Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I want to thank you for the invitation to appear before you today to testify on the status of American foreign policy. I have a prepared statement which I will submit for the record, and which I will summarize briefly before answering any questions you may have.

It seems to me almost beyond dispute that our foreign policy has gone badly adrift during the Clinton Administration. Despite some apparent (but perhaps only temporary) Administration successes, such as Northern Ireland, many Americans and other observers around the world sense aimlessness and disarray that all find profoundly disturbing. In region after region and on issue after issue, the Administration seems unable to provide a coherent analysis of America’s international objectives or a workable roadmap to achieving them.

In this testimony, I would like first to describe the general reasons for the Administration’s policy vacuum and provide specific examples of its failures. Then, briefly, I would like to sketch out an alternative formulation for foreign policy in the post-Cold War period that could remedy the deficiencies in the Clinton approach.

I. Why Our Foreign Policy Has Gone Adrift

There are several reasons for the Administration’s massive, continuing foreign-policy inadequacies. As the specific examples examined below will demonstrate, the Clinton Administration suffers from:

• chronic indecisiveness;
• the pursuit of ideological abstractions over concrete American interests;
• excessive deference to adversaries and non-allied strong powers; and
• the importance of domestic politics uber alles.

Any one of these characteristics would gravely impair the implementation of a vigorous, forward-leaning foreign policy. Occurring simultaneously as they do, they virtually guarantee that U.S. interests will not be successfully and consistently pursued. Let us consider the Administration’s record in its particulars.

Russia. Although we are not yet at the point of a debate on "who lost Russia?", we are perilously close. Democratic and capitalist reforms have not been fully implemented despite their initial promise in the early 1990s, and today even those that were enacted appear threatened. The rise to power of Yevgeny Primakov spells almost nothing but bad news for the United States, both in terms of domestic Russian policy, and its international implications for the United States.

How far we have come can be symbolized by two photographs. One, in August, 1990, just days after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, shows Secretary of State James A. Baker at a joint press conference in Moscow with his Soviet counterpart Eduard Shevardnadze, announcing their intentions to deal jointly with the Iraqi aggression. In this first post-Cold War crisis, both of the former adversaries were acutely aware of the precedents they were setting for working together, and the foundation they were potentially creating for collaborative efforts in the future. The other picture is of another joint press conference, this one of Secretary Madeleine Albright and Russian Foreign Minister Primakov in Madrid in January, 1998, also on Iraq. There, the two ministers were explaining their almost-totally divergent responses to Saddam Hussein’s refusal to allow UN weapons inspectors to proceed with their legitimate efforts to prevent Iraq from acquiring or developing deliverable weapons of mass destruction.

Why has our Russia policy turned out so badly? There are many reasons for Russia’s current straits, and certainly not all of them can be ascribed to incompetent American policy. Surely, however, one of the most significant reasons has been the Administration’s excessive deference to Russia: deference in the economic field by not insisting strongly enough on more rigorous economic reforms; deference politically by allowing Soviet-style "old thinking" like Minister Primakov’s Middle Eastern clientitis from reasserting itself; and deference militarily by not doing more to prevent the leakage of weapons of mass destruction and other critical technology to rogue states and to purchasers and other recipients we can now only guess at.

Wishing Russia well is not a policy. Respect and even admiration for Russian literature, music and culture is not a policy. And, most importantly, the inability or unwillingness to assert legitimate U.S. interests--to persuade and if necessary to pressure Russia into the same broad policy outlines as other Western states--is neither a policy nor an acceptable record for an American President. This is why the Clinton Administration has so far failed in Russia.

China. Here, the Administration’s policy is not just wrong, but hypocritical. During the 1992 campaign, candidate Clinton criticized President Bush for downplaying Chinese human rights violations, from the massacre at Tiananmen Square forward, and for seeming to favor mere American business interests instead. Once elected, however, President Clinton rushed to adopt Bush Administration’s policies to become more attractive politically to American business interests, all the while subtly shifting away not just from candidate Clinton’s rhetoric but from some of the tough economic positions taken by his predecessor. Thus, while taking the correct position on MFN for China, the Clinton Administration has not bargained nearly hard enough on the PRC’s accession to the WTO. Americans, Chinese and other foreigners alike have wondered what the Administration’s position actually was on any given day.

