Domesticating Foreign Affairs

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 17, 2000 | by Jennifer G. Hickey

While Bill Clinton trotted from land to faraway land on his Herculean quest for a legacy, Congress kept the homefires alight with new legislative fire walls and inflamed rhetoric.

All along the Eastern corridor people appear to be suffering the effects of Lost-Puppy-Syndrome, giving themselves over to incessant whining and pained facial expressions. A breakdown in arbitration talks between the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and Interstate Bakeries Inc. has created a new victimized class -- this one struggling to make do without the 2 million Twinkies and other baked goods that fuel the rages of their hypoglycemia.

Down the same corridor, meanwhile, the establishment press has been almost equally unhappy at having to wean itself off the sugary campaign coverage it had been giving the insurgent campaign of Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain. Editors are blanching at one-page stories explaining that the "crisis in Kashmir" concerns an ancient conflict between Pakistan and India and not a shortage of expensive sweaters.

While not as rambunctious an issue as "political reform," Bill Clinton's groundbreaking trip to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh served as a lesson for whatever internationalist booby hustled the president into trying to calm the antediluvian hatreds of two countries for which only nuking one another is likely to satisfy a nationalistic longing for mutual butchery that dates back long before the raj.

Clinton's politicizing of U.S. foreign policy is raising up trouble wherever one looks. Following the March 18 elections in Taiwan, Chinese President Jiang Zemin rejected a call for a peace summit by president-elect Chen Shui-bian, the former Taipei mayor who has favored independence for the island nation. Beijing had done everything possible to defeat him, but the louder it blustered the stronger he got.

China's rhetoric became apocalyptic during the Taiwan elections, and ominous rumblings continue. A 16-page special issue of Haowangjiao Weekly, an official organ of the People's Liberation Army, or PLA, laid out proposals for taking Taiwan by force, declaring: "The United States will not sacrifice 200 million Americans for 20 million Taiwanese."

The intent of the latest saber-rattling has been variously euphemized by Beijing's apologists in the United States as an effort to send a political message to Taipei and an announcement that China is a nuclear power with the capacity to make a general attack on the United States should it become sufficiently displeased with our trade policy. Regardless of the fine points, such bluster in an election year in which Al Gore must explain how Beijing got the hardware to nuke Cleveland and how he took money from the PLA laundered through a Buddhist temple is certain to have an impact on U.S. domestic politics. That is, unless the Republicans are as vulnerable to Chinese blackmail as the Clinton-Gore administration and the Democratic National Committee.

On March 23, legislation was introduced in the Senate Finance Committee aimed at granting Permanent Normal Trade Status, or PNTR, to Communist China with a vote slated for April. The future of the bill is more uncertain in the House than in the Senate, but committee Chairman William Roth of Delaware said China's threats to nuke the U.S. mainland could complicate matters.

The trade agreement would open the door for Clinton-Gore and their counterparts in Europe to admit Beijing into the World Trade Organization, or WTO. The House is expected to confront the issue in May and the Senate in June. This issue is far hotter than anyone on either side of the aisle yet seems to realize (see "Challenge to WTO Creates New Politics," p. 10).

In light of the recent increases in gas prices and an expected summer drought, Democrats also have seized upon farm issues -- hosting 3,000 farmers at a Rally for Rural America, aimed at criticizing the 1996 GOP-backed Freedom to Farm law. Democrats are using this to create a wedge issue in their races against two vulnerable GOP incumbent senators -- Missouri's John Ashcroft and Montana's Conrad Burns.

It could backfire. Although some farmers oppose the 1996 legislation advocated by Ashcroft and Burns, a majority of the agribusiness community favors it. More importantly, while many farmers favor increased trade with China, a Democratic priority, they tend to oppose increases in the minimum wage, placing them at odds with the Democratic leadership. Finally, the Democratic tractor bloc is not likely to get too much traction, considering the GOP is expected to pour additional funds into the farm sector, as it did during the first session of Congress.

This week there was some legislative movement when the Senate voted unanimously to repeal the Social Security earnings limit, which Clinton has indicated he will sign. The Depressionera law places a limit on the amount a senior between the ages of 65 and 69 may earn before losing benefits. Currently, as many as 800,000 senior citizens lose $1 for every $3 earned above a $17,000 limit.