Finding a New U.S. Foreign Policy to Fit a New World of Opportunity

The abortive coup in Panama has unleashed a debate about the adequacy of the Bush Administration’s decision-making process. Yet controversy about procedures misses the central point. In a crisis, there is usually so little time that officials react as athletes do, almost by rote--on the basis of attitudes that have become second nature. The key question concerning Panama is, therefore, not how the United States managed one incident, but how it could have slid, during two administrations, into a confrontation with a weak, dependent country, staking American prestige without achieving stated objectives.

The crisis could have been a blessing in disguise. Contrary to popular perception, the top reaches of government grow quiet during crises. Competition for pre-eminent status stops; more often, the competition is over who can avoid blame. A crisis has the hidden benefit of separating those willing to assume responsibility from those who maneuver for personal and career survival. These are lessons an Administration must learn--the sooner the better.

The fundamental imperative for a new Administration is an inquiry on how the United States chooses basic objectives. This is particularly important when the world teeters uneasily between the conventional wisdom of the past and the revolutionary reality of the present. Not since the end of World War II has the international situation been so fluid.

And not since the Marshall Plan or the formation of NATO has an American President had so great an opportunity to build a new international order. But equally, not since the end of American isolationism have the obstacles in the United States been so daunting.

No government of a major country reinvents its foreign policy with such regularity or so systematically as the American. Every eight years at most, the top personnel down to the level of deputy assistant secretary are removed even when--as happened this time--no change of party is involved. A large percentage of the next lower levels are simultaneously transferred from policy-making positions, sacrificing expertise and policy depth at a moment when political appointees are still without operational experience. Their seminal experience is often the recent political campaign, with its inevitable emphasis on short-term considerations geared to the rhythm of the TV evening news. Hence, high officials drawn from the political world tend to be more concerned with avoiding criticism than with imparting a sense of direction and tend to confuse verbal formulations or public-relations exercises with long-range policy. For in a political campaign, pronouncement is substance; the focus has to be on what to say rather than on what to do.

For all these reasons, senior officials entering policy-making from the field of politics spend a disproportionate amount of effort seeking to dissociate themselves from their predecessors.

Then a key test of any new administration is its ability to generate objectives that go beyond liquidating the policies of predecessors. That point seems to me to have been reached in the Bush Administration. At least for now, it has postponed--in my view indefinitely--controversy over the deployment of short-range nuclear weapons in Europe; it is cutting back the Strategic Defense Initiative in effect to a research program. But it has yet to put forward its concept of the new Europe, of Atlantic relations under conditions of perestroika , of the evolving role of China and Japan or of Latin America. In the nature of things, a long-range policy will take time to evolve; it would be both premature and unfair to criticize this Administration for failing to achieve it in a few months. But it is not too early to point out that in the end an administration will be judged by what it creates, not by what it liquidates.

In organizing to deal with the future, the Bush Administration has many assets, notably that the President and several key advisers have a wealth of seasoned foreign-policy experience. They are also, by nature, prudent. Tactical recklessness will not be the undoing of this Administration. But concentration on tactics and short-term politics could be. Ironically the fact that the top people have known one another for so long and obviously get along so well may prove too much of a good thing. They may be reluctant to challenge one another or even embark on projects likely to produce controversy. When harmony becomes its own end, really difficult choices tend to be avoided.

That tendency toward stagnation disguised as consensus is reinforced within each department, in the interdepartmental machinery and by evolving presidential-congressional relations.

In taking over, every administration faces institutional deadlock: Its instincts are for change almost for its own sake while the bureaucracy is committed to a status quo it helped achieve. But since the new men rarely know their goals beyond campaign rhetoric and the bureaucracy controls the paper flow, solving day-to-day problems may consume so much energy that little time is left for long-range policy. The State Department bureaucracy, convinced that few political appointees could pass the Foreign Service examination, tends to persist in its view without formally articulating it to higher levels of government. The Foreign Service has a wondrous ability to write memoranda that fudge options it does not approve without technically suppressing them, or to draft instructions for itself which, once signed by the unwary political appointee, can be interpreted in a surprisingly sweeping manner.