Whenever the human rights theme has emerged again, as on the President’s recent extended visit to China, it has been with the domestic American political audience in mind. Thus, White House spokespeople argued that the President’s statements about human rights at his live news conference in Beijing were courageous and nearly heroic. In China, however, the actual impact of the remarks was considerably different, broadcast as they were on state-run television, on a Saturday morning, unannounced, and with dubious (at best) translations into Chinese of what President Clinton actually said. (Subsequent broadcasts in China found all of the President’s human rights remarks on the cutting-room floor.) Is this an example of an Administration success on human rights? Not in China.

Far worse, however, have been the Administration’s flaccid efforts to prevent extensive Chinese programs to proliferate the technology for weapons of mass destruction and missile-delivery systems. Repeated press reports have exposed Chinese sales and other transfers of WMD know-how and materials to the likes of Pakistan, Iran, Libya, North Korea and other dubious destinations. Despite the direct threat posed to close American allies and the risks of destabilizing critical regions like the Middle East by these Chinese actions, there is little or no visible American effort to curtail their activity. Equally disturbing are reports, now under investigation in this House, of unlawful or unsanctioned technology transfers from the United States itself to China.

It is no exaggeration to say that the recent nuclear tests by India and Pakistan are directly traceable to the inadequate American policy on China. It does not excuse India’s testing to say that its government could have interpreted Clinton Administration policy toward Beijing as placing India’s legitimate security interests at risk. Pakistan’s nuclear tests, unquestionably a direct response to India’s actions, could have been only a dream without extensive, longstanding Chinese assistance. The Administration’s after-the-fact efforts to bring India and Pakistan into the nuclear non-proliferation regime (itself a highly inadequate structure) cannot excuse its initial and critical failure to restrain China.

More broadly, President Clinton has ignored and in a sense humiliated America’s Pacific allies like Japan, the Republic of Korea and Taiwan, and not just by flying over them on his recent China visit. These and other Asian countries can provide a counterbalance to Chinese power if it asserts itself broadly in the region. Japan’s role as the keystone in our Asia policy, and the way the Administration is, by inattention, displacing it, alone are worth extensive congressional attention. And yet long-time political, military and economic allies like Korea and Japan, even in the midst of their own grave financial difficulties, find themselves taking a back seat to China. This is a paradigmatic example of missing real American interests.

In fact, leaders throughout Asia fully understood the implications of President Clinton’s public acceptance of Beijing’s "Three Noes" on Taiwan. Not only did the President take a completely unnecessary slap at Taipei, but he unambiguously demonstrated his Administration’s unwise propensity to defer to large powers in the hopes of promoting regional stability. Deferring to China, however, almost surely will not slake their ambitions to regain Taiwan, hold on to Tibet, keep in power the North Korean buffer regime, and control internal political dissent. Our regional allies and friends understand this quite well, even if the Administration does not.

North Korea. The Administration’s central accomplishment, the 1994 Agreed Framework, is not only a badly flawed arrangement, but it is collapsing because of North Korea’s daily evasions and violations. The entire basis of the Agreed Framework is the successful intimidation of the United States by the DPRK, and the fear that failing to reach agreement would lead to the DPRK’s use of force against the ROK or other countries in the region. Starting from this incorrect assumption, the Administration effectively acquiesced in blackmail. Essentially the DPRK agreed not to pursue a nuclear weapons program if the United States, Japan and the Republic of Korea would prop up the Communist regime by supplying its short and longer-term energy needs.

