When George W. Bush gets his first national security briefing as president on Jan. 20, Mideast violence, Colombian drug wars and a stubborn Iraqi dictator likely will be high on the agenda.
These challenges, along with how to improve relations with Russia, shape policy toward China and improve America’s global trade position, will confront a president whose foreign policy experience to date has been limited to his dealings with Mexico as Texas’ governor and who has traveled overseas only three times during his adult life.
Acutely aware of his short foreign policy resume, Bush is bringing with him foreign policy veterans from his father’s administration who have helped him craft a philosophy focused on pursuing U.S. national interests without becoming overextended.
The group will be led by Vice President Dick Cheney, the elder Bush’s secretary of defense, and by Bush’s expected choice for secretary of state, Colin Powell, who headed the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Cheney during the Persian Gulf war. Condoleezza Rice, an adviser to the elder Bush on Russia and arms control, is expected to be the new president’s national security adviser.
The Mideast will almost certainly be Bush’s first full-bore foreign policy challenge. Violence between Israel and the Palestinians appears likely to continue. No sooner will Bush assume office than Israel will head into elections for prime minister that could bring a more hawkish government to power.
President Clinton was unable to achieve a comprehensive peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, and in the weeks since violence erupted in the West Bank and Gaza at the end of September, he has had no better success in ending the fighting that has claimed more than 300 lives, most of them Palestinian. He will pass on to his successor the problem of how to bring the foes back to the path of peace.
“There’s going to be a lot more bloodshed until a new threshold of pain is established that both parties know is unacceptable,” said Graham Fuller, a Mideast expert and former senior CIA analyst.
The Arab-Israeli conflict is likely to mark Bush’s first tactical shift on foreign policy from the departing administration. Where Clinton delved into negotiating details and pressed for a swift, comprehensive peace agreement, Bush plans to slow things in the hope of cooling down the situation.
“The United States must not set artificial timetables,” Bush said earlier this month of the Mideast peace effort. “We’ve got to be patient–firm and patient.”
The remark was clearly meant as a critique of Clinton, who was seen by some critics as overly eager to forge a final peace deal at Camp David and leave office with a major diplomatic achievement. The critics say that by overreaching, Clinton raised expectations too high, particularly among Palestinians.
What the Heritage Foundation’s James Phillips calls a necessary “breathing space” in U.S. policy toward the Mideast may end up helping the cause.
“We can’t be trying to push events because, as we saw at Camp David, sometimes if you push events, they blow up in your face,” Phillips said.
Throughout the campaign, Bush tapped this theme of avoiding overreach in foreign affairs. He said he would pursue national interests first and global idealism second, commit forces only if vital interests were at stake, and work with allies but act alone if the situation warranted.
Bush stopped short of declaring that he would pull U.S. troops out of existing peacekeeping or deterrence missions. But he made clear he will be reluctant to make new commitments.
“There may be some moments when we use our troops as peacekeepers, but not often,” Bush said during the campaign. Rice has floated the idea of establishing a separate U.S. peacekeeping force, an idea the Pentagon strenuously opposes.
Major overseas deployments include peacekeeping missions in Kosovo and Bosnia involving more than 10,000 troops, the 37,000 troops in South Korea and some 20,000 in the Persian Gulf region.
In Colombia, Bush will inherit a multibillion-dollar U.S. commitment to help that shaky democracy fight a toxic mix of drug barons and leftist guerrillas. If anything, Bush is likely to expand that commitment while being careful not to deploy U.S. forces to join in the war on the ground, either against guerrillas or drug lords.
Throughout the campaign, Bush criticized the Clinton administration for ignoring Latin America. This was part of a strategy aimed at attracting Hispanic votes in California and Florida.
“Those who ignore Latin America do not fully understand America itself,” Bush said in a speech in Miami last August. “This country was right to be concerned about a country like Kosovo–but there are more refugees of conflict in Colombia. … Should I become president, I will look south, not just as an afterthought, but as a fundamental commitment of my presidency.”
In Iraq, a country that the elder President Bush defeated in war, but only partially, the new president will face an enemy that has gradually rebuilt its military and won over former enemies.
It is difficult to imagine the new president softening U.S. relations with a regime that planned to assassinate his father in 1993. But the options for U.S. policy in Iraq are diminishing.
At any given time, there are as many as 20,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors and airmen stationed around Iraq, part of a policy of containment that came with the 1991 victory in the Persian Gulf war. Bush will have to decide how long to maintain that costly commitment, and how long to insist on economic sanctions that have won Iraq sympathy from the likes of France, Russia and China, countries eager to reopen economic ties with the world’s second-largest oil producer.
The Clinton administration, aware of the political cost of appearing soft on Hussein, stuck with the containment policy despite growing international criticism. At the end of the administration, some signs of a shift were appearing.
“In the gulf, our policy will have to adapt to changing circumstances,” Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering said in a recent speech.
Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton Co. before Bush selected him to be his running mate, ran a global oil services and contracting firm that owned a subsidiary with business interests in Iraq.
Much as Clinton had to make a swift decision to order strikes on Iraq in 1993 when the Bush assassination plot came to light, the incoming president may have a similar call to make if U.S. intelligence identifies a country or group as responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.
One of Bush’s immediate tasks will be assessing whether to impose sweeping changes on the organization of the military. He is proposing to add $45 billion to the defense budget over the next five years, less than half the amount Gore had pledged. But the Bush camp argues the money will go further because Bush won’t be sending the military off on peacekeeping and nation-building missions in far-flung trouble spots only loosely connected to U.S. national interests.
In some ways, the world scene Bush surveys after his inaugural march down Pennsylvania Avenue is improving. Bush acknowledged this during the campaign, saying the opportunity afforded by America’s unchallenged global power provided an opportunity to reshape the military, possibly by skipping a generation in weapons modernization.
The Clinton administration has opened diplomatic relations with Vietnam. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright became the first top U.S. diplomat to visit North Korea. The administration has made progress toward peace in Northern Ireland.
The U.S. peacekeeping force in Bosnia, now at 4,500, is steadily declining from the peak levels of the mid-1990s. And a new, democratically elected government is in power in Yugoslavia, bringing with it the prospect that the U.S. troop presence in Kosovo, now at 5,500, may be reduced.
With China, Bush’s foreign policy will likely reflect the dilemma confronting the Republican Party in general: how to reconcile support for free trade with those in the party who demand a tougher line against a country that is perceived to be violating the rights of religious groups and trying to steal U.S. military secrets as part of a long-term plan to challenge U.S. power in the Pacific.
Bush spoke often about improving relations with Russia and treating the former Cold War foe as “a great power.” He comes to the White House with an agenda of kick-starting the moribund arms reduction process. But Bush is also a strong supporter of national missile defense.
One of his early and critical decisions will be whether to go ahead with that costly defensive scheme even if relations with North Korea, which is trying to develop long-range missiles, continue to improve. Another key question will be whether Bush will abrogate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty if Russia refuses to agree to allow the missile defense program to go forward.
“The new U.S. administration will confront a Russia at a crucial stage of its own history,” said Thomas Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The new administration should eschew the temptation just to continue the policy status quo. … Instead, it should pursue an agenda for the renewal of U.S.-Russian relations.”
In his keynote address to the Republican National Convention, Powell said Bush’s foreign policies would be “guided by common interests and common sense.” He called Bush “a man of principle who will make partners and not enemies.”
But as Powell knows only too well from his years at the Pentagon under Bush’s father, stewardship of U.S. military and foreign affairs is an exercise in dealing with the unexpected.
