Beyond the Cold War — Foreign Policy in the 21st Century: The Second Cold War

By Karen Elliott House
The Wall Street Journal, 17 February 1994

“Good fences make good neighbors.”
— Robert Frost

MUNICH — This bit of wisdom from the New England poet’s neighbor
is as applicable to the affairs of nations as to neighborhoods. Yet,
it’s being ignored by the West’s wishful-thinking leaders as they
seek to fashion a post-Cold War world in which all ground is common,
all differences can be compromised and all truths are relative.

The Soviet Union has collapsed. But it does not follow that we
now live in a world of white hats who share — as all too many
Clintonites would have it — common aspirations, goals and good
feelings. This is no more the case today than after World War I,
when a combination of cowardice and naivete led Western leaders to
ignore rising German and Japanese imperialism and set the stage for
World War II.

A similar combination of escapism and delusion is setting the
stage for Cold War II. This stark conclusion was underscored at two
recent gatherings, of defense ministers and other security experts,
in Tokyo and in Munich.

The meetings allegedly focused on threats to North Asia and to
Europe. Assembled experts debated security issues while scarcely
mentioning the real threats to security. In Tokyo, American,
Japanese and Russian officials spent most of two days discussing
security problems in Asia without bringing themselves to mention the
looming threat of a militarizing, autocratic China. One Russian came
close by euphemistically alluding to a “regional power center that
doesn’t share our impression of human dignity.”

In Munich, U.S. and Western European security experts likewise
discussed new security frameworks for Europe, with all but a few
former Reagan advisers publicly avoiding the obvious threat — a
re-expanding Russia already moving to reabsorb its former empire.

To speak the word “China” openly in Tokyo, or “Russia” in Munich,
was to be the proverbial skunk at the garden party. At both parleys
the names were confined to whispers in hallways. As in Washington,
the conventional wisdom at these meetings was that the world must
avoid “drawing lines.” The wishful thinkers instead hold that the
West must engage in a “Partnership for Peace” that offers equal
opportunity to all in a world order so ambiguous as to be
meaningless.

This PFP’s veneration of ambiguity assumes that drawing lines to
define Western interests is what has caused previous conflicts
rather than prevented them. Some Western statesmen know better. But
they indulge a strong desire to believe that in the post-Cold War
world, time is somehow on our side; problems ignored can be faced
later at no higher cost.

Blurred thinking is compounded by a Western sense of guilt that
pervades the U.S. and extends to its policies abroad. A society
prepared to excuse the Menendez brothers for murdering their parents
is one very much inclined to overlook Kim Il Sung’s nuclear
ambitions because he “feels isolated,” or to excuse incipient
Russian expansionism because Russians feel frustrated that the U.S.
hasn’t “done enough” to help them.

The point isn’t to proclaim an expansive Russia or a militarizing
China as inevitable enemies of the West — nor to suggest that a new
Cold War would be a literal repeat of the last. But the surest way
to avoid Cold War II is for America to make abundantly clear
precisely where Western interests lie — to draw lines rather than
let others draw them in ways and places that threaten U.S.
interests.

Yet the Clinton administration is doing just the opposite. An
immediate example is North Korea, which continues to build nuclear
weapons. The combined cowardice of the U.S., Japan and especially
South Korea is clear in their offering Pyongyang more and more
enticements — from promises of aid to pledges to cancel military
exercises in South Korea — to get North Korea to drop its nuclear
ambitions. The tripartite consensus avoids drawing lines or setting
deadlines in the misguided belief that “time is on our side” and Kim
Il Sung isn’t “crazy enough to use nuclear weapons.” Meanwhile,
Pyongyang exports its nuclear technologies to Iran, an equally
dangerous enemy of America.

Bosnia is another obvious security threat. There, the Bush
administration’s failure to draw lines has been compounded by
Clintonites’ empty threats and inaction. After more than 22 months
of Serbian shelling of Sarajevo, the West is edging toward limited
air strikes on Serb artillery. If that makes sense today, it made
more sense two years and tens of thousands of casualties ago.
Bombing Serbian military bases at the source of aggression — in and
around Belgrade — would have even more impact. Drawing lines also
means drawing them in the right place.

