-Caveat Lector-
Buchanan speech at CATO Institute
A New Americanism
Patrick J. Buchanan
Last month, the Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The U.S.
nuclear arsenal that had deterred Stalin's empire, the Senate said, must be
regularly tested for reliability and to reduce the destructive power of
these awesome and awful weapons.
The Senate was right. But to an enraged President, this was a vindictive
vote to rob him of a legacy. He lashed out. The Senate, Mr. Clinton said,
has embraced a "new isolationism" that seeks to "bury our heads in the sand
behind a wall." A 4000-word tirade against the "New Isolationism" by Samuel
Berger quickly followed.
As I have been called, among other names, America's leading isolationist, my
first thought was that he was giving me credit for his defeat. But what we
are witnessing here is something more sinister, a resort by Mr. Clinton to a
malicious libel to intimidate and silence any who would interfere with his
globalist agenda.
And as one who supported every great foreign policy initiative from Kennedy
to Reagan, I reject the isolationist label, especially when made by those
whose spent their youthful careers marching against the Cold War policies
that brought us victory.
America has never been an isolationist nation. "No president or national
party in the entire history of the United States...ever advocated isolating
the United States from the rest of the world," writes historian Wayne Cole.
Historian Walter McDougall calls the term isolationist "but a dirty word
that interventionists, especially since Pearl Harbor, hurl at anyone who
questions their policies."
Why did Mr. Clinton revert to it? To divert attention from his lost
opportunity to shape a foreign policy that might endure in our post-Cold War
world. Where Truman and Acheson succeeded, Clinton, like Wilson, has failed.
His first attempt at interventionism and nation-building was the bloody
debacle in Somalia. His embargo of Haiti and invasion proved ruinous to the
people of that impoverished island, with no appreciable benefit to our
Haitian neighbors or their quality of life. To divert attention from a
personal scandal, the President fired missiles at a poison gas factory in
Sudan. It now appears to have been an innocent pharmaceutical plant. Perhaps
Mr. Clinton, who was apologizing for yet another of his predecessors'
foreign policy sins, might wish to apologize for one of his own.
Consider our relationship with Russia. Ten years ago, Ronald Reagan was
being toasted in Moscow. Today, the prevailing wind is anti-Americanism. Not
our fault, the Clintonites say. But who broke America's word to the Russians
that if they withdrew the Red Army from Eastern Europe, we would not move
NATO an inch closer to their frontiers?
And what reaction do we expect when we collude with two former Soviet
republics, Georgia and Azerbaijan, to build a pipeline to cut Russia out of
the oil of the Caspian and ship it to her ancient enemy, Turkey? When
enraged Russian generals charge us with meddling in the Caucasus, do they
not have a point?
That photo of the President in Istanbul, smiling broadly as the oil treaty
was toasted, while his Energy Secretary crowed about our "victory," was a
provocation. Be assured: Russian nationalists are surely even now plotting
to overturn Mr. Clinton's "victory." Mr. Clinton's successes have been in
Northern Ireland and the Middle East, where America assumed the role of
peacemaker, rather than military interventionist. That is the role the
greatest nation on earth should play, one ordained in the Sermon on the
Mount.
But our Republican elites are even more bellicose. It was his own
Republicans who berated President Bush for not marching on Baghdad and
establishing a "MacArthur Regency," Republicans who urged air strikes on the
North Korean nuclear facilities, thus risking a second Korean War. It was
Republicans who denounced Clinton for not sending 200,000 U.S. troops into
Belgrade. And it was a Republican Governor of Texas who complained that our
war on Serbia was not being prosecuted "ferociously" enough. And it is
Republicans who seem to lust most ardently for a new Cold War. In President
Bush's final year in office, a startling document surfaced in the Pentagon,
detailing a plan to send 6 carrier battle groups and 24 NATO divisions to
rescue Lithuania, should Moscow recolonize the republic. This prescription
for war with Russia was crafted in the shop of one Paul Wolfowitz. It is not
reassuring to see the selfsame Mr. Wolfowitz, one of Governor Bush's
"Vulcans," emerging as an early favorite to be Secretary of State.
