Foreign policy tongue twisters

Foreign policy tongue twisters? No, I'm not writing about George Bush's mispronunciation of the names of foreign leaders in 2000. What I am writing about are the contradictions inherent in some of the foreign policy positions taken by the Democrats now running for president.

I'm an avid Democrat but I see a major problem with our party's foreign policy - not just these candidate's, but Clinton and Gore's foreign policy too. It boils down to this: the Cold War ended over a decade ago, and our nation has yet to shape a new strategy to deal with this basic reality.

On his official campaign website, Sen. Joe Lieberman posits that we need to, "develop a long-term strategy to move the Muslim world toward democracy...[that we need to] export hope, increase opportunity, promote human rights, and improve the lives of ordinary men, women, and children throughout Arab and Muslim nations."

On Sen. Kerry's website, he says the following: "Americans deserve a principled diplomacy...backed by undoubted military might...based on enlightened self-interest...A bold progressive internationalism that focuses not just on the immediate and imminent, but on insidious dangers that can mount over the next years and decade, dangers that span the spectrum from the denial of democracy, to destructive weapons, endemic poverty and epidemic disease."

And you might remember the huge flap that Gov. Dean caused last spring when he proclaimed that as a country we must prepare for a day when, "We won't always have the strongest military." Sen. Kerry was quick to attack Dean, claiming that he perhaps wasn't "fit" to be president for making such a claim, and stating: "No serious candidate for the Presidency has ever before suggested that he would compromise or tolerate an erosion of America's military supremacy."

Of course, Gov. Dean's official website now states the following: "We remain the sole superpower in the world...We must lead toward clearly articulated and shared goals and with the cooperation and respect of friends and allies...I will not divide the world into us versus them. Rather, I will rally the world around fundamental principles of decency, responsibility, freedom, and mutual respect. Our foreign and military policy must be about the notion of America leading the world." Now granted, Dean makes much softer claims than the other three candidates that I've noted, but the contradictions are still there.

What are the contradictions exactly? They're slight but they cut to the most fundamental foreign policy dilemma that we face. They reflect the fundamental tension between the pursuit of an American empire, and the subjection of the United States to the will of multinational organizations (e.g. the UN, NATO, etc.).

During the Cold War, the United States acted rather overtly in promoting and defending its empire; from using the UN in Korea to thwart the spread of communism in the early 50s; to our willingness to risk global nuclear war over Berlin and Cuba; to our imperial intervention in Iraq in 1991 to secure a vital strategic asset. During the Cold War, the US used the aegis of "multinational organizations" in an attempt to soften the image of our empire, to make it appear as though we were adhering to the will of the world.

And in the first major post-Cold War conflict , the Kosovo War in 1999, President Clinton specifically avoided asking for authorization from the UN because he knew that such a proposal would fail. Thus with some arm-wrangling, Clinton took the only aegis of support he could find - NATO. We merely shopped around for an umbrella organization that could lend the US-led operation legitimacy in the court of world opinion.

Now few would deny that the US is the sole world superpower. But where should we go from here? The current crop of Democratic candidates seem to be saying, on the one hand, that we need to maintain our economic and military primacy while at the same time respecting multilateral institutions. However, there is an inherent contradiction in such a stance. If we insist on maintaining the world's strongest military and defending our national economic interests at every turn, then what happens if another nation chooses the same path? If fifty years in the future a united European Union decides that it's no longer going to play second fiddle to the US in terms of military might, then what? Do we step-up our efforts and try to out-pace them? Wouldn't that create a second Cold War? Or do we work with them through multilateral organizations? Which is it?

It seems that if such a policy were pursued by another nation, it would be viewed as a direct challenge and threat to the security of the United States (and rightly so). So why should those nations of the world that have joined us in the UN, in NATO, and in countless lesser international organizations, allow us to continue on this path for ourselves? Could Europe's attempts to put the brakes on America's rush to war with Iraq earlier this year simply be the first evidence of a concerted effort to stop the US from maintaining and asserting its military primacy in the post-Cold War world? Could we blame the Europeans if that was their deep-seated reason for doing so? After all, the Europeans could tacitly support our military dominance during the Cold War because the primary asset we were protecting at the time was Europe. The world was a chess board and Europe was our king. So Europe couldn't really complain. However, invasions from the East are no longer our biggest worry.

I'm certainly not going to defend bush here either for I believe he has also failed to define a coherent post-Cold War foreign policy-I maintain that, in the long-term, terrorism is only a blip on our radar screen, not a fundamental guiding principle around which we can shape our long-term foreign policy.

Likewise, countless Democrats running for president make it abundantly clear that we should seek to export democracy to every corner of the globe, especially to the Middle East and/or Muslim world. But again, this seems at odds with adhering to the principle of deference to international organizations. It seems that the current candidates would argue that we need to democratize the Middle East with the help of the United Nations - but what if the UN doesn't care to partake in this imperial exportation? What if China decided that its totalitarian regime was best and took steps to export it to other nations? Would they have any more or less right to do so than we have? And would we not regard any such action by China as a direct threat to American security and our way of life? Is this not the exact scenario that precipitated the Cold War? These Democratic candidates, and for that matter nearly every politician in the United States, seem to throw these phrases around without seriously considering their long-term implications.

We sit at a crossroads in the United States, a virtual stoplight on the path of our nation's history. We've been stalled here for close to a dozen years now - the light's already turned green, there's nothing holding us back, we just haven't decided whether to turn right or left at the intersection (pardon the political implications of this analogy).

It seems that those Democrats who are jockeying for the presidency haven't yet decided which way to turn either. As the world's only superpower, will we continue to maintain our military supremacy and our American empire? Or will bwe turn back, will we truly cede power to a supranational organization like the United Nations?