The Democrats' foreign policy: Partisanship for its own sake.
Wall Street Journal Featured Article.
AFTER THE COLD WAR
Tom Daschle,
Frenchman?
The Democrats' foreign policy: Partisanship
for its own sake.
BY LAWRENCE F. KAPLAN
Saturday, August 18, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT
Last week the Washington think-tank circuit featured visiting dignitaries
who lectured on the defects of U.S. foreign policy. Describing the
"resentment" President Bush's foreign policy inspires abroad, one of
them admonished that "free-world leadership does not mean dictatorship
to the free world." Another lampooned the notion that the U.S. could
"possibly build a strategic framework to which all other nations submit."
Oddly enough, these dignitaries weren't visiting from China or France.
They came instead from Capitol Hill, where the first happens to be the
Senate majority leader, and the second the House minority leader.
That it's become difficult to tell Tom Daschle and Richard Gephardt apart
from our European and Chinese detractors says something about
American politics today. After all, the end of the Cold War and eight
years of frenetic military activity under a Democratic president seemed
to put to rest the suspicion that American power was somehow tainted,
to be used only in concert with, and on behalf of, the "international
community." In recent weeks, however, complaints about U.S.
"arrogance" and "bullying"--presumed to have been banished from the
Democratic lexicon--have once more returned to favor.
The chorus began in May, when several presidential aspirants seized on
our ouster from the United Nations Human Rights Commission as an
occasion to blame America first. Mr. Gephardt characterized the
expulsion as a justified response to U.S. "unilateralism," while Sen. John
Kerry gleaned in the decision evidence that the international community
senses "a lack of honesty in the United States." Since then, the complaint
that the Bush team has stepped on too many foreign toes has become a
staple of Democratic speechifying. Sen. Paul Wellstone, for instance,
claims that the positions of State Department official John Bolton, who
fought the U.N.'s Zionism-equals-racism resolution, "are inevitably seen
by the rest of the world as arrogant, confrontational, and
condescending"--a charge that sums up the Democrats' indictment of
the administration as a whole.
The centerpiece of this indictment is the Bush administration's
enthusiasm for missile defense, which--egged on by the New York
Times editorial page--Mr. Daschle and Senate Foreign Affairs
Committee Chairman Joe Biden have made it their mission to thwart. The
recent softening of Russian and European opposition to missile defense
has not led to any corresponding softening of the Democratic opposition.
On the contrary, the Clinton team's Richard Holbrooke, who helped draft
Mr. Daschle's speech last week, exhorted the Europeans to "stand up" to
America's plans. Mr. Bush's blunt references to America's detractors,
his vocal support for democratic Taiwan, his appointment of
foreign-policy vertebrates--these, too, have elicited howls in
Democratic ranks.
If the litany sounds familiar, comfort should be drawn from the fact that
it's being repeated as sheer farce. No one doubts that the U.S. best
achieves its foreign-policy aims through cooperation, not confrontation.
But, as the Israel-baiting agenda of the U.N.'s upcoming racism
conference serves to remind, blind deference to the international
community hardly offers proof of heightened moral awareness.
Bill Clinton learned this early. The fiascoes in Bosnia, where
subordinating U.S. power to that community meant standing idle in the
face of mass murder, and Somalia, where the same practice yielded
catastrophe, effectively demolished his illusions. If a president earned a
ribbon each time he acted unilaterally, Mr. Clinton would sport a chestful.
And when it came to our role in the world, last year's Democratic ticket
echoed "Scoop" Jackson more closely than it did Mr. Daschle's imitation
of George McGovern. It was the Republicans who counseled "humility."
Which is why the rhetoric of Messrs. Gephardt, Daschle and Biden is so
mystifying.
The music may sound slightly different, but whether the issue has been
Iraq, China, defense spending, or trade, the Bush team has answered the
fundamental questions of our day in very nearly the same way as its
Democratic predecessor. Republicans may prefer to bomb Iraq in the
daytime, Democrats in the evening. One party may prefer to erect a
missile-defense system in Alaska, the other in Alaska and maybe later at
sea. But that's about the sum of their differences in 2001.
If the bitter disagreements that divided the parties during the Cold War
have faded, their political uses have not. As the stakes diminish in our
foreign-policy debates, the partisan attachments only seem to grow
stronger. Hence, Democrats find themselves inveighing against
initiatives, including missile defense, that they had touted themselves less
than a year ago. Hence, too, congressional Republicans applaud the Bush
team for implementing the very policies--on China, most notably--for
which they once excoriated Mr. Clinton.
But in this game, the Democrats risk becoming caught in a bind of their
own devising. By reverting to party type, Messrs. Daschle, Biden, and
their fellow nostalgists merely remind voters why they still trust
Republicans more than Democrats on foreign policy and defense. As a
Republican aide put it last week, "We hope Democrats continue to court
European voters." Reflexively opposing U.S. power and its exceptional
role in the world isn't just bad politics. In seeming to denigrate both,
Democrats act as if nothing has been learned, and nothing remembered,
from past decades. Make no mistake: There's ample room for criticism of
the Bush foreign policy. But it's not on the left.
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