.jpg)
|
|
|
Bush's Withdrawal From the World By Ronald D. Asmus Harry Truman must be turning over in his grave. The planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Europe and Asia that President
Bush announced this week, if allowed to stand, could lead to the demise
of the United States' key alliances across the globe, including the one
that Truman considered his greatest foreign policy accomplishment: NATO.
The president proposes something that generations of U.S. diplomats and
soldiers fought to prevent and that our adversaries sought unsuccessfully
to achieve: radical reduction of U.S. political and military influence
on the European and Asian continents. The Bush message, delivered at a
campaign rally, also smells of political opportunism. Under pressure but
unable to withdraw troops from Iraq, the president has instead reached
for what his advisers hope is the next best thing politically -- a pledge
to bring the boys home from Europe and Asia. Whether this is good or bad politics remains to be seen. But there is
little doubt that it is bad strategy and bad diplomacy, for which the
United States is likely to pay a heavy price. The reasons are fairly simple.
In Europe after the Cold War, the United States decided to significantly
reduce its former troop levels but to leave sufficient military forces
on the ground to accomplish three objectives: help ensure that peace and
stability on the continent would endure; have the capacity to support
NATO and European Union expansion and project the communities of democracies
eastward; and provide the political and military glue to enable our allies
to reorient themselves militarily and prepare, together with the United
States, to address new conflicts beyond the continent's borders. Each of these goals remains important. Each will be undercut by the president's
plan. With transatlantic relations badly frayed, Russia turning away from
democracy and the United States facing the challenge of projecting stability
from the Balkans to the Black Sea, Washington should be putting forward
a plan to repair the transatlantic alliance, not ruin it. In Asia the stakes are just as high and the challenges perhaps greater.
There the United States faces the long-term challenge of managing the
rise of China as a great power. North Korea's eventual collapse and the
unification of Korea will raise the question of that country's future
geopolitical orientation. And such seismic events will undoubtedly have
a considerable impact on the evolution of Japan's role and orientation
as well. U.S. diplomats will have their hands full over the next decade or two
trying to win the war on terrorism and help manage these multiple strategic
transitions -- and will need every ounce of U.S. political and military
leverage and muscle if they are to get it right. In an act of diplomatic
hara-kiri, the president proposes to destroy one of the key pillars of
U.S. influence just when this kind of leverage and influence is likely
to be needed the most. The president's plan is unfortunately further evidence of the strategic
myopia that has afflicted this administration and is undercutting the
United States' standing in the world. At a time when we should be mobilizing
and reinvigorating our alliances in Europe and Asia, we are dismantling
them. Instead of creating multilateral structures to mobilize the world
in a common struggle against terrorism and new anti-Western ideologies
and movements, we opt for a unilateral course that leaves us with fewer
friends. As opposed to balancing the political and military requirements
of a new era and coming up with a new troop deployment plan that meets
both needs, the administration allows the Pentagon to ride roughshod over
broader U.S. strategy and diplomacy and destroy the work of generations
of diplomats and soldiers. Is there room for reconfiguring the U.S. military deployment plan overseas
and modernizing it for a new era? Of course, there is. But such a review
must also be part of a new strategic approach to alliance-building to
confront the new threats we face. It must take into account our political
and military requirements and the views of our allies. The president should
have given a speech in Ohio on how he planned to repair the United States'
alliances for the future -- and our new global military posture should
reflect that goal as well. Why has no administration official come forward
with any ideas on repairing the United States' alliance relationships?
Sen. John Kerry has recognized that the lesson of Sept. 11 is that the
U.S. need for allies is going up, not down. He has pledged to make the
reinvigoration of U.S. alliances a foreign policy priority. He has claimed
that his election would allow for a "fresh start" and close
a remarkably divisive chapter in relations with many of our close allies.
There is little doubt that Kerry's election would be enthusiastically
welcomed in both Europe and Asia. But it is time for the senator to take
the next step and lay out a concrete plan for how his administration would
reverse the damage done by President Bush and reinvigorate the United
States' alliances to meet the dangers we face. Part of that plan should
be to freeze and review the ill-conceived plan the president put forth
this week in Ohio. The writer, senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of
the United States, served as deputy assistant secretary of state for European
affairs from 1997 to 2000. The views here are his own. Back to Official Viewpoints Page
|
|
|
This website is volunteer managed, designed and donated. Content is the sole responsibility of Democrats of Napa Valley Club. Club Sponsored Napa Democratic Headquarters- 1408 Second Street, Napa Democrats
of Napa Valley |
||