-Caveat Lector-
Los Angeles Times
Opinion
Sunday, November 12, 2000
American Influence Abroad May Shrink
By WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
NEW YORK--As the country awaits the outcome of the presidential
election, few have had the time or the emotional energy to look down
the road at the longer-term implications of one of the closest
electoral contests in U.S. history. At a time when Americans were
largely obsessed by the twists and turns of the domestic political
soap opera, fewer still were looking at the consequences of the
electoral deadlock for foreign policy.
Yet, there will be consequences, and they could be severe. The
next four years are shaping up as a time of serious testing for U.S.
foreign policy, and a divided Congress and a president with a weak
mandate, at best, will find it extremely difficult to navigate the
shoals lying ahead.
It won't be the big, obvious challenges that cause the real
problems. If Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait again, the United States
will once more go to the defense of the oil-rich sheikdom. If China
attacks Taiwan, the United States will appropriately respond. Both
parties are likely to cling to the long-standing policy of nudging the
Palestinians to make a deal with Israel. And U.S. influence in Russia
will remain weak.
Unfortunately, not all the challenges are this clear-cut. Take
Mexico. The United States urgently needs President-elect Vicente Fox
to succeed at his twin projects of modernizing the Mexican economy and
solidifying Mexican democracy. Mexico is going to need more resources,
more understanding and, on issues like immigration, a more generous
policy from the United States. With public opinion still bitterly
split over the North American Free Trade Agreement, and Minority
Leader Richard A. Gephardt's Democrats more partisan than ever in the
House, coming up with a new, positive consensus policy on Mexico will
be harder to do.
Then there's the Andean region, seemingly bent on disproving all
the optimists who just a few years ago predicted that an era of stable
democracy was dawning in Latin America. Colombian drug lords and
Marxist guerrillas--from a U.S. point of view, the alliance from
hell--have fought that country's corrupt and sometimes ill-disciplined
armed forces to a standstill, and the violence is spilling over into
Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador and the home of the Panama Canal.
Peru, meanwhile, is flirting with a return to its banana-republic
days, Ecuador is closer to political and social meltdown and the
president of Venezuela, one of the largest sources of U.S. oil
imports, is literally crooning love songs with Fidel Castro on the
radio and expounding vague but, from the standpoint of foreign
investors, alarming theories of what he calls a "Bolivarian
revolution."
A serious crisis could flare up in this region at a moment's
notice, and those who remember the controversies over Central American
policy in the 1980s--and the continuing bitter battles over Cuba
today--know how hard it can be for the United States to develop a
political consensus concerning neighborhood policy.
Expanding NAFTA or pushing harder to establish a free trade area
of the Americas are proposals most of the Washington establishment
think have the best chances for stabilizing the region but, again, it
is hard to see a politically enfeebled president and a divided
Congress mustering the determination to move far down either road.
Trade gridlock could have repercussions beyond the Western
Hemisphere. It will be harder for a weak president to make the kinds
of creative concessions and compromises necessary to resolve trade
disputes at the World Trade Organization, thereby increasing the risk
of trade wars with partners like the European Union. Fast-track
authority for new trade rounds will be difficult, if not impossible to
get.
The news isn't all bleak. In some cases, Republicans and
Democrats are more united than their rhetoric suggests. Candidate
George W. Bush may have downplayed environmental concerns and attacked
the Kyoto Protocol, but world public opinion is worried enough about
global warming that, like it or not, the U.S. has to be part of
diplomatic efforts to address it. Ditto on AIDS. Whether or not Bush
agrees that AIDS is a "national security threat" to the United States,
the humanitarian and economic consequences of the HIV-AIDS epidemic
are severe enough that both common decency and self-interest will
compel the U.S. to take part in international efforts to halt the
spread of the disease and to treat those who suffer from it. No U.S.
administration can afford to ignore the international clamor for
nuclear arms control, just as it cannot ignore the domestic popularity
of national missile defense.
The real danger may be that the two parties will hold foreign
policy hostage in an atmosphere of partisan bickering. If Congress
settles down into trench warfare, the ability of the United States to
conduct effective foreign policy could be seriously hampered. Fierce
partisans would hold up the confirmation of key officials and
ambassadors, block votes on foreign-assistance packages and use all
means that Congress possesses to harass and annoy a president lacking
a mandate.
Weak leadership also means trouble. When, as frequently happens,
hot-headed domestic lobbies introduce bills with serious
foreign-policy consequences--like the recent effort by Armenian
Americans to have the House of Representatives declare Turkish-led
1915 massacres of Armenians in eastern Anatolia acts of genocide--a
weak president, combined with a weak congressional leadership, may not
be able to block the pander. Infuriate Turkey by an Armenian pander
here, China with a Tibet pander there, India with a Kashmir pander,
Spain with a Basque pander--after a while you can get in real trouble.
What can be done to limit the damage? The answer, for which there
is plenty of precedent, is relatively simple: The next president must
not only govern from the center, he will have to appoint leading
representatives of the opposition party to key foreign-policy posts.
His administration also will have to frequently confer with the
opposition over foreign policy.
This has happened before. The current secretary of Defense is a
Republican. President George Bush found key places for Democrats in
his administration, notably Bernard Aronson, who as assistant
secretary of State for inter-American affairs helped win Democratic
support for a process that ended the political wars in Washington and
the shooting wars in Central America. By working closely with
Democrats in Congress, Aronson was able to break the deadlock over
issues like aid to the Contras.
Making bipartisan appointments does not mean retreating on
questions of principle. There are Democrats, like former Georgia Sen.
Sam Nunn, whose hard-line positions on national-security issues please
many Republicans. There are Republicans, like the young Turks of the
Weekly Standard, who staunchly supported humanitarian intervention in
the Balkans. Either presidential candidate can find plenty of talent
in the other party to staff senior and junior foreign-policy posts.
Presidents with weak mandates can run a strong foreign policy:
Look at Harry S. Truman. But, like Truman, they can do so only with
help from their political opponents. If the next president remembers
this, he will be able to provide effective leadership for the nation
no matter how narrow his margin of victory or how many recounts it
took to get him into the White House.
- - -
Walter Russell Mead, Contributing Editor to Opinion, Is a Senior
Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Author of "Mortal
Splendor: the American Empire in Transition."
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