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Few American presidents in their first years in office can have been so severely criticized over the handling of foreign policy as President Clinton. Whether the blame was laid on inept advisers -- chosen by the president -- or on his own ignorance, indecisiveness or sheer lack of interest, few commentators found good to say, and the president's clear mandate to give domestic concerns priority did nothing to protect him.
It is possible that the view may change, and in politics, when it comes, change comes quickly. A clear success in foreign policy does any president good and may even strengthen his hand in domestic matters. Yet that is by no means certain. The Gulf War, entered upon, it is easy to forget, against the opposition of many Americans and with only reluctant support from many others, was a rapid and inexpensive success, a clear triumph. It redounded to President Bush's credit -- but not enough to win him re-election. All too often, neither action nor inaction, neither initiative nor response, meets with public approval.
Nor does the difficulty stop there. Action and inaction are alike disapproved, but neither for any single identifiable reason. The president and his advisers often seem to resemble the hapless British cavalry immortalized by Tennyson --
Cannon to right of them Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volley'd and thunder'd.
Though the cannon in question today are those of American journalists rather than Russian gunners, a situation in which retreat means humiliation and advance at best survival is not one to encourage the making of sensible foreign policy.
That suggests that the fault lies, not with any individual president or his administration, but with the condition of the country, whether external or internal. It is a central paradox that over 200 years of national history the United States has in some respects changed more than any other power and in other respects has remained exceptionally unchanged. The change, from a handful of former colonies clinging to the edge of a continent still largely unexplored to the mightiest power of this technological age, is obvious enough. The continuity, hardly less obvious when stated, is in the possession of what that eminent historian, C. Vann Woodward, long ago described as "free security. "
The idea of free security may seem eccentric so soon after the end of a Cold War during which the U.S.was under threat of nuclear attack and the end of an arms race so hugely expensive that it not only ruined the Soviet Union but did real, perhaps lasting, harm to the American economy as well. The nuclear threat is not one to be shrugged off, but the point is that it is so difficult to attack the mainland U.S., such enormous expenditure is required on sophisticated long-range missile and guidance systems, that the delivery of anything less than a nuclear warhead would not be worthwhile. Against any lesser attack the mainland U.S. has long been essentially secure and remains so. Occasional fears to the contrary -- of the Japanese carrier-borne air attack at the time of the Second World War, for example -- have been unrealistic and short-lived.
In a moment of high confidence, the young Abraham Lincoln, speaking to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois in 1838, put the case:
"All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined,. . with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. "
Time has not proved him wrong. The U.S. has taken part in the two great wars of the 20th century, in the Korean War, in the Vietnam War, in the Gulf War. Only the Vietnam War dented American self-confidence; none seriously harmed the American economy, and the two greatest even strengthened it. In none were American homes or civilian lives at risk. This is not war as other nations have experienced it. When the U.S. has gone to war it has not been in the immediate defense of the country -- though it has, of course, responded to attack. The war memorials of the First World War -- the Great War -- tell the story. In Europe, they list, in several languages, the names of those who died for their countries. The Americans who did not survive died not for their country, which was not at risk, but for some larger cause. One familiar phrase is "that liberty might not perish from the earth. "
The most obvious consequence of American security in this sense has been great freedom of choice. Necessity has never determined U.S. policy, and therefore from the beginning debate about what it should be has seldom been stilled. As the eminent French scholar, Raymond Aron, put it in The Imperial Republic, "The external action of the United States. . . is a unit only in its inconsistencies, its abrupt changes of front, its inability to choose a line of conduct and stick to it. . . . " He was writing of American policy in the first half of the 20th century, but might well have extended the scope of his criticism. It is the policy in the Cold War, during which the U.S. generally showed great consistency, that provides the exception to Aron's rule. The rule has otherwise held not only through an enormous increase in the relative power of the country but also through changes at least as influential in the world within which the U.S. must operate, and in American society itself.
