Global Policy Forum

Part One: The Elections and Beyond

Summary

By all appearances, foreign policy will not be a major issue in the coming U.S. presidential campaign. But it will be a major issue for the next president who will wrestle with a fundamental task, determining America's relationship to the rest of the world. It will come in many disguises, but the question will be the same: Has the balance of power in Eurasia stabilized enough to allow Washington to reduce its political and military commitments? Or not?

Analysis

From all appearances, foreign policy will not play a major role in the coming U.S. presidential campaign. The candidates have not really confronted each other over foreign policy issues, and the media have not plugged these issues into the political equation. While the candidates and electorate may not be deeply interested in the world, that does not mean the world is not interested in them.

What people think is important and what will be important are often two different things. The next president will wrestle with a fundamental question: What is America's relationship to the world? This will not be a debate between internationalism and isolationism but instead a question in search of an answer: Has the Eurasian balance of power stabilized sufficiently to allow the United States to reduce its exposure and risk taking?

In looking at this long-term question, it is important to note that contrary to foreign policy fantasies in Washington, history is shaped less by foreign policy specialists than impersonal forces. No one truly controls foreign policy on a planet of 6 billion people. Instead, policy makers are much more prisoners of these forces – geography, population, economics – than they are in control of them.

There is an apparent paradox here: If no one is really in charge, then what difference does it make who is elected to the White House? The paradox can be answered this way: As individuals, neither George W. Bush nor Al Gore is of particular consequence. In some ways, they are interchangeable.

Nevertheless, the Republican and Democratic parties are creatures from different parts of American political culture. They represent different interests that, in turn, exert different pressures on the direction of foreign policy. The differences should not be overstated – the two parties are intertwined, a sign of relative health and stability – but the divisions are there and they matter.

While no one can predict what either man would think in the White House, it is possible to look at where they are coming from and survey the terrain in which one of them will make policy against a backdrop of powerful historical forces. Whoever is elected will confront one fundamental issue cloaked in differing disguises: What is the relationship between the United States and the world?

It is the same question that America has faced throughout its history. The United States dominates North America politically, militarily and economically. North America is effectively an island. Though extraordinarily prosperous, it is not invincible. If, for instance, all of the resources of the Eastern Hemisphere were to be united and mobilized against it, the United States would be at risk. Therefore, three times during the 20th century, the United States intervened in the Eastern Hemisphere to prevent its integration into a single system.

U.S. intervention in World War I, World War II and the Cold War were made necessary by the failure of the intrinsic Eastern Hemispheric balance of power to work. As a result, the United States exerted a huge effort and undertook enormous risks. Whatever the American public believed subjectively, the issue at stake was not ideology, but fundamental national interest: to prevent an integrated Eurasia.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new dynamic has unfolded in the Eastern Hemisphere. At least for the moment, no single power threatens to create a hemispheric hegemony. China, regardless of its population, cannot. It is, more than anything else, an island. It faces the Himalayas to the southwest, Siberia to the North and the ocean to the East. Indochina is difficult to subdue. Geography stands in the way of Beijing dominating Central Asia.

The picture that is emerging – and will emerge over the coming years – is a fragmented one. Russia will spend a generation reasserting and consolidating its sphere of influence of the former Soviet Union. The European Union has not yet emerged as a politico-military entity and, given the exhausted nationalisms involved, probably won't. Japan has not yet made the wrenching political break with its post-war regime. The other minor powers can be nuisances, but not threats.

Therefore, the fundamental question facing the United States during the next presidency will be the extent and the mode of U.S. engagement in Eurasia and the Eastern Hemisphere in general. This is not a debate between internationalism and isolationism, meaningless clichés from the past. Rather, the question is this: Has the Eurasian balance of power stabilized sufficiently to permit the United States to reduce its exposure and risk taking?

