Clinton’s Legacy Watch # 42: A United States that is ‘The World’s Only Superpower’ no More

(Washington, D.C.): You have to hand it to Bill Clinton.
Not everyone could squander so
thoroughly the incredible hand he was dealt in international affairs. Thanks most especially to the efforts of Ronald Reagan and his team, when Mr. Clinton and
Al
Gore came to office declaring that “it’s the economy, stupid,” the United States was indisputably
the world’s only superpower — its military, strategic and economic preeminence unchallenged and
unassailable.

Where We are Now

Six years later, the U.S. is still in a class by itself as measured by the strength of its economy
and
the technological prowess of its military forces. Yet, in recent days, the signs are unmistakable:
America is increasingly seen by other nations as a waning power that can be challenged
with impunity and assailed without consequence.

China

The most palpable sign of this diminished status was evident over the weekend.
In the eyes
of the Communist Chinese, Bill Clinton’s America is a paper tiger, not a superpower.
This
was the unmistakable message conveyed by the violent demonstrations against U.S. diplomatic
missions that the PRC government organized in the wake of the accidental bombing of China’s
embassy in Belgrade.

These demonstrations featured the state-arranged bussing of tens of thousands of students to
the
environs of the U.S. embassy in Beijing, followed by police-supervised rock-throwing that
Ambassador Jim Sasser has said destroyed every window in the Beijing embassy. At least one
Molotov cocktail was tossed into the embassy’s ground floor, endangering not only this bit of
sovereign American territory but Mr. Sasser, two of his senior subordinates and eight of the
mission’s Marine guards, all of whom the Ambassador described as “hostages” of the officially
sanctioned mayhem. So much for Chinese government guarantees of our diplomats’ personal
safety.

The calculated insult intended by these actions was reinforced by the fact that the Chinese did
not
interfere with Amb. Sasser’s ability to conduct a slew of interviews with the American media on
Sunday, describing how he, his family and staff were suffering at his hosts’ hands. The image of a
pitiful, helpless giant could hardly have been better conveyed than by the obviously exhausted
former Senator’s listing for successive television and radio audiences of how long it had been
since he had any real sleep (fifty-plus hours), the lack of food at the embassy and his concerns
about the well-being of dependents and staff elsewhere in China.

China’s contempt for a corrupt and decadent America is also on display in its
response to
the unfolding scandal concerning PRC penetration of the U.S. nuclear weapons
laboratories and successful acquisition of strategic “dual-use” technologies. Beijing has
simply put the arm on American corporations anxious to do business with China, encouraging
them to unleash their lobbyists on Capitol Hill with a view to ensuring that revelations about
Chinese intelligence and tech-theft operations do not translate into meaningful retribution.

The upshot of all this is not that China has emerged as an equal, a superpower set
to rival the
United States on its own terms and in the near future. While it would be a serious mistake to
ignore that prospect in the early 21^st Century, we should see in the present
episode as an early
taste of what might be called “the New, New World Order”: A global environment in
which bad actors have taken America’s measure and found that it is either unable or
unwilling to use its immense power effectively creating vacuums for others to fill.

Other Would-be ‘Vacuum’ Fillers

Examples of such vacuum-filling abound:

• The Russians are exploiting it to negotiate terms that will ensure that
  their client in Belgrade,
  Slobodan Milosevic, not only survives the present NATO air war but is rewarded for his
  predations in Kosovo (and the preceding ones in Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia). As things
  stand now, in addition to having the privilege of committing large numbers of American troops
  to an open-ended peacekeeping assignment in Kosovo, the U.S. taxpayer will be obliged to pay
  what will amount to war reparations for the rebuilding of Milosevic’s economy and
  infrastructure.

• The North Koreans have just euchred the United States and Japan
  respectively into providing
  $500 million in food aid and well over a billion in nuclear reactor-related funding. These
  concessions, we are assured, have nothing to do with the U.S. being allowed, finally, to send
  inspectors to look at a huge underground facility that Pyongyang is suspected of building to
  conceal its ongoing, covert nuclear weapons program. It is a safe bet, however, that the
  inspectors will find no “smoking gun” since the North Koreans have had at least two months to
  reconfigure or otherwise hide evidence of its activities in this facility.

• Saddam Hussein continues to beard the United States by threatening the
  pilots enforcing the
  “no-fly” zone over Iraq, even as he makes headway at the UN in unraveling what remains of
  the international consensus on the Iraqi sanctions regime. Five months have elapsed since the
  inspectors were last on the ground in Iraq; the best estimate has been that, once such
  inspections stopped, it would only take Saddam half-a-year to get his weapons of mass
  destruction programs back on line.

• Yasser Arafat chose to defer his declaration of a Palestinian state prior to
  the Israeli elections
  — but only because his doing otherwise might help Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keep
  his job. At the same time, the PLO has dusted off the 1947 UN Resolution 181, claiming that
  it entitles the Palestinians to large chunks of what is today’s Israel and the “internationalizing”
  of Jerusalem. These claims, which have been endorsed by the European Union and UN
  officials, could well set the predicate for the next Middle East war.

The Bottom Line

In short, the real danger of the present debacle is not merely that the Clinton Administration
will
want to reward Beijing for its contemptuous, premeditated acts of violence by admitting the PRC
into the World Trade Organization, giving China a pass on its espionage and tech theft activities
and/or other concessions. It is that the perception that the United States is no longer a force to be
reckoned with and is, instead, a declining power to be taken advantage of by lesser but audacious
nations. History teaches us that such situations invite conflict,
usually at great expense to
American national interests, national treasure and, most importantly, lives.

Given this history, the question must be asked: Why would the Clinton Administration act in
ways that serve to erode America’s superpower status, its prestige and credibility and, in all
likelihood, create a more dangerous world in the process? The answer seems to lie with
the
counterculture experience and mindset of many of its senior officials, starting with the
President, himself. They were schooled in a tradition that held that excessive U.S.
power gave
rise to the Vietnam debacle and are driven by the perceived need to prevent a reprise through
whatever means are possible (including unilateral reductions in military capabilities and
subordinating American freedom of action to multilateral institutions and constraints).
Unfortunately, their success in implementing such a policy approach — and thereby effectively
ending this Nation’s status as the world’s only superpower — is virtually sure to translate into
successive, terrible failures for United States’ security policy.