The Big Stick No Longer Carries Weight : Washington’s threats don’t impress foreigners who can read the U.S. electorate’s interests.

The breakdown of the trade talks with Japan provides more troubling evidence of the Clinton Administration’s inability to develop a credible foreign policy. Yet again, it has allowed big talk to run far ahead of the means available for achieving its objectives. Unless this habit is checked, foreigners will continue to run negotiating rings around the United States.

The fault does not lie primarily with the policy objectives. No one would argue against efforts to assist the Russian transition to democracy, to bring about peace in Bosnia or to counter nuclear proliferation. Execution, however, has been woefully inadequate. As George Kennan remarked, the errors reside in the “how” rather than the “what.”

Time and time again, the Administration has permitted a hopeless overestimation of its ability to mold the world after its own designs to take charge of its rhetoric and operational methods. Under the influence of the intoxicating vision of America as the sole remaining superpower, many inside the Administration and on Capitol Hill believe that they can demand foreign acquiescence in their wishes, either as America’s due or by threat of sanctions.

The sight of the Japanese prime minister not merely refusing to be intimidated by his host in Washington, but talking with nonchalant equanimity about the worst that the Administration could throw at him by way of retaliation, should surely be enough to demonstrate the waywardness of this approach.

A greater sense of strategic finesse is needed. The time has long departed when foreign leaders, even those of major powers, would undertake meek pilgrimages to Washington to collect their marching orders. They no longer need the security guarantees on which this deference was based.

Further, the basic facts of American politics do not go unnoticed by foreign nations, friendly and unfriendly alike. Even an international cause celebre like Bosnia attracts the close attention of only 0.5% of the electorate, compared with the 48% that reports itself transfixed by Tonya Harding. They deduce from these figures that, for all the macho talk in Washington, no public consensus exists in favor of costly foreign-policy ventures. North Korea, for example, can easily calculate that few Americans are in the mood for a land war in Asia. Administration statements or congressional resolutions to the contrary ring hollow and compromise America’s ability to address the Korean nuclear problem with the seriousness it deserves.

On economic matters, foreigners also have a shrewd idea of the American self-interest. They know that this nation’s welfare is crucially linked to foreign trade and they expect that Americans, rational beings that they are, will act with this in mind. Asians, for instance, cannot believe that American policy-makers would be so illogical as to jeopardize the nearly 3 million American jobs that currently depend on Asian trade, or the prospects for many more such jobs, about which President Clinton waxed so lyrical at November’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Threats of trade sanctions, therefore, command scant respect.

The big stick brigade will dismiss this analysis as “declinist” or “selling America short.” They will argue that the United States must negotiate from strength and hang tough. This makes for good sound bites at home, but as foreigners increasingly perceive an absence of commitment behind the stern American language, they will feel able to disregard American positions, including those that are central to the nation’s interests. Those draping themselves in patriotic colors are in fact rendering their country a disservice.

The United States has many vital national interests on which no compromise is possible. To safeguard these, the United States needs a reformed diplomatic strategy based on realism rather than rhetoric.

First, stop treating the Asians and Europeans as though they were small-town mayors who can be browbeaten or bought off. Work with them as though they were powerful members of Congress who might be on the different side of today’s issue but whose support may be vital tomorrow.

And when dealing with adversaries, ensure that the prospective punitive action is credible and that the means are appropriate to the ends desired. It is pointless, for example, to cut off aid to punish a country that is lagging in drug eradication if the aid cut-off only stimulates drug production.

Washington is a noisy town, so some high-decibel diplomacy is inevitable. But the less vainglorious the talk, the better the chance that the United States will attain its foreign-policy objectives.