Pundits love to say that foreign policy doesn’t determine presidential elections, but they have very short memories. Kennedy convinced the country he was a tougher anti-Communist than Nixon. Johnson convinced at least part of the American public that the nation could not allow Goldwater near the nuclear button. Reagan capitalized on Carter’s Iran fiasco and fantasyladen approach to the Soviets. Once the American people saw Dukakis sitting uncomfortably in that tank, they voted for Bush. If Dole is going to defeat Clinton, he will have to deconstruct Clinton’s foreign policy and present a convincing alternative vision of the American role in the world.
Exposing Clinton’s follies is the easy part. The Clinton-Christopher- Talbott-Perry-Lake worldview has proven pitifully, sometimes dangerously, misguided. We were told that trade — even trade in advanced military technology — was a magic solvent that would dissolve the messy problems with the People’s Republic of China, but it only made the Chinese Communists stronger and more dangerous. We were told that money would grease the skids for a smooth transition to democracy in Russia, but it only enriched the old Communist elite and may be hastening its return to political power. We were told that Bosnia was a European problem, but after years of dithering only the United States could get the Europeans to deal with their own crisis. Clinton committed the nation’s prestige on behalf of democracy in Haiti but has appeased the dictatorship in Cuba, a much more serious problem. He escalated our involvement in Somalia from an embarrassment to a debacle. And ambassador-at-large Hillary Rodham Clinton and special adviser Chelsea Clinton globe-trot during school vacations, praising Islam while remaining silent on the enslavement of black Africans in Islamic countries, and endorsing the inalienable rights of the Five Genders. Deconstructing Clintonism will not only be easy, it will be fun.
What is lacking, as surely as in the Bush-Baker-Scowcroft years, is the Vision Thing. Bush and Baker prided themselves on being “pragmatists,” as opposed to the “ideologues” of the Reagan years, and Clinton chose his secretary of state right out of that tradition. Warren Christopher began his stewardship at the Department of State by proudly informing the Foreign Service that he did not have a strategic vision and did not want one. We would simply deal with problems as they came up, one at a time. In short, we would conduct our foreign policy just as Sri Lanka or Costa Rica handles its. And so we have.
But America is not a traditional nation. We are the embodiment of an idea: the sovereignty of a free people defined by a commitment to the rights and obligations embodied in the written law rather than by a shared ancestry. Our national interests cannot be defined in purely geopolitical terms because we seek to advance ideals. Therefore, our foreign policy must be ideological — must be designed to advance freedom. Three times in this century we and our friends and allies have been attacked by the enemies of freedom, and three times we have prevailed because of the incomparable power and creativity that only free people, bound together by a common purpose, can generate.
In these days of multicultural relativism, it is unfashionable to state openly what the rest of the world takes for granted: the superiority of American civilization. Yet that fact makes us the automatic target of all tyrants. They attack us because so long as we are here, their own people will want more freedom or, failing that, will brave unimaginable hardships to come here and join us. Americans do not apply for green cards in Tehran, Havana, or Beijing, even though Americans are free to go there. But Iranians, Cubans, and Chinese risk their lives to come here, even though their regimes strive mightily to keep the exits firmly barred, just as the fallen Soviets did before them. We are stigmatized and vilified because our very existence threatens the tyrants.
And yet, with very rare exceptions (Reps. Henry Hyde, Christopher Cox, and Tillie Fowler, occasional sorties by the speaker, and Bob Dole’s shining moment on Bosnia), there is no sign of a Republican, or even a conservative, foreign policy. The GOP’s revolutionaries have been so obsessed with the trees at home that they have lost sight of the global forest. They do not seem to appreciate that the success or failure of America is a matter of consequence for the entire world. Other countries can deal separately with foreign and domestic policies, but for us there can be no dividing line. We need better schools because without superior education Americans cannot fulfill a global mission. We need greater freedom so that the creative energies of the American people can continue to stimulate and enrich mankind. We need to repudiate the divisive radical separatists, from the racial nationalists to the gay-rightists, so we can demonstrate with renewed vigor that citizenship — not ethnicity, faith, class, or race — is the proper basis for civilization.
The Republicans cannot lead the nation without leading the world. Dole cannot lay legitimate claim to the White House without telling the rest of the world how he intends to lead it, and his global vision must be of a piece with his policies to expand freedom in America. It is time for a Contract with the World. Here is a first draft:
First: Our mission is the advance of freedom. The enslavement of men and women anywhere diminishes us all. So we will support democracies, old and new, and we will support democrats wherever and whenever we can. The new Republican presidency will be a platform for democratic advocacy and for the relentless denunciation of tyranny and slavery. The new secretary of state will not be a political fixer or a corporate lawyer; he or she will be someone whose career and commitment bespeak an unwavering dedication to democratic causes.
