A Bipartisan March Behind a Tin Drum : The U.S. can’t claim global leadership until both parties agree to spend what that entails.

As Democrats and Republicans wrestle over domestic issues, a new bromide is throwing a beguiling embrace around foreign policy: America must lead.

In the current issue of Foreign Policy, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole join forces to extol the virtues of global American leadership. This return to bipartisanship may be welcome to a public numbed by the viciousness of the domestic debate. Alas, it is likely simply to numb such creativity as still remains in the foreign-policy community.

Leadership is a seductive idea and makes for stirring stump rhetoric. But the harsh truth is that it has outlived its usefulness as a guiding principle for protecting American welfare in today’s world.

The leadership principle hails from a unique period in American history just after World War II, when the United States enjoyed a 40% share of world production. This meant that when it came to countering challenges to world order, like the Soviet aggression in Greece and Turkey in 1947, there literally was no one else big enough to do the job.

With the growth of overseas economies, this situation has radically changed: The U.S. share has returned to its 1870 level of around 20%. There is nothing disgraceful about this; individually, Americans are much richer than a century ago. But in foreign-policy terms, the implications are significant. The Cold War-era abundance of resources for overseas undertakings has gone forever. To ignore this is to lead foreign policy into an intellectual cul de sac.

Leadership presupposes a cheerful willingness to bear costs beyond what is strictly fair. Luckily for the course of human liberty, this corresponded exactly with the American mood of instinctive generosity during the postwar period. Today, however, Americans are reluctant to shoulder unequal burdens. As a result, in key areas of the world, others are having to lead. The evidence can be seen everywhere. In Europe, the European Union has provided 60% of the aid flow to Eastern Europe and twice as much assistance to the former Soviet Union as the United States. In East Asia, Japan far outstrips the United States as an aid donor and South Korea is bearing the costs of defanging the North Korean nuclear menace. Even when the United States takes the lead, as over Mexico, many Americans grumble that they are bearing a disproportionate load. The Republicans’ proposed National Security Revitalization Act reflects this less bountiful, accountancy-driven attitude.

This is not the stuff of leadership. Nor it is designed to produce what Charles William Maynes, the editor of Foreign Policy, has called “followership.” Who among the great nations of the world will follow the United States at the very time that they are being forced to take up the slack caused by cutbacks in American overseas commitments? Among the second-tier nations, who will subordinate themselves to the United States when, as in the case of Jordan, promises of debt relief are vulnerable to fickle political power in Washington? Even the poorest of the poor no longer naturally gravitate toward the United States; for example, Sierra Leone, many of whose citizens are descendants of freed American slaves, gets significantly more aid from Beijing than Washington.

In their attacks on the military policy of the Carter period, Republicans rightly criticized the “hollow” force structure that could not carry out its assigned missions. They may now be falling into the same trap. Unless they have found some magic elixir for obtaining more money for the tasks that Dole’s article recommends--on the order, of, say, $450 billion per year for a true two-war capability, the expansion of NATO and recapturing the lead in foreign aid--the resources for compelling or persuading foreigners to fall into line will simply not be available. American assertions of foreign-policy leadership will then be revealed as similarly hollow.

Disappointingly, Christopher seems inclined to agree to the same course, ignoring the Clinton Administration’s mistakes of trying to do too much with too little. This approach has dealt successive blows to U.S. credibility since 1992, yet Christopher’s rhetoric is unchanged.

This erosion of power needs to be corrected if American influence is to be maintained in a world where foreigners no longer routinely doff their caps as the American carriage sweeps by.

Instead of composing emotionally pleasurable but unsustainable rhetoric, the leaders of both parties should be working on the task for which they were elected: producing a viable program, supported by real rather than imaginary resources, for guaranteeing core national interests.