We should start with the obvious: the United States should not negotiate on the basis of threats, and it should not grant concessions in the hopes that the "other side" will refrain from military activity that can only be regarded as hostile. Indded, former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger has flatly characterized the Administration’s approach as "reckless appeasement." North Korea’s efforts to obtain (or enlarge) a nuclear weapons capability should have been seen as flatly unacceptable, and the Administration should have been exploring steps to reverse or neutralize the North’s efforts. Far from being provocative, there is strong reason to believe that South Korea--the country most at risk from North Korean aggression--would have supported such efforts.

If we needed any further confirmation of the North Korean assessment of the Administration’s unwillingness or inability to hold them to their obligations, consider just the events of recent weeks. Press reports indicate that there is substantial evidence that the DPRK’s nuclear weapons program is continuing, and the North Koreans prove they have the capability of striking Tokyo by launching a Taepo Dong missile that lands east of Japan. In response, the Clinton Administration chose not to stand up to North Korea, but to circumvent the U.S. Congress, by reprogramming funds to purchase fuel oil to supply the North. No critic could be more telling in exposing the weaknesses of this policy than the Administration’s own actions.

Iraq. I have written extensively on Iraq in the year since Saddam Hussein launched his most successful efforts to achieve his twin policy objectives after Iraq’s disastrous defeat in the Persian Gulf War:

• breaking free from the Security Council economic sanctions; and
• destroying the UN’s efforts to prevent him from reacquiring a deliverable capability in WMD.

These objectives have to be understood together, because the role of the economic sanctions is a necessary corollary to the work of the UN Special Commission on WMD ("UNSCOM"), helping to ensure that Iraq does not amass sufficient financial resources to acquire a renewed conventional weapons capability. Iraq has every reason to believe that it is likely to prevail, among other reasons, because the Administration’s repeated threats to use significant force have time and time again come to nothing. (I attach to this testimony several articles published during the last year, rather than repeat it all here.)

In summary, the Administration has: (1) presided over the disintegration of the international coalition forged in the immediate aftermath of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, losing the bulk of both our European and Arab allies; (2) frustrated, restrained and undercut UNSCOM in a way that leaves its credibility shattered; and (3) lost any real opportunity to retain effective economic sanctions against Iraq.

Libya. The Administration recently shifted policy in a dramatic way with respect to Pan Am 103, agreeing with a long-standing Libyan demand that trial of the Libyans accused of destroying the plane be held outside of Scotland or the United States. The reasons why the Libyans wanted the trial elsewhere were clear, but the reasons the Clinton Administration bowed to their demand is completely unclear. One major reason appears to be persuasion by the United Kingdom to back off the joint position the two governments have shared for most of this decade. Some believe that Prime Minister Blair’s government shifted because it was responding to pressures from British businesses seeking contracts from Libya, while others argue that London was bowing to pressure from other EU members which wanted the UK policy brought into line with the prevailing--and very soft--EU position.

Whatever the reason for the UK shift, however, the Administration should have held its ground. Its failure to do has three very serious consequences. First, by agreeing to trial before Scottish judges under Scottish law, President Clinton has effectively eliminated then possibility that the Libyan defendants, if found guilty, could have received the death penalty. Perhaps the Administration does not prize the death penalty highly, but I believe that it is the appropriate penalty for terrorist murderers. In any event, Secretary Albright gave the death penalty away and got nothing in return. Second, at nearly the same time that the Administration was launching cruise missile strikes in retaliation for the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, it was weakening its position on the Pan Am 103. The signal this sends to terrorists worldwide is unmistakable: if you hold out long enough, the U.S. will inevitably begin to back down. Third is the related point about the broader loss of American credibility. The Libyans understood this result almost immediately. They have already begun demanding new concessions from the United States. Moreover, not only is the inconsistent American position unlikely to gain support for increased sanctions against Libya if the defendants are not handed over, America’s lack of willpower almost certainly means that even the existing, limited sanctions regime is in jeopardy.

