POLITICS-US: Berger Lashes Republican Isolationists

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 1999 (IPS) - US presidential security adviser Sandy Berger, stung by the Senate’s rejection last week of the nuclear test-ban treaty, came out swinging Thursday against right-wing Republicans who opposed an internationalist foreign policy.

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York Berger declared that these “neo-isolationists” were “distinctly defeatist” in outlook.

They favoured “a survivalist foreign policy – building a fortified fence around America and retreating behind it – and, if other nations complain that we’re abdicating our responsibilities, or if they start abdicating their own, let them because we are stronger and richer than they are,” Berger said

Echoing President Bill Clinton’s remarks after the Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), Berger added: “That is a recipe for a ‘bleaker, poor, less secure world.”‘

His remarks, remarkably passionate for a corporate lawyer who has been viewed more of a foreign-policy manager than as a strategist, underlined a major impasse between Clinton and the Republican-led Congress on a number of budgetary issues, including foreign aid and the payment of more than one billion dollars the United States owes the United Nations.

Clinton has vetoed an aid bill which would cut two billion dollars from his 14-billion-dollar request, and he stands poised to veto yet another bill that would fall far short of clearing Washington’s UN arrears.

“If we underfund our diplomacy, we’re going to end up overusing our military – which happens to be precisely the outcome these (Republican) critics say they want to avoid,” he said.

“The outlines of this debate are quite clear,” Berger said.

“The Clinton administration believes we must use all the tools of our leadership to maintain our strength. The new isolationists would have us rely solely on our military defences to protect our security.”

The remarks by Berger, Clinton’s top foreign policy adviser, woluld suggest that Democrats intend to make foreign policy an issue in next year’s presidential elections.

Polls during the past 10 years repeatedly showed that a clear majority of voters held views which were closer to Clinton’s internationalism than the foreign-policy views of the Republican Right. More than 80 percent of the public favoured ratification of the CTBT.

Berger also directed his remarks at foreign critics of US power who were concerned that Washington had become a “hectoring hegemon.”

“There is another image of America abroad – of a country that is unilateralist and too powerful,” he said, particularly in the wake of the Kosovo conflict and the disproportionate role of US airpower.

Russia and China, in particular, saw in that war “the start of a crusade to contain their power and impose our will on the world,” he said. “Since perceptions do matter, this is a problem we must do what we can to resolve.”

Berger rejected charges that the United States was trying to dominate the world, either politically or economically.

“Some people say (we are) forcing our values on the world,” he said. “But when we promote democracy, we are promoting a system of government that allows the people of other nations to choose their own destiny, according to their own values and aspirations.”

The same logic applied to charges of US cultural domination.

“There is the slightly confused attitude of Europeans who flock to fast-food outlets – and then complain about the threat of ‘McDomination’ to their ‘culinary sovereignty’ – and of Asians who decry the superficial materialism of American culture but then compete to build the biggest skyscrapers,” he said.

“There is not much that we can do about this except exercise a fair measure of humility and, as our Declaration of Independence says, a ‘decent respect for the opinions of mankind’.”

Berger then turned back to the domestic foreign-policy debate, noting that “the great irony today is that we owe our reputation for trying to dominate the world in no small measure to a group of people who are intent on disregarding the world.”

“It is tempting to say that the isolationist right in the Congress has no foreign policy, that it is driven only by partisanship, but that underestimates it,” Berger said. “I believe there is a coherence to its convictions, a vision of America’s role in the world.”

That vision consists of several major elements.

First, “the new isolationists are convinced that treaties – pretty much all treaties – are a threat to our sovereignty and continued superiority.” Berger noted that this was the argument presented against the CTBT.

“We agree it would be foolish to rely on arms control treaties alone to protect our security. But it would be equally foolish to throw away the tools good treaties offer: the restraint and deterrence that comes from global rules…the ability to shine a light on threatening behaviour through inspections and to mobilise the whole world against it,” he said.

Second, the new isolationists believed that others should bear the burden of maintaining peace and stability. “They oppose American involvement in Africa’s tragic wars, but refuse to help fund the efforts of others, like Nigeria, when they take responsibility to act,” Berger he went on, citing Congress’ failure to pay for UN peacekeeping costs.

“We believe that is is dangerous and wrong. Unless we want to be the world’s policeman, we must support the institutions and arrangements through which we share the responsibilities of leader,” according to Berger.

“That is why all Americans, whether they are internationalists or those who wish to limit our involvement, should agree it is utterly self-defeating to fail to pay our dues and debts to the UN.”

The third plank of the new isolationists, according to Berger is: “If it’s over there, it’s not our fight.”

“Let me be clear: America cannot do everything or be everywhere. But we also cannot afford to do nothing, and be nowhere. The new isolationism of 1999 fails to understand what the old isolationism of 60 years ago failed to understand – that local conflicts have global consequences.”

A final plank of the new isolationism is: “Billions for defence but hardly a penny for prevention.”

At the same time that Congress is trying to add five billion dollars to a defence budget which the Pentagon says it doesn’t need, it is cutting funds to support peace in the Middle East, safeguarding nuclear technology in the former Soviet Union, and easing the debt burden on the world’s poorest countries, he said.