Calleo: A New Era of Overstretch? American Policy in Europe and Asia – World Policy Journal – World Policy Institute

American foreign and defense policy has been frequently criticized in recent years for lacking a coherent strategy adequate to the challenges and opportunities of the post-Cold War era. These complaints were raised occasionally in the Bush administration, despite its rather spectacular historic successes, but have become particularly insistent during the Clinton administration. Part of the problem stems from the election of 1992 that brought Clinton to power. His campaign focused on the shortcomings of the domestic economy (“It’s the economy, stupid!”) and depicted George Bush as uninterested in domestic matters and bemused by geopolitical visions. His tactic was to display his own preoccupation with domestic issues, but to avoid spelling out its corollary in foreign policy so as not to identify himself as an “isolationist.”

Ignoring foreign policy was good politics for a Democrat, whose party, given half a chance, was always ready to split into its old pro-and anti-Vietnam wings. Attacking Bush’s foreign policy directly was thus left to Ross Perot, who, in many respects, dominated the election intellectually. Perot not only relentlessly criticized Bush and Reagan for mismanaging domestic affairs but combined the themes of economic degeneration, fiscal deficits, and falling working class incomes with geopolitical overextension-a package put together by the so-called “declinist” scholars at the end of the 1980s. Perot made 1992 the declinist election and, by taking nearly 20 percent of the votes, made Clinton president, albeit with less than a majority of the popular vote. Between votes for Clinton and votes for Perot, however, the electorate seemed to have registered an overwhelming preference for a vigorous pursuit of domestic regeneration. Al-though Clinton’s campaign strategy had worked, it gave him scant mandate for a different sort of foreign policy. Had the Cold War continued, with its heavy demand on American resources, the tension between Clinton’s domestic goals and the customary Cold War military expenses would probably have led to serious problems.

The tension never developed because the Cold War soon ended. Few initiatives needed to be taken in American foreign policy, since the initiatives that changed the world for the better and relieved the United States of its Cold War burdens had already been taken by others-by the Soviets, who had retreated and then collapsed, and by the Germans, who had reunited. The United States, having skillfully eased and consolidated the Soviet retreat and successfully ejected Iraq from Kuwait, found itself in a position to settle back and enjoy the fiscal fruits of a well-deserved peace dividend. The administration and Congress together proceeded to cut the defense budget severely. From FY 1989, when Bush came into office, through FY 1998 (January estimate), defense spending fell by over 30 percent in real terms, some $109 billion in FY 1992 dollars. By contrast, nondefense spending rose by roughly 28 percent over the same period-by some $264 billion in constant 1992 dollars.1

Ironically, Clinton’s domestic accomplishments in his first term were not the reforms that he emphasized in his campaign, notably the health care that he failed egregiously to implement, but the remarkable improvements in the country’s fiscal balance. When Clinton took office in 1993, the fiscal deficit (on budget) stood at 4.6 percent of GDP. By January of FY 1998, it was estimated to be 1.3 percent of GDP.2 The fall in defense spending played a major role in the improvement. During Clinton’s first term (from FY 1993 through FY 1996), when the level of the annual fiscal deficit fell by $151.5 billion, the level of annual defense spending dropped by $46.3 billion, both figures in constant 1992 dollars. The contribution of defense for the period 1989-98 is still more telling. As the level of the annual deficit dropped by $162.7 billion, the level of national defense spending dropped by $109 billion-all in constant FY 1992 dollars.3

Clinton’s fiscal record denied the Republicans their favorite campaign issue and led to his easy reelection in 1996. The other factor that helped him greatly was the exceptionally long boom, dating from 1992 and adroitly nursed along by the generous monetary policy of the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. The low interest rates that fueled the boom also helped to control the deficit. Thanks to Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin’s adept management, the only other favorable fiscal change to rival cuts in defense spending was the much lower relative cost of financing the federal debt. Between FY 1992 and FY 1998, the costs of net interest (on budget) rose by only $66 billion in current dollars-from $223 billion to $289 billion4-despite an increase in the gross federal debt in the same period of $1.541 trillion-from $4.002 trillion to $5.543 trillion.5

The low interest rates managed to work their benefits without bringing on inflation, presumably because America’s relative openness to trade from Asia made it difficult to raise the prices of goods, while globalization in production and advances in labor-saving technology helped to keep wages down, despite record low unemployment. Even today, the only real sign of gathering inflation in the American economy seems to be the extremely high stock market. Optimists-official and private-judge even that not as asset inflation but as a reflection of faith in American economic vitality. This bubble, which some analysts believe is overripe for bursting, lends a certain nagging precariousness to what otherwise seems a remarkable achievement.

