LONDON–Joschka Fischer, the Green foreign minister of Germany, visited Washington this week for talks with the U.S. government. It raises the interesting question of how the world might look if President Bill Clinton could be persuaded to adopt a foreign policy that would satisfy the rank and file members of Germany’s Green Party.
The cynics and hard realpoliticians would say, we already have pretty well got that with Clinton. What they want is a policy, talking of Germany, more like the Kaiser and his court. Using that extra margin of power the defeat and vanquishing of the enemy has brought to impose America’s will far and wide–establishing a “benevolent global hegemony” as argue William Kristol and Robert Kagan, editors of the conservative Weekly Standard.
But Clinton’s foreign policy has not been what these gentlemen infer, a “green” policy of military disengagement. It has been a mishmash of hot and cold. And it has been, at its worst, hard line enough to do the world some serious damage.
Clinton has expanded NATO right up to Russia’s doorstep and failed it financially in the critical early liberal years of the Yeltsin democracy. Nuclear disarmament, which needed a powerful unilateral ingredient by the victor power, has been relegated to the back burner. The land of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, Pasternak and Sakharov, has been judged not to be an integral member of western society–a viewpoint which is rapidly becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Clinton undermined the UN at a critical juncture, more effectively than Senator Jesse Helms has since. When 18 U.S. Rangers were killed in Somalia in a military attack that went dramatically wrong, Clinton unashamedly used the UN as a scapegoat, although he well knew that the soldiers were fighting under the direct authority of Special Operations Command in Florida.
Clinton’s policy towards Iraq has been all over the place. One month threatening military punishment, the next lobbying for the UN inspectors to cool their ardour. With China he has confused detente, after his early years of rather fruitless confrontation, with abrogating a consistent line on the fundamental importance of human rights.
What then would a “greener” policy be? First and foremost, it would be sober in analysing the content of the supposed threats against modern day America.
There’s no need, since the demise of the Soviet Union, to balance some opposing power. But what about China? China is probably going to be Asia’s Brazil–big on promise, but a nest of political and economic problems that will clip its wings just as democratic, relatively stable, India soars. Despite its achievements so far China, even on the best scenario, cannot ever hope to match America militarily. Besides, China has no ambition to rule the world, only perhaps Taiwan. That can be handled in a civilized manner as long as the independence urge is reined in as it is right now.
Neither does America need to build up its reach to deal with the new nuclear powers, India and Pakistan. A nuclear war between them, dreadful though it would be, doesn’t call for America to enter the quarrel.
What about the “rogues”–Libya, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Iraq? All are diplomatically isolated. All are basket economies. All are bordered by states with great military potential. These states, mistaken and misgoverned though they are, are neither crazy nor suicidal. Rightly or wrongly, they feel cornered and paranoid about American power. More productive for the U.S. with all of them, would be to try and engage them to draw them into reasonable behavior–as the U.S. has with North Korea, though not without continuous attempts from Congress to sabotage it.
But what about Saddam Hussein in particular, who has now thrown the UN inspectors out? Saddam Hussein is not confrontational because he is strong, as he was eight years ago. He is being difficult and provocative because he is weak. His armed forces are a pale shadow of what they were. He cannot think of invading Kuwait, much less Saudi Arabia. His nuclear bomb program is effectively dismantled (and the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency have not yet been thrown out). His chemical and biological weapons programs are hard to monitor even with the most intrusive inspections but the evidence suggests they remain relatively primitive, particularly in terms of delivery. Unity in the Security Council in fact is America’s best countervailing weapon–and waiting Saddam out. Yes, Iraq could possibly within a decade develop recombinant DNA and eventually manufacture a deliverable superbiological weapon. But 10 years gives the diplomats–and the subversives–a lot of time. Meanwhile, some carrot to go with the stick of sanctions might be useful. America, unfortunately, has just repeated its old mantra–even a clean sheet on weapons of mass destruction would not be enough to lift sanctions.
With the current elections out of the way Clinton is as free a president as he is ever going to be, pace the remnants of the Lewinsky business. Perhaps it is the time for the greening of American foreign policy?
