The New Administration and America’s Security Role

Different Perspective, Different Style
Let me say a few words about how the perspective of the new Administration differs from the Clinton Administration. It’s an experienced team with strong personalities, all having previously served in the same or analogous roles. Dick Cheney, who is an extremely unusual vice president, has been Chief of Staff of the White House and Secretary of Defense, and he was also in the Congressional leadership in the House of Representatives. This is a very broad background and I think you will see Dick Cheney playing a role that very few vice presidents have played, primarily in relation to a Congress that is evenly divided.

It has been a very sure-footed Administration so far. In the first six weeks I think it has established a record probably unequalled by any previous Administration. There have been no significant gaffes. That bespeaks of a good decision-making process. There have been a few policy differences and I notice the Telegraph this morning talked about a “cacophony.” That is an exaggeration. There are different world-views within the top leadership, but I think already it is quite clear that the decision-maker is the president. While he listens to his “board of directors,” if you will, very carefully, he makes the decisions.

There is a significant difference in style between the Clinton Administration and this Administration. I think you will find a more consistent pursuit of issues in this Administration than was the tradition in the Clinton Administration. It is not clear what all of the Administration’s positions will be, but I think they will be pursued with consistency and with a greater attention to the views of friends and allies. There will be more of a propensity to consult, and hopefully before rather than after a decision has been made.

On the only foreign policy issue in the presidential campaign, the issue of intervention, I think you will find the Bush Administration much less willing to intervene on other than clear security grounds, much less willing to intervene on behalf of values, human rights, and so on. I think that the view of the new Administration about U.S. leadership in general is not that we make decisions and others follow, but that we are more the nucleus around which coalitions can form to take joint action. I believe the model of the Gulf War will be an example that the new Administration will try to follow. The Administration may say, let’s do something, but then they will try to get others to join them.

There is greater concern in this Administration about China, Russia, and North Korea than there was in the Clinton Administration after the first year.

There Will Be a Missile Defense System, but What Kind, When, and How?
After that cursory introduction, I want to start with missile defense, because that is one of the big psychological problems as I see it and, I think, as the Administration sees it. How did we in the United States get where we are on missile defense? The Republican Congress pressed hard for a crash program to fulfill the Reagan legacy. The Clinton Administration started out wanting no part of a national missile defense system. The program they inherited (GPAL, Global Protection Against Launch) under which we had started discussions with both Europe and Russia was stopped because it was a part of missile defense that the Clinton Administration didn’t want to pursue. Pressures from the Congress, accelerated after the North Koreans tested a long-range missile, gradually led the Administration to support it. The program they pursued was based on the principle of least disruption to the ABM Treaty. Congressional pressure, and the way the Clinton Administration reacted, resulted in a system that relatively few liked, whether you’re an opponent of an ABM system or a supporter of it. Another factor is that the time in which North Korea might have a missile able to hit the United States (as projected by a commission headed by now Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld) has been stretched out at least by a couple of years because the North Koreans have not tested any missiles since then. That’s where we are now.

There will be a missile defense system. There is no question about that. The Administration is fixed on it. But what kind and when and how is much more up in the air now than it was even a year ago. There is now a chance and probably even a likelihood of a review of where we are. I think it will include consultations with Europe, Russia, and perhaps with China. It may include a look at alternative approaches to the subject, for example, an early intercept system. (The advantages of a boost-phase intercept are not only technical; that kind of intercept is less threatening to people whom you don’t wish to threaten.) Or it may include an approach to national missile defense through theater missile defense, which perhaps would be much easier for all concerned to swallow, except the Chinese. The basic purpose for any missile defense is to prevent blackmail. That means that defending our allies is as important as defending the United States because the United States can be blackmailed just as easily through London, Tokyo, or Paris as through New York.

The United States Security Role in Europe
There is no questioning in the United States that we have a security role in Europe. President Mitterrand used to say time and again, “At some time your Congress is going to say, ‘We’re tired of this, pull the troops back and come home.’ ” Well, that cannot be ruled out, but there is absolutely no discussion of it. It is not an issue in the United States at the present time. As I said, the new Administration will be more consultative, notwithstanding the unfortunate campaign comments about our troops in Kosovo, which were mostly misunderstood. Those comments were partly based on the general notion that President Clinton had spread nation-building forces willy-nilly around the world and had gone too far. Other than that, the core of the concern is that combat forces are not well-suited to the peacekeeping role, as in Kosovo, where you still have a military threat as well as a police problem. Combat forces are designed to destroy the enemy; police are designed to deal one-on-one with occasional lawbreakers. The new Administration is arguing that what you need is something in-between, which we don’t have. None of us has that. Perhaps a special corps, able to do police work and to cope with larger scale violence, is something at which we all should look. Concerns that the Bush Administration will pull troops out of Kosovo, or go it alone here or there, or divide operations into high-tech jobs and low-tech jobs are concerns Europe needn’t worry about.

