May Powell Win the GOP Slug Fest Over Foreign Policy

Aletter sent to President Bush in late January by a group of self-described “leading” conservatives has brought into the open a festering struggle for the soul of Republican foreign policy. The letter’s authors urge Bush to reject the traditional foreign policy notions of “stability” and “national interest” as overcautious and too limiting of U.S. options. Instead they advocate the vigorous application of military power to advance what some describe as a “benevolent American hegemony” reflecting the universality of American values. Applied to regimes violating these values, such as China, this approach seeks to bring about “regime change” rather than coexistence. There are distinct echoes of John Foster Dulles’ early Cold War embrace of “roll back” as the organizing structure of foreign policy.

This approach stands in marked contrast to the “realist” attitudes displayed by the new people settling into actual jobs at the State Department and National Security Council. With the exception of national missile defense, the need for which both conservatives and realists accept, the emergent ethos is of a return to professionalism taking precedence over ideology. This was the philosophic flavor of George W. Bush’s November speech on a “distinctly American internationalism.” Secretary of State Colin Powell’s instinctive pragmatism is well established and he has spoken of a “humble” foreign policy, whereby the U.S. does not tell other nations how to manage their affairs.

The stage is thus set for an intra-Republican clash of cultures between those who emphasize incremental problem-solving and those who want America to seek out latter-day Berlin Walls and tear them down.

The would-be hegemons have global ambitions. Far from looking for ways to take the toxicity out of international problems, they revel in prospective value-based confrontation with Russia and China. In other trouble spots, like the Taiwan Strait, North Korea and Iraq, they reach for the gas can. They interpret the Kosovo episode not as a cautionary tale but as a pivot for more and bigger expeditions of the same sort. A rough count of their recommendations scattered over various publications imply that, if implemented all at once, the U.S. would risk unilaterally fighting at least a five-front war, including with China and Russia. To back this bellicosity they argue for annual defense spending increases of $100 billion and urge the president to mobilize the national will for forward-leaning military deployments. These calls contrast sharply with Bush’s caution last week on defense spending.

No one quarrels with the notion of a strong America able to defend its interests and project its values. What is striking, however, about the hegemons’ advocacy of military power as the main if not sole instrument for advancing these goals is how much contrary evidence they omit.

The Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Lebanon are all examples of the spectacular failure of precisely these value-driven adventures during the Cold War. In the defeat of the Soviet Union, the U.S. military buildup was not the only factor. Let us not forget the dockworkers of Gdansk, the moral authority of Pope John Paul II and the toughness of the Russian leadership in the face of coups. More recently, Somalia and Haiti do not provide any encouragement that military intervention is a panacea. Even in the Balkans the verdict is ambiguous. Without the self-standing efforts of the Serbian people, it is clear that Slobodan Milosevic would still be in power, despite the NATO bombs. Looking to the future, militarizing the Colombia problem is fraught with risk.

More important, there are cogent present examples of how diplomatic subtlety short of force, notably the South Korean “sunshine” policy toward the North, can defang the most poisonous serpents. The same is true in China where economic integration has worked wonders on domestic legal liberalization. The 50,000 Chinese students in the U.S. are absorbing American values they will take back to China and practice there.

There is a long way to go on political liberties but a policy of hegemonic confrontation would likely retard the existing favorable trends. In Cuba and Iran, for example, U.S. ostracism has strengthened reactionary forces.

Powell’s advocacy of humility is far from a cry of weakness. It draws on America’s genius in balancing moral purpose with the rule of law.

America’s most enduring contribution to world affairs is that it is not like the other great powers of history, which routinely used military force to impose their will. This is an extraordinarily important legacy. If abandoned in favor of hegemony-obsessed power politics, America will lose its exceptionalism and become just today’s biggest boy on the block. Such a posture discards America’s greatest asset as a beacon of morality.