As a result of the fiscal gains of Clinton’s first term, his 1999 budget was able to estimate a balanced total budget by the year 1999.6 Considering that the deficit total stood at 4.7 percent of GDP in 1992, the improvement seems highly impressive. It should be noted that actual defense outlays in the official projections continue to fall-by another $4 billion between FY 1998 and FY 2003 in 1992 dollars.7

No Defense Strategy
Along with his admirable economic record, Clinton has confronted growing disaffection in the defense community. While the large military cuts were providing the foundation for his fiscal achievement, critics felt these cuts had not been linked to any coherent changes in strategic and geopolitical doctrine. Clinton’s first secretary of defense, Les Aspin, went through the motions of a serious defense review-the “bottom-up” review of 1993. But its conclusions, which merely reaffirmed a basic strategy of preparing for two wars simultaneously, were almost universally a source of disappointment. Given the big defense cuts that actually had been occurring, not to mention the changes in the world, continuing with old definitions of old commitments seemed excessively inadequate. More recent efforts have not mollified the critics.

Foreign policy in Clinton’s first term was, however, more or less in harmony with his budget. Quietly, Clinton seemed to be adopting a sort of devolutionist foreign policy, at least in Europe, that was a symmetrical accompaniment to declining American military spending. European efforts to organize collectively for their own defense were seemingly encouraged, along with efforts to “reform” NATO into a more European-directed organization. The admini-stration gave the impression that Americans would stick around but not get in the way.
Clinton spoke little of this at home but did spell it out clearly enough in a speech before the French National Assembly in June 1994, where he welcomed European efforts to develop common defense policies and forces, and appeared to be open to a significant Europeanization of NATO. Meanwhile, American ambitions for NATO’s role in any new European construction seemed notably restrained. The “Partnership for Peace” sought to reach out to Russia as well as its neighbors, but without changing the basic membership of NATO itself.

A certain strategic vision could be inferred from this reticent European policy-a multipolar world in which the United States would play the role of general balancing power but would not aspire to the high-profile hegemonic role implied in the Bush era’s notion of a unipolar world, with the United States as its only superpower.

Clinton’s Ambitions
In Asia, the Clinton administration appeared ready to take a somewhat more commanding role, not from any great enthusi-asm for it, but from the apparent lack of any alternative. This was brought home to the administration by the gathering crisis over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. The United States, meanwhile, continued its familiar trade dispute with Japan and uneasy engagement with China.

In the State Department, grand ration-alizations of foreign policy were out of fashion. Secretary of State Warren Christopher prided himself on a problem-solving approach to the world’s difficulties. There was considerable American involvement in the world’s trouble spots but obvious reluctance to commit forces or even money to foreign policy goals. The unhappy experience in Somalia had encouraged America’s military leaders of the time to perfect the argument that the armed forces should never be engaged unless they could use force without inhibition and had a clear chance of winning quickly without extensive casualties. Under no circumstances were they to be committed in ambiguous situations that could not be resolved by military means. In practice, this amounted to unwillingness to commit military forces almost anywhere. Arguably, the combination of ad hoc diplomacy and diffident military doctrine was ideal for Clinton’s domestic priorities-to bring the deficit under control and renew the domestic economy.

A more ambitious and hegemonic-sounding note did emerge occasionally out of the National Security Council-a sort of low-grade, low-wattage Wilsonian rhetoric concerned with prodding the world toward universal democracy. But given the cautious pragmatism of the State Department and the chronic diffidence of the military, the rhetoric was not taken very seriously. And in practice, it was applied with obvious reluctance, as, for example, in Haiti.

These characteristics of early Clinton foreign policy were probably manifested at their worst in the Yugoslav crisis. Starting with the Bush administration, the United States was happy not to get involved mili-tarily in what Europeans regarded as their own problem. On the other hand, the United States interfered diplomatically all the time, primarily to discourage the Moslems from accepting any offer of a negotiated settlement. This policy went on for several years and undoubtedly did very little to help the Europeans resolve the situation themselves.

As the 1996 election campaign approached, Clinton possibly felt vulnerable to the widespread criticism of his “lack of leadership” in foreign affairs. Events in Yugoslavia were not proceeding at all well under the “hands off” approach, and French president Jacques Chirac, elected in 1995, was demanding that the U.S. military get involved. The successful NATO intervention, coupled with Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke’s bravura diplomacy, dissolved the administration’s old image of weakness in foreign policy. Clinton suddenly became a resolute world leader, as the United States demonstrated its indis-pensability as the manager of the Western alliance.

Since Bosnia, the administration’s Wilsonian rhetoric has had what is described in electrical terms as a “heavy up.” Not only has the president been lecturing the rest of the world about the virtues of the American economy, but American hegemony has also been forcefully reasserted in NATO and the limits of American interest in developing a European-run alliance once more made clear. More significant still, membership in NATO is to be extended to East European countries, despite implacable if ineffective Russian opposition.

