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Chapter 16: National Security Policymaking |
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INTRODUCTION
The end of the cold war in the early 1990s brought with it many questions regarding the future of international politics, from what the nature of threat is, to what new alliances are needed and what the changing role of "superpowers" might be in the new global scene. This chapter reviews cold war policies and politics from a historical perspective as well as new issues concerning global inequality and human rights.
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY: INSTRUMENTS, ACTORS, AND POLICYMAKERS
Foreign policy involves making choices about relations with the rest of the world. The instruments of foreign policy are different from those of domestic policy. Foreign policies depend ultimately on three types of tools: military, economic, and diplomatic. Among the oldest instruments of foreign policy are war and the threat of war. Economic instruments are becoming weapons almost as potent as those of war. Diplomacy is the quietest instrument of foreign policy; it may involve meetings of world leaders at summit conferences, but more often involves quiet negotiations by less prominent officials.
Most of the challenges in international relations require the cooperation of many nations; thus, international organizations play an increasingly important role on the world stage. The United Nations (UN), created in 1945, is the most important of the international organizations today. In addition to its peacekeeping function, the UN runs a number of programs focused on economic development and health, education, and welfare concerns. Regional organizations are organizations of several nations bound by a treaty, often for military reasons. For example, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) agreed to combine military forces and to treat a war against one as a war against all. By contrast, the European Economic Community (EEC), often called the Common Market, is an economic alliance of the major Western European nations; the EEC coordinates monetary, trade, immigration, and labor policies.
More than one-third of the world's industrial output comes from multinational corporations (MNCs), which are sometimes more powerful (and often much wealthier) than the governments under which they operate. Groups such as churches and labor unions have long had international interests and activities. Even individuals are international actors; the recent explosion of tourism affects the international economic system.
The president is the main force behind foreign policy: As chief diplomat, the president negotiates treaties; as commander-in-chief, the president deploys American troops abroad. Presidents are aided (and sometimes thwarted) by a huge national security bureaucracy; Congress also wields considerable clout in the foreign policy arena. Other foreign policy decision makers include diplomats (such as the secretary of state and special assistants for national security affairs) and the national security establishment (including the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency).
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY: AN OVERVIEW
The United States followed a foreign policy of isolationism throughout most of its history. The Monroe Doctrine reaffirmed America's inattention to Europe's problems but warned European nations to stay out of Latin America. In the wake of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson urged the United States to join the League of Nations; the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, indicating the country was not ready to abandon isolationism.
All of Eastern Europe fell under Soviet domination as World War II ended. In 1946, Winston Churchill warned that the Russians had sealed off Eastern Europe with an "iron curtain." The United States poured billions of dollars into war-ravaged European nations through the Marshall Plan. Writing in Foreign Affairs in 1947 (under the pseudonym "X"), George F. Kennan proposed a policy of "containment." His containment doctrine called for the United States to isolate the Soviet Union and to "contain" its advances and resist its encroachments. The Truman Doctrine was developed to help other nations oppose communism.
The Cold War was at its height in the 1950s. Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, proclaimed a policy of "brinkmanship" in which the United States was to be prepared to use nuclear weapons in order to deter the Soviet Union and Communist China from taking aggressive action. In the era of McCarthyism, domestic policy was deeply affected by the cold war and by anti-communist fears. With containment came a massive buildup of the military apparatus, resulting in the military-industrial complex (a phrase that was coined by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to refer to the interests shared by the armed services and defense contractors). Economist Seymour Melman wrote about Pentagon capitalism, linking the military's drive to expand with the profit motives of private industry. The 1950s ushered in an arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States; eventually, a point of mutual assured destruction (MAD) was reached in which each side could destroy the other.
Vietnam first became an election-year issue in 1964. Since Truman's time, the United States had sent military "advisors" to South Vietnam, which was in the midst of a civil war spurred by the Viet Cong (National Liberation Front). Despite his election-year promise, Johnson sent in American troops when we were unable to contain the forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnam with American advisors.
American troops and massive firepower failed to contain the North Vietnamese. At home, widespread protests against the war contributed to Johnson's decision not to run for reelection in 1968 and to begin peace negotiations. The new Nixon administration prosecuted the war vigorously, but also worked to negotiate a peace treaty with the Viet Cong and North Vietnam.
