March 18, 2003
FROM THE AIRWAVES
The Complexities of US Foreign Policy
From the Airwaves is a transcript
of “The GW Washington Forum,” the weekly public affairs radio
program produced by GW, hosted by Richard Sheehe, and broadcast on WWRC-AM
1260 in Washington. This conversation with Robert Hunter, former ambassador
to NATO in the 1990s and Gordon Adams, professor of the practice of
international affairs, comes from a recent program.
Richard Sheehe: Mr. Hunter, you are a former
US ambassador to NATO. Are you surprised at the lack of involvement
by NATO?
Robert Hunter: We haven’t asked NATO,
per se, to be involved. A part of that is to want to be able to control
the pace, tempo, and character of a war. We did not involve NATO, per
se, in Afghanistan even though for the first time the alliance invoked,
the all-for-one, one-for-all provision of the North Atlantic treaty,
even though a large number of NATO allies played some kind of part in
that conflict.
RS: A lot of people are saying the French
are using this crisis as a way to mold their role in the decades to
come as the “un-America,” the distinction from the American
point of view.
Gordon Adams: Ideally, one could say all
countries should be together on an exercise of this kind, but every
country is defining its role through this crisis. The declaration of
the US national security strategy last fall very clearly laid out counterterrorism
and nonproliferation as central objectives of American national security
policy. It did not emphasize the role of alliances and talked about
a preemptive strategy in dealing with these issues when the United States
government felt like it was threatened by terrorists. This crisis is
a playing out of that strategy. For the French, I have no doubt this
is an attempt to carve out an independent role in the world. They’d
like to see the European Union play this role. The big difference between
this and 15-20 years ago is that there is not a Soviet Union that tends
to pull these nations together to focus on a common objective.
RH: An alliance is composed of sovereign
states, each of which has its own interests. With regard to France,
I think we are confusing the messenger with the message. The French
don’t want the United States to leave Europe. They don’t want
the United States to be damaged. They don’t want us to get to a
point where we cannot help deal with security challenges to their country
and others. Now, they are trying to carve out a little bit of space
for themselves, but also send us a message.
GA: The critical long-term issue here is
that there’s almost no issue in the international arena, whether
it’s North Korea, AIDS, terrorism, nonproliferation, or globalization
that can be dealt with by the United States alone. One of the long-term
implications of the policy being pursued and the way it’s being
pursued is whether or not it strengthens or weakens the multilateral
institutions that involve a number of nations trying to address those
problems. The risk in a go-it-alone strategy is that you compromise
those alliances.
RS: Once the bombs begin falling and we
see a war going on, how will that change the diplomacy? Will people
sort of fall in line or will we see these various viewpoints continue?
RH: Nobody in the alliance is going to
want the United States to fail. Nobody in the alliance likes Saddam
Hussein. They’d like to see him gone. The debate has not been about
whether he’s a good guy or a bad guy, it’s how do you bring
about the changes. With regard to the future of the alliance, there’s
a thing that’s not clear — whether the approach the administration
has taken toward the Allies is tactical or strategic. If it’s tactical,
we have to press ahead so Saddam Hussein doesn’t believe he can
play France, Germany, Belgium off against the United States. If it’s
not a strategic policy to be angry at Allies, then the administration
will need to turn on a dime. There’s nothing serious we can do
to shape the world, other than just employing military force, that we
can do alone. We can’t reconstruct Iraq. We can’t build democracy.
We can’t get peace between Israel and its neighbors. We can’t
deal with North Korea. If they haven’t learned the lesson that
you can only do so much with military power, then I think we’re
going to be in for a long, dark night of deteriorating relations and
then one day America waking up and saying how did we get so isolated,
how come no one’s following us anymore.
RS: Thomas Friedman from The New York
Times argued recently that if the Bush Administration from day one
had it on its agenda to unseat Saddam Hussein, then they probably shouldn’t
have alienated Europe in advance by balking at the Kyoto Treaty and
other international agreements. How premeditated do you think this approach
is by the Bush Administration?
RH: I think a new team comes in really
oblivious of what they have to do in the world. It’s true of every
party. New people come in and they haven’t had to read the president’s
daily briefing to know what the world is really like as opposed to what
they said on the campaign trail. Suddenly, Sept. 11, 2001, came along
nine months in where they had a bunch of ideologues in various positions
who didn’t like this treaty or that one. But instead of saying
let’s grab hold of them, let’s make them right and move forward,
too many people who spoke for the administration kept saying multilateralism
is terrible, we can do this alone. They were kind of showing off. The
grownups in the administration didn’t bring them under control.
That created a bad atmosphere within the alliance because it’s
like crying wolf. The wolf is at the door, Saddam Hussein is bad. But,
everybody says you’re sounding just like you were when you were
trashing Kyoto and the international criminal court. Why should we believe
you now? The administration hasn’t come around and said that was
yesterday, the people who said those things have been reassigned to
North Dakota and the grownups are back in charge. Let’s get on
with the alliance and do things right.
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