Meanwhile, there has been no diminishing of the traditional American role in Asia. If anything, the recent show of force in the Taiwan Strait has elevated America’s Asian military role to a level not seen in several years. There is certainly a great deal of semi-official talk about the increasing danger to American interests of a rapidly growing China, which has more and more money to spend on arms.8 At the same time, no real improvement has been made in America’s troubled economic relations with Japan, itself going through a prolonged political and financial crisis. In other words, the United States seems to be taking a strong position-not particularly conciliatory to either China or Japan. In Asia as well as in Europe, the new United States comes across as aggressively assertive.

Arguably, this new American assertiveness is merely the restoration of normal American foreign policy, unavoidable given the world’s real conditions. From a certain perspective, it never was realistic to imagine that the United States could retreat to the position of primus inter pares in a multipolar world. Like it or not, the United States must continue to play the leading hege-monic role in Europe and Asia both. Thus, the administration has belatedly discovered what it should have known from the beginning, or perhaps it did know it from the start but cleverly took advantage of a lull in its responsibilities to restore the country’s domestic strength. Having done so, the United States now stands ready to resume its traditional hegemonic role-and to redefine it for the new world order.

Sour Notes
There is, however, an insistent sour note in this fashionable litany of American self-congratulation, and it derives from the tensions implicit in Clinton’s electoral success of 1992: how can the administration harmonize its ongoing fiscal policy with its new, more ambitious, foreign policy? There has apparently been a significant change in the ambitions of the administration’s foreign policy without, so far, much corresponding change in its defense budget. The administration’s fiscal projections continue to count on a low, indeed, a falling military budget, which remains an essential element in achieving its promised fiscal balance early in the new century.

This disconnect naturally raises the question of whether the administration really has a coherent overall strategy to link its fiscal and geopolitical policies. Beyond is the further issue of whether the administration has a coherent foreign policy, and in particular whether its Asian and European parts are complementary or contradictory. Some of President Clinton’s foreign colleagues and domestic critics claim, for example, that the shifts in NATO policy were adventitious responses to particular opportunities and electoral pressures.9 The administration would no doubt hotly dispute the charge.
A sensible way to explore these questions further is to look at the commitments and fiscal consequences implicit in America’s European and Asian policies-to see first whether together they reveal a coherent, overarching geopolitical strategy, and second, whether that geopolitical strategy, coherent or not, is in harmony with domestic fiscal strategy and expectations.

Implications of NATO Enlargement
As essential background, it is worth noting just how very expensive the Cold War in Europe was for the United States, and why it was so. The principal reason was the need to maintain a large American conventional army, a requirement that emerged from the character of the nuclear balance as it evolved between the United States and the Soviet Union. The NATO commitment was assumed at a time when the United States could hit Soviet targets but was itself invulnerable to a Soviet nuclear attack. The Soviet Union began to achieve strategic parity with the United States at the end of the 1950s, and did so by the early 1970s, when it developed MIRV technology.

As the reality of the situation bore in on American strategic planners, they became more and more terrified of a commitment to Europe that left an American president with few options between surrendering to a Soviet conventional attack in Europe or launching a nuclear war that could be expected to encompass America’s home territory. The situation was further complicated because both the French and the British developed their own nuclear deterrents, together with a strategic doctrine to make them triggers to intercontinental escalation if any war did begin in Europe. For the Europeans, making this strategy explicit seemed the best way to ensure that no European war would actually break out. Their particular nightmare was a war between the superpowers that was confined to Europe. But the American nightmare was a war that began in Europe and spread to the United States.

The American remedy was to insist upon a large conventional capability for NATO. The problem was that the Europeans were uninterested in providing the conventional forces required-partly, at least, because they feared such forces would detract from nuclear deterrence and make a war more likely. Moreover, the United States insisted upon being in charge of all the conventional forces, through SACEUR, so as to control any escalation that might occur. Ultimately, the French simply pulled out of the military arrangements, and the alliance thereupon adopted the American “flexible response” doctrine.

The resulting solution, if efficacious militarily, was also extremely expensive for the United States. In the 1980s, the Pentagon began claiming that roughly $150 billion annually was devoted to forces honor-ing the NATO commitment, fully half of its huge budget. This situation fed an interminable and often acrimonious quarrel between Americans and Europeans over bur-den sharing. Throughout most of the Cold War, even the major European countries spent a much lower percentage of GDP on defense than the United States.10 America’s high defense spending could, of course, be used to explain its difficulty in maintaining a fiscal balance.

