Clinton's
Foreign Policy is the Twentieth
Century's Missed Opportunity
By JONATHAN POWER
LONDON-- It has been whispered that
Bill Clinton is deeply envious of his vice-president, Al
Gore. Mr. Gore stands the chance of being the president Mr.
Clinton wanted to be, trained and matured for the job, able
to set his own agenda and priorities. Clinton, when he ran
for the Democratic nomination, never expected to win; his
intention was to position himself for a future attempt.
Perhaps this is what explains his lack-lustre performance in
foreign affairs. Unschooled, his ill thought out,
event-driven foreign policy has been arguably the greatest
twentieth century opportunity missed.
Every leader's foreign policy is
event-driven to some extent, since the unpredictable is a
large part of human life. But no other American president in
my memory has made it almost an art form. Nothing
demonstrates this more than Iraq. For all the sabre rattling
of the last couple of weeks, Clinton the last few years has
acted as if he hoped that Saddam Hussein and his weapons of
mass destruction would just disappear in a desert
sand-storm. Only Saddam upping the ante forced Clinton to
focus on reports of biological weapon construction that had
been in his in-tray all year.
And only now, as Arab opinion has
drifted dangerously away from America to the point where
coalition-building against Iraq has become impossible, is
Clinton belatedly getting tough with Israel. Benjamin
Netanyahu's government needed both its settlements' policy
and its anti-Oslo Agreement stance firmly to be knocked on
their head seventeen months ago, before the newly elected
Netanyahu got up speed. Now too much precious time has been
lost. The Middle East that looked ripe for positive change
after the Gulf War has slipped back into its former
polarized, suspicious and antagonistic state. A rare
historical opportunity has been squandered with
consequences, such as another Middle East war, this time
fought with weapons of mass destruction, not beyond the
realm of possibilities.
The war in Bosnia was never, even at
its worst, going to become another Sarajevo, 1914.
Nevertheless, it's a black mark on contemporary western
institutions. Clinton allowed himself to be pushed around by
volatile American public opinion when he could have done
much more to underpin what the Europeans and the UN were
trying to do. In the end Washington was forced into assuming
leadership as it confronted the likelihood of having to
fulfill its pledge to facilitate the retreat of British and
French peacekeepers.
Even if there is a tenuous peace in
ex-Yugoslavia today, a peace that will probably not outlast
the promised American withdrawal, the vagaries of U.S.
policy have so undermined modern day UN peacekeeping, once
the proud and extremely successful flagship of the UN, that
it is going to take years for the UN to recover its
standing. The rot began with Somalia when 18 American
soldiers were killed in a fire-fight and Clinton, besieged
by an outraged public opinion, fanned by a jingoistic media,
impulsively pulled out the U.S. contingent, blaming as he
did the UN, even though these particular troops were
operating outside the UN command.
If Clinton today cannot get his way
with Congress in paying the U.S.'s back dues to the UN it is
because for so many years he has allowed the UN to be
falsely misrepresented and denigrated. The UN, which could
have done so many valuable things, has ended up more
circumscribed than it was in the depths of the Cold
War.
If much foreign policy has been
shallow and reactive there are two areas where there have
been the makings of a strategy, although in one case it is
counterproductive and in the other half-baked. Indeed, it is
with America's relationship with Russia that history may
judge Clinton the harshest. Here clear-cut opportunities
beckoned and either were not taken or simply spurned. Not
only are there no compelling benefits to be gained from NATO
expansion, not only has it gratuitously fed Russian paranoia
about western intentions, it has diverted precious
presidential energy from what was needed first and
foremost--to educate and guide American public opinion away
from reflex Cold War attitudes towards a new perception of
what is possible with the new Russia. A short list would be:
A nuclear-free relationship; a new joint security structure
in Europe; a willingness to a full party to Russian economic
reform by taking sizeable risks with financial aid; and an
equal partnership in resolving the outstanding crises of the
Middle East.
With China, tomorrow's superpower,
fortunately time is still on America's side. The early
mistakes of the Clinton presidency to go into a battle of
words and wills on every front have now been subsumed into a
more sophisticated strategy of engagement. Finally, this
past year, the White House woke up to the fact that
cooperating with China's economic emancipation was the
single most powerful lever for liberalizing Chinese civic
society.
Well done, Mr. Clinton. He doesn't
have much else to be proud of. The world Clinton inherited
was uniquely favorable to the creation of a much more benign
international order than the twentieth century had ever
seen. He blew it.
November 26,
1997, LONDON
Copyright © 1997 By JONATHAN POWER
Note: I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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