Stratfor.com's Weekly Global Intelligence Update - 28 August 2000 _________________________________________ We knew it before it was news. Washington Chases Oil http://www.stratfor.com/CIS/commentary/0008260100.htm Communists Temper Vietnam's Trade Agreement http://www.stratfor.com/asia/commentary/0008252352.htm _________________________________________ The Next President Part Four: A Gore Foreign Policy Summary The fourth part of our series on the future of U.S. foreign policy, the Next President, examines the Democratic foreign policy that would propel Al Gore should he be elected the next president of the United States. Gore may continue Bill Clinton's foreign policy. Yet he will be facing a more hostile world than the current administration, and tensions over trade and power will arise. Analysis Without the overriding enemy of the Soviet Union and the struggle of the Cold War, the Clinton administration has been able to pursue a foreign policy free of the intrigue that previous presidents have used abroad. Instead, the Clinton years have seen the United States pursue collective security and set new thresholds for the use of military force. Vice President Al Gore, in his campaign for the presidency, is the heir to this foreign policy. But if he wins the White House, Gore is likely to face two complications that, in turn, will alter U.S. foreign policy. First, there are signs that he will have to face great powers with interests that are divergent from those of the United States. Gore, unlike Clinton, may not have the luxury of avoiding cold, geopolitical calculations. Second, there is the long-term question: Can free trade and its consequences continue to coexist with a Democratic foreign policy of internationalism? Over the past eight years, the Clinton administration has departed from the history of Democratic-led foreign policy. Without the Cold War, the president has been able to dispense with the Machiavellianism that could be found in previous Democratic administrations, such as Kennedy's and Roosevelt's. Instead, the Clinton years saw the United States: 1. Elevate collective security to the status of operational principle, by using the United Nations, NATO and other instruments to carry out interventions; 2. Resurrect and re-engineer the Vietnam problem. From Haiti to Kosovo, U.S. foreign policy used military power to restructure societies. 3. Reconcile anti-military sentiments with intense interventionism. Clinton managed to increase international involvement while cutting the defense budget. In short, President Clinton has used the collapse of the Soviet Union to create an integrated foreign policy that reconciles two strains: the experiences of the Vietnam War, and those of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. What was left out was realpolitik. ______________________________________________________________ For more Global Intelligence Updates on North America, see: http://www.stratfor.com/services/giu/region/namerica/ ______________________________________________________________ There are two great layers underlying Democratic foreign policy. The first is the heritage of Roosevelt and his management of World War II. The second is the Vietnam experience. Gore inherits more than a foreign policy, but one that is historically split. On one side are those who would return to the FDR model of internationalism; on the other are those who take their bearings from the failure of force in Vietnam and recoil from power politics. At one level, Roosevelt's legacy was his routing of isolationists. He managed the transition of the United States from a country that saw itself as insulated from the international system to a role as major guarantor of its stability. But the story is more complex. Roosevelt was one of history's great geopoliticians. Beneath the veneer of humanitarianism, he conducted a cunning foreign policy based on extracting maximum benefits. He traded aid to Great Britain during the dark days of the war in exchange for all British naval facilities in the Western Hemisphere. Similarly, Roosevelt allowed the Soviets to bleed the Germans dry before landing in France. The United States emerged from the war occupying Western Europe, setting the stage for stripping the European powers of their empires. At the same time Roosevelt believed deeply in the doctrine of collective security. He was the creator of and a genuine believer in the United Nations. He seems to have genuinely hoped that he could create a global entente with the Soviet Union after the war. But that effort failed. The resulting institutionalization of foreign policy: 1. An America-centric worldview with brilliant tactical maneuvering of enemies and allies alike. 2. A system of collective security in which allies bore the burden of exposure while the United States served as the final guarantor of security. 3. A dependency on institutional frameworks designed to formalize risk-sharing and decision-making. The Vietnam experience derived from these three principles. And it contained a new doctrine: the transformation of war into social experimentation. The doctrine of unconventional warfare, shown in the Kennedy administration's infatuation with the special forces, read the Vietnam War as an exercise in nation building. The mission of U.S. troops was to provide the South Vietnamese with security to carry out the reforms and win the hearts and minds of the people. As this policy spiraled into failure, its architects turned against the war and the Democratic Party slipped from its moorings into power politics. The Democrats also tried to rationalize their new aversion to foreign military adventure by arguing that what Jimmy Carter called "the irrational fear of communism" had led the United States into harming American interests and the very people the country was trying to help. But the collapse of communism 10 years ago changed this equation and set the stage for Clinton's defeat of President Bush. American power became and remains clearly preeminent. Moreover, the fear of nuclear war, a key element in Democratic post-Vietnam thinking, has diminished. What had been a great handicap to the Democrats, the reaction against Vietnam, ceased to be significant. If Gore wins the election, he will likely be forced to reconcile two divergent strains to be found in one of the party's most central tenets today: free trade. The party is committed to free trade because of its corporate constituents. There is no equivalent ideological element. Quite the contrary, to the extent that ideology does intrude, it cuts the other way. Clinton's reconciliation of the strands of Democratic foreign policy included elevating human rights to a central place in foreign policy; it is a key element of the social- engineering model. But free trade with China, for instance, cuts against human rights. It goes deeper, too. The party's roots in the labor movement mean that at some level free trade is an opportunity to move jobs elsewhere. This is particularly true in the old-style industries where labor remains strongest. There is a strong anti-free trade movement in the Democratic Party, and Gore has ties to it. As president, he would also be dependent upon corporate interests with exactly the opposite interest. As the world becomes more volatile, Gore will face a terrific challenge. On one hand, Gore will need to resurrect the part of FDR's foreign policy that Clinton jettisoned: a geopolitical strategy. In doing this, he will have to transform U.S. military involvements from social engineering to missions that build U.S. power. On the other hand, the argument for maintaining free trade with nations that might be hostile to U.S. political and military interests will become weaker. More important, there will be key elements of the party ready to argue that deteriorating political relations should translate into trade barriers. The end of the Cold War saved the Democrats from the wilderness by rendering the ghosts of Vietnam irrelevant. If international threats increase, as we expect, those ghosts and those issues will be resurrected. However, the real subtext will be found in the argument over trade. Clinton finessed this by giving us low-cost interventions while being permitted by history to avoid issues of power politics. Gore will not have the same luxury. 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