Bush vs. Clinton: How Serious the Foreign Policy Differences? : The historic tendency toward bipartisan consensus has served to mute so far the debate about the post-Cold War U.S. role abroad

The world as seen from the Oval Office next Jan. 20 will be a far different place from the world the last nine Presidents inherited on their inauguration days. For the first time in 44 years the Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union and its surrogates will not dominate the international agenda. For the first time since the Atomic Age began, national security concerns will not be focused foremost on the imperative to prevent--or to survive and respond to--a nuclear attack.

The New, Complex Challenge for America and Its President

In strictly strategic terms, the United States is more secure than it was just four years, more secure indeed than it has been for decades. But the collapse of the Soviet empire and the achievement of several immensely important accords to reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals and to slash conventional forces in Europe have not by themselves brought about a more peaceful or orderly world. Far from it. Whether it is George Bush or Bill Clinton who wins the White House on Nov. 3, the list of crisis spots and challenges that sooner or later will command presidential attention promises to be long. Start with Europe, where the Cold War began and where it ended, and where in its aftermath renewed ethnic conflicts threaten regional stability.

In the next few years the United States must decide what its role in Europe should be. The Warsaw Pact has gone out of business. NATO is being drastically downsized because the threat it was formed to meet no longer exists; U.S. troop strength in Western Europe is in the process of shrinking from more than 300,000 to probably no more than 50,000. Patrick J. Buchanan, the voice of isolationism in the Republican primaries, would bring all American troops home from Europe, and from Asia as well. Bush and Clinton are alike in rejecting any such withdrawal.

In the face of the greatest post-Cold War threat to order in Europe--the brutal ethnic conflicts that have savaged much of what was once Yugoslavia--NATO has done precisely nothing. Neither, for that matter, have the European Community and the revived Western European Union, two potential forums for collective action in which there is no U.S. participation.

So far as the war in Bosnia goes, Bush has been reluctant to dispatch any U.S. forces to impose or keep the peace, whether alone or as part of an international force, though that policy is under review. Clinton has called for U.S. “leadership” to bring about intervention by the United Nations, but has similarly stopped short of endorsing any use of U.S. forces.

Changing Europe Is Only the First of the New Challenges

The unsettled future of Russia and the smaller states of the former Soviet Union is sure to take up a lot of presidential time in the years ahead. Bush and Clinton have both spoken out strongly about the compelling need to encourage Russia’s democratic evolution. Each--if gingerly, given the limited constituency that foreign aid has among Americans these days--endorses giving aid. Each has warned of the seismic international consequences if Russia reverts to a nationalistic authoritarianism or is riven by ethnic and regional conflicts. A retrograde Russia would inevitably raise anew the most serious security issues for the United States and its allies. The next President ought to begin thinking early about the consequences for international security should Russia lose its way on the road to democracy.

The Persian Gulf, the location of most of the world’s known oil reserves, seems destined to remain a major potential trouble spot. Saddam Hussein clings to power in Iraq and proclaims that the “mother of battles” has not yet ended. Iran, still committed to spreading its revolutionary ideology, is spending lavishly to build up its armed forces and develop weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile the oil states of the Arabian Peninsula that are most threatened by aggression remain divided by jealousies and suspicions and unable to join in effective common defense.

U.S. national interests--the interests of the industrialized world generally--require keeping the Persian Gulf’s resources out of hostile hands. Bush did well in forging a successful international response to Saddam Hussein’s effort to seize control of those resources, beginning with the conquest of Kuwait, although the Administration’s earlier efforts to woo and succor the Iraqi dictator can be seen as not just ill-advised but astonishingly self-deluding. It’s possible the next President may again be confronted with the need to rebuild a coalition committed to safeguarding threatened Persian Gulf states.

The next President probably will have the opportunity to help achieve and endorse peace arrangements in the Middle East of a kind that would have been unimaginable before the end of the Cold War. Bush, to his credit, last year prodded reluctant Arabs and Israelis into face-to-face negotiations. Sometime in the next four years this most intractable of regional conflicts may give way, in whole or in part, to historic new accords. But, like the Camp David agreement between Israel and Egypt brokered by President Jimmy Carter, the prelude to that will almost certainly see the need for firm and even courageous diplomatic intervention by the United States.

The Growing Dynamism of the New Asia, Africa and Latin America

Asia will continue to command a good part of the President’s foreign policy attention. Clinton may well be ready to take a tougher line than Bush toward China on human rights issues. Trade frictions with Japan and, quite possibly, with South Korea and Taiwan as well could increase. Meanwhile, South Africa’s troubled progress toward racial equality and the terrible effects of civil war and drought elsewhere on the continent will inescapably demand presidential attention. All across Africa political and economic problems compete for attention. Some movement toward democracy is noticeable--for instance in Nigeria. But many of the continent’s problems--to some extent inheritances from European misrule--will not ameliorate without a greater involvement of the world community, and Washington.

In Central and South America the next President will face both opportunity and challenge. With Mexico, it’s possible that America could soon enjoy perhaps its best relations ever. The recently negotiated, but still unapproved, North American Free Trade Agreement could be the beginning of the easing of U.S. border tensions and the further improvement of the Mexican economy. Further south, governments struggle, with varying degrees of success, with political corruption and extremism, and also with economic modernization. Their successes, and failures, impact directly on the big northern neighbor. No American foreign policy that deprioritizes Latin America can be successful.

It may well be that there is more fundamental agreement between Bush and Clinton on foreign policy than on any other major sets of issues. The outlook of both reflects the broad bipartisan consensus that has guided America’s approach to the world since World War II. Clinton, in several foreign policy speeches, has taken a balanced and moderate mainstream approach to world affairs, emphasizing particularly the link between an effective foreign policy and a strong domestic economy. Bush has called attention to his record in foreign policy, especially the Gulf War and the arms agreements negotiated with Moscow, with particular emphasis on his experience of more than two decades in foreign affairs. He has every right to do so: When it comes to foreign policy, that obviously is his strong suit. As a former ambassador to China and director of the CIA--and as someone who spends countless hours on the phone with world leaders--Bush is obviously considerably more experienced than Clinton.

Clinton: Experience Is Important but Not the Sole Standard

That experience is of course important. However, no less crucial in meeting foreign policy challenges are a President’s temperament and judgment and the quality of his advisers. It will be recalled that Harry S. Truman, whose memory is being invoked often in this campaign, assumed the presidency with scant experience of the world beyond America’s shores. Soon he made the major decisions--on aid to Greece and Turkey, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin airlift, the birth of NATO--that are generally credited with halting the advance of Soviet-backed communism.

Both Clinton and Bush have spoken eloquently about their commitment to supporting the spread of democracy and free markets in the world, and both have reaffirmed their belief that America must continue to lead. It is their styles of leadership that differ. And leadership in foreign policy is always a key determinant of a successful presidency. The economy may be Topic No. 1 now--and for some time to come. But the President’s role as commander in chief and top diplomat is never far from the heart of the job.