic's ouster is the only real "exit strategy" in the Balkans...
...Do Republicans really want to present themselves as the party of callous indifference to human suffering, the party that defends the "sovereign" right of brutal thugs like Slobodan Milosevic to slaughter innocent women and children, the party that won't lift a finger against aggressive dictators, the party that doesn't give a fig about what happens in Europe and is willing to abandon U.S...
...The damage can, however, still be repaired...
...No one has been paying much attention to Iraq lately...
...But Sen...
...Republicans should also push the administration to abandon its faith in any further "peace" agreements with Milosevic and to arm the Kosovars...
...A Republican president should restore American strength, reinvigorate American global leadership, and return American foreign policy to the strong moral and strategic foundations of the Reagan era...
...and polls suggest the American people are figuring this out...
...Bob Dole and Jeane Kirk-patrick have been arguing on both moral and strategic grounds that the United States must do what it takes to defeat Milosevic and defend the Kosovar Albanians...
...Right now Saddam Hussein is busy building his weapons of mass destruction, unencumbered by international inspectors, unchallenged by a domestic opposition that the Clinton administration, despite paying lip service to the Iraq Liberation Act, refuses to support, and unharmed by the sporadic attacks which the United States has been carrying out in the no-fly zones...
...The list of Clinton foreign policy failures is surprisingly long...
...This would be a powerful case for putting a Republican in the White House in 2001—but only if Republicans can plausibly make it...
...John McCain struck the right note when he insisted on the Senate floor that Republicans "must not compound the administration's mistakes by committing our own...
...On the contrary, it is a reason for Congress to do what it can to restore our credibility...
...Republicans have every right to be critical of President Clinton—Steve Forbes, for example, is absolutely correct to say that "the bombing should have taken place six months ago, a year ago, two years ago...
...The fundamental point is this: Once the United States and NATO are engaged, there is no acceptable alternative to success...
...Covering up Chinese espionage...
...Republicans have almost managed to make the feckless Clinton look like a champion of American moral leadership...
...As a result of that vote, and of the neo-isolationist arguments that leading Republicans made to support their position, Republican foreign policy is now mired in pathetic incoherence...
...and now, apparently, agreeing to Chinese entry into the World Trade Organization ahead of Taiwan and on concessionary terms—all these failures of China policy amount to a grand albatross around the Clinton-Gore administration's neck...
...But that unfolding Clinton administration disaster is certain to rear its head again over the next year...
...But there's the rub...
...And, as Sen...
...And anyone who believes the Clinton administration is actually committed to building a missile defense system—now more urgently needed than ever—must have been living on another planet for the past six years...
...This is too bad, because Republicans are right to think that foreign policy offers them a big opportunity in 2000...
...Combined with a continuing air campaign, these efforts to undermine Milosevic stand a real chance of success...
...But when Republican senators voted 38-16 against NATO airstrikes in Yugoslavia last week, they gravely damaged their ability to do so...
...Meanwhile, the defense budget continues to decline in real dollars—despite Clinton administration efforts to use smoke and mirrors to claim that it is boosting spending...
...Instead of voting against a U.S...
...One bribe will be followed by more—and with no prospect of actually stopping the North Koreans from building their weapons...
...but if it doesn't do the job, it is irresponsible to rule out the possibility of ground troops...
...The sanctions regime is tottering...
...the world on his watch has become a much more dangerous place...
...As McCain argued, "That the president has so frequently and so utterly failed to preserve one of our most important strategic assets—our credibility—is not a reason to deny him his authority to lead NATO in this action...
...Whatever problems that may cause pale in comparison with letting Milosevic win...
...overlooking Chinese proliferation of nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea...
...Is this the party of Reagan or the party of Buchanan...
...A policy that combines a vigorous air campaign with an arms supply to the Kosovars could replicate the successful strategy that brought peace to Bosnia...
...In North Korea, things go from bad to worse...
Vol. 4 • April 1999 • No. 28
