From: MEDELMA@cms.cc.wayne.edu (Michael Edelman)
Subject: Re: Clinton/Gore on foreign policy
Organization: Wayne State University, C&IT
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 19:17:18 GMT

In article <1591@cogsci.ucsd.EDU>
king@cogsci.ucsd.EDU (Jonathan King) writes:
      [...]
>booming economy.  And now that we are no longer dedicated to fighting
>a land war in Europe against the Warsaw Pact, why shouldn't it
>continue to shrink?  Or at least change?  You know, I haven't heard
>either side talk about mine-sweepers yet, or the need to develop much
>better methods of battlefield damage assessment, or other things that
>might be really important.  And I bet that I won't.
>
Note that the end of the cold war may mean more small, localized wars as
we've been seeing. Between nuclear powers you get standoffs. Between
non-nuclear powers disputes become wars.
 
>>What a Clinton presidency promises is something akin to a Carter
>>presidency--but without Carter's one small success in the mideast.
>
>I don't follow this at all.  In Carter's presidency there were no
>US wars that I can recall, the Stealth program was begun, and he tried
>to kill the B-1.  Not to say everything was hunky-dory, but I must be
>missing something here (but not the Iran hostage debacle, since that
>only grossly distorted our foreign policy in the 1980s).  Meanwhile,
>I guess we disagree about the importance of that "small success in the
>mideast".
 
Oh, I was thinking of net losses in  the number of free states, increased
Soviet domination of other states, weakened US influence throughout the
world, that sort of thing.
>
>>That is to say an extremely non-interventionist stance. And along
>>with that, a corresponding reaction in the rest of the world.
>
>The US policy was non-interventionist?  What the heck was the Carter
>Doctrine about, then?
 
Apparantly it was about nothing, because Carter didn't do anything even
as the USSR attempted to increase its influence in our hemisphere.
>
>>There are still a great many communists- whom the media in this country
>>refer to, in their puzzling way, as "conservatives"- in the ex-USSR states,
>>who are capable of a coup attempt.
>
>Actually, I wouldn't know what to call them either.  But I don't see
>their attachment to "Communism" as being their defining trait.  Let's
>call them "Anti-reform opportunists".  And, yes, they are a problem.
 
Boy, that's a novel attempt. How about just sticking with "Communists?"
It's okay to call them Communists. That's what they call themselves.
 
>What is the Bush policy on them, by the way?
 
The question is, what is the perceived US position? Bush has declared his
support for Yeltsin and the reformers, for free and open trade between
the US and the former Soviet states, and so forth. What's Clinton's
stated position?
>
>>They might be tempted to try localized
>>coups in some states under a Clinton presidency.
>
>As opposed to the Union-wide coup they tried under a Bush presidency?
 
But it wasn't a Union-wide coup. It was localized, it was led by a very few,
and it collapsed quickly. Whether the perception of possible US aid
affected that we can't say. If it did, there is less threat from a Clinton
administration. He has been inconsistent at best in his support of intervention
or even support of other countries. Look at his statements on both sides of
the Iraq affair- he was against it, but probably would have voted to
authorize the intervention. I'm not making this up...!
>(Personally, I think that coup would have happened no matter who was
>president at the time.)
>
>>Iraq, still a military
>>power, could well try to reassert itself under a Clinton presidency, given
>>his wishy-washy statements about the gulf war. Syria would probably move
>>further into Lebanon and surrounding countries.
>
>Uh, hold it.  While Clinton wasn't the one who decided to fight Iraq,
>he also wasn't the one who decided to stop fighting it before some
>apparently easily achievable military objectives were met.  The
>decision to stop was just as political (and probably as wishy-washy)
>as any you're likely to see.  Meanwhile, who was the guy who invited
 
There is a theory that Bush stopped short of a full invasion at the
request of Gorbachev, who was afraid he wouldn't be able to stop his
military from engineering a coup. Or so says one Washington rumor.
 
In retrospect it was probably a bad idea to stop short. Of course, had
we simply crushed the entire Iraq military, what would we be hearing
from the Democrats? That we overdid it. Can't win in political debate.
What would Clinton have done?
 
>Syria into the coalition in the first place?  Didn't this have a
>little something to do with the situation in Lebanon today?  And who
 
No, they were already in there. They were invited in- under some
Syrian coercion, no doubt,- to get rid of the PLO.
 
>was the guy who signed executive orders to help out Hussein until
>shortly before the invasion of Kuwait?
>
So war is always preferable to attempts at diplomacy?
 
>I'm sorry, but I just don't see how your arguments support your
>apparent conclusion that Bush would be better than Clinton in foreign
>affairs.  And some of these might end up being ammunition for Clinton.
>
Good luck.
 
>>There are a lot of countries and insurgency movements which are
>>held in check or limited in actions by the real or implied threat of
>>US intervention.
>
>And there are repressive regimes which are kept in power by the same.
>And there generally have been under presidents both Republican and
>Democratic for quite some time.
>
And the biggest collapses- Nicaragua, the USSR, the Phillipines, Poland,
the rest of Eastern Europe- were under Reagan's watch. Now did the US
presidents have an effect on keeping them in power? If so, then Reagan
was a factor in the collapse of the regimes as well. Can't have it
both ways. In Eastern Europe they think Reagan helped.
 
>>The US ceased being an IRA "safe house" under Reagan.
>
>Don't know about this one, so I can't comment.  But didn't the US
>become a Contra "safe house" under Reagan?  Again, these are all
 
And didn't the Nicaraguans, given a free, monitored election, vote for
the Contra-supported leaders? Looks like that one's a plus.
 
Actually, the US wasn't a Contra "safe house" in the way that it
harbored many IRA terrorists from British prosecution.
 
>political decisions, and not as simple as you seem to paint them.
>
>>I could easily see more IRA accomodation under Clinton and a tilt away
>>from Great Britain.
>
>I assume you mean the United Kingdom? :-)  Certainly, I wouldn't expect
>Clinton to be quite as chummy with John Major as Reagan and Bush were
>with Thatcher and Major, but I don't know why you expect Clinton to
>tilt either towards or away the UK.  And I don't know why you think
>this is more worth mentioning than Clinton's view of, say, China, Japan,
>India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Mexico or Brazil, to name a few.
>
We *know* Clinton wants economic war with Mexico, Japan and Canada. Is
that what you mean?
 
>>Whether any of this seems important to you depends on how you perceived the
>>Carter era, of course. ;-)
>
>Uh, why is that?
>
I thought Clinton was running as a Democrat- isn't he?
 
>Anyway, back then I at least had the innocent notion that we were
>trying to support people and governments for moral reasons (yeah, I
>was pretty innocent).  My perception of the Bush era is much darker,
>centering around his actions towards Iraq, China, Syria, Burma and the
>like.
>
So you think we should have instead supported Iraq against Kuwait? What's
the Burma problem?
 
>jking
 
 
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 Michael Joseph Edelman           Wayne State University
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