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| | | | | The Democratic Debate, Second Edition
Bruce Miroff, Raymond Seidelman, Todd Swanstrom
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| | | | Chapter Overview
Chapter Eighteen: Foreign Policy in the National Security State
The CIA’s remarkable attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, like something out of a bad movie, leads us to an important discovery: The conventional wisdom about foreign policy may not be all that it is cracked up to be. A rereading of American history demonstrates that there is a large price to be paid, in both our true security interests and our fundamental values, when foreign policy is dominated by a handful of elites operating free from public scrutiny. A fresh look at the alternative voices in the democratic debate, from the Anti-federalists to critics of the Cold War, cannot only help us to gain a better understanding of past foreign policy, but also point us to the different possibilities and choices America might make as it enters the post–Cold War era.
Beginnings of the Democratic Debate over Foreign Policy
From the beginning, elite and popular democrats have clashed over how Americans should relate to the rest of the world. In the original democratic debate, popular democrats favored public involvement in foreign affairs and citizen militias, whereas elites touted professional armies and executive control of policy making. The foremost proponent of the elite position, Alexander Hamilton, recognized that strong presidential leadership ("decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch") and a powerful military establishment were vital if the United States was to fulfill its "destiny" of becoming a great world power. By contrast, the Anti-federalists saw only danger in these potential instruments of oppression. Their preference for citizen militias over professional armies exemplifies their political world view. The Anti-federalists believed America would gain more through peaceful commercial relationships and by acting as a worldwide exemplar of freedom, self-government, and republicanism than by playing dangerous games of power politics. There is little doubt that some of the Anti-federalists’ arguments have become obsolete. But their essential question remains relevant: Should foreign policy be the province of insulated elites concerned mostly with the projection of American power, or should it be open to popular democratic influence in order to try to reconcile national security with cherished democratic traditions?
Isolation and Expansion
Interestingly, initially the Anti-federalist perspective did have the upper hand in the debate. For much of America’s history, isolationism characterized American foreign and defense policy; freedom from "entangling alliances" and a small military establishment were the rule. Along with isolationism, however, came a less benign side to American foreign policy—continental and hemispheric expansion. The authors point out that both elite and popular democrats must shoulder the blame for the shameful side of American expansion. Indian expulsion was a legacy of the Jacksonian Democrats, while America’s involvement in Latin America and Asia was spearheaded by such elites as Theodore Roosevelt. Throughout the nineteenth century there were critics, including Abraham Lincoln, who decried this European path of militarism and imperialism, but by and large it enjoyed both mass and elite support. Yet even as America expanded and became a great industrial power, isolationist sentiment remained strong. It would not be until World War II and the Cold War that the United States would finally realize its Hamiltonian destiny.
The Democratic Debate over the Cold War
The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was the defining foreign policy experience for modern Americans. It is not enough to look back and simply say that we "won" the Cold War. Rather, the era itself—and the democratic debate swirling through it—must be examined with care, ultimately because American political life was altered in fundamental ways as a result.
The Cold War inaugurated the national security state. The United States became a superpower charged with the protection of the "free world," developed for the first time an enormous peacetime military establishment, and accepted presidential dominance of foreign affairs. The national security state was a triumph for elite democrats, although almost all Americans shared a belief in its necessity. But the Cold War consensus cracked during the Vietnam War. The resurgence of popular democratic opposition at this time ensured that there would henceforth be intense debate over American foreign policy.
Elite democrats admitted that the national security state was not fully compatible with democracy but, for them, the heroic nature of the struggle with global communism was worth the price. There are four elements to their case for the Cold War: (1) Institutions such as NATO served to resist aggression and preserve world peace; (2) a strategy of global containment of communism to protect freedom had to be the basis of American foreign policy; (3) Cold War policy, as expressed in presidential initiatives from Truman to Bush, was an effective combination of force and diplomacy; (4) the American public recognized, and accepted, that the Cold War required elite dominance and, unfortunately, some deviations from democratic political practices.
