America, The Impotent? ‘Tarnoff Doctrine’ Begets The ‘Please Hold’ Military Strategy; Sets Stage For Abandoned Commitments, Future Combat Losses

Last week, the Clinton Administration became embroiled in controversy over its world view: Does the Administration believe, as Under Secretary of State Peter Tarnoff stated "on background" in a 25 May meeting with reporters, that the United States can no longer afford to exercise global power — and therefore will generally decline to do so? Or does it believe that America’s leadership role is "undiminished" as Secretary of State Warren Christopher and other Administration spokesmen subsequently asserted?(1)

Unfortunately for those who recognize that the former would jeopardize U.S. interests — and international security more generally — and who would, therefore, like to give credence to the latter, two recent developments augur ill: 1) Evidence is mounting that the "Tarnoff Doctrine" unveiled last week was, as the communists used to say, "no accident" and instead reflects considered Administration policy. Indeed, it appears that Secretary of State Warren Christopher flatly prevaricated when, as reported in today’s New York Times(2), he said "he had ‘had no idea’ about what Mr. Tarnoff was going to say." And 2) the Clinton Defense Department is implementing the Tarnoff Doctrine, notwithstanding disclaimers from the State Department.

Birth of the ‘Tarnoff Doctrine’

Far from being an unauthorized and inaccurate depiction of U.S. foreign policy under the Clinton Administration — Peter Tarnoff’s speech to the Overseas Writers Club was a key piece in a coordinated inter-agency campaign aimed at enunciating and marketing a new approach to international affairs. In fact, the Administration had to have decided to adopt the Tarnoff Doctrine sometime before 31 March 1993. After all, according to the Manchester Guardian(3), on that date a senior Administration official "from the State Department’s seventh floor" (presumably Peter Tarnoff) read U.S. ambassadors and diplomats in on what the Guardian called its policy of "creeping disengagement":

"America’s allies [have] to be encouraged to emerge from the shadow of Washington’s tutelage and ‘take the lead — and the credit — in solving regional problems.’ And if this sometimes meant hiccups in traditional alliance relationships, there should not be too much concern about occasional policy differences ‘in a free and open family of democratic nations.’"

The State Department typically uses such forums as vehicles for communicating U.S. policy shifts to the allies. In the normal scheme of things, a similar effort would be mounted shortly thereafter to inform the American people. The Center for Security Policy has learned that such a campaign was mapped out roughly a month ago at a senior-level meeting at the State Department chaired by Amb. Samuel Lewis, director of State’s Policy Planning Staff, and involving representatives of all relevant U.S. government agencies (e.g., Under Secretary of Defense for Policy-designate Frank Wisner).

It appears, however, that the orchestration for unveiling the Clinton "creeping disengagement" policy was seriously disrupted by the double crises of the Russian referendum and the Administration’s unravelling policy toward Bosnia. It would have been unseemly — if not highly counterproductive — to embrace in public the "America is resource-constrained and committed to multilateral action" excuse at the very moment when President Clinton was promising billions for Boris Yeltsin and talking about bombing the Serbs and lifting the arms embargo in the face of European opposition.

It was only when the Administration was facing virulent criticism for its inability to define and deliver a coherent U.S. policy toward Bosnia, culminating in the abortive five-power "joint action plan," that the public relations program was put back into gear. The thought seems to have been that lemonade could be made out of the Administration’s Bosnian lemons by suggesting that the joint inaction plan was the product not of ineptitude but of purposeful design, an example of the new style of American "leadership."

Rather than lead with an official statement of policy, however, the decision was evidently taken to start with a trial balloon: the Tarnoff speech "on background." Presumably, if Tarnoff’s doctrine flew, Secretary Christopher would have enunciated it officially a few days later in Minneapolis, with President Clinton himself embracing it at West Point on 30 May. If not, it could always be discounted as unauthorized and an inaccurate description of the Clinton foreign policy — even though it had been approved by Secretary Christopher, National Security Advisor Anthony Lake and Deputy Advisor Samuel Berger.

The ‘Method to Our Madness’ Defense

Needless to say, the debut of the Tarnoff Doctrine was an unqualified disaster, giving rise to increasingly frantic efforts to disassociate the Administration from its premises. As the first negative press reactions came in on the afternoon of 25 May, Secretary Christopher called reporters to downplay the speech. His aides backgrounded journalists, however, that the Secretary was not repudiating his subordinate; it was merely a question of "shades of meaning over a philosophical issue." That night, on ABC News’ "Nightline" Mr. Christopher actually repeated the Tarnoff Doctrine’s central contention, namely that "We can’t do it all."