If the U.S. had from the start great freedom of choice in policy making, it might seem that ever-growing power would only enlarge that freedom. In the early days, it quickly became clear that, while the U.S. had great scope in the Western Hemisphere, to act outside it involved risks and costs which were usually not worth- while. To attack pirates in the Mediterranean, to take the lead in opening up Japan to Western commerce, placed no strain on American resources and raised no serious opposition from any powerful state. Rather, such acts were widely approved.
For most of the 19th century, moreover, Americans had the added luxury of feeling that the world was going their way, becoming, with Europe of course in the lead, recognizably more "American. " While that belief lasted, the U.S. could always choose not to act outside the hemisphere. Americans, for example, broadly supported the several European revolutions of 1848, but the pain of seeing them fail was mitigated by the confidence that success would follow on a later occasion. Meanwhile, governments existed which could and did maintain order in their territories, which protected the lives and property of Americans and with which the American government could reach useful, limited agreements. The legitimacy of such governments need not become an issue, and the U.S. could stick to the proposition first advanced by Jefferson that what mattered was not the origin of a government's title, but only whether it possessed de facto control over its territory.
American activity in the Western Hemisphere was limited by different considerations. Though the American urge to act was greater and the external constraints on action less, any action -- or inaction -- would benefit some Americans more than others. Behind a generally accepted moral consensus, a real debate about interests could take place. The War of 1812, the war with Mexico, the prospect of war with Britain over the Oregon boundary, all stimulated such debate. The intensifying national dispute over slavery came to dominate the debates as it dominated everything else, but it neither caused nor stifled them. What was in question was American action for American purposes, initiatory rather than responsive action, and thus action certain to be more advantageous to some Americans than to others. For a limited time in a limited area foreign policy became an aspect of domestic policy.
With the Civil War behind and the U.S. a satiated power on her own continent -- even Alaska was added in 1867 -- a period of quiescence, even stagnation, in foreign policy followed. There was some activity, and indeed this is the period in which radical historians have most sharply criticized American policy; their essential charge has been that foreign policy was of so little interest to most Americans that it was allowed to fall into the hands of plutocrats who distorted U.S. values in their eagerness to exploit what is now still described as the Third World. Whatever truth there may be in the charge, such men could not have gained control of policy without the indifference of the American public, and the equal indifference, or even tacit approval, of the European powers. From time to time, as over the annexation of Hawaii or the Philippines or the suggested annexation of Cuba, the American public briefly woke up when it appeared there might be trouble, only to go back to sleep when it became clear there would be none.
The outbreak of the First World War presented U.S. policy makers with a new problem, one which reveals the essential American dilemma. American power was now great enough to determine the outcome of the war. Whichever side the U.S. chose to join would certainly win, yet there were no specific ends or purposes peculiar to the U.S. to gain by fighting. The same power that ensured victory if the U.S. fought made armed neutrality, fortress America, a viable and to some an attractive alternative.
The decision to go to war was President Wilson's. He could hardly have acted without the direct affront of the German decision to renew unrestricted submarine warfare, but even that did not force the decision on him. He reached it not because the country was in danger nor because he hoped to gain some territorial or other national advantage. He reached it because he feared that without American intervention the peace settlement would be a bad one, leading to renewed war, and because he hoped to bring about a better settlement and a more lasting peace. American participation made possible the complete Allied victory, yet without enabling Wilson, for all his heroic efforts, to modify much the peace the Allies were determined to impose. It is fair to say that most Americans agreed with Wilson's purposes; but too many differed over whether they were attainable and over what the U.S. should do, if anything, to attain them. The moralizing to which hostile critics, Americans no less than others, have so often drawn attention in the exposition of American policy is not the product of some tedious quirk in the American character. It is an inevitable consequence of great power lacking any clear and natural objective.
