Mainstream Republicans Must Step Up : After Clinton’s floundering, voters are ready for a coherent vision of the U.S. world role.

Critics of the Clinton Administration’s foreign policy have enjoyed easy pickings. Secretary of State Warren Christopher offered another peach in Senate testimony last month. Less than three weeks after ruffling European politico-military feathers with his caustic comment that American policy had been “too Eurocentric,” he has now designated NATO renewal as one of his top priorities.

What are we to believe? Is this really a serious objective, or just another device to get the Administration through January’s NATO summit?

But criticism should not be a one-way street. As the Republicans begin to ride an incoming electoral wave, the voters are entitled to ask whether the Republicans have updated their foreign-policy thinking to address the problems of most concern to themselves today, such as foreign economic competition and immigration.

Apart from sideline sniping at the Administration’s missteps, a comprehensive Republican vision for America’s post-Cold War role is conspicuously absent. To date, there is no sign that the Republicans are any more successful than the Clinton Administration in devising a coherent rationale for the new world where Tomahawk missile interventionism no longer gets the job done. If anything, they are having even greater difficulties in coming to terms with a world where there is no clear-cut threat, no public consensus and no abundant defense appropriations--in short, no role for themselves as master organizers of the world.

Republicans of all stripes are able to agree on Jeane Kirkpatrick’s emphasis of national interest as the organizing principle for foreign policy. But this merely sets the debate in motion. Individual leaders differ radically on their definition of the national interest and the means to pursue it. The result is a yawning gap in the various Republican foreign-policy prescriptions.

On the right, Pat Buchanan and his Perot-inclined soulmates espouse “America First.” They opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement, reject foreign aid and repudiate military alliances such as NATO. Their interpretation of the national interest excludes any overseas activity that does not offer an immediate pay-back. Mainstream Republican foreign-policy experts like Sen. Bob Dole, Sen. Richard Lugar and former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney take an entirely different tack. Philosophically they incline toward a traditional internationalist foreign policy that focuses around crises in the world’s “hot spots.” Cheney has chided the Administration for failing to stand up to North Korea on the development of nuclear weapons. Dole advocates a more aggressive policy in Bosnia. Lugar favors expanding NATO, even to the point of intervening to oppose Russian activities on its periphery.

Talk about these issues is cheap. The price of taking action is what the Clinton Administration has had to assess. If foreigners like the Serbs, the Somalis or the North Koreans do not immediately bend to the American will, are sanctions the answer? If these fail, does military intervention follow? If allies don’t agree, does America go it alone regardless of casualties and cost?

These questions go to the heart of the debate about America’s role as global leader, the balance between human rights and Realpolitik and the allocation of resources between foreign and domestic priorities--the very issues that have left the Clinton team floundering. If the Republicans have sorted these issues out, for the good of the nation they should let everyone know--especially if they envision a more militarily assertive policy.

This would clash with the public will as expressed in every recent opinion survey, but public opinion is not a static commodity. There is no reason why the Republicans should not be able to reconstruct a consensus around an activist foreign policy; on NAFTA, they showed that they can lead from the front. But this cannot be achieved by stealth. At present, there is a massive public intolerance, shared by Democrat and Republican voters alike and especially virulent among Perot supporters, against the commitment of American lives and treasure to foreign adventures, unless the national interest is crystal clear.

The Republican right is reflecting these sentiments. To sustain their more interventionist or internationalist approach, mainstream Republican leaders need to articulate a set of consistent strategic principles. If they return to office without an updated vision, they are likely to find today’s problems just as intractable as the present Administration does. And they will end up looking just as foolish.