This is not a question of whether or not Eurasia is stable or not. From the perspective of American interests, Eurasian stability is irrelevant. Rather, the question is whether the correlation of forces is such that no Eurasian great power can emerge as hegemon. Obviously, the United States retains important commercial interests Eurasia, but it is not clear that the present level of politico-military activity is necessary to secure those interests.

Washington's political and military interventions in Eurasia made sense during the 20th century. They would continue to make sense if another cohesive power threatened to emerge. The fundamental act by a new administration will be interpreting the dynamic of the Eastern Hemisphere. If the next occupant of the White House perceives an emerging hegemonistic threat, continued presence is imperative. If there is no threat, then the existing presence and exposure must be rationalized.

The argument for American engagement is framed by the interest in a stable, international trading system. As the only superpower, the United States must take primary responsibility for maintaining that stability. That stability is indivisible; a threat to stability anywhere is a threat to stability everywhere. As a result, the U.S. presence in Korea, the Persian Gulf and the Balkans is logical and necessary. The policy of the 1990s flowed from this core analysis.

But the current rationalization for American policy avoids important questions and political forces arising in the United States:

1. Does the United States truly have a vested interest in intensified international trade? The fringe candidates, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan argue no. Embedded in both political parties, but particularly the Democrats, are those who would also argue against it.

2. Does intensifying international trade require a stable international system? Unless there is a complete breakdown, which occurred during World War II, instability opens the possibility for sales of everything from food to weapons. Stabilizing the system creates competition for the United States. Perhaps stability is not the optimum outcome for the United States.

3. Does the United States have responsibility to stabilize the unstable areas? Assuming that stability is good, it is not clear that America as the sole superpower translates into the idea that the United States alone is able to create international stability.

4. Is instability indivisible? Does Serbian or Iraqi behavior really affect Eurasia as a whole, or is it an entirely localized and trivial affair?

The foreign policy of the last decade took one stand on these questions. But there is another. Even if the United States has no interest in Eurasia's stability, it can still be argued that Washington has a fundamental interest in the balance of power, which no native forces can maintain. But again, who represents a potential threat? Russia? China? At some distant point, the European Union? Japan?

Perhaps we don't know, but a constant forward presence is necessary to prevent it. This is a hard case to make. If we don't know which power will emerge, what policy should be followed? In contrast, if we identify a likely threat, there are policy options. Consider Russia. If it will not only regain its sphere of influence, but over time return to the status of the Soviet Union, for example, certain policies would follow. It would be in Washington's interest to create powerful client states around Russia. Similarly, if we assume that China is the threat, relations with Vietnam might have to be redefined.

Three competing possibilities face the United States and in one measure or another, the next administration:

1. The current policy that assumes that Eurasian stability, not a Eurasian balance of power, is in the American interest.

2. A new policy that is less interested in stability than in preventing the emergence of powers capable of threatening Eurasian stability is in the American interest.

3. A new policy that regards the native Eurasian balance of power as self-sustaining and argues that reduced exposure is the most prudent course, until events shift, is in the American interest.

These are the deep structural issues confronting U.S. foreign policy. All are examples of the way in which interests intersect with choices. The first perspective is the orthodoxy of both major parties. The second is a submerged perspective of interests with investments and exposure in the areas that might be threatened by a new superpower, those invested in Central Asian energy supplies, for instance. The last in the list is the view of those who are not beneficiaries of international trade.

In the coming weeks of the American campaign, these arguments will not be made this starkly – if at all, actually. Bush and Gore share in the current orthodoxy.

Nevertheless, as we shall see when we dissect the two parties, there are in fact important differences between them that can and over time will drive them away from the orthodoxies of the first perspective. A Republican victory, over time, will cause U.S. policies to evolve in the direction of the second perspective. A Democratic victory will subtly move U.S. foreign policy toward the third.

In the next Weekly Analysis: Part Two in this three-part series, looks further into the historical forces at work in American politics and how they will impact the country's relationship to the rest of the world in the next administration.