Middle East Peace Process. As we approach the Israeli-Palestinian summit meeting here, conveniently scheduled for the end of October, all of us can certainly hope that a major breakthrough is possible. On the other hand, given the Administration’s record to date, whether we face a sustainable breakthrough in a few weeks or just another photo opportunity is open to speculation. Even if a major agreement is achieved, press reports indicate that the Administration appears to contemplate an ongoing American (and perhaps CIA) involvement in ensuring security between Palestinians and Israelis that many Americans find unacceptable. Nonetheless, with American elections only a few weeks away from the Summit, the domestic political pressures on President Clinton to strike almost any agreement will be intense, even if its long-term prospects are uncertain and unsound.

More broadly, the Administration in recent years has blamed the lack of progress in the peace process largely on the Israelis. The Netanyahu government is said to be intransigent, a prisoner of its domestic politics (a truly ironic assertion coming from the Clinton Administration), and unacceptably interfering in American politics through its congressional relations program (another remarkable complaint). On the other side, the Administration has not pressed the Palestinians to adhere to their commitments and obligations with nearly the force applied to the Israelis. Merely as one example, when can we expect the Palestinian Covenant to be rewritten, as Yassir Arafat has repeatedly promised. Greatly troubling over the long term, the Administration has said publicly next to nothing about human rights abuses, the lack of democratic structures and allegations of widespread corruption in Palestinian-controlled territories.

Even more incredibly, the Administration has blamed Israel for the collapse at least of the Arab portion of the anti-Iraq coalition in the Persian Gulf, discussed briefly above. This linkage of the Middle Eats peace process and the ongoing Persian Gulf standoff was one of Saddam Hussein’s most sought-after goals, both before and after the Gulf War. He correctly saw that if he could convince our allies that Iraq was not being treated in an even-handed fashion compared to Israel, he could weaken the coalition arrayed against him. Saddam did not succeed in 1990-1991, and the coalition held. Now, incredibly, he appears not only to have convinced the allies that Israel is unfairly preferred, but he has even convinced the American Administration.

Former Yugoslavia. As we prepare for the possibility of NATO bombing raids in and around Kosovo, and the possible deployment of American forces there, we risk losing sight of the Dayton Accords, and their consequences, both in Bosnia directly and perhaps soon in Kosovo as well. I testified before this Committee three years ago, shortly after the Dayton agreement was signed, that the most likely outcome was the partition of Bosnia. Sadly, the recent Bosnian election provides yet a further indication that my unhappy prediction is still on track. Although hostilities in Bosnia have ceased, virtually none of the civil side of the Dayton package has been put in place. Refugees, in the main, are not returning to their pre-war residences, the three Bosnian communities are not recreating civil society there, and the institutions of a central government are essentially as inadequate as they were at the time of my earlier testimony.

The Administration’s much-touted war crimes policy runs directly contrary to its political concern to minimize American casualties (a concern which obviously also has its own independent legitimacy), with the result that, unfortunately, all perceive American rhetoric to be visibly outrunning our reach. Instead of working aggressively, however, to improve and repair the Bosnia war crimes process, the Administration devoted substantial time and attention to the chimera of a permanent international criminal court. The result, embodied in the Statute of Rome, has no chance whatever of being signed by the Administration, and certainly even less of being approved by the Senate. This diplomatic diversion is an excellent example of the Administration’s fascination with abstract ideology over concrete interests.

At the same time, there is no evidence whatever that the Administration has any expectation of a pullout of American or other foreign troops: not now; not in the foreseeable future; not ever. And yet, as I stressed earlier, it is the de facto partition of Bosnia along the line of separatio n policed by the SFOR troops that is becoming frozen in place. Partition can be a comfortable thing, as the UN’s experience in Cyprus demonstrates, but at least according to its public pronouncements this was never the Administration’s intent. Enforcing the military aspects of Dayton thus almost certainly guarantees frustrating it in other respects. Moreover, there should be no mistake that Dayton itself would collapse if the Serbs conclude in Kosovo that dealing with the West is a hopeless proposition for them.

