Bill Clinton believes in a place called Hope, and he has, I think, given us reason to believe with him. We can and should celebrate the end of the Reagan-Bush era and rejoice in a president who is genuinely concerned about real people and their troubles. Even more important, Clinton is a consensus builder, which provides us with an opportunity we have not had since the Carter years: the opportunity to participate in the national debate.
We must begin, however, with an honest recognition of who Clinton is and the limits of the hope he holds out. Despite clear indications Clinton has given of his foreign policy direction, many in the peace and justice movements are almost pretending he didn't mean it. Some hope that all the election year tough talk was just election year tough talk. Others say that Clinton's focus is on domestic issues, not the New World Order. Everyone seems to put more stock in his opposition to the Vietnam War than his support of the Gulf war.
Clinton's campaign message was, "The economy, stupid," but the bottom line is in his budget plans. Over the next four years, Clinton proposes to increase revenues by $274 billion and cut spending by $223 billion. A little more than a fourth of the spending cuts come from the military. Over the same four years, Clinton proposes to spend $1.35 trillion on the military. George Bush would have spent $1.42 trillion, just 5 percent higher than what Clinton will spend.
Why? What foreign policy agenda justifies spending $1.35 trillion? Why should the United States continue to spend $1,200 per person per year on its military when Germans spend a quarter of that and Japanese a tenth? George Bush justified military spending by pointing to the New World Order he sought to build. Clinton has yet to find a title for his policy, but again and again he has used a phrase that summarizes it: "The world is a dangerous place."
Based on evidence we've seen so far, Clinton's foreign policy looks so much like Bush's that a Washington Post analysis of it was titled, "Six of Bush and a Half Dozen of Clinton." A study by the Georgetown National Security Studies Program concluded: "A Clinton presidency would not fundamentally alter the current content of U.S. national security policies." The Los Angeles Times reported in October that senior Bush administration officials "say privately that the prospect of handing foreign policy over to a Clinton administration is not costing them much sleep."
Their shared "enemies list" is staggeringly long: Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Islamic fundamentalism (threatening Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait), North Korea, guerrillas and drugs (in Peru and Colombia), Panama, Serbia, and, of course, Cuba (opposition to communism having been replaced by "humanitarian" reasons).
After the operation in Somalia, the list of potential military intervention sites can be extended to any country where millions face starvation (such as, for example, the Sudan). After protecting Kurds, Shiites, and perhaps Muslims in Bosnia, candidates for intervention can conceivably include any place facing bloody civil conflict, such as Angola, several former Soviet republics, and India.
Some of these dangers are real, but to whom and why? Why, for example, are Iran and North Korea "nuclear dangers" when Israel and South Africa are not (not to mention India, Pakistan, Britain, and France)? Why are the evils being done in the Balkans different than those being done in East Timor? In South Africa? Or in Iraq? The death toll from the embargo of Iraq is roughly equal to that in Bosnia. Why are Iraqi lives ignored while those in Bosnia are not? Do we really want to wage a religious war against fundamentalist Islam, and do we even vaguely know what it is we are fighting against?
The real danger is that the United States will increasingly play the role of a very selective globocop -- chasing some of the bad guys while winking at the crimes of others (and committing crimes of its own). As the United States dons its white hat, we need to remember that U.S. intervention did not begin with the Reagan-Bush years. In fact, the imperial phase began with the conquest of the Southwest, which was then part of Mexico. The conquest of the continent was followed almost immediately by the Spanish-American War (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines became "ours") and by a half-century of repeated military interventions in Central America (our "backyard").
The Cold War's $11 trillion military tab was justified by the Red Menace, but it was fought in the Third World -- Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, etc. And it was fought not just by U.S. troops, but by CIA operatives and proxy troops such as the contras.
The New World Order was an extension of the old, and Clinton's "dangerous world" could prove to be yet another case of the same old wine in the same old bottle -- only the label has been changed. The pressure Clinton will face is not only from the nutty right wing we saw on display last summer at the GOP convention in Houston. The interventionist impulse is woven into our nation's history, and we shouldn't ignore the dangerous warning signs in the worldview of the new president.
Stephen Slade was co-director of Out Now, an anti-interventionist organization, when this article appeared. A version of this editorial was published in the group's newsletter, War Watch.
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