No World Order

Foreign policy has been the step-child issue of this election year, receiving only a fraction of the attention it did during the Cold War. Most observers believe this has hurt President Bush, whose strength seems to lie in foreign policy skill. But a closer look at Bush's handling of foreign affairs reveals not just the lack of a clear moral vision for promoting democracy but serious mishandling of certain world events.

Bush's lack of moral scruples in foreign policy became clear with his management of two events in particular: the Tiananmen Square massacre and the coup in Haiti.

Just weeks after students fighting for democracy were killed or imprisoned by the Chinese government, Bush surreptitiously sent two close advisers to Beijing to assure the communist leaders that the U.S. still supported them. And he refused to extend visas for Chinese students studying in the U.S. who feared political repercussions if they went home.

In addition, Bush cynically stymied every attempt to punish--even mildly--the Chinese government. By vetoing legislation to retard the sale of Chinese exports to the United States, Bush kept cash flowing into the Chinese economy by means of most favored nation status.

He said these moves were all designed to gain influence over the hard-liners to pressure them to stop human rights violations. But under Bush's watch, China seized disputed islands in the South China Sea, expanded nuclear testing and continued arms sales to Syria and Iran. Not only was the policy value-neutral--it was a failure.

But Bush didn't stop there. In a cynical attempt to win over voters in Texas, Bush promised to sell 150 F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan. This shattered a 1982 Sino-American agreement in which the U.S. promised to reduce arms sales to Taiwan gradually and not exceed the level being supplied at the time. By disregarding this agreement, Bush has given China a reason to abandon its pledge to stick to weapons treaties.

After the coup in Haiti which deposed a democratically elected leader, Haitians streamed out of the island nation, many of them facing possible political persecution. Most came to the U.S. in search of asylum. Bush turned them away.

The president claimed that evidence showed that the Haitians were economic refugees, not political dissidents. Perhaps this was true for many of them, although human rights groups cite evidence to the contrary.

Whatever the case, Bush's policy intended to force every refugee to return to Haiti. No interviews were conducted, no opportunity for temporary asylum was offered--nothing. Bush assumed that all of them were lying.

Perhaps Bush's greatest foreign policy failure, ironically, was his handling of Iraq in the months preceding the Gulf War. For years, the U.S. directly aided the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein and helped build up his military with weapons sales. Then, in the weeks before Hussein invaded Kuwait, Bush appeased the dictator through Ambassador April Glaspie. Just days before the invasion, in fact, Glaspie told Hussein that the U.S. had "no opinion" on the "border disagreement with Kuwait."

Today, Bush risks a repeat of the Iraq failure with his support of another dictator, Syrian leader Hafez Assad. Even after the Gulf War, Hussein himself (a man Bush called "worse" than Adolf Hitler) remains strong. What's worse, Bush has allowed thousands of Kurds and Shiites to die at the dictator's hands.

Gov. Bill Clinton, for one, has said that Bush should have ordered a "slight lengthening of the war" to destroy more Iraqi military in the south, where the Shiites face such danger.

The story in the former Yugoslavia is also one of appeasement. The CIA warned Bush in 1990 that the nation would split apart. Yet Bush adhered to the status quo, never altering policy to fit the reality of the impending breakup--the same policy Bush pursued in the former Soviet Union until the failed coup forced a change. The U.S. was dangerously silent on Yugoslavia, allowing the Serbs and the communist government to go ahead with plans to keep the country together--even if it meant bloodshed.

And when the blood began flowing, the Bush administration threw out the only bargaining chip the U.S. had by announcing that military force would not be used to fight the Serbs. By then, no amount of economic or diplomatic pressure could work since there was nothing to back it.

After the conflict began, Bush still did nothing--even after the exposure of the horrifying "ethnic cleansing" taking place in Serbian concentration camps. No limited air strike. No weapons interdiction along the borders. No help for the Bosnians beyond food and medical supplies. Bush's failure is astounding.

All of these catastrophes make Bush's bragging about his foreign policy experience laughable. He has claimed credit for bringing the Cold War to a successful end, ignoring that it was Ronald Reagan who presided over (and, with all his militarism, almost overturned) the end of the bipartisan effort to defeat communism. And Bush not only dismisses the contributions of Democrats (the ones who began containment), he shamelessly ignores the people of Eastern Europe, whose defiance of despotism was an important ingredient in communism's fall.

It seems clear now that Bush simply isn't prepared to wage the new kind of foreign policy that he himself called the New World Order. His ideas about foreign affairs have been immutably shaped by Cold War assumptions--assumptions that Bush thinks demanded practicality, not ideology. In an age without a clear foreign policy conflict--without one, overriding international divide--ideology is indispensible.

In Bill Clinton, voters have a clear commitment to democratic ideals. Clinton has blasted Bush on China and Haiti, and has indicated his desire to predicate foreign policy less on balance-of-power considerations and more on opposing tyranny. His recommendations on Bosnia--to begin limited air strikes and help the Bosnians with weapons--even embarrassed the Bush administration into taking a firmer line on the conflict. With Clinton, it seems clear that American foreign policy will work more toward democracy and human rights.

Most important, Clinton understands that the best foreign policy begins by guaranteeing economic security at home. As he said in Los Angeles recently, "An anemic, debt-laden economy undermines our diplomacy, makes it harder for us to secure favorable trade agreements and compromises our ability to finance essential military actions."

Clinton says he will make the necessary, responsible cuts in the defense budget that Bush will not. He says he will deemphasize the Star Wars program and downsize the U.S. presence in Europe appropriately. And he and running mate Al Gore have a sensible and forward-looking plan to convert defense industries to productive elements of the civilian economy.

Will Clinton make good on these promises? We can never be sure. But for now, his promises are better than Bush's record. And better than Ross Perot's one-liners.

George Bush will likely lose the election on November 3 for reasons that have nothing to do with foreign policy. But it's in this area where some of Bush's worst failures become apparent. In the end, he should probably be glad voters aren't focusing too much on foreign affairs.