Clinton’s Foreign Policy Proved Toothless

Amid the many attempts these days to evaluate the foreign policy of the Clinton administration, one subject is too often ignored: How did it do in promoting democracy and human rights?

The judgment here is that the record over the past eight years has been mediocre and inconsistent. Occasionally, President Clinton spoke out, and sometimes he put some muscle behind his policies. Often he didn’t.

Clinton never came up with a philosophy, or even just a good answer, to overcome the blatant contradictions: Why promote “engagement” with China, North Korea and Vietnam but not with Cuba? If America stands squarely for democracy in Myanmar, as it should, then how can it turn a blind eye to Saudi Arabia’s utterly undemocratic monarchy?

At the heart of Clinton’s foreign policy has been economics: the promotion of free trade and globalized markets. The administration has regularly made the claim that trade will, over the long run, promote political liberalization.

The problem is that there’s little evidence yet that this argument is valid. Take China as the paradigm. The Chinese regime is as intolerant of open political dissent today as it was eight years ago.

If the long-term effect of Clinton’s trade policies will be to make China a more prosperous one-party state, then historians will probably look back upon the administration’s sweeping claims about the liberalizing impact of trade as merely a convenient rationalization for U.S. business interests.

In a recent farewell interview, National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger--who has gradually emerged as the principal advisor, executor and spokesman for Clinton’s foreign policy--said U.S. policy cannot depend exclusively on trade to promote democracy.

“I’ve always said that I don’t think trade is a sufficient human rights policy or a sufficient democracy policy,” Berger said. “[Former Commerce Secretary] Ron Brown and I disagreed on that.”

In addition to promoting trade, Berger went on, “we have to validate the values for which people are fighting in countries where there is repression. . . . I think we have to stand up and scream, and validate the people who are working for change.”

Those are noble sentiments--but ones that the Clinton administration too often failed to honor.

Clinton did break some new ground. He was willing to give voice to democratic ideals in his two summit meetings with Chinese President Jiang Zemin, memorably declaring that China’s Communist regime was on “the wrong side of history.” In that limited sense, Clinton went further than his predecessor, George Bush.

But Clinton’s rhetorical denunciations seemed to be merely the minimum necessary to win public acceptance for the summits.

And on other occasions, such as China’s 1998 arrests of leaders of the China Democratic Party or its continuing repression of the religious sect Falun Gong, Clinton most certainly did not “stand up and scream.” He was all too silent.

Moreover, Clinton never found any consistent way of taking his human rights and democracy policies beyond the realm of rhetoric. He supported the use of economic sanctions against Myanmar, Cuba and Iraq, but not China or North Korea.

China, again, was the benchmark case. Clinton tried at first to link renewals of China’s trade benefits to improvements in human rights--but he did so in an ill-timed, poorly planned, all-or-nothing fashion.

When Clinton backed away from this approach of trade linkage in 1994, the administration was thereafter reluctant to try anything more graduated and sophisticated that might reward China for easing repression or penalize it for its crackdowns. Clinton’s occasional rhetoric on China was, ultimately, toothless.

The conclusion seems inescapable that the Clinton administration was tough on human rights and democracy when there were political reasons to do so (Cuba) but more lenient if a country was deemed especially important for America’s strategic or commercial interests (Saudi Arabia, China).

Clinton and his team took office underestimating China’s significance to American interests. Their view, voiced in the 1992 campaign, was that China mattered less than during the Cold War because the United States no longer needed China’s help against the Soviet Union.

In Clinton’s second term, by contrast, he sometimes seemed to be overestimating the importance of China. Berger volunteered that, in hindsight, “we probably shouldn’t have” flown over Japan and failed to stop there during Clinton’s 1998 visit to China. That was a needless affront to America’s principal ally in Asia.

Overall, the Clinton administration deserves some credit for supporting institutions that can promote democracy over the long run. The president carried through on a campaign pledge to create Radio Free Asia--an institution the last Bush administration opposed. He and Congress supported the National Endowment for Democracy.

Summing up, Berger reflected that trade can help bring about political liberalization, “but I would hate to see this administration, I’d hate to see the next administration, say that’s all you have to do.”

That’s sage advice for the incoming George W. Bush team--although it’s a philosophy that Clinton himself followed only intermittently over the past eight years.

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Jim Mann’s column appears in this space every Wednesday.