Clinton Blasts Bush’s Foreign Policy Record

Delivering his first major foreign policy address since receiving his party’s nomination, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton delivered a sharp attack against President Bush’s record on foreign affairs Thursday and laid out a comprehensive outline of a Clinton foreign policy, which centers on an emphasis on economic competitiveness and a fundamental restructuring of the military Establishment.

Clinton, who has often tried to neutralize Bush’s presumed advantage in foreign policy by emphasizing points of agreement with the Administration, used a speech at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council to instead launch an unusually blunt and direct assault on Bush’s record, accusing him of favoring the international status quo at the expense of democratic change.

“From the Baltics to Beijing, from Sarajevo to South Africa, time after time, this President has sided with the status quo rather than 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.”

Bush, Clinton said, “failed to stand up for our values” when China’s government attacked demonstrators in Tian An Men Square. The Administration “initially snubbed Boris Yeltsin” in Russia and publicly opposed efforts by Ukrainian leaders to break away from the Soviet Union and establish their independence.

And in Iraq, Bush “appeased” and “coddled” Saddam Hussein’s regime, giving Iraq economic credits and offering “an obliging silence about Iraq’s savage human rights record” even after the Baghdad government used poison gas to kill Kurds in the years before his invasion of Kuwait.

“My Administration will stand up for democracy,” Clinton said, pledging to offer assistance to the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe, to “keep the pressure on South Africa until the day of true democracy has dawned,” and to “link China’s trading privileges to its human rights record and its conduct on trade and weapons sales.”

“We must have a President ready to think anew in a world that is new,” Clinton said. “It is time for leadership that is strategic, vigorous and grounded in our democratic values, not reactive and tied to a status quo that cannot prevail.”

In the former Yugoslavia, Bush “ignored the warning signs that (Serbian President) Slobodan Milosevic was emerging as one of Europe’s bloodiest tyrants,” he said.

“My Administration will stand up for democracy,” he said, and will “buttress democratic forces in Haiti, Peru and throughout the Western Hemisphere.”

Bush “has been oddly reluctant to commit America’s prestige on the side of people inspired by America’s example,” he said, citing what he called an initial snubbing of Russia’s Boris N. Yeltsin and slowness to support independence in Ukraine.

Clinton said he would support trade sanctions against China if it fails to improve its human rights record and stop selling weapons to renegade dictators.

“A Clinton-Gore Administration will not permit American firms again to sell key technologies to outlaw states like Iraq,” he said.

While reiterating his support for defense cuts after the end of the Cold War, Clinton said: “We can never forget this essential fact: Power is the basis for successful diplomacy, and military power has always been fundamental in international relationships.”

And, he said, he would not hesitate to use force when necessary.

“Every President in the last half century has had to confront the fateful decision to send Americans into combat. I do not relish this prospect, but neither do I shrink from it.”

In Washington, Bush campaign press secretary Torie Clarke said Clinton had “stretched the outer edge of the envelope on credibility” with his comments on Bush. She said the Democrat supports military cuts that would be “reckless and irresponsible and endanger the national security of this country.”

Bush has proposed $50 billion in defense cuts over five years; Clinton has called for about twice that.

Clarke also repeated the Republicans’ contention that Clinton, as governor of Arkansas, has no experience qualifying him to steward U.S. foreign policy.

Clinton, speaking to reporters before the speech, dismissed such challenges. He said: “The issue in foreign policy is how much do you understand about the world, what are your values, what is your judgment, do you have the personal strength to make the right decisions. The two great wars we fought in this century were led by presidents who came to the White House from governorships.” He referred to Woodrow Wilson during World War I and Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II.

In his speech, he said liberals are wrong to view the Pentagon as a “piggy bank” for their favorite domestic programs. And he described the Bush plan as one that would simply shrink “the existing Cold War structure.”

Clinton said the organization of the military needed to be streamlined, eliminating duplication between the different services. And while reductions were needed in some areas, new weapon systems were needed to respond to the changing threat.

For example, Clinton supported the V-22 Osprey, a controversial new aircraft that takes off like a helicopter but flies like an airplane to reach difficult destinations.

“Our new military must be more agile because, with the end of the nuclear standoff, the new battlefields will likely be dominated by maneuver, speed and outthinking the enemy,” he said.

The Arkansas governor’s speech was interrupted by applause many times, including when he accused the Bush Administration of failing to develop a plan to convert parts of the defense industry to civilian use. California has been particularly hard hit by the loss of military manufacturing jobs.

Clinton’s speech came on the first day of a three-day campaign trip to California, a state critical to his election chances. Polls have shown him with a strong lead in the state.

Clinton blamed much of California’s economic woes on what he called Bush’s failure to map out a plan to convert defense businesses into other kinds of industry.

The defense cuts of the late 1980s should have been accompanied by a plan to retool plants, retrain workers and invest in new technology, he said.

“You wouldn’t be in the fix you’re in today if we had that plan then,” Clinton said to Californians. “It is not too late, but we must begin to pursue that course.”

But Clinton skirted two issues of deep local interest: illegal immigration and the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement.

The Arkansas governor acknowledged that he had no ideas of substance to address illegal immigration, telling the audience: “If I knew the answer to that, I’d be king, not President.”

He further joked: “If there is anybody in this room today who can tell me how to solve this problem, you can be my foreign policy adviser.” This was a reference to an earlier question of whom he’d appoint to advise him on foreign matters if elected.

Clinton said that he would “stay within the basic framework that we’ve got” on immigration policies and said that improving the Mexican economy is important.

“If we could get growth rates in Mexico up, more Mexican workers would stay home, and there would be more jobs here in the United States for legal immigrants and American citizens,” he said.

But Clinton declined to comment on U.S.-Mexico economic provisions in the free trade agreement between those countries and Canada, nor on any other aspects of the pact.

The proposal was announced Wednesday and must be approved by lawmakers in the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Clinton said he has not read the agreement and wasn’t familiar with its details.

Clinton said he did, however, support giving Bush the freedom to work out an agreement and added that “America would be helped by the right kind of agreement with Mexico.”