U.S.-FOREIGN POLICY: Internationalists Offer New Policy Prescriptions

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Mar 13 1997 (IPS) - On the 50th anniversary of the birth of Washington’s Cold War foreign policy, U.S. internationalists of various stripes and persuasions say the administration of President Bill Clinton must do more to adjust to new global realities.

Two new reports by liberal interest groups and thinktanks argue that Washington has been too slow to recognise the dangers and opportunities posed by economic globalisation and too reluctant to embrace multilateralism as the best route for protecting U.S. interests. When Washington has acted, it has done so in an ad hoc and piecemeal fashion, according to the reports.

One report — a collaborative effort by the Washington-based Overseas Development Council (ODC) and the Henry L. Stimson Center — calls on Washington to promote “ambitious partnerships,” especially with European and East Asian nations, to address global economic and security issues, including trade, environment, terrorism, and arms control.

The second report, coordinated by the more left-wing Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) here, assails the Clinton administration for promoting what it calls “unilateral multilateralism.” It also urges the adoption of a “new internationalism” whereby Washington would use its power “to encourage more participation in global decision-making — both by major powers and Southern nations.”

Publication of both reports coincides with the 50th anniversary this week of former President Harry Truman’s address in which he asked Congress to supply massive aid to the anti-Communist governments in Greece and Turkey to stave off what he said was aggression from Moscow.

That address, followed just three months later by the Marshall Plan and eventually by the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), marked the beginning of Cold War internationalism, which was a sharp deviation from the isolationism traditionally practiced by Washington, especially vis- a-vis Europe.

Cold War internationalism, supported by the leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties alike, justified Washington’s huge military buildup, foreign aid programme, trade concessions, and covert and military interventions in the Third World in terms of the overriding global threat posed by Soviet Communism.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, advocates of any internationalism have had a hard row to hoe. While the Republican-led Congress continues to favour high defence budgets, U.S. foreign aid has fallen to a 50-year low in real dollars.

Despite public opinion polls showing strong support for the United Nations and other forms of multilateralism, right-wing Republican forces, which prefer a more muscular and unilateral approach to foreign policy, can now block major internationalist initiatives in Congress.

At the same time, many on the left, who saw Cold War internationalism as a fig leaf for pushing the budgetary interests of the Pentagon and the investment interests of U.S. multinational corporations, are gaining new attention as a result of the economic anxiety felt by the middle class.

The Institute for Policy Studies falls clearly in the latter category, while the ODC as a long-time proponent of foreign aid, and the Stimson Center, a liberal disarmament think tank, have generally been less critical of the Cold War consensus.

But, six years after the Soviet Union’s demise, both groups appear to share views on a range of key issues, including the inadequacy of the Clinton administration’s adjustment to post-Cold War realities. And the two argue in favour of new forms of internatinnalism.

Both see the present era as one dominated by globalisation — economic and technological. But, while Clinton has given lip service to the importance of these trends, he has not done nearly enough to address them, according to the reports.

While the ODC-Stimson Centre report, ‘The Partnership Imperative’, puts a far more favourable gloss on economic globalisation, by stressing, for example, its record at creating “greater wealth,” it also notes “new patterns of social and economic inequities between and within countries” subject to globalisation’s effects.

This concern is strongly echoed in one of the major themes of the Institute for Policy Studies report, titled ‘Global Focus’. “The growing gap between the winners and losers from corporate- driven globalisation becomes one of the major new sources of tension and conflict in the world today,” according to the report which calls into question the administration’s credo that “freer markets bring prosperity and democracy.”

In dealing with globalisation, as well as other trans-border problems, such as environmental degradation, poverty, and crime, both reports agree that Washington must seek help from other nations through the United Nations or other mechanisms.

“The United States should use its substantial influence,” according to the ODC-Stimson report, “to build ambitious international partnerships that will revamp the architecture of international cooperation.” The report lays special stress on enlisting the emerging markets of East Asia in such an effort, which would include “new arrangements to manage the interconnected problems of monetary, financial and trade relations in an integrated way.”

The Institute for Policy Studies’ proposal does not differ from this approach, but its call for “more participation in global decision-making” suggests less discrimination between emerging markets and other developing countries.

Indeed, it suggests more caution in working with some emerging markets, decrying Clinton’s “constructive engagement” policies with China and Indonesia and other human rights violations “that happened to be important trading partners.”

Both reports acknowledge major challenges in gaining public support for recasting U.S. foreign policy in favour of their recommendations. The Institute for Policy Studies calls for a grassroots debate on the U.S. role in the world and the impact of globalisation. “This new internationalism cannot be defined by governments or corporations alone,” it says. “But must weave the interests of the broader public into the tapestry of global policy- making.”

The ODC-Stimson report takes a more top-down approach, insisting that gaining the resources necessary to build “ambitious partnerships” will not only require that U.S. partners take on a fairer share of the burden but also “political engagement of the highest order. In the U.S. system, this means a presidential effort to engage the public — and a parallel effort to convince the Congress — that America needs to be an active and productive partner with others on a range of critical issues.”