These are headline hot spots. But the larger threats are ones
Western leaders avoid discussing. High on that list is Russia’s
intent to reabsorb what it euphemistically calls “the near abroad”:
the component parts of the old Soviet empire, from the Baltics to
Central Asia, that now exist as fragile independent states.

While Western security experts in Munich duck discussing this
threat, the Russians talk openly and fervently. Listen to Russian
Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, widely considered a “liberal”
within the Russian leadership: Russia, he said recently, intends to
“toughly uphold the interests of the Russian-speaking populations
and stand up for them wherever that might be. . . .”

Since some 25 million Russians live outside Russia’s borders in
places like Ukraine and the Baltic states, Mr. Kozyrev’s logic is
precisely the same as that applied by the Serbs to Greater Serbian
interests in the former Yugoslavia. But the consequences for the
West are likely to be far greater as Russians reconstruct Greater
Russia. The process already is beginning with Moscow encouraging
Crimea to break from Ukraine and return to the Motherland.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton offers meaningless “security assurances”
to Ukrainians to ease their fears of Russia and destroy their
nuclear weapons. Within six weeks of presidential assurances in
Kiev, Defense Secretary William Perry in Munich said they “did not
include a guarantee of security by the U.S. government.”

Indeed, the administration’s Partnership for Peace expressly, in
the words of Mr. Perry, “avoids drawing new security lines in Europe
when our goal is to integrate Russia into Europe.”

But Russia’s stated objective contradicts this goal. Russia seeks
to embrace the old Soviet empire and insist that much of former
Eastern Europe remain a neutralist buffer zone. When NATO recently
faced an opportunity to extend membership to former Soviet
satellites such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, it shrank
from doing so for fear of upsetting Russia.

All of this leads to the obvious: New lines are being drawn
across the face of Europe, but by Russia, at its pleasure and with
timid acquiescence by the U.S. and Western Europe. The major
security threat to Europe in the near term will be Russia’s attempts
to reabsorb Ukraine, which could prove even more violent and
divisive than Yugoslavia’s conflict.

“The issue is whether Ukraine is our buffer against Russia or
Russia’s buffer against the West,” says a Western defense minister
privately. “The West must have a common policy.” Instead, it has
wishful thinking: “I’m sure Yeltsin will not listen to those who
call for a nationalistic or imperialistic policy,” Germany’s
Chancellor Helmut Kohl said here.

Much the same syndrome is visible in Asia, where a resurgent
China flexes its muscles at increasingly fearful neighbors. China,
unlike Russia, isn’t an overtly imperial power; it’s also much more
subtle. With the exception of Hong Kong, which China reabsorbs in
1997, Beijing isn’t seeking to gobble territory but to intimidate
neighbors into accepting China’s primacy as Asia’s superpower.

China’s military spending is growing at a time when other major
powers are slowing defense expenditures. China is actively exporting
missiles and other technologies to rogue nations like Iran. There is
also its failure to employ its influence to stop Pyongyang’s nuclear
program.

As ever, the greater danger lies not in drawing lines but in
pretending that differences in national interests do not exist. The
history of American foreign policy in this century has been one of
repeatedly failing to learn this lesson. The time to draw lines is
before North Korea threatens to use a nuclear weapon or before the
Russians annex Ukraine, not after. Time is rarely on the side of
freedom and stability.

The world wouldn’t be a safer place if George Bush had acquiesced
in Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait. Germany wouldn’t be united today if
Helmut Kohl and George Bush had temporized over reunification in the
face of Soviet displeasure. And, sadly, Eastern Europe and the
Baltic states may not remain truly free and independent nations
because the West cravenly temporizes today about their status in
mere anticipation of Russian displeasure.

The first Cold War didn’t end because time was on our side. It
concluded because the West drew enough lines at enough times and in
enough places. We demonstrated the historic truth that when
imperialism isn’t permitted to expand, it inevitably contracts.
Better to draw clear lines now than to have to contest them later.

Ms. House is vice president, international, of Dow Jones & Co.