American taxpayers refused to pay anything like the level of taxes paid by Europeans, arguably because of the relatively low proportion of civilian benefits that they received in return. That low proportion of civilian return could be attributed to the high level of military spending, which, on occasion, accounted for roughly half of all federal spending and never fell below a quarter throughout the Cold War. Given the relatively undisciplined American constitutional structure and the privileged role of the dollar, it was easier to run fiscal deficits, financed alternately by inflation or foreign borrowing, than it was to cut either military spending or the already comparatively low level of civilian benefits.11 Thus, once the Cold War ended, the United States received enormous fiscal benefits. A weak and friendly Russia meant that large forces could be withdrawn from Eu-rope. Indeed, American forces in Western Europe (European Command) have been cut from well over 300,000 in 1989 to somewhere around 122,000 at the moment.12 A series of brilliant arms control agreements continuing from the Bush administration have consolidated the reductions while further enhancing security with various limits on the deployment of conventional forces.

Clinton’s relatively passive approach to European diplomacy followed naturally from these accomplishments. A hostile superpower confronting the West in the middle of Germany was a situation that obviously called for a strong American presence and leadership. That confrontation was now over. The new problems were those of ethnic quarrels, border disputes, criminality and general disorder-most of which went hand in hand with the resurrection and transformation of the states of Eastern Europe.

The United States wished to retain a significant military presence but hoped that the Europeans could manage the messysecurity problems arising from the Soviet withdrawal, particularly in the Balkans. It was hoped that the European Union (EU) would quickly embrace the newly liberated countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and the United States seemed not to object to a parallel development of the Western European Union as the EU’s military arm. At the same time, the United States remained diffident about formal extensions of NATO, although Washington offered all sorts of cooperative arrangements to East European countries, and most particularly to the Russians.

Managing Europe
The switch began with President Clinton’s July 1994 visit to Poland, where he spoke of extending NATO membership. After the intervention in Bosnia, and particularly during the presidential campaign of 1996, Clinton enthusiastically endorsed NATO’s enlargement. The limits to U.S. interest in the Europeanization of the alliance also grew increasingly apparent, prompting the French, who seemed ready to reenter NATO’s military structures, once more to stand aloof from them. It is difficult to see how any of this can logically be regarded in America’s national interest unless the United States is now determined to assume a very direct hegemonic role in managing European se-curity problems. That disposition seems confirmed not only by U.S. proposals for NATO enlargement but by the expansive character of those proposals, which appear to be intentionally maximalist rather than limited in scope.

Limited enlargement could mean merely an extension of NATO membership to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, with perhaps Slovenia, Slovakia, and even Croatia eventually to follow. Such an enlargement could be presented as a once-for-all adjustment of those East-West borders that had been artificially altered by the Cold War. In effect, it would mean returning a much Westernized Poland and the old crown lands of Austria to the West. The Russians could be soothed by being told that such measures were simply rectifying Stalin’s historic wrongs against obviously Western countries. Arguably, Romania and Bulgaria might be construed into membership under a similar rationale, namely that they need stabilizing and are of little interest to the Russians.

Part of such a policy, however, would have to be the explicit renouncing of NATO expansion to countries that are clearly seen by the Russians as vital to themselves, in particular to former territories of the So-viet Union, notably the Baltic States and Ukraine. But no such renunciation has been forthcoming. On the contrary, whatever its real intentions, the administration seems to be taking a deliberately maximalist tone. The president himself toured Eastern Eu-rope to promise further openings, and NATO now claims already to be readying a second slate of candidates. Clinton has continued to signal his intention to see the Baltic States’ eventual inclusion.13 Meanwhile, the United States has been cultivating close relations with Ukraine and showing a strong interest in Central Asian states as well. In other words, the United States seems firmly embarked on a policy of advancing not only its political and economic but also its military influence eastward.

The appeal of such policies is easily understood. Western countries feel benevolent toward the East Europeans and perhaps more than a little guilty about their harsh fate throughout most of the twentieth century. The governments of these East European states, supported by varying degrees of popular enthusiasm, are pressing very hard to be included. The Germans, hoping to roll eastward NATO’s “carpet of stability,” have also been pressing the United States for expansion. The French, whatever their real thoughts, cannot afford to seem less enthusiastic. Many European countries, beginning to calculate the costs and other difficulties of EU expansion, perhaps see NATO as a heaven-sent stopgap.

The Defeat of Russia
The problem remains that NATO expansion seems bound to outrage the historic sensibilities of Russians and make them afraid for the future. It may be wondered whether any great power would be willing to put up with this kind of intrusion into its adjacent areas. For centuries, Russians have regarded these regions as part of their own sphere. Russians, moreover, seem bound to see these Western moves as a direct violation of promises made at the time of German reunification. Belatedly, the United States and Ger-many are acting as victors. The result is that Russians will see themselves as defeated. TheWest is thus denying the Russians their useful fiction, not altogether false, that Russia itself created the new Europe by freeing its empire at the same time as it threw off its own totalitarian shackles. What NATO enlargement is saying is that Russia was defeated and that the West is now collecting its gains.