Even while the Vietnam War was being waged, President Nixon supported a new policy of détente. Popularized by Nixon's national security assistant (and later secretary of state), Henry Kissinger, détente sought a relaxation of tensions between the superpowers, coupled with firm guarantees of mutual security. One major initiative that came out of détente was the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). These talks represented an effort by the United States and the Soviet Union to agree to scale down their nuclear capabilities, with each power maintaining sufficient nuclear weapons to deter a surprise attack by the other. President Nixon signed the first SALT treaty in 1972. A second SALT treaty (SALT II) was signed and sent to the Senate by President Carter in 1979, but the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that year caused Carter to withdraw the treaty from Senate consideration; both he and President Reagan nevertheless insisted that they would be committed to its arms limitations.
The philosophy of détente was applied to the People's Republic of China as well as to the Soviet Union. President Nixon visited the People's Republic and sent an American mission there. President Carter extended formal diplomatic recognition in November 1978.
From the mid-1950s to 1981, the defense budget had generally been declining as a percentage of both the total federal budget and the gross national product (with the exception of the Vietnam War); the decline in defense spending became a major issue in Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign. President Carter's last budget had proposed a large increase in defense spending, and the Reagan administration proposed adding $32 billion on top of that. However, concern over huge budget deficits brought defense spending to a standstill in the second Reagan term. In 1983 President Reagan added another element to his defense policy-a new plan for defense against missiles. He called it the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Reagan's plans for SDI proposed creating a global umbrella in space, wherein computers would scan the skies and use various high-tech devices to destroy invading missiles.
Forces of change sparked by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev led to a staggering wave of upheavals that shattered Communist regimes and the postwar barriers between Eastern and Western Europe. The Berlin Wall was brought down, and East and West Germany formed a unified, democratic republic. The former Soviet Union split into 15 separate nations; non-Communist governments formed in most of them. On May 12, 1989, President Bush announced a new era in American foreign policy that he termed "beyond containment."
In 1989, reform seemed on the verge of occurring in China as well as in Eastern Europe. Thousands of students held protests on behalf of democratization in Tiananmen Square (the central meeting place in Beijing). However, on the night of June 3, the army violently crushed the democracy movement, killing hundreds -perhaps thousands - of protesters and beginning a wave of executions, arrests, and repression.
Perhaps the most troublesome issue in the national security area is the spread of terrorism-the use of violence to demoralize and frighten a country's population or government. Terrorism takes many forms, including the bombing of buildings (such as the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001), and ships (such as USS Cole in Yemen in 2000), the assassinations of political leaders (as when Iraq attempted to kill former president George H. W. Bush in 1993), and the kidnappings of diplomats and civilians.
The threat posed by terrorist groups and the hostile states supporting them has forced America to reconsider basic tenets of its national security policy. The George W. Bush administration developed a new strategic doctrine that moves away from the Cold War pillars of containment and deterrence toward a policy that supports preemptive strikes against terrorists and hostile states with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.
THE POLITICS OF DEFENSE POLICY
The central assumption of current American defense policy is that the United States requires forces and equipment sufficient to win decisively a single major conflict, defend American territory against new threats, and conduct a number of holding actions elsewhere in the world.
Defense spending comprises about one-fifth of the federal budget. Domestic political concerns, budgetary limitations, and ideology all have a role in influencing decisions regarding the structure of defense policy.
Some scholars have argued that America faces a trade-off between defense spending and social spending. A nation, they claim, must choose between guns and butter, and more guns mean less butter. In general, defense and domestic policy expenditures appear to be independent of each other. Defense spending is a thorny political issue, entangled with ideological disputes. Conservatives fight deep cuts in defense spending, pointing out that many nations retain potent military capability and insisting that America maintain its readiness at a high level. Liberals, on the other hand, insist that the Pentagon wastes money and that the United States spends too much on defense and too little on social welfare programs.
The structure of America's defense has been based on a large standing military force and a battery of strategic nuclear weapons. The United States has nearly 1.4 million men and women on active duty and nearly 860,000 in the National Guard and Reserves.
To deter an aggressor's attack, the United States has relied on a triad of nuclear weapons: ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and strategic bombers.
During the May 1988 Moscow summit meeting, President Reagan and President Gorbachev exchanged ratified copies of a new treaty eliminating intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF). On November 19, 1990, the leaders of 22 countries signed a treaty cutting conventional arms in Europe. In 1991, the Warsaw Pact (the military alliance tying Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union) was dissolved. On July 31, 1991, Gorbachev and President Bush signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, following nine years of negotiations.
