A changing map for foreign policy - what Bill Clinton faces in international affairs and conflicts

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 8, 1993 | by Henrik Bering-Jensen

By tapping Aspin for secretary of defense, however, Clinton has changed the complexion of the House Armed Services Committee. Aspin's departure as chairman means the elevation of California Democrat Ron Dellums to that post. Dellums has opposed every U.S. military intervention since Vietnam and has fought major arms programs. Besides his well-known cordiality toward Fidel Castro's Cuba, he was revealed after the U.S. invasion of Grenada to have had embarrassingly friendly dealings with the fallen Marxist government of Maurice Bishop.

The other conservative voice in the Clinton Cabinet is expected to be Woolsey, who has been described as the Republicans' favorite Democrat. He has been a voice for caution in the dismantling of the military and its industrial base. He was a confidant of Brent Scowcroft, Bush's national security adviser, and the two collaborated in the early eighties on a proposal to make a Soviet first strike more difficult by developing the one-warhead Midgetman missile. Woolsey favors retaining a strong U.S. military presence in Europe, saying the U.S. has a responsibility to maintain a balance of power there.

In a speech to the World Affairs Council on Dec. 2, a blunt appraisal of the dangers threatening the world community, Woolsey maintained that the rise of virulently nationalist regimes needs to be forcefully opposed. A new system of collective security is badly needed, Woolsey said; he, too, suggests the United Nations as the means of obtaining this.

In assessing the prospects for the Clinton foreign policy team, most every observer, while noting the continuity of personnel with the Carter years, agrees that the stakes are lower now that the Cold War has ended and that Clinton is not Carter. A slow learner in a more dangerous era, Carter by his own admission didn't understand what the Soviets were up to until the invasion of Afghanistan.

But as the saying goes in Washington, people are policies, policies are people. As a president without foreign policy experience, Clinton will almost always be acting on somebody else's recommendations, Gaffney notes, and it will be crucial for him to hear opposing arguments when making policy choices.

The fear of Gaffney and other skeptics is that the histories of too many top advisers show a pattern of faulty reflexes that made them wrong on the important issues. Says Gaffney, "This is a time when a president without discernible experience in foreign policy matters is going to need to have very strong, very capable, very effective advisers. My concern is that he may have come up short."