From: anders@athena.mit.edu (Anders W Hove)
Subject: Re: Clinton/Gore on foreign policy
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 21:54:50 GMT

In article <1685E813B.MEDELMA@cms.cc.wayne.edu>, MEDELMA@cms.cc.wayne.edu (Michael Edelman) writes:
|> Slippery Bill has had precious little to say about foreign policy, since
|> it's Bush's one strong point and it's not a strong factor in the election.
|> But we still ought to consider what a Clinton presidency would mean for
|> world affairs.
|>  
|> Clinton is still promising to come up with more money by shrinking defense
|> spending- never mind that it's *been* shrionking for 40 years. It's shrunk
|> by half (%GNP) since the 50s. What a Clinton presidency promises is something
|> akin to a Carter presidency- but without Carter's one small success in the
|> mideast. That is to say an extremely non-interventionist stance. And along
|> with that, a corresponding reaction in the rest of the world.
|>  
|> 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. They might be tempted to try localized
|> coups in some states under a Clinton presidency. 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.
|>  
|> 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.
|> The US ceased being an IRA "safe house" under Reagan. I could easily see more
|> IRA accomodation under Clinton and a tilt away from Great Britain.
|>  
|> Whether any of this seems important to you depends on how you perceived the
|> Carter era, of course. ;-)
|> -----------------------------------------------------------------
|>  Michael Joseph Edelman           Wayne State University

I find most of what Mr. Edelman writes here to be either grossly inaccurate or
severely distorted.  First, Bill Clinton has indeed said a great deal about
foreign policy.  In several major foreign policy speeches, Clinton has outlined
a foreign policy which parts ways with Bush's policy.  Most of the differences 
which Edelman cites, however, do not exist.

First, Edelman claims that the Defense Establishment has been shrinking for 42
years.  In fact, the GNP figure he supplies may be true (I haven't seen it, but
that means little).  What matters is that after WWII the Defense Department was
bloated and continued to be artificially large until Eisenhower came into
office. Therefore, his figures are skewed. Kennedy, claiming that we suffered
from a "missile gap", launched a new round of spending and modernization.  
Spending increases continued through the end of the Vietnam War.

Again in 1978, as in 1961, our defense spending was deemed too low to win the
Cold War.  President Jimmy Carter, contrary to what Edelman implies, began
another huge build-up.  

Ronald Reagan, taking advise from a far-right defense policy group, came into
office believing that Defense needed a 7% hike in spending, above inflation. 
The rationale for this figure is still not known.  The $32.6 billion dollar
increase in defense spending came out of the blue for the Defense Dept, for even
they hadn't proposed anything that big.  There weren't even projects to
fill the figure, so the military revived various programs (like the B-2) which
had been deemed useless or unnecessary in the past.  By 1984, Reagan's defense
budget was twice what had been projected under Carter.  Unfortunately, the $32.6
billion figure was about what Reagan had saved through domestic cuts, so the
tax cuts he had proposed fed a huge increase in the debt, with which our
economy is still saddled.

Contrary to what Edelman says, Clinton has taken a stance with regards to
intervention that is more hawkish than that of President Bush.  It was Clinton 
who challenged Bush to intervene to stop the "ethnic cleansing"in Yugoslavia.  
Marlin Fitzwater even went so far as to call this "reckless" (a claim
which he had to retract after finding that Dick Cheney had been on record as
supporting this position before it was proposed by Clinton).  According to
"TIME","both [Clinton and Bush] see the planet as a dangerous place where the
occasional use of American force will likely be necessary for decades to
come." ["Time Magazine", April 13, 92, p 28.]  If anything, Bush
has been behind the curve on intervention.

Edelman also seems to fear the revival of a new Russian militarism.  Dick
Cheney, who has always been of the most wary of Soviet peril, told the Senate
Armed Services Committee on Jan. 31 that, since Soviet GNP had fallen 15-20% in
1991 alone,"it is improbable that a global conventional challenge to US and
Western security will reemerge from the Eurasian heartland for years to come."
[Source:  "Technology Review", Aug/Sept 92, p 47.]

Edelman also fears the revival of various third world threats.  
The Gulf War proved that even the best equiped underdeveloped nations such as
Iraq "lack the broader tachnological sophistication and training required to
take on a Western power".  [ibid.]  Even if such nations are sold advanced
weapons by the French, British or Chinese, they can't use them to any effect on
our military.

Lastly, Edelman asserts that, because Clinton is weak, fiendish dictators like
Hafez al-Assad of Syria and groups such as the IRA will run ruffshod over their
respective areas of the globe.  This is nonsense.  As stated above, Clinton's
stance on intervention is just as aggressive as Bush's.  Moreover, unlike Bush,
who has coddled up to the evil governments of Syria, China, Serbia and the like,
Clinton has proposed making democracy and civil rights the litmus test for US
support.  He has said as much: "There's no need to play the China card
now when our opponents have thrown in their hand; no need to ignore China's
spreading dangerous weapons technologies and its trampling of human rights.  I
would deny most-favored-nation status to China, impose trade sanctions and
encourage the younger generation's democratic aspirations."  [Source:  "Time
Magazine", April 13, 92, p 28.]  In this light, Bush's whimpy policy reminds one
of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement stance in Munich.

While Clinton is for an active military, he also wants a lean military.  Where
Bush has proposed hardly any cuts in wasteful, Cold War oriented programs like
Star Wars and the B-2, Clinton wants a smaller, more flexible force structure. 
This involves cuts of tens of billions of dollars over the next five years. 
Why?  It is Clinton's belief that a nation with a failling economy isn't really
strong no matter what the size of the military budget (the Soviet Union proved
how ephemeral military might can be).
  
So, in the end, it is "the economy, stupid" which is the key to retaining
America's stance in the world.  Edelman says foreign policy won't play a role
in the election.  In this light, he is wrong.  Bill Clinton not only has a 
strong foreign policy vision, but has a strong economic vision as well.  Since 
the two are inextricably linked, voters will go to the polls having to 
decide who offers the most in terms of America's strength in the world, as well
as at home.  


   

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