Policy Disaster

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 13, 2000 | by J. Michael Waller

Clinton and Gore inherited a U.S. foreign policy that had defeated the U.S.S.R., made a friend of Russia and won the gulf war. Consider the legacy they leave.

It was a sure sign that U.S. power and prestige have diminished when, at Kosovo peace talks, the Albanian delegation mistook the U.S. secretary of state for a cleaning lady.

The incident is a metaphor for what critics call the squandering of U.S. superpower status since Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected eight years ago. On the campaign stump, Gore likes to say that the United States is the most powerful military force in the world. Nobody disputes him there. But then, the only other superpower is long gone. And even overwhelming military strength matters little if national leaders don't know how to use it -- which gets to the question of whether the United States is as strong and secure as it was eight years ago and whether U.S. leaders have used power wisely.

The attack on the Aegis destroyer USS Cole in Yemen prompts further questions. Was the Cole visiting the port of Aden as part of a well-considered strategy, or did intelligence, policy and planning failures unnecessarily put the ship and its crew in danger?

And what to make of information supplied to Insight by military sources that U.S. Medevac personnel stationed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany could not respond to the Cole emergency because of a shortage of pilots? Insight was told that, as a result, French medical emergency personnel were called on -- late -- to respond. DOD confirms the French angle of this scenario but says the French were sent because they volunteered. But what of the alleged U.S. pilot shortage? Silence from DOD.

It's clear that, even within U.S. military and diplomatic channels, something is amiss with U.S. policy and the Cole tragedy is but the latest poster child of disaster.

To all but the most partisan observers, the Clinton administration has wasted most of the historic opportunities bequeathed to it at the end of the Cold War. Gone are the days when the U.S. president can stride confidently to any podium anywhere in the world and command the respect of ally and adversary alike. Emerging from the hastily prepared October summit with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, President Clinton looked defeated -- and it was far from the first time. Veteran White House and State Department officials say that has cheapened the perceived power of the United States as much as any lost battle.

The administration's approach to world affairs has been a patchwork of narrow policy initiatives watered down by stopgap measures and media stunts to obtain personal domestic gains for the man, not the country. It has cast suspicions that U.S. foreign and military policy has served as often to cover up the president's personal and political troubles as to advance any vital U.S. national interests.

Palestinian Authority spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi dismissed Clinton's recent emergency truce-brokering as "Band-Aid diplomacy." Small wonder: The administration's approach to fighting terrorism at a 1996 antiterrorism summit in Egypt -- which State Department cables reveal was subordinated to Clinton's personal backdoor effort to get Russia to buy more frozen Arkansas chicken -- earned the label "chicken diplomacy." The United States even had trouble getting Saudi Arabia to cooperate fully in the investigation of terrorists who murdered U.S. service personnel on Saudi soil at the Khobar Towers.

Grand strategy to determine and secure vital U.S. interests has taken a back seat to old-boy politicking, campaign payoffs and a constant desire to distract attention from Clinton's constant need. And where it would have been fitting and proper for Gore at least to distance himself from those distractions, the vice president cheered just as he did amid the Clinton impeachment defense.

Insight has reviewed the Clinton/ Gore foreign and defense policies of the last four years and found interesting tie-ins that coincide with scandal, especially since the Monica Lewinsky affair that led to presidential perjury and obstruction of justice. From that point, the administration called again and again on Russian and Communist Chinese leaders to make Clinton look statesmanlike back home. As the presidential scandals gathered momentum in early 1998, the administration suddenly moved the president's summit visit to China, originally scheduled to take place after the November elections, five months earlier to June. This sudden change -- never explained publicly -- coincided with scheduled grand-jury testimony about presidential impeachment offenses.

At the same time, the administration broke its year-old pledge that the president would not visit Russia again until after the Russian parliament ratified the troubled START II arms-control treaty. When Congress prepared to reconvene after the August recess, Clinton suddenly dropped his objections and pressured Moscow to receive him in an emergency summit -- just as Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr was to submit his report to the House. Covering the president, Associated Press correspondent Barry Schweid observed, "The summit will give Clinton a chance to escape his Monica Lewinsky problems at home and focus on his role as leader of the free world."