Russia seems in no position to confront the West head on. Russian leaders probably believe it would be counterproductive to make any show of force, even if they were capable of it. It would merely rejuvenate the Cold War’s old anti-Russian alliance. Russia needs time and Western investment to transform its domestic economy and refashion its society. But the grievances are nevertheless likely to rankle and to alienate Russia from the West over the long run. Even in the short term, there are formidable opportunity costs to the West from driving Russia back into hostile isolation. Russia could refuse, now or later, to ratify or honor the numerous recent arms control treaties that are rightly thought to be highly advantageous to the West-far more so, some experts think, than any putative advantages of adding new members to NATO and modernizing their armies.
Even in its present weakened state, Russia could cause NATO acute difficulties by stirring up the incipient disorder in neighboring states. Over time, the West can only lose by antagonizing Russia. It is an immensely rich and populous country, with impressive military traditions and highly advanced technology. Even now it remains a nuclear superpower and seems unlikely to remain militarily weak indefinitely. Once Russia is restored, it may be wondered how significant American guarantees would be for NATO’s new members, were the Russians to grow seriously hostile. Would the United States be prepared to launch a nuclear war for the defense of a disputed Polish border, a civil war in Ukraine, or a swift takeover of Estonia?

Making such American commitments responsibly implies a willingness to create a military structure that would make the commitments effective, without at the same time creating unbearable risks of nuclear war. If the past is any guide, such a military structure will be extremely expensive. Indeed, by comparison with the relatively short and precisely defined NATO boundaries that existed in Central Europe during the Cold War period, organizing a conventional defense for the proposed new NATO is inherently a far more formidable task. The cost of modernizing the armies of the putative new NATO members is, in itself, likely to be considerable, even by conservative estimates.14 New member countries in the throes of economic transformation clearly have better uses for their scarce resources.

The Clinton administration, sporting its hard-won credentials for fiscal responsibility, blithely assumes that the military im-plications of enlargement will be slightand that the West Europeans will, in any event, bear a large part of the costs. Nei-ther assumption seems very secure. A new transatlantic burden-sharing row of major proportions may well be in the making. In short, America’s new European policy has major military, fiscal, and diplomatic implications.

China’s Ambitions
NATO enlargement not only raises important issues of cost and risk in Europe but seems also to carry significant implications for American policy in Asia, which is, of course, America’s other great area of strategic concern. After 1950, the United States undertook to contain the Soviet Union and Communist China in Asia, just as it undertook to contain the Soviets in Europe. In Asia, however, the United States actually fought two wars to do so. As in Europe, America’s Asian role was partly explained by the need to prevent the malignant revival of an indigenous great power whose ambitions had devastated the region-Germany in Europe, Japan in Asia. Japan was persuaded to adhere to a nuclear nonproliferation treaty, as was Germany, on the grounds that the United States would provide adequate extended nuclear deterrence.

As in Europe, it was initially relatively easy to pledge that extended deterrence, since both potential major antagonists-China and the Soviet Union-were incapable of attacking the American homeland. After the Soviet Union achieved strategic parity, overall U.S.-Soviet strategic relations nevertheless remained reasonably stable, not least because the Soviets fell out with their erstwhile Chinese allies. That falling out rendered China a more tractable antagonist in Asia. Without its Soviet ally, with whom it was now on very bad terms, with only rudimentary nuclear forces of its own, and in the midst of all the upheavals of the Mao era, China was in no position to challenge the United States militarily.

The Soviet collapse has not really improved this American position in Asia, where the problem is not Russian ambition but Chinese. China after Mao has been growing very rapidly economically, according to its own singular model of authoritarianism tempered by anarchy. Its economy seems destined to become the world’s largest within a decade or so. The rate of social change is so frenetic as to raise questions about China’s continuing social and political stability. Meanwhile, many analysts are worried about China’s growing military spending and capacity. In short, China is a giant on the move-full of conflicting forces and tendencies.

The question for American policymakers is whether this China is programmed to be aggressive-inevitably driven to dominate its region and, in the process, to challenge the United States. Arguments can be marshaled on all sides of the issue. There seems no reason to assume, a priori, an implacable Chinese hostility to the West, let alone a mindless and self-destructive expansionism. But the potential threat is sufficient to require reasonable precautions. China seems more likely to develop in a way that is benign for its neighbors, for the world in general, and indeed for itself if it is surrounded by a balanced regional security structure. Arguably, it is America’s historic role to create such a structure.