The democratization of Eastern Europe, the restructuring of the Soviet Union, and the deterioration of the Soviet economy substantially diminished Russia's inclination and potential to threaten the interests of the United States and its allies. In the fall of 1991, President Bush broke new ground with his decision to unilaterally dismantle some U.S. nuclear weapons; President Gorbachev followed suit shortly afterward. Presidents Bush and Yeltsin later signed an agreement to sharply reduce the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals.
Despite these changes, high-tech weapons systems will continue to play an important role in America's defense posture. The perception that space-age technology helped win the Gulf War in "100 hours" and with few American casualties provides support for high-tech systems.
THE NEW GLOBAL AGENDA
By whatever standards one uses, the United States is the world's mightiest power; but for Americans, merely being big and powerful is no guarantee of dominance.
One explanation for America's tribulations is that the nation's supposed strong suit, military might, is no longer the primary instrument of foreign policy. An ancient tool of diplomacy, sanctions are nonmilitary penalties imposed on a foreign government in an attempt to modify its behavior. Economic sanctions are often a first resort in times of crisis as they are less risky than sending in troops. Successful sanctions most often have broad international support, which is rare. Critics argue that sanctions are counterproductive because they can provoke a nationalist backlash.
The spread of technology has enabled the creation of nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, encouraging U.S. officials to adopt a more assertive posture in attempting to deny these weapons of mass destruction to rogue states. Currently, policymakers are most concerned about countries who are actively seeking nuclear weapons capabilities: North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya. Other nations have serious security concerns when faced with hostile neighbors possessing nuclear weapons.
Although the United States has great military power, many of the world's issues today are not military ones. Interconnected issues of equality, economics, energy, and the environment have become important. Today's international economy is illustrated by interdependency. The health of the American economy depends increasingly on the prosperity of its trading partners and on the smooth flow of trade and finance across borders.
Since the era of the Great Depression, the world economy has moved away from high tariffs and protectionism toward lower tariffs and freer trade. President Bush signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992 with Canada and Mexico; it was approved by Congress in 1993. In 1994 Congress approved the GATT agreement. Nontariff barriers such as quotas, subsidies, or quality specifications for imported products are common means of limiting imports today; such policies do save American jobs, but they also raise prices on products that Americans use.
For a number of years, America has experienced a balance of trade deficit; the excess of imports over exports decreases the dollar's buying power against other currencies, making Americans pay more for goods they buy from other nations. On the plus side, this decline in the dollar also makes American products cheaper abroad, thereby increasing our exports. Since the late 1980s, the United States has actually experienced a balance of trade surplus with Western Europe; the trade deficit with Japan and other Asian countries has declined, but much more slowly.
Presidents of both parties have pressed for aid to nations in the developing world - sometimes from humanitarian concern, sometimes out of a desire to stabilize friendly nations. Foreign aid has taken a variety of forms: Sometimes it has been given in the form of grants, but it often has taken the form of credits and loan guarantees to purchase American goods, assistance with agricultural modernization, loans at favorable interest rates, and forgiveness of previous loans; preferential trade agreements have sometimes been granted for the sale of foreign goods here. A substantial percentage of foreign aid is in the form of military assistance and is targeted to a few countries that are considered to be of vital strategic significance. Foreign aid has never been very popular with Americans. Although the United States donates more total aid than any other country, it devotes a smaller share of its GNP to foreign economic development than any other developed nation.
Energy transfers offer convincing evidence that world politics is a politics of growing dependency. Massive oceangoing oil tankers (most sailing from OPEC nations) have made it possible to import half of the oil Americans now use, but they have also contributed to ruined fisheries and beaches from oil spills.
Other important issues such as terrorism and nuclear proliferation have also become more important in an increasingly complex international environment.
UNDERSTANDING NATIONAL SECURITY POLICYMAKING
The themes that have guided students' understanding of American politics throughout Government in America-democracy and the scope of government-also pertain to the topic of international relations. Because domestic issues are closer to their daily lives and easier to understand, Americans are usually more interested in domestic policy than in foreign policy. There is little evidence, however, that policies at odds with the wishes of the American people can be sustained; civilian control of the military is unquestionable. In addition, the system of separation of powers plays a crucial role in foreign as well as domestic policy. When it comes to the increasingly important arena of American international economic policy, pluralism is pervasive. Treaty obligations, the nation's economic interests in an interdependent global economy, and other questions on the global agenda guarantee that the national government will be active in international relations. As the United States remains a superpower and continues to have interests to defend around the world, the scope of American government in foreign and defense policy will be substantial.
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