As the Second World War approached, the American dilemma came into even sharper focus. To set lesser matters aside, most Americans agreed that Germany and Japan were aggressive states whose ambitions ought to be opposed; yet the desire to stay away from trouble held almost equal weight. It was primarily for Britain and France to oppose Germany, and while the Far East was indeed a region in which the U.S. might claim leadership, she had no purposes there other than that Japan should withdraw from China and exercise restraint. War for such purposes would have been politically impossible -- there is an inherent absurdity about the idea of going to war to preserve peace -- but all attempts to bribe or threaten Japan into good behavior proved unsuccessful. It is hard to see how President Roosevelt, whatever his own wishes, could have taken his country into war without a direct attack on American forces. When the U.S. went to war, the war aim was not to reach some negotiated settlement or to redraw the map of the world. It was nothing less than the remaking of German and Japanese societies. The ghost of Woodrow Wilson might surely have cracked a pained smile.
The onset of the Cold War provided the U.S., for the first and only time, with an adequate national purpose even though that purpose had to be formulated in ideological terms. But to check the expansion of Soviet influence and so of world communism was a task which Americans agreed upon as necessary, clearly a task which only the U.S. could undertake and a task which required the dedication of a significant share of the national resources, large though those were. During the 40-odd years of the Cold War, American statesmen doubtless made mistakes and missed opportunities, but they had an overriding objective to pursue and strong public support in pursuing it. Historians have long since criticized American Cold War policies and they will continue to do so; but they will not, for this period, be able to bring Raymond Aron's charge. They will not deny the consistency of purpose appropriate to a Great Power.
Now, once again, all is changed. Victory, even in a Cold War, ought to bring its rewards, and no doubt it will. But, as after the First World War, the question of what to do next remains unresolved. With the collapse of the only worthy opponent, American power may seem to be even greater than before; in fact, it is less.
Power is a concept which has no meaning in the abstract. All power is power to do something. Power is specific to purpose. The possession of a lot of heavy lifting gear does not make one more able to perform precision work, and indeed heavy lifting gear is useless if there is nothing one wants to lift. So it is with the U.S. today. To change the metaphor, it is appropriate for a knight errant to ride out to slay a dragon or to confine the beast to its lair. It is not appropriate for a knight errant to chase stray cats, even neighborhood cats. He is poorly equipped for the chase, the cats easily evade his lance and the bystanders are not impressed even if he should succeed in spearing one. This is the position of an American president today. Americans now are accustomed to thinking of their nation as the leader of the "free world" and of their president as exercising that leadership on their behalf. Yet once again, and far more than in earlier periods of American history, there is nowhere for the nation or the world to go, and so no president can lead them there. Power lacks purpose. Lacking purpose, power does not exist.
In the most general sense, Americans are agreed about where they want the world to go now that the Cold War is over. They would like all countries to be democratic, to show a decent regard for human rights, to pursue the sound economic policies that lead to prosperity. But such generalized desires cannot form policy. The plain fact is that it matters hardly at all to the well-being of most Americans what happens in much of the world. At most, if things go well, Americans will be spared the harrowing sights of famine, pestilence and war on their television screens.
Even the best-known counterexamples are not strong. Suppose the Iraqi attack on Kuwait had been allowed to succeed. An exceptionally nasty dictator would have won an easy victory; but neither the security nor the prosperity of the U.S. would have been endangered -- a fact which would have become quickly apparent had the Gulf War proved longer and more expensive. (Rapid success in the Gulf War made response to a renewed threat last year more necessary, easier and cheaper. Though Western forces operate around Kuwait with advantages they do not have everywhere, even repulse of that second threat left the situation in Iraq hardly less satisfactory than before. ) Suppose the North Koreans develop a nuclear arsenal. Any direct threat would be to neighboring countries, above all, of course, to South Korea, rather than to the U.S. Untrustworthy though the North Korean government is, its ambitions can hardly extend much beyond the peninsula. If one potentially aggressive state acquires nuclear weapons, surely the greatest threat still surviving from the Cold War, an arms race is likely, and that is something worth forestalling. One must generalize the threat, however, before one can argue a serious American concern in anything that now happens in Korea. It was, after all, such generalization that was needed to justify the Korean War and, later, the Vietnam War. Still more today, essentially local events must be given global significance before they can properly demand an American response. Events in Bosnia, in Somalia, in Haiti and doubtless in other places in the future do not have that significance.