Analysts naturally speculate on what the nature of that future Asian security structure might be. Three obvious models come to mind: China the regional hegemon, America the region’s hegemonic balancer, and a multipolar regional balance made up of China, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States. The noted American analyst, Samuel Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations and the Making of World Order, expects the first model, Chinese hegemony, to prevail over the long run, in part because he sees it as the traditional historic pattern. Asian states will know how to adapt to it, he suspects. They will understand how to defer without sacrificing too much indepen-dence, just as the Chinese will probably be wise enough not to exaggerate their hegemony. Huntington, of course, is currently emphasizing the “civilizational” aspects of geo-political affinities. It seems natural to him that “Sinic” Asian states will ultimately stick together under their traditional leader. He includes the Japanese in this Sinic grouping and expects them to kowtow to Beijing, as they have through much of their history.

Huntington makes a strong case. Not the least of China’s attractions to Japan and other highly developed neighbors is, of course, its huge and rapidly growing economy. Provided that Chinese hegemony is reasonably benign and not excessively burdensome, such a system could have great advantages and strengths. The feasibility of such optimistic expectations naturally depends on a wide variety of unknown factors-the real strength and adaptability of traditional Asian or “Sinic” values; the pull on Asian societies of such Western values as democracy, human rights, or free market competition; the capacity of China to serve as a manager of interstate political and economic relations; the sustainability of economic progress in China and elsewhere in Asia; and the stability of China’s own po-litical and social system. All such elements are sufficiently uncertain to guarantee widespread resistance to accepting Chinese hegemony, so long as a reasonably attractive alternative is available. That alternative, presumably, is some sort of containment system.

A Viable Asian Balance of Power
Building such a system, a viable Asian balance of power, would not have to be seen as an anti-Chinese policy, nor one that denied China a certain preeminence in the region, only natural as it grows more and more important economically and politically. But it would be a policy that, even while prompting cooperative arrangements across the region, also sought to sustain a basic military balance to encourage all parties, China included, to remain reasonable in their claims on each other.
American hegemonic balancing seems the obvious way to organize such a system. Indeed, it is a continuation of a status quo that has long had numerous advantages for Asia. Not only has it successfully contained China, North Korea, and Japan, but it has provided rich capital inflows to Asia and access for its exports in the huge American domestic market. Hence, the trade imbalance with the United States that is so very favorable to Asian producers.

The problem is whether America can be expected to sustain this status quo over the long run, and in particular whether the terms for it can continue to be as generous for Asia as in the past. As China inevitably grows into a more and more formidable nuclear power, the cost and danger to the United States of sustaining its balancing role is bound to increase. If the European case is any guide, the Americans will react by upgrading conventional forces and seeking allies to share the “burdens.” As in Europe, the increases implied for U.S. defense budgets do not square with Clinton’s fiscal targets on the home front.

The third option-a multipolar balance-is perhaps the most attractive in principle but also the most elusive to define in practice. Some analysts speak of a pentagonal balance-with India, Japan, and Russia as participants, along with China and the United States. In some versions, this model seems merely an extension of American hegemonic balancing-a device to rally regional support behind the American hegemon. In this view, what is needed is a sort of Asian NATO to help the United States contain China by enlisting several other Asian allies-Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, or the Philippines, for example. Arguably, some of the European great powers might be brought in as well. The problem with this idea is that few Asian or European states would be willing to risk such a for-mal alienation from China on behalf of the United States, at least not unless China’s behavior grows a great deal more threatening.

The notion of a pentagonal balance of independent great powers, in the classic realist sense, seems rather unreal in the Asian situation. Japan cannot be an independent great power capable of playing a balancing military role against China so long as it depends on the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Of course, Japan, were it more aggressively armed with conventional weapons, could be an excellent subordinate military ally for America, like Germany during the Cold War. But it is not clear that the Japanese would relish such a role, or that it would be welcomed by others in the region. Including India in the group of five balancers also seems artificial, given the vast distances and the world’s most formidable mountain chain between itself and the others. In reality, only three powers seem capable of playing an independent balancing role-China, Russia, and the United States.

A Tripolar Balance
What are the dynamics of this triad? Logically, Russia ought to be an ally of the United States in attempting to balance China. In many respects, it seems the only useful independent major ally for the United States in Asia. Militarily, Russia has a nuclear capacity that matches America’s and, over the long term, can be expected to have independent conventional military forces of high quality. Politically, there are many reasons why Russia’s relations with China will be conflictual. In the nineteenth century, while China was debilitated by Western incursions of one sort or another, Russia was able to consolidate its hold on the immense land mass of northern Asia, including some territories regarded as part of the Chinese sphere. Today, with Russia’s acquisitions populated by a great many people of Sinic or Turkish origin, with only a thin veneer of indigenous Russians, the huge Russian gains of the last century appear highly vulnerable. This seems likely to be true unless Russia is very strong, as it was during the Soviet period, or unless China is otherwise balanced or engaged.