But even the Serbs could understandably be forgiven if they could not follow the twists and turns of President Clinton’s Balkans policy. After months of tough-sounding speeches about not letting Kosovo go the way of Bosnia, the Administration and NATO are now poised to take military action of some sort. Bombing Serb targets (or, finally, a credible threat to do so) may produce a reduction in Serbia’s use of force against the Kosovar Albanians, but it is long past the point where it will produce a fundamental political change on the ground. Moreover, the Administration is arguing that bombing such targets will encourage the warring parties to reach an agreement for a substantially more autonomous Kosovo, but that it will not encourage the hope of independence for Kosovo. I suppose the planes will drop "autonomy bombs" rather than "independence bombs" to promote this result.

Let me summarize again why the Clinton Administration’s foreign policy has gone adrift, as the foregoing specific examples demonstrate.

• First, the Administration has unending difficulty in deciding what America’s truly important interests are, and concentrating on them, rather than continually concentrating on side issues and abstract ideological precepts. Whether in "assertive multilateralism" or "nation building," two early Administration themes now long abandoned (at least in public statements), or still today in "human rights," the Administration is easily distracted from the unglamorous pursuit of basic interests.
• Second, when confronted with a determined adversary, the President’s typical reaction is to defer to the demander, to accommodate its desires in order to restore calm and stability. Not for this Administration is the business of alliance management and balance-of-power politics, vesting its hopes instead in the goodwill of the states deferred to. Indeed, the pattern of deference leads one to wonder whether at the tactical level the Administration ever thinks more than one move ahead.
• Third, and most avoidably, we have a President who, even before his current difficulties, participated in foreign policy only episodically and irregularly. A six-year-long pattern is unlikely to change in the last two years of an Administration, especially so now. Moreover, when the President has become involved, whether in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Ireland, or almost anywhere else, it has been because of a perceived domestic political impact. Only the naïve believe that politics plays no role in foreign policy. What is unprecedented in this Administration is that almost nothing else plays a role.

This brief summary obviously does not encompass every aspect of the Administration’s foreign policy, including some aspects more successful than those enumerated here. I believe it beyond dispute, however, that the general pattern is clear.

II. A Framework for a New American Foreign Policy

While it is certainly not possible to describe here all of the analysis necessary for a completely new American foreign policy, we can at least sketch out the framework.

The place to start is to understand the present international context. In the post-Cold War period, the principal threat that we faced for so long, the Soviet Union, is gone. The prospect that one major threat will return, sooner or later, is inherently uncertain, and we obviously cannot rule it out. As Christopher Patten says in concluding his recent book East and West, "we know from all history that the barbarians always, always return." Until they do, however, the threats faced by the United States will be individually smaller, more diffuse and less coherently understandable. In short, the world is a remarkably different place from that known by the Baby Boomers as they were maturing, and which they now must manage.

Whether or not the present time is an interregnum between one definable global struggle and another, or whether it is a new and essentially permanent international reality, the United States must, sooner rather than later, begin to restate its national interests. This process is not the same as finding a new "vision" to infuse our foreign policy, nor is it the same as finding a new name to describe it. We should eschew the mistake made by the early Clinton Administration as it tried to define a new doctrine called "enlargement" to replace the doctrine of "containment," when the President had little more than a word and an abstract idea to give it "content."

Rather than resorting to abstractions and slogans, we should straightforwardly assert our interests to be: the protection of American people and territory, the defense of a free and open order for international trade and commerce, and the advancement of our interests with like-minded friends and allies. These broad principles can be translated into specific objectives that are neither abstract nor ideological, and which highlight the lack of focus in the Clinton Administration’s approach, as demonstrated in the individual examples discussed above. The specific objectives are three.

American Political Leadership. Most importantly, the United States needs a President who is engaged in national security policy, and whose decisions on difficult foreign policy issues, especially those involving military force, are respected. As former President Ford said in 1996, "we need a Commander-in-Chief who has earned his salute." We need a President with "strength of character, trustworthiness, honesty, reliability, discretion and sound judgment," in the words of Executive Order 12,968 (August, 1995)(regarding security clearance requirements). These are important traits in any politician, but especially so in a President.

