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THE CONCEPT OF CONTINUITY IN POST COLD WAR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
INTRODUCTION
On September 12 2001, people all around the world were still in shock because of the horrible images of death that they saw on their TV screens. After a few days the question in people’s minds was not only who attacked the twin towers but also the vulnerability of the most powerful country of the world: United States of America. After the attacks in his address to the nation President Bush stated that: “America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.” I think that, this statement can be seen as an example of a very stereotypical misperception of how Americans see themselves as the chosen nation of the world. Throughout the history of America this misperception played a crucial role to shape American foreign policy. The horrible events like 9/11 as Andrew Roberts’s points out have always been seen as “historical opportunities”. Similar to Robert, Ken Jowitt also argues that perceiving these kinds of events as historical opportunities is actually a very long American tradition, Jowitt believes that United States always used and will continue to use these kinds of crisis to serve a wider foreign policy purposes. Therefore it is not surprising but even justifying hearing President Bush declare that: “America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time.” This statement was not only the predictor of an upcoming war but also the answer to most provoking question of American foreign policy after the Cold war:” Where is the threat?”9/11 not only gave a very specific answer to this question but also as Perry Anderson points out: ”Gave the new administration, the opportunity for a much swifter and more ambitious tune that it could easily have executed otherwise.” Therefore with the newly formed social density which was signifying the total commitment of the public to the new administration, American foreign policy from the outside seemed to face a breakpoint with 9/11.However this was not the case. The root of the foreign policy of America which was adopted during the presidency of Bush was not formed with the appearance of the new threat. It was the outcome of the policies starting from the end of the Cold War. In order to connect the dots and show the continuity between the policies which were adopted during the Bush administration and the policies of post-cold war era, I will examine the foremost objectives of American foreign policy tradition which was formed with the establishment of the United States and continued to evolve through subsequent historical events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall.
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
“The history of American foreign policy as more of a unified whole and less as a sequence of unrelated episodes.
Walter Russel Mead
Shortly after the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989, United States stood as the most powerful nation in the world. Since the Soviet threat was out of question, the system evolved from bipolarity to unipolarity. Most of the well known academicians and politicians of America were questioning what would be the next step that United States should take to preserve the stability of the system. Since Americans never in their history experienced to be a hegemonic power, they were looking back to history and make interpretations to find out the unknown events and the threats that they might face. Therefore American foreign policy had to evolve itself due to the changing circumstances but also had to preserve its basic strategic posture, which was first shaped actually by Monroe doctrine. As Walter Russel Mead points out:
“The strategic principles of the Monroe doctrine have continued without interruption to shape American foreign policy from that day to this. American interventions in the world wars as well as the Cold War were not a series of revolutionary departures from Monroe’s statecraft; they were examples at the same thinking that led Monroe to proclaim it.”
The basic strategic posture of American foreign policy was not actually something which is emphasized often. The ideology behind this posture was always known by heart therefore it was not necessary to name it as a foreign policy tradition. Most of the Americans today, still can question whether they have an accurate foreign policy tradition or not. The reason behind this, is quite simple, America since the day it was formed was not a country which can isolate itself from the rest of the world, its economy is tightly bounded to the rest of the world. Major historical events such as the Great Depression or the Oil Crisis can be seen as the proofs of this. Therefore every major political or economical issue which is debated in American domestic politics has an impact on American foreign policy. Thus what Meads or other scholars or politicians call “the basic strategic posture” of American foreign policy is nothing but preserving the national interests.
The scope of the national interests of United States in its foreign policy may change due the time and circumstances but in general it means to secure the homeland from the threats and to preserve the economical interests abroad. This objective never changed throughout the American history. Especially because of the economical dependency to outside world, economical interests prevailed to be the one of the most crucial concept in American foreign policy. Therefore I think the continuity is not something we can only observe between the Bush policies and the post cold war policies. By connecting the dots between every era we can easily notice that the main objectives of American Foreign policy always stood the same even during the most catastrophic events. However in this paper I will precisely point out the objectives of foreign policy throughout the 1990s which I believe affected the every decision which was taken during the Bush administration.


OBJECTIVES OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN POST COLD WAR WORLD

American policy planners through out the 1990s determined few objectives to confront the post-Cold War world. Perry Anderson eloquently summarizes some of these objectives with these words:” The first priority was to make sure that Russia was locked, economically and politically, into the global order of capital, with the installation of a privatized economy and business oligarchy at the switches of a democratic electoral system… A second concern was to secure the two adjacent zones of Soviet influence- Eastern Europe and the Middle East.” These objectives were become active policies during the periods of Clinton and Bush administrations. Again Anderson points out the way how United Sates achieved these goals one by one.

“Washington extended NATO to the East, and took charge of liquidating the Yugoslav estate. In the latter, the war for Kuwait was a windfall that allowed it to install advanced military bases in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.”

Starting from the Reagan Administration, apart from controlling Russia, one of the other principles of American foreign policy was expanding the military budget. This policy was mostly supported by the Jacksonianists Later on during the Clinton administration, neo-conservatives such as William Kristol and Robert Kagan continued to stress the importance of expanding military budget in their writings. In 1996 they wrote an article which praised the foreign policy style of Reagan and sharply criticized Clinton and his Foreign Secretary Madeline Albright for carrying out Wilsonian Multilateralism in their foreign policies. They respond the critics coming from democrats about expanding the military budget with these words:

“These days, some critics complain about the fact that the United States spends more on defense than the next six major power combined. But the enormous disparity between US military strength and that of any potential challenger is a good thing for America and the world .They do not notice that potential challengers are deterred before even contemplating confrontation by their overwhelming power and influence.”