Perhaps the defining foreign policy moment of the Clinton presidency was his
unconstitutional war on Serbia. The cause of that war was Madeline Albright'
s rage that Serbia would not sign a Rambouillet accord that called for the
removal of all its troops from Kosovo, and permission for NATO troops to
tramp through their country. No American would have accepted that ultimatum.
And when war came, it was accompanied by the usual bodyguard of lies.
We were told we were fighting to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Albanians.
Before NATO's air strikes, 90,000 had fled. But after NATO's peace, 180,000
Serbs have been driven from their homes, as Christian shrines, monasteries,
and churches have been desecrated. We were told we were fighting to prevent
another Auschwitz, that Milosevic's mad killers were butchering tens of
thousands, perhaps a hundred thousand people, suggested our Secretary of
Defense.
A few weeks ago, a Spanish doctor in search of mass graves had found 187
bodies, and the death toll of Albanians was estimated at 2500. Is it
possible Milosevic gave orders for the mass murder of civilians, but in 80
days his soldiers were only able to kill this tiny fraction of a defenseless
population of 1.5 million? Twenty-five hundred dead is a terrible tragedy;
Auschwitz it is not.
Having smashed Serbia, it is now U.S. policy to deny fuel to the Serb
people, so they can suffer in the brutal Balkan winter. This immoral policy
shames us as a people. What are we doing putting old men, women, and
children under a sentence of death for being unable to what NATO itself
could not do-overthrow Milosevic?
Under the Christian conditions for a just war, the targeting of innocent
civilians is forbidden. But who is suffering, who is dying from the
sanctions we impose on Serbia and Iraq? We read of tens of thousands of
deaths among Iraqi children. Is it moral to cause their deaths because these
toddlers refused to rise up and oust Saddam, which the mighty Army of Desert
Storm was itself reluctant to do? America is a good country; she does not
make war on children.
We need a new foreign policy rooted neither in the Wilsonian Utopianism of
the Democrat Party nor the Pax Americana of the Republican think tanks and
little magazines, a policy that reflects the goodness and greatness of this
Republic, but also an awareness that we were not put on this earth to lord
it over other nations.
The true third way is a New Americanism that puts America first, but "goes
not abroad in search of monsters to destroy," that defends America's
freedom, frontiers, citizens, security, and vital interests, but harbors no
desire to impose our vision on any other people. As the great scholar
Russell Kirk wrote:
[T]here exists no single best form of government for the happiness of all
mankind. The most suitable form of government necessarily depends upon the
historic experience, the customs, the beliefs, the state of culture, the
ancient laws and the material circumstances of a people, and all these
things vary from land to land and age to age.
The blunders other nations make are not ours to correct. And our moralistic
policy of imposing sanctions on tiny tyrannies like Haiti and Myanamar,
while we make no demands of the mighty Middle Kingdom, is cowardly and
contemptible. When the elected mayor of our own capital city has to be
virtually deposed in the name of good government, we should show more
patience with foreign friends who fall short of the exacting standards of
Clintonian democracy.
My friends, a presidential election should offer the nation a choice of
destinies. But on all the great foreign policy issues-from moving NATO onto
Russia's front porch, to undeclared wars in the Balkans, to shoveling out
billions in IMF loans and foreign aid to wastrel regimes-our Republican
elite offers only a bellicose echo. Bush, Gore, Bradley, and McCain, they
are all on one side of this great debate about America's destiny; we alone
are on the other.
What would a foreign policy rooted in our history, the wisdom of our
Fathers, and the national interest look like?
Specifically, while America should restate to the world its iron resolve
that never again will a hostile power be allowed to overrun our ancestral
home, we will cease to smother Europe. It is time we ended our reflexive
opposition to every new idea advanced by the nations of Europe to build
their own pillar of Western defense.
It is time to say "yes" to Europe, time to let go, as doting parents whose
children have reached maturity, must let go. Indeed, let us accelerate the
day of Europe's reclaiming its full independence, by setting a date certain
for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops. In 1961, General Eisenhower urged Mr.