But American political leadership is obviously far more important than any one individual, even the President. We need to continue to assert our interests through existing alliances such as NATO, numerous bilateral agreements, and through the ad hoc, informal coalitions we can create confronted with unacceptable behavior, such as Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Leadership also requires, most importantly understanding first what our own interests are, as described above, and then persuading others to follow our lead.

Nonetheless, political leadership on behalf of U.S. interests also implies the willingness to act unilaterally (or essentially unilaterally) when appropriate. Acting alone may not always be the most attractive option, and it should not necessarily be the instinctive first choice for an American President. It would, however, be a leadership failure of the most destructive sort to lead the United States into a future where our ability or our willingness to act unilaterally was constrained. We can see already in such endeavors as the International Criminal Court, the Landmines Convention, and a range of proposed arms control treaties the outlines of purported legal requirements that inhibit American freedom of action. We can see it also at the rhetorical level, in an Administration that seeks to justify the use of force most often by relying first on UN Security Council authorization, whether in former Yugoslavia, Iraq or elsewhere.

I want to be very precise about the picture I am painting, because I am by no means asserting that we are already at a dangerous point of losing our unilateral freedom to act. Instead, it is important to understand the implications of some policies, now only nascent, but which could have far more profound consequences as the years go by. The antidote to this problem is indeed American political leadership, which by its force and willpower can make it clear over time that our capacity to act unilaterally in our national interests will not be sacrificed to abstract ideas of international comity.

American Military Strength. Military strength is inextricably linked to political leadership, and here too we feel especially exposed in the current environment. Our military budgets and capabilities have been reduced across the board in search of what was once called "the peace dividend," and we now find ourselves unable to project the same level of military presence that we could at the beginning of this decade. Although military planners appropriately debate whether our budget priorities should be greater readiness, increased procurement, more research and development, or higher salaries and better personnel benefits, the fact is that we are deficient in every one of these areas.

Even on the most basic of levels, military protection for our people and territories, we seem unable to undertake the necessary levels to protect against the threats caus ed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. At least at present, the WMD threat does not come from massive ballistic missile strikes, but from the threat posed by rogue states or terrorists who mass possess only a handful of deliverable weapons. What once might have been a reasonable budgetary argument that a fully protective missile defense system was costly beyond imagination simply no longer applies. Just taking North Korea as a case in point, its ability to threaten countries like Japan, or even South Korea, would be greatly reduced by the swift development of missile defenses. Moreover, we should be doing more than just missile defense as well, and thinking more seriously about counter-proliferation efforts against outlaw nations developing WMD capabilities. Not all chemical or biological (or even nuclear) weapons need to be delivered by missiles, and yet they are just as deadly. From whatever source, however, weapons of mass destruction and their threats to American interests should be a much greater concern for our defense planners.

American Economic Vigor. Although this testimony has not concentrated on economic policy to the extent it should have, we cannot underestimate the importance of economic strength, without which neither political leadership nor military strength would be possible over the long term. Not only does the encouragement of economic vigor require sound domestic economic policies like reduced government regulation, lower taxes and reduced entitlement and transfer programs, but sound international policies as well.

Thus, it is in fact time to review the roles and performances of the IMF and the World Bank as distinguished former Secretaries of the Treasury like William Simon and George Shultz have suggested. We should also be concerned with keeping international trade open through such possibilities as a North Atlantic Free Trade Area, and by resisting the currently popular notion of international capital controls. These are all matters that deserve far more extensive treatment than we can afford here, but they are vital to protecting America from political and military threats in the future.

Despite our current difficulties, Mr. Chairman, the prospects for America remain strong if we can maintain our resolve and our resources. We should not be discouraged by the considerable problems that exist, or retire from them. Instead, even now, we should be thinking about repairing and strengthening our political, military and economic foundations to be ready when new leadership becomes possible.

John R. Bolton is senior vice president at AEI.