These arguments of Kagan and Kristol later on more emphasized by other neo conservatives and supported by several other groups such as: military industrial complex, evangelicals and petrol lobbies. Most of these groups were very affective in shaping the American foreign policy. And again for most of these groups since United States gained an unrivaled position with the end of the Cold War, it was its turn to pursue wide range of goals. From the early days of Clinton administration these groups showed their impact in defense policies. In 1992 Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney who worked in Defense Department drafted the “Defense Planning Guidance”. Michael Lind argues that this guidance: “Laid out a strategy for turning America’s temporary Cold War predominance into indefinite U.S. global hegemony.” Therefore when Clinton tried to expand the ideals of American life style, free market and individual rights to whole world, he somehow could not satisfy the right wing in US politics. During his presidency, he tried to implement policies to foster a more productive world economy and to achieve this goal he encouraged the democratization of the former communist countries. His ideas about international order were very much inspired by the arguments of Kant about “perpetual peace” As a result during his administration, his efforts to bring peace to former Yugoslavia while ignoring the genocide taking place in Rwanda were not justifying what he promised to achieve. He was mostly criticized by the left wing because of trying to cover his policies with fake Wilsonian motifs. And the right wing accused him for not giving too much attention to American foreign policy by setting up small scale targets to achieve. As Kagan and Kristol describes: ”Benevolent Hegemony” should be the America’s new international role. Therefore the neo conservatives who became very influential starting from the Reagan administration were not please with the general attitude of the Clinton administration who choose to be supportive of international institutions. Because they believe that since America was no more challenged by any rivals, there is no necessity to cooperate with international actors and sacrifice U.S. national interests. However when we have a look at the priorities of Clinton administration we can still see the affects of basic strategic postures of American foreign policy.

Clinton had to face a very different world, and keeping in mind the circumstances of post Cold War, he maintained to preserve stability of the system by not only negotiating with the world powers but also with the precautionary measures he used in his foreign policy. The humanitarian interventions which took place in Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor where the signs of his willingness to protect American democratic ideals. However he did not achieve a solid success with any of these interventions. So how did he serve for America’s national interests in his foreign policy? He tried to bring peace to Palestine conflict through negotiations with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders, he succeeded to persuade Russia to withdraw its troops from Latvia and Estonia and I believe the most astonishing ones out of all these were his achievements which came in the field of trade. He pushed the Congress to ratify NAFTA and GATT. Hence, I think that, there is no significant drift from the traditional foreign policy of America in his presidency because he, like his predecessors tried to serve the national interests of America without undermining the national security.

I believe the main reason behind the lack of aggressiveness in Clinton’s attitude in foreign policy was due to his cautiousness to preserve the stability of the international order. He did not choose to carry out an assertive national posture because, there were no very accurate threats or in other words, during his presidency the “new enemy” was not constructed yet. One of the reasons why most of the world sees 9/11 as a breakpoint has actually originated from this. With 9/11 American foreign policy came to face its “new enemy”. In fact it was craving to meet this “new enemy” since the end of the Cold War. Kennan once wrote that:

“There seems to be a curious American tendency to search, at all times, for a single external center of evil, to which all our troubles can be attributed rather than to recognize that there might be multiple sources of resistance to our purposes and undertakings, and that these sources might be relatively independent of each other”

Anatol Lieven in his article: Neo-Conservatives, Liberal Hawks, and the War of Terror: Lessons from the Cold War enhances this argument of Kennan and points out that : “This tendency stemmed, like so many others, from a desire to divide the world into black and white, good and evil. “ Therefore it was not surprising for United States to finally define the new threat as “global terrorism” or more specifically as “ Islamofacism” . As a consequence with the effort of the groups which I listed above such as neo conservatives, military industrial complex, evangelicals and petrol lobbies, the concept of “New World Order” and “Terrorism” became the most striking words starting from the early days of Bush’s presidency. However projects like “New American century” which were formed by neo conservatives have not actually start to become influential in Bush’s era. They have been the most influential voices to shape post –cold war American foreign policy starting from the presidency of Reagan. These Neo Conservatives were also in favor of a more assertive foreign policy. As Perry Anderson points “The rhetoric of the Clinton’s regime spoke of the cause of international justice and the construction of a democratic peace” .However this situation did not last too long. The horrible terrorist attacks in 9/11 caused a mainstream discontent among the nation about American foreign policy for the first time in American history. This discontent suddenly showed itself with the inflamation of popular nationalism. American society changed its ignorant attitude towards foreign conflicts. Therefore we can not state there is a sharp turning point between the years of Clinton and Bush. Their priorities were different and they emphasized different problems in their foreign policies. On the one hand Clinton chose to stress the elements of Wilsonian and Hamiltonian schools in his foreign policy and on the other hand Bush chose more to stress the priorities of Jaksonians and Jefforsonians.

Anderson points out that:
“...…these are not incompatible motifs, but the order of emphasis assigned to each has altered. The result is a sharp contrast of atmospherics. The war on terrorism orchestrated by Cheney and Rumsfeld is a far more strident, if also brittle, rallying –cry than cloying pieties of the Clinton-Albright years”

Finally, basing my argument on Anderson’s ideas , I believe that 9/11 triggered the long existent desire for expansion which was apparent since the declaration of the “manifest destiny” therefore the neoconservative ideas during the 1990’s which supported the American hegemony were the founding parameters of Bush’s new world order. According to the studies I’ve conducted during this course, I think that there’s a continuity, not only in the foreign policies of 1990’s and Bush era but also at all times in the history of American foreign relations.