Although popular democrats agreed about the communist threat, they believed that too often it was exaggerated for strictly domestic reasons, and that it could have been better handled with more open and peaceful methods. Most importantly, America’s Cold War victory came at a tremendous price. Popular democrats identify at least five major costs: (1) the misguided war in Vietnam, a haunting but not unexpected consequence of simplistic Cold War thinking; (2) backing for repressive anticommunist regimes, such as that of the Shah of Iran, which not only damaged American security interests but undermined U.S. moral force abroad; (3) the spectacle of the world’s foremost democracy trying to overthrow other legitimate democracies, such as the government of Chile, that appeared to threaten its political or economic interests; (4) the damage done to democracy at home—the spread of government secrecy and the stifling of debate on the premises of foreign policy, the erosion of constitutional checks and balances, the trend toward an "imperial presidency," and the twin disasters of Watergate and Iran-Contra; and (5) the decline in competitiveness and inadequate attention to social justice that were the results of the arms race and the subsequent emergence of a permanent war economy.
The End of the Cold War
The Cold War came to an unexpected end in the late 1980s. Attempting to reform the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev only exposed its fatal flaws. The Soviet empire in Eastern Europe collapsed in 1989, and the country itself came apart at the end of 1991. Although the world now breathed easier as the nuclear threat diminished, the end of the Cold War brought new problems and conflicts along with new opportunities. The institutions of the national security state, deprived of their rationale by the disappearance of their enemy, are groping for new missions.
Foreign and Defense Policy: Institutions
Since the Vietnam War, Congress and the president have often battled over foreign and defense policy. In these battles, the president is supported by the agencies of the national security state. Although presidents have had wide latitude to mold these agencies to their purposes, we should not underestimate the role the agencies continue to play in shaping how the United States understands and operates in international affairs.
Consisting of the president and his formal foreign policy team, the National Security Council (NSC) was created in 1947 to set and coordinate foreign and defense policy at the highest levels. In practice, however, its power has lodged in the president’s national security adviser. Since the Kennedy administration, national security advisers such as Henry Kissinger have been major foreign policy players due to their proximity to the Oval Office, control over the flow of security information, and ability to provide policy recommendations tailored for the president. However, after their power came under widespread scrutiny in the 1980s, recent NSC advisers have come to act mainly as facilitators of policy rather than as "top dogs."
The Department of State is the oldest Cabinet department and the traditional source of American diplomacy. During the Cold War, given the huge growth in the Defense Department and an emphasis on the military side of containment, State was eclipsed in influence by other institutions. It also suffered from a reputation of being a cautious and unwieldy policymaking organ. However, in a world where the utility of military force is declining while diplomatic conflicts are proliferating, we should see a resurgence in the power of the State Department.
With the passing of the superpower conflict, the Department of Defense has not been so fortunate. The most powerful agency of the national security state, the Defense Department has both civilian and military leadership structures. Secretaries of defense have varied considerably in their approaches to the Pentagon. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, composed of the heads of the service branches, convey the military’s perspective to the president. Although its influence has been diminished by the perception that it offers advice biased toward the military, its prestige did make a comeback with the appointment of Colin Powell as chair.
The tremendous expansion of the military during the Cold War can be traced not only to exaggerated rhetoric about the Soviet threat but to interservice rivalry as well. The desire of the branches to grow larger and better armed, together with their close ties to private defense manufacturers, led President Eisenhower to warn about the development of a military-industrial complex pushing for ever-rising levels of defense spending. Ironically, however, the military has often been hesitant about flexing this muscle, especially after its experience in Vietnam. Pentagon officials oppose involvement in military operations unless they are assured of public support and promised they can deploy massive force, as during the Persian Gulf War. But even the military’s success in that conflict has not protected it from budgetary downsizing amid the struggle to redefine its purpose in a new and complex strategic environment.
Perhaps the most problematic feature of the national security state has been the development of an intelligence community. The preeminent force here is the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Created by Congress for intelligence-gathering purposes, the CIA quickly became involved in covert action—secret operations favored by presidents because they could not be traced to the U.S. government. The CIA’s bag of "dirty tricks" often backfired, as the Castro and other examples illustrate, but it also raises disturbing questions about the compatibility of covert action with a democratic society. Revelations of CIA abuses in the 1970s led to more congressional oversight, but the agency has found creative ways to avoid accountability. Even after the end of the Cold War, the CIA has been caught collaborating with repressive and antidemocratic forces in Guatemala. The authors contend that the time is ripe for a debate about the place of the CIA in American democracy.
Foreign Policy and Economic Power
Economic concerns have always been central to American foreign policy. This was particularly true immediately after World War II, when the United States established the liberal postwar trade and finance regimes and helped rebuild Europe through the Marshall Plan. The decline of the hegemonic status of the United States is evident in its massive trade and budget deficits. Private interests, particularly the corporate sector, have a significant voice in American foreign policy. The notion that what was good for corporations was good for the national interest often underlined American policy during the Cold War. Policies toward Iran and Chile are analyzed to illustrate how economic and political interests were dangerously interwoven.
