Foreign Policy for a Democratic President

Samuel R. Berger

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004

Summary:  By stressing unilateralism over cooperation, preemption over prevention, and firepower over staying power, the Bush administration has alienated the United States' natural allies and disengaged from many of the world's most pressing problems. To restore U.S. global standing--which is essential in checking the spread of lethal weapons and winning the war on terrorism--the next Democratic president must recognize the obvious: that means are as important as ends.

Samuel R. Berger served as National Security Adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001 and is Chairman of Stonebridge International, LLC.

To this end, the United States should be seen as a peacemaker again, actively engaged in the resolution of conflicts from the Middle East to Southeast Asia to Central and West Africa, helping to build the peacekeeping capabilities of other nations, and willing to contribute money and troops, alongside our allies, when our interests and values are at stake. Even when the chances of success are small, such efforts help reveal that American power can serve the common good.

A Democratic administration should also fund a greater U.S. commitment to combating infectious disease. For all the headlines and paper promises of action, fewer than 1 in 5 people in the world at risk of AIDS have access to preventive services. Fewer than 1 in 50 infected people receive the drugs they need; in Africa, the number is only 1 in 1,000. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria has asked rich countries to contribute just $10 billion a year to save millions of lives. The United States can and should give more than its fair share of this amount, so we can prod other countries to do the same.

A Democratic administration should launch a major global initiative to bring clean water to the hundreds of millions of people in poor countries who do not have it. It must do more to enable children, especially girls, to go to school. And it must seek to close the "digital divide" -- the increasing gap between rich and poor in technology availability. A Democratic president must treat these issues as part of a personal crusade again, including them in every foreign summit and speech, and challenging leaders around the world and in the private sector to do more.

A Democratic administration should champion expanding trade as the best long-term hope for gaining prosperity in rich and poor countries alike. It should urge Europeans to end their farm subsidies, which impoverish farmers in the developing world (the average cow in the European Union gets more than $2 a day in state support, more than most people in Africa have to live on), while having the courage to cut U.S. farm subsidies as well. The next president must also recognize that an agenda that pursues growth without equity is destined to achieve neither goal. Gene Sperling, President Bill Clinton's former national economic adviser, has proposed a "new consensus on free trade," one that expands open markets while addressing the legitimate concerns of workers. His proposal prioritizes investing in education and retraining before jobs are lost, providing comprehensive services to dislocated workers, adjusting tax and health care policies that make job creation in the United States less attractive, and fighting abuses of labor rights overseas.

Finally, it is time for the United States to confront climate change. Unchecked global warming could devastate the global economy and global agriculture, lead to massive population movements, and literally wipe some nations off the face of the earth. This rising tide will sink all boats. A Democratic president will need to meet this threat with courage and alacrity, strengthening bipartisan efforts, such as the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act (which was narrowly defeated in the Senate last year), to cut greenhouse gas emissions, re-engaging with our allies either to rescue or to revise the Kyoto Protocol, and launching initiatives to address life-and-death concerns such as expanding deserts and shrinking forests.

WHO WE ARE MATTERS

President Bush says that the front line of the war on terrorism is in Iraq and that it is better to fight our enemies in Baghdad than in Baltimore. That formulation is fundamentally flawed. The front line today is wherever we are, particularly in those places where people don't want us to be. Because of this reality, it is essential that we define who we are in a way that isolates our enemies, rather than ourselves. That notion was something well understood by American leaders during the Cold War. Of course, the United States was not universally loved, but we did at least build an enduring set of alliances, rooted in a genuine sense of shared interests and based on ties among peoples, not just governments. During those years, America was admired where it counted most: in the nations behind the Iron Curtain, the chief battleground of the Cold War. Poles, Hungarians, and ordinary Russians saw us as credible champions of their democratic aspirations. There was no anti-Americanism in Eastern Europe that communist governments could stoke to deflect U.S. pressure for change or that extremists could exploit to win support for their aims. Imagine if there had been. Would the Cold War have ended as it did? Would the Soviet empire have collapsed when it did? If it had, what would have replaced it?

These are precisely the kinds of questions we face now in the greater Middle East and more broadly around the world. We have the raw power to impose our will when we must, and far more often than not that power has been used for good, not ill. But whoever is president, we will need to rely most often on persuasion, not power, to achieve our goals. Who will be persuaded to stand with America if we do not stand for something larger than ourselves? Who will voluntarily work with us if we demand cooperation entirely on our terms? And if we do succeed in challenging the status quo in the Islamic world, as we did in Eastern Europe a generation ago, what will take its place, if U.S. leadership is rejected by those people who wish to bring about change?

The good news is that the world is eager for the United States to return to its tradition of leadership. Most countries would still be far more worried by the prospect of American isolationism than by American unilateralism. We can seize on these sentiments to forge new coalitions against terrorism and WMD and to build a freer, safer world.