Kennedy to withdraw them all then; forty years later,it is time to follow
Ike's advice.
As we look eastward, we see a Russia smaller than she was under Peter the
Great. In an eyelash, she lost a world empire, a European empire, an
internal empire. Stalin's USSR is now fifteen nations. The collapse of
Bolshevism was of extraordinary benefit to mankind, and we risk the fruits
of that victory by treating Russia as a defeated nation to be ignored or
taken advantage of.
We should inform Moscow that NATO's red line will move no further east, that
we are bringing home all U.S. forces from Europe, that while American oil
companies may cut deals in the Caucasus, the United States has no vital
interest there, and no intention of creating any new anti-Russian alliance
in her back yard. Instead of expanding military alliances to corral and
contain Russia, why have we not insisted that our European allies expand the
European Union to include Russia? Let us bring Russia in, rather than drive
her out.
As for Chechnya, it is an ugly brutal war, but the Russians are fighting
inside their own territory. Americans, whose beloved Mr. Lincoln unleashed
General Sherman to deal with his rebellious provinces, can surely understand
the horrors of civil wars, even as we rightly deplore them.
But no matter our differences with Russia, we must repair the relationship.
None is more crucial. We could make no greater blunder than to cast aside
the fruits of our Cold War victory by driving an embittered Russia into the
arms of Beijing. But that is exactly what our Beltway elites seem to be
doing. But just as we respect the legitimate aspirations of Europe for an
equal place in the sun, and Russia's right not to have NATO squat on its
doorstep, Europe and Russia must respect our inherent right to defend
ourselves against the ballistic missiles of rogue states.
As for our policy of "dual containment" of Iran and Iraq, it is sterile and
unsustainable. Like the British, we are one day going home, and we ought not
to be devising schemes to extend our stay. Unlike Beijing and Hanoi, Baghdad
and Teheran never killed tens of thousands of American soldiers in war. But
if we can engage China and North Vietnam, and even North Korea, why can we
not at least talk to Iran and Iraq?
Have we not suffered enough terrorist atrocities-from the massacre of our
Marines, to Pan Am 103, to the World Trade Center, to the embassy bombings
in Nairobi and Dar-to awaken our elites to the reality that interventionism
is the incubator of terrorism? Or will it take some cataclysmic act of
violence on U.S. soil to finally awaken our gamesmen to the costs of global
hegemony?
As for China, the most peaceful and powerful weapon America had to effect
change in its policies is our control of our $8 trillion market. From its
sales to us, China earns a trade surplus of over a billion dollars every
week. But by bringing China into the WTO, the President threw away our trump
card and turned his trade portfolio over to global bureaucrats. The next
president must get it back. The China portfolio belongs in the Oval Office,
and we need a return to linkage. Specifically, we should tell Beijing: If
you wish free access to our 270 million consumers, you must stop harassing
Christians, menacing Taiwan, targeting our country, and you must begin
giving our exports the same tariff treatment we give yours. We do not want a
hot war or a Cold War with China. Nor do we wish to contain China. She is
already contained by suspicious neighbors, north, south, east and west. But
a China that threatens America's friends and tramples on American values
cannot expect to be treated as any kind of partner.
Friends, America today faces a choice of destinies: Are we to be a republic
or an empire? Will we be the peacemaker of the world, or its policeman, who
goes about night-sticking the trouble-makers of the world, until we, too,
find ourselves in a bloody brawl we cannot handle. Let us use this transient
moment of American preeminence to encourage and assist other countries to
stand on their own feet and begin to provide for their own defense.
A century ago, a great populist leader begged America not to forego her best
traditions and annex the Philippines, an imperial act that would draw
America into three Asian wars. We did not heed his advice; let us heed it
now: "The fruits of imperialism, be they bitter or sweet," declared Bryan,
"must be left to the subjects of monarchy. This is one tree of which
citizens of a republic may not partake. It is the voice of the serpent, not
the voice of God, which bids us eat."
Buchanan Reform
P.O. Box 1919
Merrifield, VA 22116-1919
703.734.2700
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