“We will not be satisfied by anything other than the end of the (Russia-Iran) nuclear program.”
–Secretary of State Warren Christopher
And what, pray tell, is the penalty for denying satisfaction to this American secretary of state?
Christopher and his boss have said a dozen times how important it is to the United States that Russia cancel its deal to sell nuclear technology to Iran. This is an issue on which the president has promised “to be quite aggressive.” Evidently, he considers pleading and cajoling forms of aggression. After weeks of both–and after rewarding the Russians by celebrating V-E Day in Moscow–Clinton returns home empty-handed. The Russians offered him a couple of laughable fig leaves, but never budged on the nuclear reactor deal.
It is bad enough to have no clout in foreign policy. Why make a point of advertising it?
The Japanese, as is their wont, have been more polite but no less determined in brushing off the United States. On Tuesday, having cut off our own trade with Iran, we asked Japan to follow suit. The timing was curious: Asking the Japanese to follow our lead at some economic sacrifice just as we are declaring a trade war on them. The response was predictable: Japan said it would study the U.S. policy taking into consideration its own “policy of securing a stable supply of petroleum.” Translation: Fat chance.
What did we expect? It is bad enough to have an ineffectual foreign policy. It is worse to highlight that ineffectiveness by inviting repeated public rebuff. Our Iranian diplomacy is only the latest example. The tone was set with Christopher’s first trip to Europe in 1993 where he presented his ideas on Bosnia as if he were at some Aspen conference. He insisted on nothing and got nothing. The allies pointedly went their own way.
A year later he traveled to China waving a human rights agenda. He was treated scandalously. Dissidents were arrested while he was in Beijing, just to rub it in. Two months later, Clinton lifted the threat of sanctions against China. The point was made for all to see: There is no penalty for stiffing this administration.
Yet another demonstration of administration weakness was offered this year by North Korea. Clinton went from declaring that North Korea would not be allowed to acquire any nuclear weapons to heralding an agreement under which North Korea might begin to dismantle its facilities for building more bombs a decade from now–and is rewarded by the United States with a nine-year supply of free oil, two free $2 billion nuclear reactors (the same type, incidentally, that the Russians are selling Teheran), and the opening of trade and diplomatic relations.
Meanwhile, North Korea’s bomb-building machinery is Scotch-taped shut. It threatens weekly to remove the tape and restart the program if we do not jump through yet more diplomatic hoops. We jump.
Has there ever been a president who commanded less respect abroad, less fear, less compliance than Bill Clinton? Jimmy Carter, maybe. But, to be fair, he was leading a country in full psychological retreat from Vietnam. He was holding no cards.
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Clinton, on the other hand, leads the sole remaining superpower, fresh from victory in the Cold War, unchallenged by any Great Power for the first time in 50 years, in command of the world’s dominant military force–and finds himself unable to be taken seriously by even the most minor world actors.
Why? Partly, presidential inattention to and lack of interest in foreign affairs. Partly, Warren Christopher’s natural inclination to find consensus rather than assert interests. His repeated trips to Syria, for example, begging a terrorist state (by the State Department’s own definition) to accept the most generous territorial concessions it has ever been offered, are an embarrassment. But for a secretary of state who sees his job as splitting differences rather than knocking heads, it seems perfectly natural.
The most important source of American diplomatic weakness, however, is a president who so discounts the domestic political impact of foreign policy that he will expend no political capital–risk no popularity–on behalf of any of his solemnly declared foreign policy goals. None on Bosnia. None (at least intentionally) on Somalia. None on North Korea. None on China. None on NATO expansion. None on Russia.
The only issue on which the president has shown himself muscular is international economics: negotiating free trade agreements, opening markets, winning foreign contracts. Not since Calvin Coolidge have we had a president who so firmly believes that the business of America–at least in foreign policy–is business. Take away a narrow economic interest in foreign affairs and you have a president who would rather be golfing.