Since the mid-1980s, relations between China and Russia have been improving, in contrast to the open hostility of the 1970s. In recent years, relations have taken a con-siderable step forward as Russia has growndisillusioned with the West over NATO enlargement, which China also opposes. Ties between the two countries have grown tighter. Trade has risen from a low of $370 million in 1974 to an estimated $7 billion in 1996, one-third of which was cross-border trade. The Russian Far East conducts about 80 percent of its trade with China’s Northeast. Joint ventures are proliferating. There were said to be over 800 such ventures already in 1992 and 1993.

Militarily, both sides have taken a much less aggressive posture than formerly. Russia has cut 150,000 troops from the Far East since 1985, and 50 percent of its Pacific fleet. Other confidence-building measures include a pullback of forces to between 100 and 200 kilometers from the border and a general round of multilateral force reductions, joint military exercises, and agreements on no first use of nuclear weapons. The Chinese are heavy buyers of Russian military equipment, which the russians are desperately eager to sell in order to keep their large and impoverished armaments industry going. Border issues have been almost entirely ironed out, but the enormous incursion of Chinese into Siberia, supposedly as temporary workers-is a development that the russians watch with appre-hension. Russia’s friendliness toward china stems in good part from its weakness and diplomatic isolation, which offer little room for quarreling with china. Thus, surface relations are good, even if the long-term prognosis includes a high probability ofconflict.

Having Russia as an ally in Asia would presumably greatly simplify the task of containing China for the United States. This is particularly true since Russia also has a long history of close relations with India. That Russia has recently been successfully cultivating good relations with China may provide a further advantage. The aim of con-tainment, after all, is not to threaten China but to encourage it along a path of peaceful engagement with its neighbors, as opposed to a path of aggrandizement at its neighbors’ expense. Arguably, it is in China’s interest to be reliably “contained.” within a military triad with russia and the united states, China ought to be able to find enough room for maneuver to protect its own interests.

An entente between Russia and the United States in Asia depends on the absence of serious conflict between them elsewhere. NATO enlargement is just such a case. But if it is a priority for the United States to balance China in Asia, then it should also be a priority not to antagonize Russia unnecessarily in Europe. If the Russians were ready to overrun Western Europe, the United States would have little choice in the matter of NATO enlargement. But Russia poses a very small real military threat to its European neighbors. On the whole, Russia behaved very well during the Yugoslav crisis. And indeed, since they themselves ended the Cold War, the Russians have been eager to be brought into an overarching European security system, so long as the terms are not humiliating.
So what is the rationale for the current American policy? One such rationale might be the assumption that Russia is in irrevocable decline, so weak that it is an immense vacuum that needs to be filled and might as well be filled by the West. The other rationale might be that Russia remains fundamentally and constitutionally hostile to the West, whatever its current policies, or even the intentions of its current leaders. Under the circumstances, the West might as well pocket what gains it can while Russia is weak.

Neither argument seems to me to support a “maximalist” NATO enlargement in Europe. If Russia has become a vacuum, there is no threat to European security and no enlargement is needed. If Russia remains potentially powerful and constitutionally hostile, enlargement makes NATO militarily indefensible at any reasonable price. Likewise, neither the vacuum argument nor the hostility argument seems very comforting to Western interests in Asia. A Russia that really is permanently weak would be a highly destabilizing element in the Far East. Russia’s enormous territory-rich and underpopulated-presents so huge and appetizing a prize that no great power could be expected not to covet it.

If Russia remains enfeebled over the long run, neither the United States nor a Japan not thoroughly remilitarized would be in a position to stop the Chinese from encroaching on Siberia. The thesis of an implacably and permanently hostile Russia is scarcely more encouraging. A hostile Russia, allied with China, could easily create enormous security problems for a United States trying to play the role of hegemonic balancer, not just in Europe but in Asia as well.

If this analysis has much validity, the rationale for current American foreign policy is unclear. Potentially, the military commit-ments being prepared in Europe and Asia are substantially greater than anything undertaken during the Cold War. On the European side, commitments to defend the bor-ders of Poland or the Baltic states, for example, pose a much more difficult military problem than defending the West German border against the Soviets. Unless the United States is prepared to rely on purely nuclear defense, a highly improbable scenario, the requirements of an effective conventional defense for an enlarged NATO against a rejuvenated and hostile Russia will be enormous. Similarly, the American commitment to Asia can only grow in scope, as China becomes more and more powerful.