By the next day, however, the Administration was in headlong retreat. Marc Grossman (who, as State’s Executive Secretary, controls the department’s paper flow) issued a memorandum to all Under Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, Deputy Assistant Secretaries and office directors. It advised the recipients that, in the future, public remarks must be cleared in advance by the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs (and Christopher protégè) Tom Donilon. While departmental spokesman Richard Boucher tried with a straight face to suggest that there was no connection between the Grossman memo and the Tarnoff debacle, the implication was unmistakable: Such a clearance process had not been in place before Tarnoff delivered his remarks and therefore his comments had been unauthorized.

By the 27th, moreover, Secretary Christopher delivered a speech in Minneapolis billed as a major foreign policy address. In it, he went to absurd lengths to pay lip-service to the concept of U.S. leadership using the term (or its variants) no fewer than 23 times. For example, he opined:

"Some say — and I’m sure you’ve heard this said — that our nation is on a course of decline, that we can no longer afford to lead. And certainly, it is true that the United States faces many challenges unlike our nation has ever felt before in our history. But to me that means that we must be more engaged internationally, not less; more ardent in the promotion of democracy not less; and more inspired in our leadership, not less." (Emphasis added.)

 

In an interview with the New York Times on the margins of that speech, Secretary Christopher actually went so far as to say:

"I think our need to lead, our determination to lead is not constrained by our resources. I think that where we need to lead, where our vital interests are threatened, we will find the resources to accomplish that."

 

A Military Strategy That Effectively Precludes All But Multilateral Options

If mixed signals about the status of the Tarnoff Doctrine is the order of the day at the State Department, over at Defense the message is being read loud and clear. The New York Times reported in its 30 May editions that the Pentagon is developing a new military strategy tailored to fit the Clinton resource-limited foreign policy.

According to DoD documents leaked to the Times, this strategy envisions a substantially diminished U.S. force structure, capable of fighting only one regional war at a time. Insofar as America’s international commitments could well require the nation to become engaged in two conflicts simultaneously, the plan calls for putting the second "on hold" while the first is dealt with — a so-called "win-hold-win" strategy.

The truth of the matter, of course, is that wars do not stay "on hold." The idea of applying air power and minimal ground forces to a second front — in the hope of buying time and enabling the preponderance of the U.S. military to be engaged decisively elsewhere — is not a new one. For example, at the height of World War II, when America’s armed forces were at roughly their zenith, priority was given to dealing with one theater of operations (Europe) over the other (the Pacific). Then as now, however, the effect of such a "win-hold-win" strategy is inevitably to put at least some troops in harm’s way without the capability to properly defend themselves.

The Bottom Line

In short, the notion of putting wars "on hold" to justify cuts in force structure and capabilities amounts to trading U.S. servicemen and women’s lives for ephemeral savings. With luck, the national interest will not be jeopardized by the losses sustained as a result. But no one should be under any illusion: There will be losses, possibly large ones, in terms of American lives and other equities, thanks to this effort to fulfill standing American security commitments on the cheap.

What is more, there is very little likelihood that those who currently depend upon U.S. guarantees for their security will do so for very long as it becomes clear that they may have to wait for those guarantees to be honored. Is it realistic, for example, in the face of North Korea’s crash efforts to acquire nuclear weapons — and other indications of Pyongyang’s abiding belligerence — to expect South Korea and Japan to be indifferent to the prospect that they will be put "on hold" in the event the North chooses an inconvenient moment to strike? Pragmatic responses — for example, Japanese and South Korean nuclear weapons programs — may not be what the Tarnoff Doctrine had in mind when it talks about increased allied burden-sharing, but they are predictable reactions to such a vacuum of American power.

The Center for Security Policy believes that the United States can ill-afford either the Tarnoff Doctrine or the military strategy it is precipitating. As in the past, the American people and their loved ones who serve in the nation’s armed forces will pay dearly for a disengaged U.S. foreign policy and a military establishment deliberately configured so as to be unprepared to deal with abiding threats to our security and global interests.

Ironically, even the Clinton/Tarnoff economic rationale — that American overextension abroad must be curtailed so as to husband and reallocate resources for domestic revitalization — is untenable. Loss of international confidence in U.S. leadership and power will inexorably translate into adverse market developments ranging from a weakened dollar to loss of leverage in the conduct of trade and investment relations to upward pressure on interest rates.

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1. For an early explanation of this controversy, see the Center’s Decision Brief entitled, "It’s Official: U.S. Abdication of International Leadership is State Policy, Not Mere Ineptitude," (No. 93-D 42, 26 May 1993).

2. See "Despite Heat, Christopher Has ‘The Time of My Life,’" by Elaine Sciolino, p. A3.

3. See Martin Walker’s prescient analysis of the Clinton/Tarnoff Doctrine published under the headline "America is Coming Home" in the Manchester Guardian on 25 May 1993, the day of Tarnoff’s notorious remarks.