UNITED STATES: Foreign Policy is Virtual Non-Issue in Campaign

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Oct 11 1996 (IPS) - For the dwindling number of foreign policy buffs in the United States, the 1996 presidential campaign is turning into one big disappointment.

Less than four weeks before the Nov. 5 elections, relations with other nations scarcely appear on the radar screen of the two candidates, front-runner President Bill Clinton and his Republican challenger, former Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole.

In the first of two nationally televised debates Sunday night, Clinton and Dole spent about seven out of a total of 90 minutes quibbling about whether Washington’s performance in a half dozen hot spots over the past four years enhanced or diminished its credibility.

The even shorter shrift given foreign policy during Wednesday’s debate between Vice President Al Gore and Dole’s running-mate, former Rep. Jack Kemp, was symptomatic of a political leadership that believes the electorate could not care less about Washington’s global role.

Yet the foreign policy elite is warning that whoever wins the presidency will be facing some major decisions about Washington’s future course virtually from the moment he takes the oath of office next January, if not before.

Among these are: military and trade relations with Asian giants China and Japan; the possible political meltdown of North Korea; new challenges by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to U.S. power in the Persian Gulf; and the possible collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The extension of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) into Eastern Europe, relations with Russia, possible genocide in Burundi, and increasing instability in Mexico also loom large on the U.S. foreign policy agenda.

“An election campaign is the perfect time to pose these questions,” wrote Dole adviser and former U.N. Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick in the Washington Post earlier this month. “Why is no one doing it?”

A prominent view is that Dole, a World War II veteran and traditional Republican internationalist, is reluctant to publicly criticise the “commander-in-chief.”

This has not stopped him from attacking Clinton recently for running a “photo-op foreign policy,” as he did when the president invited Mideast leaders to the White House earlier this month. But what complaints he has voiced have been far more about tactics than strategy.

Indeed, Dole has backed Clinton on key policy decisions, notably U.S. participation in a NATO peacekeeping force in Bosnia, its adherence to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and orchestration of the financial bailout of Mexico when the peso collapsed in December 1994.

He also initially supported Clinton’s missile attacks on targets in southern Iraq, although he later criticised the president for not lining up more regional and international support for the move.

A second, related view on why foreign policy is being ignored this year is the lack of fundamental differences between the Democratic from the Republican tickets.

This was illustrated earlier this week during a desultory, 90- minute debate between Dole and Clinton experts on U.S. policy in Asia. As observed at the outset by Clinton’s stand-in, former Rep. Stephen Solarz, “Regardless of who wins (the election), the fundamentals of U.S. policy towards Asia will remain the same.”

While the Clinton administration had “a somewhat shaky start in Asia,” especially regarding human rights policy towards China and trade policy towards Japan, Solarz said there were no major substantive differences between the two parties at this point in an area of the world which is likely to be most challenging to U.S. policy over the next decade.

Even on Washington’s engagement with North Korea, which was bitterly assailed by Dole earlier this year, Solarz noted that the Republican candidate does not favour canceling the cornerstone of U.S. policy — an agreement to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear power programme in exchange for the construction of safer, South Korean nuclear reactors financed chiefly by Tokyo and Seoul.

After 90 minutes of Republican thrusts and Democratic parries, Dole adviser Robert Zoellick said the chief difference between the two candidates’ policy toward Asia is that Dole will be “firm without bluster.”

Policy analysts do see some major philosophical differences between Clinton and Dole, but these are rarely voiced on the campaign trail. “Dole has tended to favour a more unilateralist approach (to foreign policy),” notes Columbia University professor John Ruggie.

But even this distinction has become blurred during the past year.

Despite vigorous protests from Washington’s closest allies, Clinton has signed onto Republican bills to penalise foreign companies whichpinvest in Cuba, Libya, or Iran. Washington’s current campaign to deprive U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros- Ghali of a second term is also seen as a repudiation of the administration’s multilateralist stance.

In acting unilaterally against Iraq last month, Clinton successfully blunted Dole’s charge that the administration defers too much to the United Nations.

“Sometimes the United States has to act alone or at least has to act first,” Clinton said during the first debate last week about his decision to launch the missile attack. “Sometimes we cannot let other countries have a veto on our foreign policy.”

“In foreign affairs, as well as domestic matters, Mr. Clinton has disarmed the Republicans by stealing their views,” observed the New York Times.

But a larger reason why the candidates are avoiding foreign policy this year is that their own parties are deeply split on Washington’s global role.

Richard Haas, head of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution here, points to two debates that have cut across both parties since the 1990-91 Gulf crisis. The first pits isolationists against internationalists, he says, and the second, protectionists against proponents of free trade.

Internationalists and free trade boosters, as represented by both Dole and Clinton, currently have the upper hand in both parties.

But a drift toward increasing unilateralism, combined with the government’s inability to soften the impact of global market forces on the U.S. working and middle classes could well strengthen “populist” forces with a protectionist and isolationist agenda in coming elections, according to Ruggie.