Abstract
Voters have a real–some would say stark–choice to make between the candidates when it comes to foreign policy.
Many people look at the apparent agreement between Sen. John Kerry and President George W. Bush on Iraq policy and see, as former Alabama Gov. George Wallace used to say, not a dime's worth of difference between the two candidates. This feeling is particularly strong among those inclined to support Ralph Nader for president.
Such a view ignores many critical issues on which the two leading candidates for president differ. A Kerry national security policy would be greatly different from the one carried out over the past four years.
Indeed, it could be argued that the Bush administration has, over the last three and a half years, diverged dramatically from the broad, long-held, bipartisan consensus that the American role in the world is to work closely with allies, build coalitions where intervention is called for in the world's trouble spots, expand international trade, promote democratic values by example rather than force, and look to expand international cooperation to deal with problems that cross international borders–disease, trade, refugees, and threats to the environment.
A Kerry administration would return to that broad consensus shared by the Brent Scowcroft-Jim Baker-Lawrence Eagleburger realist wing of the Republican Party.
Iraq is a case in point. Senator Kerry voted to authorize President Bush to use force in Iraq and would not at this time withdraw U.S. forces from the country. But it is also true that Kerry has said he would have exhausted all efforts to obtain a U.N. endorsement before sending in U.S. troops and would have worked to build a genuine international coalition in support of U.S. aims. Even today, Kerry argues for attracting greater international support for stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq–steps he suggests would be very difficult for President Bush after years of alienating many traditional allies.
While Bush used summit meetings in June in a vain attempt to bridge the differences with major allies over Iraq policy and American unilateralism, Kerry promised in a May 27, 2004 speech to rebuild those alliances and to place diplomacy before the use of force. In that speech, he criticized a Bush administration that “looked to force before exhausting diplomacy. They bullied when they should have persuaded. They have gone it alone when they should have assembled a team.” He went on to say “Alliances matter, and the United States must lead them…. We can magnify our power through alliances.”
On many of the hot button arms control issues, Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would steer the country in a different direction.
Bush has launched research programs into a new generation of nuclear weapons that may lead to production of those weapons in a second term. But Kerry said in a June 1, 2004 speech: “I will stop this administration's program to develop a whole new generation of bunker-busting nuclear bombs.”
Bush opposes the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and has accelerated preparations to renew the testing of nuclear explosives. A second term could lead to the U.S. abandonment of the CTBT and a resumption of nuclear testing. Kerry supports the test ban and is expected to look for ways to win Senate consent to the treaty. He would certainly extend the moratorium on nuclear testing.
There are some areas in which the Bush administration only recently has begun to move toward the bipartisan position. For example, the administration initially sought to cut the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program before reversing course to support it. It has recently endorsed a stronger regimen to safeguard or eliminate the world's potential bomb-making material. But the administration has never made nonproliferation policy a high priority, except to use Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction as a pretext to invade that country. The senator, on the other hand, has said he will make nonproliferation programs a central focus of his administration. He pledged in his June 1 speech to “lead the world in a mission to lock up and safeguard nuclear material so terrorists can never acquire it.”
While the Bush team has promoted a program that will require 13 more years to secure potential bomb material in Russia, Kerry has promised to complete that work in four and would use his first summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to eliminate nagging obstacles to greater Russian-American nuclear cooperation.
For years, Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, and retired Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn have pressed Bush to appoint a high-level official to coordinate the multiple anti-proliferation programs scattered among many agencies. Kerry has listened and plans to appoint a national coordinator for nuclear terrorism and counterproliferation.
The Bush administration has careened between Pentagon and State Department positions in search of ways to cope with the dangerous North Korean nuclear weapons program. Until recently, it put forward a hardline position guaranteed to avoid progress and has refused to talk directly with the communist regime. Kerry has criticized the administration's fixation on Iraq rather than the more serious North Korean situation and has stated his willingness to talk directly with the North's leaders.
The current team has also made clear its disdain for international treaties. It abandoned the Global Warming Convention, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the International Criminal Court, and the Biological Weapons Convention Protocol. One of its proudest achievements was producing the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT, or “Moscow Treaty”) with Russia that was all of three pages and left key details to be filled in at a later date.
A President Kerry would have no aversion to bold treaties; indeed, in 2003, Kerry returned from the campaign trail to offer an amendment in the Senate to strengthen SORT and fought for ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the late 1990s.
George Bush enshrined preemptive war as a key American policy in a major West Point speech in 2002 and carried out that doctrine by invading Iraq. Kerry, on the other hand, has said that preemption should be a last resort.
One area in which there is likely to be little difference between Bush and Kerry is the size of the military budget. President Bush has raised the military budget from $296 billion, the last Clinton budget, to about $475 billion in fiscal year 2005. For both political and substantive reasons, it would be very difficult for Kerry to slash the military budget, particularly when U.S. troops remain engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kerry vows to “modernize our military to match its new missions” and to increase the size of the army, which is having difficulty coping with widespread overseas engagements.
Kerry has made foreign policy a centerpiece of his 18-year Senate career. He has served on the Foreign Relations Committee since 1985. In the 1980s he offered numerous Senate floor amendments to block a Reagan-era Star Wars program and anti-satellite weaponry. More recently, as noted, he tackled the nearly meaningless Moscow Treaty.
Many nuclear issues require the high-level engagement of the president, in no small part to resolve differences among key cabinet officials. It was this sort of high-level engagement by President George Herbert Walker Bush that enabled him, working with highly competent advisers, to help the United States navigate the difficult currents following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the breakup of the Warsaw Pact.
Like the elder Bush, John Kerry would be engaged in dealing with international problems from the beginning of his administration and would personally work for solutions. It would be a welcome change from the past four years.