Posted on 06/15/2004 2:08:12 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
Every day as I ride the Metro to and from my office in Washington, DC, I pass Reagan National Airport and marvel at how natural the words Reagan and National sound together. As the country mourned the passing of former President Ronald Reagan, he was memorialized for having won the Cold War. But while in office, he was attacked by the cosmopolitan liberal establishment for pursuing overly nationalistic adventures in "cowboy diplomacy." His campaign pledge to "Make America Great Again" was considered out of step with enlightened sentiments.
In 1985, the Carnegie Endowment published a collection of essays entitled "Estrangement: America and the World." Editor Sanford Unger, a host on National Public Radio as well as a Carnegie senior associate, started off the volume claiming, "The United States is estranged from [the] complex world -- separate, aloof, more alone than even the most cynical or pessimistic observers might have predicted in the heyday of American postwar power." As evidence, Unger cited several cases where the Reagan administration went against "world opinion" as expressed at the United Nations and the various trade disputes in which America was embroiled.
If this sounds like current complaints about President George W. Bush, there should be no surprise. Liberals and conservatives have a fundamentally different view of the world and America's role in it. Writing in the current May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, President Bill Clinton's national security advisor Samuel Berger charges, "The [Bush] administration's high-handed style and its gratuitous unilateralism have embittered even those most likely to embrace American values." Among the actions Berger deems to have violated the tenets of liberal internationalism are Bush's preference for "coalitions of the willing" over "permanent alliances;" and his belief that "we did not need the legitimacy UN authorization and involvement would have bestowed" in Iraq; and his failure to understand that "means are as important as ends."
Actually, in liberal ideology, means are more important than ends; especially if the ends are the advancement of what are perceived to be narrow national interests. The common element in the Unger and Berger criticism is that other governments, working through international organizations, were not being given a veto power over decision-making in Washington.
In his essay in the Estrangement collection, Richard H. Ullman, a Princeton professor who served in the Lyndon Johnson administration at the Pentagon, notes the many "quarrels" that had disrupted NATO unity. He warned that these disagreements were increasing due to American behavior. "The allies part company with the Reagan administration over its assessment of the worldwide nature of the communist threat," he wrote. Ullman then advocated as the "path to reconciliation" the "de-escalation" of tensions by Washington. However, he was not optimistic, for "to depart from the familiar path of 'negotiation from strength' (or not at all) will require a vision of a possible cooperative future certainly not evident in the first administration of Ronald Reagan." Yet, Reagan was optimistic and only four years after Ullman's argument for retreat appeared, the Berlin Wall disappeared.
Ironically, it was Reagan's success in ending the Cold War that encouraged the belief that a new, harmonious world was dawning in the 1990s. Short periods of euphoria of this sort have been common after every period of major conflict since the Seven Years War in the 18th century. Indeed, it was in the aftermath of the quarter century of wars spawned by the French Revolution and Napoleon's bid for hegemony that much of the classical liberal philosophy took its now familiar shape. Some form of world federation, free trade, disarmament and the submission of disputes to legalistic arbitration procedures were common to virtually all "progressive" British, French and German thinkers on international affairs in the 19th century. Suffice it to say, the real world has not followed liberal prophecy. Postwar periods inevitably become interwar periods, as the endless waltz of world politics plays on.
President Clinton came into office looking to the UN for legitimacy, and wanting to build additional institutions under UN auspices. He accepted the creation of the World Trade Organization, something the Europeans had pushed as a constraint on America's dominant economic position, but in which Reagan and George H.W. Bush had shown no interest during their trade negotiations. It is the World Trade Organization that marks a major break between Reagan and Bush in regard to the defense of America's sovereign prerogative to act on its own behalf to defend critical national interests.
In his State of the Union address this year, President Bush proclaimed, "America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country" in reference to the UN. But he has never said anything this bold about American independence from the WTO. Instead, his administration has consistently claimed that WTO rulings must be honored and any offending U.S. laws changed to comply with the opinions handed down by WTO dispute panels. This has been true even when the charges against the United States were brought by the same European Union cabal of France and Germany which has vexed Bush at the UN.
Last week, House Ways and Means Committee chairman Bill Thomas (R-CA) introduced the latest in a long line of bills meant to eliminate the Foreign Sales Corporation tax procedure to meet a WTO ruling. The EU had charged that excluding exports sold by overseas subsidiaries of U.S. corporations from taxable income was an illegal subsidy to those exports. The case was brought by the EU in violation of a supposed "gentlemen's agreement" that domestic tax policy was not an area subject to WTO jurisdiction. Even the free traders at the Wall Street Journal have objected to this case, noting in an editorial (1/17/02) that, "Once tax policy is on the table, there's no end to what the WTO might meddle in."
Congress already passed one attempt to comply, in October 2000, in an unseemly rush to meet a WTO deadline, only to have the WTO rule that the changes were not good enough. The bill phases out the FSC tax break for exporters over three years, with beneficiaries retaining 100 percent of their benefits this year. The EU will most likely object to the phase-out and demand a bill that ends the FSC immediately. The EU has been rattling the sword of economic sanctions on U.S. trade, but has been reluctant to impose them because they know the latent power of the United States to retaliate if President Bush is pushed too far. Yet, Bush has shown no sign that he is disposed to doing anything but meekly accepting whatever the EU does.
Bush should take a look at something Reagan said in his 1987 State of the Union address, "We are always willing to be trade partners but never trade patsies."
William R. Hawkins is Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the U.S. Business and Industry Council.
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