Foreign Policy and Public Opinion
The classic picture of public opinion in regard to foreign policy—that Americans lacked interest, knowledge, and awareness of foreign affairs and uncritically deferred to elite preferences—is not pretty. Recent research challenges this interpretation. Mass opinion about foreign affairs is generally quite realistic and stable, and although the public rarely determines specific policy decisions, it does create a climate of opinion in which policy makers have to operate. Shapiro and Page even found that when major shifts in public opinion occur, foreign policy shifts with it a majority of the time. The fact that public opinion is influential, and that the public is committed to policies of "peace when possible," is welcome news to popular democrats.
Post–Cold War Foreign Policy and the Democratic Debate
With the passing of the Cold War, American foreign policy has lost its old certitudes and simplifications and become mired in confusion. Yet foreign policy strategists are eager to offer new directions, four of which are considered by the authors.
Two proposed strategies seek to update the global activism of the Cold War years. The first of these follows the elite democratic tradition of Hamilton in emphasizing global primacy for the United States. Proponents of this strategy argue that we must not become sidetracked by issues of democracy and human rights and must keep our eye on power, economic as well as military. The second strategy wants the new American global mission to be the promotion of democracy. Proponents of this view see democratic advances as provisional and likely to be reversed unless the United States arrives with economic and political aid. Promoting democracy abroad, they claim, will further both our values and our interests.
The other two strategies seek a pullback from Cold War globalism. A "new isolationism" is equally mistrustful of American foreign policy elites and other nations. Hostile to the UN, free trade, and immigration, it calls for a foreign policy that, in the words of Patrick Buchanan, "puts America first." An alternative strategy also suggest wariness of elites hooked on running the world, but takes a more generous view of other peoples. Arguing that we must give up the vain hope of reshaping the world in our own image, it suggests a concentration on addressing domestic inequities and a cautious involvement when mass suffering or genocide abroad require our action.
Bill Clinton ran for office in 1992 largely on a domestic program, and his foreign policy views sounded closest to the fourth of the strategies described above. But since taking office he has become more involved in foreign affairs, especially after the Republican takeover of Congress, and he has moved in the direction of the strategy that emphasizes American primacy in the world.
Clinton supporters who expected a "peace dividend" have been disappointed; on the defensive in military matters, the president has proposed only modest reductions in the Pentagon budget. Initially reluctant to send American forces abroad, he grew more comfortable with the use of military power in the cases of Haiti in 1994 and Bosnia in 1995. Clinton has been true to his original campaign promises in the area of trade. Along with free trade agreements such as NAFTA, his Commerce Department has pushed American exports in the "10 Big Emerging Markets." Justified as the means to creating more jobs for Americans at home, the new dollar diplomacy has led the Clinton administration to go to bat for American companies abroad while dropping its insistence on human rights advances, most dramatically in the case of China.
Haiti was at first an embarrassment to the Clinton administration, as the military rulers who had overthrown President Aristide repeatedly brushed off Clinton’s efforts to restore democratic rule. Under pressure as Haitian refugees flooded into Florida, and lobbied by the Congressional Black Caucus and activist Randall Robinson, Clinton finally sent a invasion force that cowed the military leaders of Haiti into relinquishing their power peacefully. Sending troops to Haiti in defiance of Congress recalled the imperial presidency of the Cold War, but on this occasion, Clinton at least could claim that he had promoted democracy—not the case with American interventions in Latin America in the past.
Bosnia, "the problem from hell," reflected even more fully than Haiti the uncertainties of American foreign policy in a new era. Clinton repeatedly talked tough about the horrific civil war in Bosnia, then retreated into inaction as opposition emerged. In the summer of 1995 he finally took strong action, first bombing Serb positions and then pushing the warring parties to a peace accord. Sending U.S. troops to enforce the accord, the president stressed America’s idealistic motives. But the more pressing reason for the eventual U.S. intervention in Bosnia was the reassertion of U.S. global leadership—humanitarian action in the service of American primacy.
Conclusion: A More Democratic Foreign Policy
Calls to return to the older, popular tradition of isolationism are misguided. Foreign policy elites are right to point out America’s need to maintain an internationalist perspective. Still, warnings by popular democrats about the problems created by the national security state, and their advice about what successful foreign policy means, should be heard. This requires a turning away from secretive presidential dominance of foreign affairs toward a true democratic dialogue over America’s future.
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