POLITICS-US: Gore Foreign Policy More Assertive, Multilateral Than Bush

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Analysis Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Nov 1 2000 (IPS) - To the tiny degree foreign policy has played any role in this year’s presidential campaign, Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush have generally agreed far more than they have disagreed on specific foreign-policy issues.

But that superficial agreement masks much deeper differences in the ways each man would approach Washington’s relationship with the rest of the world over the next four years.

Gore, who has been deeply engaged in foreign-policy questions since entering Congress 24 years ago, is likely to be significantly more assertive of US interests and values abroad, and more inclined to work through multilateral mechanisms, such as the United Nations and the World Bank, in pursuing those interests and values.

He also is far more of an advocate of “global issues,” such as environment, especially global warming; health; population; and labour rights which require multilateral co-operation than Bush, whose closest advisers, tend to see foreign policy more in traditional terms of relations between nation-states.

Bush, whose foreign-policy experience has been limited to dealing with governors of states across the Texas border with Mexico, has indicated a greater reluctance than Gore to commit US troops abroad and support multilateral institutions, even while he favours free trade unrestricted by labour or environmental conditions or even by sanctions against governments which abuse human rights.

Reflecting the isolationism of many Republicans, his inclinations overseas are more unilateralist, from opposing the Conventional Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Kyoto Protocol to fight global warming – both strongly favoured by Gore – to promoting an expensive national missile defence (NMD) and the withdrawal of US troops from NATO peacekeeping missions in the Balkans, an idea which has already drawn heavy flak both from Gore and Washington’s European allies.

In regional terms, both Bush and Gore agree that Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia lie at the top of Washington’s strategic agenda. But Bush, pushed by Congressional Republicans, is likely to be less eager to court China at the expense of Japan and Taiwan, somewhat more critical of Russia, and slightly more receptive to the Arab side in the Arab-Israeli conflict than Gore.

His running-mate, Dick Cheney, who is also expected to be key foreign-policy adviser, was outspoken in denouncing the use of economic sanctions, as chief of Halliburton Co., a huge, Texas-based oil and gas supply company.

Outside those strategic areas, Bush also would likely elevate Latin America, with which he hopes to conclude a sweeping free-trade accord, in the hierarchy of US priorities, while Gore, taking up where Clinton left off, probably would be more inclined to spotlight, at least rhetorically, Africa’s importance in the global order.

In the absence of a clear overseas threat, foreign policy has played virtually no role in the election campaign to date. And when it has come up, as in a 30-minute segment in their second debate, Bush and Gore have tended to mute their differences. Bush, for example, has repeatedly stressed his backing of President Bill Clinton’s efforts to resume Mideast peace talks and undermine former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

For his part, Gore has emphasised that he remains a “hard-liner” on Cuba and, like Bush, is opposed to easing the 38-year-old trade embargo. During the debate, Gore also said Clinton was right not for Washington not to intervene militarily in the Rwandan genocide, “as heartbreaking as it was”.

Both came out in support for debt relief for the world’s poorest nations, although Bush stressed that it be made conditional on economic reform. Bush also disagreed with Gore over the wisdom of Clinton’s military intervention in Haiti in 1994 to restore an elected president, suggesting that it was a poor use of overextended US troops.

How much these positions were designed to woo specific constituencies in the campaign and how much they reflected the personal views of the candidates which they would pursue if actually elected to office is not clear. Much also depends on which party gains control of the two houses of Congress.

While Republicans are favoured to retain a very slim majority in the Senate, the House of Representatives is up for grabs. A majority there by either party could make life very difficult for the president from the opposing party.

At first glance, it would appear that Gore and Bush – both born to prominent political families during the post-World War Two baby boom and educated at elite Ivy League universities during the Vietnam War era – should see the world in similar ways. Gore, who went to Vietnam but opposed the war, hails from the more-conservative wing of the Democratic Party, particularly on foreign policy.

A long-time champion of hefty defence budgets, he supported former president Ronald Reagan and George Bush in the US invasions of Grenada in 1982 and Panama in 1989, and was one of less than a dozen Democrats who sided with Bush in the critical Senate vote authorising war with Iraq during the 1990 Gulf crisis.

Bush’s family antecedents lie with the moderate, internationalist wing of the Republican Party. Republican internationalists and conservative Democrats together forged a foreign-policy consensus – consisting of anti- communism; big military budgets and the forward deployment of US forces in Europe and Asia; strong backing for Israel and pro-US Arab oil-producing states; support for western-dominated multilateral forums; and free trade – that endured through most of the Cold War.

But the end of the Cold War has resulted in major challenges to that consensus, especially among Republicans in Congress where isolationist and unilateralist forces have been dominant since 1994.

Whatever the personal views of Bush and his advisers, they have already moved to accommodate these forces, as shown not only by their opposition to the CTBT and Kyoto treaties, but also by their opposition to US troops serving in UN or other peacekeeping operations; and their fervent commitment to NMD, despite serious questions over its technical feasibility and warnings by the US intelligence community that it could set off a new arms race involving China, Russia, and even India.

But the end of the Cold War has also influenced Democrats who, like Gore, have generally become more interventionist in their orientation, particularly in the name of human rights and “democracy”. Unlike the Republicans, however, they tend to favour working through multilateral forums like the United Nations.

At the same time, they have become more critical of unfettered free trade, forcing Gore to pledge to include environmental and worker rights conditions in all future trade accords.

Foreign-policy slots in a Bush administration would be dominated by veterans from his father’s administration. Analysts believe ret. Gen. Colin Powell, head of the joint chiefs of staff during the Gulf War, would become Secretary Of State, while Condoleeza Rice, a Russia specialist under Bush senior, will be named National Security Adviser. Other senior appointees are likely to include Robert Zoellick, one of former Secretary of State James Baker’s top aides and Richard Armitage, a former senior Pentagon official. Cheney was Bush’s Defence Secretary.

Gore will likely tap most of his foreign-policy talent from the Clinton administration. Many observers believe UN Amb. Richard Holbrooke is the favoured candidate for Secretary of State, and Treasury Secretary Larry Summers could well remain in his post. The National Security Adviser will almost certainly be Leon Fuerth, a former State Department official who has been his top foreign-policy aide for more than a decade.