Such guerrilla tactics come to the fore when the Foreign Service believes its views are being systematically ignored--more or less the case today. A certain tension between the political leadership and the professional staff is both inevitable and desirable. But foreign policy cannot thrive without support from what is now one of the world’s best diplomatic services; when disciplined and monitored, it can be marvelously effective.

The flow of cables in and out of State is so voluminous, the issues so complex that it can only be managed by teamwork between professionals and political appointees. Though it is still early in this Administration, this teamwork has in my view not yet been achieved.

More difficult is the task of aligning the interdepartmental process to the genesis of long-range goals. The most overwhelming experience of high-level government service is that there are always more problems than time. Then the urgent tends to drive out the important--especially, if paradoxically, in an Administration of extremely compatible individuals where there is great reluctance to play devil’s advocate.

Countless treatises have been written about the relative role of the national security adviser and the principal Cabinet officers. There is no formally conclusive answer because so much depends on the personality of the President. Since he has the final power of decision, the way issues are presented to him must be compatible with his style of work. But as a general proposition, Cabinet members are under duress to deal with day-to-day issues. They cannot avoid taking into account the morale of their subordinates, which is inevitably linked to short-term issues rather than the uncertainties inherent in long-range strategic planning.

Ideally, the national security adviser should act as the conscience of the Administration. He and the secretary of state should not be so afraid of reigniting bureaucratic struggles that they seek to solve all problems by a nonaggression treaty between themselves. The national security adviser and staff should feel free to raise forbidden subjects and to insist--within limits tolerated by the President--on the consideration of controversial issues. The incumbent, Brent Scowcroft, is almost ideally suited for this, though I should mention that he is an admired friend and former business associate.

The tendency toward the short-term and the ad hoc is reinforced by the growing role of Congress; its staffs have multiplied as its claims have been extended from oversight of policy into control of day-to-day tactics. Unfortunately, the process of foreign-policy decision-making rarely lends itself to the trade-offs that characterize domestic legislation. Effective statecraft demands patience, nuance and confidentiality--characteristics so often the opposite of robust congressional politics. The Bush Administration has shown extraordinary deference to congressional views. It remains to be seen whether this encourages pressures or eases them. In the end, the public and Congress will require a road map of proposed long-range destinations. Only in this manner does it become possible to generate the sort of dialogue capable of bringing about national consensus.

We thus return to our original problem: whether this nation can, in a period of revolutionary change, develop objectives capable of shaping history. And this depends even more on the cast of mind of top policy-makers--executive and legislative--than on the administrative machinery at their disposal.

Thus there is reason to be concerned over the disparity between the description of our time as revolutionary and the measures put forward to deal with it. Those are still quite conventional. For months there has been a debate in the United States about whether or not to affirm perestroika --an update of the Cold War question: Can the Soviets be trusted and to what extent? But now that perestroika has been endorsed, what are the precise operational consequences? Neither Moscow nor the West has put forward any recognizable definition. As a result, neither Congress nor the public--or U.S. allies--have any criteria for determining what is being endorsed; the crucial challenge for the West is to develop a common concept and strategy for the new era now being proclaimed.

There are celebrations of new democracy in the world but little discussion on the specific actions required to sustain or defend it, especially in Latin America.

Defense is being reduced, but in the name of what doctrine, by what strategy?

Conventional wisdom holds that the two-power world is disintegrating but the United States remains focused on a version of arms control that is a vestige of that world; so far no concept has been put forward to take advantage of the most significant opportunity perestroika seems to open up: the political organization of a new Europe, East and West, and the consequent redistribution of responsibility within the Atlantic Alliance.

The comforting assumption seems to be that evolution--in the Soviet Union and in the world--will proceed smoothly toward some form of undefined global harmony symbolized by an occasional high-level meeting. This suits American optimism, though not the lessons of history; they teach that revolutions tend to proceed unevenly with periodic convulsions until a new structure has emerged. How to shape such a process and what we understand by harmony define the opportunity for peace. It is too early to ask for an agenda that will cause this Administration to meet its seminal opportunities. But the process should begin now with the recognition that the answers can be no better than the questions that are put.