Gulf War Lessons Fail to Leave Mark on U.S. Soil

The Republican Party was awash in Gulf War nostalgia last week--further proof that, when it comes to foreign policy, the party stalwarts find it much easier to dwell in the past than the present.

The stars of the George Bush Administration’s foreign policy team--National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney--gathered before a Republican audience for a symposium on “The Lessons of the Gulf War.” The event, sponsored by the International Republican Institute, the party’s foreign policy arm, inadvertently demonstrated just how little meaning the 1991 campaign against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has for the foreign policies of the United States today.

Only Scowcroft, the most reflective and analytic of the three, was willing to examine not only the extraordinary successes of the Persian Gulf War itself but also the more complex foreign policy implications of the events leading up to the war and immediately following it.

Scowcroft attempted to defend the Bush Administration’s conciliatory stance toward Hussein in the years before Iraq’s August, 1990, invasion of Kuwait. He even candidly acknowledged error--admitting that at the end of the war, he assumed, wrongly, that the defeated Hussein would be overthrown or would step down.

Baker and Cheney were more celebratory, emphasizing repeatedly the importance of good teamwork among themselves and the presidential leadership displayed by Bush. Cheney had some cogent words about the many ways in which the Pentagon avoided the mistakes of Vietnam: Gulf War military leaders avoided President Lyndon B. Johnson’s policy of “gradual escalation,” and they decided to rotate personnel within their units rather than individually, as was done in Vietnam. Baker emphasized that the United States must clearly assess its interests and define its objectives--an unmistakable attack on the Clinton Administration’s wavering policies in Bosnia.

However, the members of the Bush team had little to say about the larger, longer-term implications of the Gulf War. The “new world order” that Bush envisioned at the time is now all but forgotten. What implications does the Gulf War have for the United States in dealing with the unpredictable future of China and Russia, or the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, or the American trade deficit with Japan?

No one can be expected to have answers to all these questions. The Bush team deserves credit for having run foreign policy skillfully during the Gulf War, as well as during the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany.

But its managerial skill was not accompanied by a lasting vision of America’s role in the post-Cold War world. Indeed, ironically, the Gulf War seems in retrospect to have had a greater impact on other countries than it did on the United States.

China, the aspiring superpower, learned from the Gulf War that it needed to acquire modern weaponry, the sort of electronic arsenal that the United States used against Iraq. For Russia, the lesson was a need for a more independent foreign policy, less linked to America.

Japan discovered that its Cold War relationship with the United States was changing; the Gulf War partnership, in which Japan financed American military initiatives, did not sit well with either country. For Iran, the Gulf War showed that challenging American military power in the Middle East is futile without nuclear weapons.

In the United States, it is striking how little impact Scowcroft, Baker and Cheney now seem to have, not only over a Democratic foreign policy but even within their own Republican Party. In Congress, the driving Republican influence on foreign policy seems to come from Pat Buchanan, not from the Bush team. The Republican-led Congress is moving toward adopting legislation that would impose radical changes upon American foreign policy in ways the Bush team would have fervently opposed while in office.

What would Baker, as secretary of state, have said about legislation requiring the United States to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem?

What would Scowcroft, as national security adviser, have said about a measure requiring the United States to appoint a special envoy to Tibet, which would run contrary to the China policies he has been espousing for 25 years?

What would all three have said about efforts to slash foreign aid and impose a series of limits on presidential authority over foreign affairs--exactly the sorts of congressional restrictions the Republicans opposed when they came from such Democrats as George McGovern and Tip O’Neill?

Measures to do all these things are being pushed forward by congressional Republicans, in some cases with the support of the Republican leadership. Yet there does not seem to be any particular effort by the Bush foreign policy team to convince their fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill, much less America as a whole, that this is the wrong course. They may have done some private lobbying or written a couple of Op-Ed pieces, but none of them is sounding any serious alarms.

It is being left to other, lower-ranking veterans of past Administrations to point out how dramatically the Republican views of foreign policy have shifted. In an especially incisive article called “A Retreat From Power?” in the July issue of Commentary magazine, Robert Kagan, who served in the State Department during the Ronald Reagan Administration, heaps criticism upon conservatives and the Republican Party for accepting and, indeed, leading the way toward a more limited American role in the world.

Kagan writes that the Republicans have become “a party that has convinced itself that the American people are in an isolationist mood; and a party seeking reasons to spend less on everything, including foreign policy.” Conservatives and Republicans, Kagan suggests, are “trying to have things both ways: calling for American leadership while systematically paring down the tools necessary to exert that leadership; . . . urging an expanded NATO while doing nothing to provide the increased resources and political will that such vastly increased responsibilities require.”

None of these philosophical issues were addressed at last week’s Gulf War symposium. It was structured in such a way that no questions could be asked of the three top Bush Administration officials. Any queries about the world of 1995 might have exposed how unclear the lessons of the Gulf War are for American foreign policy today, and the degree to which the leaders of the last Republican Administration are out of sync with today’s Republican Party in Congress.

The Bush Administration’s conduct of the Gulf War was a great achievement. The top officials of that Administration marshaled all the foreign policy skills at their disposal to defeat a tyrant, enlisting the support of allies, other Arab governments and the American public in the process. At least for a time, they restored stability to the Middle East.

They drew a line in the sand. But after four years, the desert has shifted once again, and the lines they drew can no longer be seen, not in a way that can guide America today and tomorrow. Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and now we’re left with just Desert.