Second: We will revive linkage. No money to tyrants. Period. We will promise the American taxpayers that their money will be spent to advance freedom, not to strengthen the slavemasters. No most-favored-nation status to a China that exploits slave labor, tortures and murders its own democrats, and intimidates democratic neighbors. No aid to Russia so long as the Yeltsin regime brazenly violates its agreements with us and marches on its neighbors. No aid to a Bulgarian regime that recollectivizes agriculture and deep-sixes the privatization program. No money to corrupt tyrants who pocket the bulk of our aid and dribble a few fragments to their people. We have developed the most sophisticated money-tracking system in the world, and we will put it to work for the new democrats, so that they will have a chance to recover at least some of the wealth stolen from them by their present and former rulers, from Russia, Bulgaria, and Romania to Mexico, Zaire, Zambia, and Tanzania. In the future, American money will fund projects, not regimes. We want to create new wealth, not redistribute our resources.
Third: We will publish our files from the tom War that deal with the domestic and international activities of the Communist elites. This is important because it will enable the citizens of the new democracies to make informed decisions about their leaders. We will urge the same on Russia and the other former Communist countries.
Fourth: While we believe in free trade, we do not believe in strengthening the enemies of freedom. The greatest folly of the past eight years has been the dismantling of the system of international export controls that restricted the sale of advanced military technology to rogue countries. Today, countries like North Korea, China, Iraq, Iran, and Libya are buying weapons of mass destruction — and the technology to manufacture them — from the West, including the United States. We will tighten restrictions on our own military and dual-use technology exports and work with the other advanced industrial countries to recreate the system of high-tech export controls that worked so well against the Soviet Empire.
Fifth: We will take every legitimate step to transform tyrannies into free societies, even when this means challenging “friendly tyrants.” It has sometimes proved necessary to ally ourselves with anti-democratic regimes — as with the Soviet Union in the Second World War, or with Iran and China in the Cold War — but it is only a matter of time before the American people turn against such alliances. Tactical considerations can only temporarily override our strategic mission. Today, this means we must insist that friendly authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia share power with their own people. China may yet embrace democratic capitalism, but the gerontarchs there have shown great fear of real democracy in Taiwan and Hong Kong; to have true friendship with us, the Chinese must liberalize their policy as well as their economy. In the case of anti-democratic enemies, we will attempt to weaken and replace the oppressive regimes and will give all possible support to democratic forces seeking to defeat them. We prefer that this support be open, but it will sometimes be necessary to do it discreetly, depending upon the needs of the democrats.
Sixth: We will restore and expand America’s voice to the peoples of the world. Radio broadcasts played a heroic role in our defeat of the Communist empire, and there are now even more ways to reach those whose governments do not want them to know the truth. We will use all means, from radio to direct satellite broadcasting and the Internet, to advance freedom in all its forms. We will not hesitate to inform the Chinese people directly that their government is violating both international standards of civilized behavior and its signed agreements with the United States, or to ask the Japanese people why their government makes them pay triple the world price for rice, or to tell the Iranians that we hope one day to welcome them back to the family of normal nations, or to express our disgust to the peoples of Africa at the practice of chattel slavery by Mauritania and Sudan.
Seventh: We will provide safe haven for political refugees. Unlike the appeaser in the White House, we will not send Cuban freedom-seekers back to Castro’s evil island.
Eighth: We are going to build the best missile-defense system possible. We have heard Chinese military leaders threaten to send missiles into Los Angeles, and we know that the fanatics in Iran, Libya, and Iraq are building missiles to carry their new chemical and biological warheads and are racing to get nuclear weapons. This is technology we can share with allies who need protection from such missile attacks as well.
Ninth: We will embrace the new democracies of Central Europe and the Baltics and will urge our NATO allies to expand the alliance to include them. There is no reason to humor the dangerous post-Soviet desire to maintain the Evil Empire’s supposed centrality in world affairs. The former Soviet states must look inward to save themselves from chaos, and we should help them do so by bringing an end to their fantasies.
Tenth: We do not intend to wait for the next Pearl Harbor to build a military force capable of defeating our next enemy. The Clinton administration has permitted rogue nations to acquire advanced technology that can be used against us in the near future, and we will immediately call upon the intelligence community and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to assess the implications for our own security. This done, we will take the appropriate steps to strengthen our armed forces. Serious leaders are expected to protect against worst-case scenarios.
In short, we will pledge to the peoples of the world, friend and foe alike, that we will do our very best to complete the global democratic revolution that began more than 20 years ago with the end of the Latin European dictatorships in Greece, Spain, and Portugal and continued with the dramatic transformation of Latin America. The revolution destroyed the Soviet Empire, gave hope to the peoples of Africa, inspired the creation of new democracies in Asia, and unleashed the creative juices of the American electorate in 1994. We do not expect to complete this great mission in the lifetime of the next administration, or even in the lifetime of living Americans. The struggle against evil on this earth is eternal. But we will be faithful to our calling, secure in our democratic faith, and resolute in our pursuit of freedom.
Michael A. Ledeen, foreign editor of the American Spectator, holds the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.
