I’ve been thinking lately about the alleged vast difference between Bill Clinton’s foreign policy and George Bush’s. To listen to some Europeans, you’d think it were night and day. But on the key issues at stake now, the principles of U.S. foreign policy are pretty much indistinguishable between Clinton and Bush. On Iraq, Clinton’s stated objective, after the failure of sanctions, was regime change. The other day, I quoted the former president who, in his language at least, was no less hawkish than Bush:
“What if [Saddam] fails to comply and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction? … Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you he’ll use the arsenal.”
MORE MULTILATERALIST: The difference, of course, is 9/11 and the simple fact that Bush has, shall we say, a different relationship with the follow-through than his immediate predecessor. Even in practice, on, say, the unilateral question, there’s the Kosovo precedent, which shows that Clinton was prepared not merely to defy certain powers, i.e. Russia, to do what he wanted; but he was also prepared to bypass the U.N. altogether if necessary. In this narrow sense, Bush is actually more multilateralist than Clinton. He’s heading into an uncertain Security Council vote which he need not have pursued. Even on an issue like the Kyoto accord, the differences are exaggerated. No one seems to point out that ratification of Kyoto was killed not by Bush but by the Senate under Clinton which voted it down 95 – 0. Again, the difference with Bush is that he connected this action with words. Clinton was a master at saying what others wanted to hear. What I’m getting at is that the distinctions are by no means as great as some would have it; that some of our problems today are not a function of Bush but of world events; and that Clinton’s facility with schmooze and inaction didn’t solve the problems of a unipolar world; it merely delayed them a while. That period of glorious avoidance is now over – for good and ill. But very similar policies endure.
A SHIFT IN BRITAIN?: The latest MORI poll shows some small good news for Blair. His eloquent defense of war against Saddam has helped win some people over. A huge 75 percent would back a war if the U.N. approves and some kind of “smoking gun” is found by inspectors. But a hefty majority would still oppose without those conditions. I have to say that’s almost meaningless. The inspectors aren’t there to find any smoking guns. And the U.N., at best, will not veto. But what the poll says to me is that once a war starts, the Brits will back the troops; and when WMDs are discovered, retroactive support will soar. My gut tells me that Blair’s gamble could pay off hugely. As long as we win well and quickly, that applies to Bush as well.
The Dish 