Given the priority that American domestic politics places on budget balancing, a foreign policy that appears vigorously deter-mined to create expensive new military commitments seems anomalous. It is difficult to see the rationale for an American policy that deliberately picks an unnecessary quarrel in Europe and, at one stroke, also antagonizes its most useful future ally in Asia. If the United States truly embarks on such a geopolitical course, a quick return to the unbalanced American fiscal conditions typical of the late Cold War seems very probable. Alternatively, should the civilian priorities of the American political system prevent such an ambitious geopolitical course from be-ing financed effectively, America’s foreign commitments will be taken less and less seriously, the classic recipe for war by miscalculation.

Foreign Policy by Special Interests
How can current American policy be explained? Two explanations come quickly to mind. Each, however, seems to raise more questions than it answers. One is that Amer-ican foreign policy has simply been hijacked by special interests-by, for example, the NATO bureaucracy, the arms industry, and Polish, Czech, and other East European ÈmigrÈ communities in the United States. If so, this seems a rather dangerous situation, not least for the safety of Central and East European countries themselves. They are enticing the United States into a policy that will antagonize their relations with Russia without gaining a reliable long-term defense for themselves. Such a course seems as little in their interest as in the interest of the United States. America, after all, can always leave Europe. The Central and East European countries cannot. Their long-term interest is to engage Russia in some peaceful pan-European structure rather than to add a postscript to the Cold War that leaves the West occupying an overextended and indefensible position. Arguably, it was Stalin’s unwise overextension westward into Germany that triggered the Cold War and ultimately exhausted and destroyed the Soviet Union. Should the West now insist upon imitating Stalin?

Another possible explanation is that the administration agrees with many of the ÈmigrÈ lobbies-that so fundamental and implacable a division exists between the “West” and Russia that geographical Europe must continue to be split between two armed camps. Recently, Samuel Huntington has also been arguing that there exists a major civilizational divide between Western Christendom and Orthodox Christendom, such that they may be considered two distinct civilizations, along with the Moslem, Sinic, and several other civilizations. To the best of my knowledge, Huntington never relates this civilizational divide to the question of NATO enlargement, nor does he suggest that it precludes some sort of cooperative pan-European structure.15 But he does argue forcefully that Russia embodies a Byzantine or Orthodox civilization distinct from the West’s and is unlikely to merge with it.

Many people might take issue with Huntington’s civilizational analysis in its European dimension. Obviously, there are important differences between the Orthodox and Western Christian cultures. But it is not so clear that these are greater than those between Catholics and Protestants, or between the French, Germans, and Americans. Elites, moreover, are generally more cosmopolitan than their countrymen, who they tend to drag along behind them. A large part of the Russian elite clearly wants to be in the West. Huntington tends to discount the influence of such elites in the present era. At the very least, his argument is a healthy corrective to prevailing fatuous assumptions of the coming universality of Western or American values.

But if civilizational differences mean that Russia will be alienated from the West, the consequences seem unfortunate for any American policy that tries to maintain se-curity in both Europe and Asia without bankrupting the national economy in the process. If Huntington is right about both Asia and Europe, the sensible American strategy would be a gradual retreat from Asia and a NATO enlargement limited to truly “Western” nations in Europe. Presumably, the alternative to an American retreat from Asia would be a search for major non-Sinic allies, which means Russia, a course blocked by the expanded civilizational NATO in Europe. If, however, civilizational antagonism does not preclude close cooperative relations between the West and Russia, then it is difficult not to agree with George Kennan that NATO enlargement is a profound historical mistake for American policy. In any event, it is difficult to find a coherent strategy that can reconcile the current American foreign policies toward Europe and Asia with each other, or with the Clinton administration’s fiscal goals and expectations at home.

By any reasonable standard, the first term of the Clinton administration was a very respectable performance. True, Clinton’s campaign goals were not achieved. But in the American system, unlike many in Europe, the president is far from being an elected dictator. Perhaps even more than most other Western leaders, he has to seize and exploit whatever opportunities the situation offers. Arguably, Clinton used the end of the Cold War and the Republican enthusiasm for budget balancing to bring about a major improvement in the country’s macro-economic climate, without sacrificing too much of the educational and technological agenda that he believes essential for long-term economic viability. Doubtless, his fiscal accomplishment is more precarious than it looks and, given the demographic trends, should have gone further. Still, politics remains the art of the possible and he has done very well by the country.

Clinton’s second term, however, seems to be off to a troubling start. The lack of coherence between foreign and domestic policy looks as if it may start to catch up with him. Worse, there is a prevailing smell of hubris. A rather militant and assertive self-satisfaction, which alienates useful allies, seems to go hand in hand with geopolitical overconfidence and carelessness-tendencies that point to a new era of geopolitical “overstretch” and a new lease on life for the “declinists.” If there is a historical parallel, it is with the 1960s and the Kennedy administration. If the parallel holds, we are probably now entering the Lyndon Johnson phase-a thought that should give pauseto any president, most especially to one who is a liberal Democrat of the Vietnam generation.