There is the American dilemma. What sort of response is appropriate to a foreign problem? Where and how should it be applied? There have been and still are matters over which the U.S. would fight, and should fight. They are fortunately not many nor immediate, and it is much to the credit of the nation that, like any civilized state, it fights only with great reluctance and as a last resort. In the modern world imperialism is out, even if places like Bosnia or Haiti or Afghanistan seem incapable of sensible self-rule. Potential alien rulers lack self-confidence, potential subjects fail in requisite deference. The Gulf War stopped short of overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and most Americans recoiled from the prospect of invading even so feeble a state as Haiti. If power in the form of military force is useless, or nearly so, that leaves power in the form of money. If the stick cannot be used, one must try the carrot.
The history of trying to bribe states into good behavior is not an encouraging one. The offer is too often seen merely as a sign of weakness. Saddam Hussein clearly read Western efforts to moderate his behavior in that way. American efforts to persuade the Japanese before the Second World War to pursue prosperity rather than domination failed; the rulers of Japan declined to have one without the other. We must see whether the new rulers of North Korea, when bought, will stay bought. Sanctions -- the withdrawal of the carrot -- are a doubtful weapon at best. Until a late stage in their use, they injure the helpless subjects of tyrannical rulers while confirming those rulers in their determination to cling to power. Modern media make all such difficulties obvious to a public whose attention span is short and whose interest in most outcomes is not great.
There is in all international relations, considered as intergovernmental relations, an irreducible element of hostility, something which the Founding Fathers well knew when they proposed keeping them to a minimum. What any peaceable people wants is that the world outside its borders should exist for tourism, or as a profitable place for trade and investment -- and that action by its government should not be necessary. When its government must act, something is wrong, and the fault lies with foreigners. Good relations between two nations imply either that no government activity is called for or common hostility to a third nation. In a nation both wealthy and secure, such hostility is easily diverted into irritation at the man responsible for the conduct of policy, the president. The focus of the irritation remains personal. Foreign policy is not, and shows no sign of becoming, a matter of rational debate between parties; it is a matter on which both parties are not so much divided as fractious. When the Congress and the White House are held by different parties, sensible policy making is certainly harder. But the root of the difficulty lies elsewhere. It is the great security of the country that allows scope for the prejudices of individuals -- say, a partiality for Israel. One casualty will surely be American willingness to modify policy in deference to the wishes and needs of allies or to the general principle of international cooperation.
In these circumstances a president cannot make much political capital out of skill in foreign affairs, even if he is supposed to have it. A successful foreign tour, a successful little war, may make him look presidential for a time, but since the purpose of diplomacy is again to reduce the scope of American involvement, later if not immediately, any credit gained cannot be made to last. Success in one area will only focus attention on some new irritation. Mistakes will be remembered, success taken for granted. Since in the U.S., as in most democracies, the evidence is that voters vote against a candidate rather than for one, it is the man in charge, not his rival, who is likely to lose more in a presidential contest. Where both candidates are untested, foreign policy is not likely to be the decisive issue.
What is the likely outcome? There is some hope, even if not a strong one, that once again the world is moving in an "American" direction, that more countries will choose to follow broadly democratic, broadly free-market paths, that those choosing otherwise will be of lesser importance and that world stability will slowly increase, though naturally with hesitations and backslidings. That is the most promising outlook. It may be falsified, but if it is not, American interest in the outside world once again will weaken. It is too much to expect Americans to abandon overnight the sense of responsibility for the world's future so painfully learned during the Cold War. But if, over time, they do, that will at least mitigate the Aron criticism of inconsistency and abrupt changes of front. And even if those should survive or revive, it will matter very little, except to the hapless president of the day, who will be damned if he does and damned if he does not.
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