There is an incipient problem over a European defense force (ESDP, European Security and Defense Policy). I think there are two main questions involved. First of all, does NATO have the right of first refusal? In other words, does any crisis first go to the NATO Council to decide how to deal with it? And secondly, what are the kinds of forces that an ESDP would build? If they are to act when NATO does not, those kinds of forces include lift, command and control (including all the auxiliary communications forces), and intelligence. Those forces already exist within NATO, but they happen to be mostly U.S.-owned. So if the focus is on building those kinds of forces, the money is in part duplicative. At a time when I don’t think anybody can expect large increases in European defense expenditures, that duplication would constitute a problem, for the Americans see a more critical need for Europe to be able to fight alongside the United States in a technical sense. The United States and the EU need to explore new strategic ways of cooperating and relating to each other more than we have so far.

The United States Security Role in Asia
Asia is a dynamic, rapidly changing region. The new Administration probably has fewer people familiar with Asia than they do with Europe. The United States has operated on the basis—which I think is true—that in Asia, there is no internal balance absent a U.S. presence. The U.S. presence provides key elements of Japanese security that the Japanese do not have to provide for themselves; it provides China with some sense of reassurance with respect to Japan; and it provides the rest of the states of the region the freedom of maneuver to avoid being forced into polarizing relationships. The key question is, can we, in fact, keep our forces in Asia?

Korea. The new Administration is much more skeptical about Kim Jong Il than was the Clinton Administration. There are many in the Republican party who feel that the 1994 Agreed Framework was a mistake. Indeed, a proposal has been introduced in Congress that the United States withdraw from providing nuclear power plants to North Korea and substitute conventional power plants. I think that would be a serious policy mistake at this point. While the North Koreans have not proceeded either to build their proscribed nuclear plants or test the Taepodong missile in the last couple of years, the feeling within the Administration is that the relationship has been mostly give by the United States and rhetoric by North Korea. There are dangers that we could separate ourselves from South Korea and Kim Dae Jung’s “sunshine policy” to an extent that would be imprudent. The president distinguished himself from Secretary of State Powell a bit on this issue by saying there would not be any immediate negotiations on missiles with North Korea. I believe there will eventually be negotiations, but the Administration will be much more skeptical and there will be efforts to ensure that North Korea is prepared to carry out its end of the bargain. So far North Korea has used an element of blackmail. They have stopped doing things that they otherwise would have done. But every time the United States objects to something, they say they may have to go back to building their own nuclear plants or testing their missiles. This is an issue where the Administration still has to get its act together.

Taiwan. Taiwan is an issue where a consensus within the Administration may not come easily. There are many Republicans who are suspicious of China and supportive of Taiwan to the point of independence. Here I’ll give a personal note. I think we need to tell both sides, “Don’t rock the boat.” The United States should tell the Chinese that an unprovoked attack on Taiwan would bring our support to Taiwan; and we should tell the Taiwanese that, while they are free to make their own policy, if they provoke a Chinese attack by, for example, declaring independence, they’re on their own. This is an extremely sensitive issue, but there are some signs for hope. The new Taiwan president, who is from the independence party (DPP), has been generally very careful not to provoke the Chinese. Indeed, he has stated that there will be no independence declaration unless the Chinese attack. The Chinese started out very hostile toward the new Taiwan Administration saying that “a tiger can’t change its stripes”; but they’ve since calmed down a lot. Vice Premier Qian Qichen recently gave a reformulation of One China: There is one China, and Taiwan and Beijing are both parts of the one China. This formulation provides considerable flexibility.

There are many other challenges: the Chinese missile build-up opposite Taiwan and the pressures it brings to deploy a theater missile defense; the delay in China’s accession to the WTO, probably requiring another vote in Congress to extend normal trade relations for another year; and most importantly, the arms sales agreement with Taiwan this year. What happens this year on Taiwan could strongly impact elections in Taiwan in December and the Chinese leadership changes scheduled for next year.