Foreign Policy Crew Is Smashing the Crockery

Are we heading for a foreign policy train wreck?

The decision of the Bush administration to cool relations with Russia can be explained in rational terms, as retaliation for President Vladimir V. Putin’s decision to sell weapons to Iran. The decision to cool relations with China can also be explained as retaliation for Chinese military technology sales to Iraq in violation of the United Nations embargo and specific promises to the U.S. Finally, the decision to stop endorsing South Korean President Kim Dae Jung’s opening to North Korea under his “sunshine policy” can be explained with the argument that North Korean President Kim Jong Il keeps trying to obtain more aid by threatening to resume ballistic missile tests--straight blackmail.

What cannot be explained in the context of a rational foreign policy is that all three things were done at once. U.S. leverage on China is enhanced by good relations with Russia and vice versa. To quarrel with both countries at the same time reduces American influence on both countries while increasing their inclination to collaborate in ways that hurt American interests. The Chinese threat to Taiwan, for example, has been increased by its recent acquisition of Russian Sukhoi jet fighters and Sovremenny cruisers armed with missiles effective against U.S. aircraft carriers. It does not make sense for Washington to encourage more intense military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing.

The same is true on the diplomatic front. The Russians and Chinese have frequently disagreed with U.S. foreign policy, but each has preferred to work out its own compromise arrangements with Washington rather than to jointly collaborate against it. For example, when the Russians and the Chinese vehemently opposed the 1999 Kosovo war, they did so separately, without seeking to combine forces against Washington.

As for North Korea, it remains the single most dangerous real-life military threat for the U.S. In an all-out war, its eventual defeat is certain, but with thousands of U.S. troops within range of the huge mass of North Korean artillery and with Seoul exposed to heavy rocket barrages, initial losses could be severe. The U.S. therefore has the strongest possible reasons to support the glacially slow, still tentative but hopeful detente between the two Korean states, for example by implementing Bill Clinton’s promise to remove trade prohibitions.

That becomes even more urgent if Washington’s relations with Russia and China are set to deteriorate--both have done much to restrain North Korea. During his recent visit to North Korea, Putin tried hard to persuade Kim Jong Il to renounce missile development as categorically as he has renounced the development of nuclear weapons. Moscow’s priority is to rehabilitate its distressed far eastern provinces, for which South Korean investment is urgently needed. Likewise, in spite of all the contentions between the U.S. and China, starting with Taiwan, the Chinese have been very cooperative on Korea. They have pressed Kim Jong Il to liberalize while developing cordial relations with South Korea, and without trying to undermine its alliance with the U.S.

It follows that while good relations with Moscow and Beijing favor U.S. interests in Korea, bad relations with both call for an intensified American detente with North Korea to offset the loss of their restraining influence. There is nothing complicated about any of this, it is realpolitik at its simplest: the rational use of power to pursue obvious interests.

So why is the highly experienced Bush team breaking all the rules? The short answer is that there is no Bush “team” but only the contending impulses of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell. All are highly experienced, and each one of them could devise an effective foreign policy if left alone to do the job. As it is, their increasingly overt competition for influence over a rather passive president is badly distorting U.S. foreign policy.

Rice--whose staff has been reduced--is squeezed between Powell’s immense prestige at the State Department and Cheney’s unprecedented power, which is backed by a much-expanded foreign-policy staff. So she is seeking Pentagon support by staking out the most hard-line position on every issue. “Realism” is her slogan, an academic term much used in the Cold War.

Rumsfeld is Cheney’s ally first of all, but his personal standing in Washington requires presidential approval of the national missile defense, which is strenuously opposed by Russia and China, and which is justified above all by the North Korean missile threat. Therefore, Rumsfeld supports Rice against Powell, who is convinced that good relations with Russia and China are far more important than building a missile defense in the future. As a former general, Powell knows that an operational system is many years in the future and evidently believes that the North Korean missile threat can be negotiated away long before then.

Convinced that powerful business lobbies will soon intervene to oppose harsh policies toward Beijing, and that America’s European allies will press Washington to restore good relations with Moscow, Powell is playing for time. He has the loyal support of the State Department diplomats who favor continuity and the backing of much of Washington’s foreign policy establishment, which in turn influences the mass media. Those same forces failed to stop President Reagan’s departure from the continuity of detente, but in those days there was a Cold War to win. Today no victories can be won by quarreling with countries very willing to cooperate with Washington on most things.