The Foreign Policy ‘Blame Game’: A Pox On Both Bush And Clinton’s Houses

In recent days, senior officials of the Bush Administration — including Mr. Bush himself — have suddenly reemerged from the shadows of political banishment to assail their successors’ hapless mismanagement of U.S. security policy. While the criticism is well deserved, the Bush foreign policy team should be very careful about which "stones" they throw, and at whom.

The Checkered Bush Legacy

Recent remarks by President Bush, former Secretaries of State James Baker and Lawrence Eagleburger, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and other top representatives of the ancien regime, smack of selective memories — if not outright revisionism. The truth of the matter, of course, is that many of the policies for which the Clinton Administration is receiving the harshest, and most deserved, criticism have their antecedents in the previous administration. Feckless and/or ill-defined Bush approaches to the most pressing crises of the moment — notably, in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia and Haiti — have been adopted in whole or in part by the Clinton team. Worse yet, the roots of the pernicious notion that the United States could rely upon multilateralism to resolve post-Cold War conflicts are clearly to be found in the Bush concept of a "New World Order."

In Yugoslavia, for example, Secretary Baker first invited Serbian aggression by asserting that the United States wished to see that nation’s integrity preserved, then effectively abetted it by accepting an arms embargo whose principal effect was to deny the victims of such aggression the means to defend themselves. As the bankruptcy of these policies became clear, Mr. Baker and his colleagues tried to fob the crises in Croatia and Bosnia off on the various, vacuous European multilateral institutions and the U.N., hoping that doing so would enable a president embroiled in a tough reelection bid to get away with abdicating U.S. leadership.

The same can basically be said of Haiti and Somalia, as well. Even though Mr. Bush and his surrogates seek to distinguish between the previous and present Administrations’ handling of U.S. intervention in the Horn of Africa, arguments that the "mission changed" do not ring entirely true: It was quite obvious at the time some 25,000 American troops were inserted by President Bush into the country that Somalia would quickly revert to chaos, undoing the effects of the intervention, if conditions for political settlement were not created.

The Bush team sought to facilitate those conditions — not just distribute food and medicine — from the outset, albeit, without disarming or otherwise moving against the gangs that represent the persistent threat to such a settlement. It is noteworthy that Adm. Jonathan Howe, the senior U.N. official in Somalia who is currently bearing much of the blame for the present failed policy there, was formerly the Deputy National Security Advisor to President Bush.

Clinton’s Responsibility for the Present Debacles

If President Clinton has grounds for rebutting some of the Bush Administration’s self-serving revisionism, he certainly bears responsibility for having made matters worse in virtually every area. This has been a function of: the President’s neglect of foreign policy matters in favor of focussing on domestic agenda items; the resulting reliance upon a weak team of subordinates in the security policy arena; and his Administration’s well-documented attachment — for ideological as well as budgetary reasons — to multilateral "solutions" to international problems.

In case after case, these factors have meant that U.S. foreign and defense policies are every bit as devoid of "vision," principle and steadfastness as they were when Candidate Clinton was properly criticizing the Bush Administration for its handling of the tragedies in Bosnia, Somalia and Haiti. Matters have been made much worse, however, by the Clinton Administration’s squandering of the valuable political capital generated by decisive U.S. military action in Desert Storm. The lack of confidence being expressed in the new Commander-in-Chief’s leadership by the American people and their representatives in Congress — which is being translated into confusion and retreat in the U.S. conduct of foreign affairs — will inevitably inspire bad actors around the world to exploit perceived vacuums of power.

In this connection, it is particularly galling to hear the Clinton team defend its dismal performance on the present crises by claiming that it is managing the really important, "strategic" accounts very well. As the President himself put it last week: "I think on the biggest issues affecting the future and the security of the United States, we have a good record."

Such statements are proof-positive of the Administration’s ineptitude in foreign affairs: For one thing, it implies that perceptions of American weakness and irresoluteness or lack of presidential leadership will have no bearing on the ultimate outcomes in Russia or the Middle East, in the future of relations with Japan or the course of nuclear proliferation. In truth, such perceptions are certain to influence decisions in ways that may not be anticipated at the moment but will almost certainly prove inimical to long-term U.S. interests.

For another, in staking its claim to successful management of the major foreign policy issues, the Administration is guilty of counting chickens long before they are hatched. If anything, such statements tend to confirm the view that the Clinton team is way beyond its depth: In each case, the best that can be said is that the jury is still out; regrettably, moreover, there is reason to believe that the trend is in the wrong direction.

Take for example, the prospects for an end — once and for all — to the domination of Russian society by an insatiable military-industrial complex which threatens democracy and free enterprise at home and international security abroad. In a major address on the Senate floor yesterday, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) itemized very troubling evidence that this cornerstone of the old Soviet empire continues to operate in much the same fashion as it did during the dark days of the Cold War. Sen. Stevens made the obvious conclusion: It is absurd for the United States to be spending billions in an effort to dismantle Soviet-era nuclear weapons at the same time as Russia is building still more such offensive arms. He also called into question the wisdom, under these circumstances, of the ongoing, reckless reductions in American military capabilities.

There is, unfortunately, no evidence that the Clinton Administration has appreciated the serious implications of the information laid out by Sen. Stevens. To the contrary, Clinton foreign policy-makers appear so consumed with self-congratulatory statements about their management of the Russian account that they seem to be studiously ignoring reality.

The Bottom Line

The deleterious effect of Mr. Clinton’s perpetuation of flawed Bush security policies has been greatly exacerbated by his own shortcomings in international affairs, his reliance upon weak and ideologically motivated subordinates and an intense desire to avoid blame for what is going wrong. The result has been mindless multilateralism, chronic incoherence on policy and a series of blows to America’s international prestige and influence.

The Clinton Administration has, in short, brought on itself the crisis of confidence that inspired last week’s Senate debate on Somalia. This lack of confidence is also animating amendments being offered today by Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole (R-KS), aimed at precluding military operations in Haiti without congressional approval, and Sen. Don Nickles (R-OK) requiring congressional approval for U.S. forces to serve under U.N. command. While Bush Administration officials should not be permitted to minimize the contribution they made to Clinton policy failures from Bosnia to Haiti — and to incipient problems with Russia, the Middle East and Japan — the buck does, and must, stop at President Clinton’s desk.

The Center for Security Policy does not relish the prospect of more congressional impediments to the timely and effective use of U.S. power by the Commander-in-Chief. It believes, however, that Congress currently has no choice — given the weakness of this Administration’s foreign policy team — but to insist upon a formal say in the involvement of American military forces in multilateral operations before commitments to such involvement are made.

In particular, the Center finds unacceptable the Clinton Administration’s practice of promoting, approving and committing U.S. prestige to various U.N. "peacekeeping" or "nation-building" ventures without congressional assent. The President’s tendency, and that of his spokesmen, to blame the United Nations for these initiatives or to suggest that the U.N. is making the United States do or not do various things demeans this country, seriously misrepresents the facts and can only undermine whatever usefulness that international organization might have.