‘SITUATION NORMAL(IZED)’: WILL BUSH-BAKER GET AWAY WITH PROPPING UP ONE LAST TYRANNICAL REGIME?

(Washington, D.C.): The Bush
Administration may be about to lose its
mandate to govern. If so, one factor
almost certainly contributing to its
defeat is public revulsion at its
penchant for coddling dictators and
promoting cordial relations between this
country and tyrannies around the globe.

After all — on those few occasions
when he has addressed foreign policy —
Governor Clinton has singled out this
misguided global strategy for special,
and well-deserved, criticism. For
example, in his major address before the
Los Angeles World Affairs Council on 13
August 1992, Mr. Clinton said:

“From the Baltics to
Beijing, from Sarajevo to South
Africa, time after time this
President has sided with the status
quo against democratic
change; with familiar tyrants
rather than those who would
overthrow them; with the old
geography of repression rather
than a new map of
freedom….”

For his part, Ross Perot has sharply
challenged President Bush’s appeasement
of Saddam Hussein. Who can forget the
most memorable moments of the third and
final presidential debate — when Perot
savaged the President for an inept policy
that had to be corrected by sending the
nation’s armed forces into harm’s way
when a potential “friend” was
transformed overnight into a “new
Hitler.”

Vietnamese
Water Torture

Incredibly, the Bush Administration
has chosen this moment to signal its
intention to reward the communist
government of Vietnam — one of the most
brutally repressive regimes on the globe
— for its latest dollop of transparency
in accounting for U.S. POW/MIAs. Full
cooperation on trade, economic,
financial, energy, and technology matters
as well as political legitimation are in
the offing, thanks to the latest
so-called “breakthrough” on
missing American personnel.

Never mind that such
“forthcomingness” simply
confirms Hanoi’s deviousness,
dishonesty and cynical willingness to
manipulate and exploit the families of
missing U.S. service personnel. Never
mind, either, that such demonstrated
unreliability augurs ill for
future dealings — particularly
those made possible by American
taxpayer-underwriting of business and
political risks.

What’s Going On Here?

There are two possible explanations
for the timing of this latest and
eleventh hour betrayal of those who
aspire to democracy in Vietnam:

Taking Care of Business:
The withering pressure from an American
business community all-too-disposed to do
deals with centrally controlled economies
— for example, in Iraq, China and the
Soviet Union — may be creating
irresistible opportunities for the likes
of Jim Baker, if not George Bush,
himself. On the one hand, their faltering
campaign is desperate for infusions of
quick and substantial corporate
contributions. On the other, the
possibility that their reelection drive
will ultimately fail is clearly
encouraging some in the Administration to
look to grateful boardrooms as future
sources of retainers and employment.

Coopting a Clinton
Administration Policy: Four
years ago, former Secretary of State
George Shultz did a favor for like-minded
operatives in the incoming Bush
Administration by locking in a
“dialogue” with the Palestine
Liberation Organization during the
Reagan-Bush interregnum. In a similar
fashion, establishmentarians on the
Bush-Baker and Clinton-Gore teams could
conceivably have a common interest in
denying a democracy-oriented
president-elect the latitude to do what
he has pledged to do: Accept no
substitute for freedom as the price for
relations with totalitarian regimes like
Vietnam’s.

A Sacrifice Defiled

Evidently, Bush-Baker feel that one or
the other — or both — of these
considerations is sufficiently compelling
not only to justify exposing their
campaign anew to charges of abandoning
democracy for profit. They even
seem willing in the process to compromise
what has been, to date, one of their
strongest lines of attack on the Arkansas
Democrat.

Ironically, on no other issue in the
1992 presidential race has Mr. Bush
exhibited the passion prompted by Gov.
Clinton’s manner of opposing the war in
Vietnam. The President has repeatedly
condemned his Democratic challenger for
having led demonstrations overseas at a
time “when young ghetto kids have
been drafted and are dying”
half-a-world away. The implication is
that the sacrifice of American servicemen
and women was demeaned by a self-serving
betrayal of the cause for which they
fought.

And yet, Mr. Bush seems
scarcely less concerned about that
sacrifice as he, in his own way, now
seems poised to undermine fatally the
fight for genuine and lasting freedom in
Vietnam. If the cumulative
experience with expediency-driven,
taxpayer-guaranteed business dealings
with tyrannies around the globe is any
guide — and it surely is —
this latest, and possibly last, Bush
foreign policy initiative will be no less
misbegotten and counterproductive than
the youthful notions that animated much
of the anti-war movement.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
believes that it would be
irresponsible and reprehensible to deny
the next President of the United States
the full range of options
required to make momentous decisions that
will do much to determine Vietnam’s
destiny. These decisions will
literally bear on the hearts and minds of
generations of Americans — to say
nothing of directly affecting the lives
of millions of Vietnamese still suffering
under the yoke of communism.

For the Bush Administration,
this means appropriately deferring any
action on normalization until the
American people have spoken at the polls
in November and a mandate for foreign and
domestic policies is affirmed. Should
that mandate not be provided to the Bush
Administration, it must take no further
action to normalize relations with Hanoi
during a lame-duck interregnum.

For the Clinton forces, it
should be clear that their candidate can
accept nothing less than such a
postponement. The Center believes that
the words of John F. Kennedy — a man
Bill Clinton, and much of America, holds
in great esteem — must serve as the
beacon for a decision of this import:

“Let the word go forth from
this time and place, to friend
and foe alike, that the torch has
been passed to a new generation
of Americans — born in this
century, tempered by war,
disciplined by a hard and bitter
peace, proud of our ancient
heritage — and unwilling
to witness or permit the slow
undoing of those human rights to
which this nation has always been
committed, and to which
we are committed today at home
and around the world.

“Let every nation know,
whether it wishes us well or ill,
that we shall pay any price, bear
any burden, meet any hardship,
support any friend, oppose any
foe, in order to assure
the survival and the success of
liberty.

“This much we pledge — and
more.”