Aiming for Accord on Foreign Policy

There was a distinct air of nostalgia in the room last week when organizers launched a group dedicated to promoting bipartisan consensus on foreign policy.

Partly that was because the two Washington veterans headlining the effort -- former Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.) and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.) -- were last seen together playing key roles in the congressional investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal in 1988.

But the mood owed more to the example both men raised as the alternative to the partisan clashes over foreign policy that are common today. Each pointed to the years immediately after World War II, when patricians who have become known as the “Wise Men” shuttled between Wall Street and the inner circles of government, and internationalists in both parties locked arms to construct the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Marshall Plan.

Despite substantial disagreements between Democrats and Republicans, “both sides understood that there had to be a policy to take the world from where it was ... to where it would be as we sit here today,” Rudman said at the news conference announcing the Partnership for a Secure America. “I would just say to you: It has been done before, and it can be done again.”

But can it?

Most historians agree that the period after World War II represented the high point for a foreign policy establishment in both parties that steered a centrist course, despite resistance from each side’s most ideological elements.

That tradition is still evident in the membership of the Partnership for a Secure America. Its advisory board includes a prominent array of moderate Republicans and centrist Democrats, including former secretaries of State, national security advisors and U.N. ambassadors from both parties.

Some believe the new group’s call to reestablish a “bipartisan center in American foreign and national security policy” will strike a chord with politicians and voters tired of partisan disputes over issues from Iraq to global climate change.

“There is a vast majority of Americans who care strongly about security and realize [we need] the kind of bipartisan thinking that helped us win the Cold War because we are in a new ‘long, twilight struggle,’ ” said Walter Isaacson, president of the nonpartisan Aspen Institute and coauthor of “The Wise Men,” a history of the World War II era.

But many observers think the differences between today’s environment and the conditions after World War II mean that tail fins and big bands are more likely to return than the bipartisan cooperation that shaped America’s first steps in the Cold War.

An increase in party-line voting on Capitol Hill, the rising importance of adversarial media such as talk radio and the Internet, more focus by each party on its political base and sharp partisan divisions among voters over how best to safeguard America all make consensus more elusive than in the days when Republican Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan helped Democratic President Truman lay down the foundation of America’s Cold War strategy.

Madeleine Albright, President Clinton’s second secretary of State, signed a manifesto the partnership published in the New York Times last week, and welcomed the group’s effort to encourage more bipartisan agreement. But, like many, she is cautious about the prospects of restoring an environment of compromise similar to that earlier time.

“After World War II, there was a real sense of patriotism and collegiality because we had fought the war together,” Albright said. “There were ideological divisions about the way people felt about the Soviet Union, but there are partisan divisions that are more severe now.”

The new group sprang from discussions between two figures with relatively low profiles in Washington: Jamie Metzl, a former Clinton administration aide who lost a bid for Congress from Missouri as a Democrat last year, and Charles Andreae, a former chief of staff for Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) who now consults for companies on government relations in foreign countries.

The pair approached Rudman and Hamilton, two moderates who have led other bipartisan initiatives. The Century Foundation, a left-of-center think tank, agreed to sponsor the project, and Hamilton and Rudman helped to recruit the rest of the organization’s advisory board.

Democrats on the board include Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, the national security advisors for Presidents Carter and Clinton, respectively; Donald McHenry and Richard C. Holbrooke, U.N. ambassadors for Carter and Clinton; Warren Christopher, Clinton’s first secretary of State; and former Sens. Gary Hart of Colorado and Sam Nunn of Georgia.

The Republican recruits generally haven’t been as central to shaping GOP foreign policy, but they include Lawrence S. Eagleburger, secretary of State at the end of George H.W. Bush’s presidency; Robert C. McFarlane, President Reagan’s national security advisor; and former Sen. John C. Danforth of Missouri, who served briefly as U.N. ambassador for George W. Bush.

All of the Republicans involved identify with the party’s moderate wing. Notably absent are prominent conservatives.

Rudman acknowledged that the list reflected just one segment of the GOP. “We are going to reach out and bring some folks in,” he said.

The initial reaction from one conservative foreign policy advocate suggested that recruiting on the right wouldn’t be easy. “These are very much people who are part of the old foreign policy establishment,” said Cliff May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “And the weaknesses of [their] positions should have become fairly evident on Sept. 11.”

Other foreign policy experts said it was difficult to predict whether the group would have much influence. Most of the advisory board members are old enough that they are unlikely to serve again in government. And the group’s first manifesto drew some derision because, critics said, its sweeping principles offered no guidance on the practical questions facing America, such as how to proceed in Iraq.

For instance, the group said in its ad: “America must always be ready to act alone when its security interests are threatened. But by building strong alliances ... we will be better able to protect America’s interests.”

Metzl said the organization would issue more detailed statements on issues every few months. But the group may be important less for its proposals than as a barometer of a broader mood.

Rudman and Hamilton said their group wasn’t meant as a criticism of Bush. But many observers see its call to build “strong alliances” and to “renew and reform the United Nations” as a sign of continuing centrist unease over the emphasis the president has placed on preserving America’s unilateral freedom of action, even at the price of strain with traditional allies.

“There is a feeling Bush brought in a very assertive nationalism that gave short shrift to America’s internationalist traditions,” said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank. “What you have here is folks saying, ‘We’ve got to get back to that.’ ”