"The
2000 Election: What's At Stake" by Peter W.
Rodman
from The American Spectator, February 2000, p. 40.
Many Americans seem to have concluded that, with the Cold War over, foreign policy and national security are of no compelling concern. But there are others (including myself) who believe the present euphoric moment of relative international bliss will not last forever. Already, other major powers (Russia, China, Europe) are reacting to America’s dominance by actively building counterweights to it. Rogue states and terrorists are looking for our Achilles’ heel. A lot of folks out there, in other words, are gunning for us.
Thus the fecklessness of our present posture, if continued into the future, will do us lasting harm. Already, the world is in a more precarious state than when Mr. Clinton inherited it. This is a period when American leaders and planners ought to be thinking hard about future challenges, and preparing for them.
The cliché that the end of the Cold War has abolished the distinction between Left and Right is therefore mistaken.
The Left retains a liberal guilt about American power, which it assuages by faith in multilateral institutions, diplomatic nostrums like arms control, and "New Age" issues like environmentalism. Liberal presidents are still uncomfortable with the use of force – desperate to "legitimize" it by the imprimatur of the international community. This "legitimacy" is purchased by limiting the goals to humanitarian ones (lest they be tainted by any American strategic interest) and by limiting the means as well: Liberal presidents yearn to use military power "surgically," or in calibrated fashion – to do the minimum. That is the syndrome of the Bay of Pigs, of LBJ’s "graduated escalation" over North Vietnam, of Jimmy Carter’s abortive helicopter raid in Iran, and of Clinton’s interventions from Somalia to Iraq to Kosovo.
Republicans today tend to be more strategic-minded, less naive about our ability to abolish the factor of power from international politics, and unapologetic about American strength, American sovereignty, and American preeminence. They have a more clear-headed understanding that, once one has made the decision to use American power, the categorical moral as well as strategic importance is to prevail.
The two parties, judging by their leading candidates, are sharply differentiated along these lines. Those are high stakes.
(Peter W. Rodman is Director of National Security Programs at The Nixon Center.)
