Bazaar Foreign Policy

__"The Selling of American Foreign Policy" by Lawrence F. Kaplan, in The Weekly Standard (Apr. 28, 1997), 1150 17th St. N.W., Ste. 505, Washington, D.C. 20036–4617.__

The Clinton administration has put commerce at the center of U.S. foreign policy, in the hope of promoting peace, democracy, and human rights throughout the world. The result has been to cut American foreign policy loose from its strategic and ideological moorings, asserts Kaplan, a Fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

In the name of "commercial diplomacy," the United States now "engages" nations of all sorts, he says, even those whose links to terrorist activities and human rights abuses have won them places on the State Department’s roster of rogue states. "No profit margin is too small [and] almost no regime [is] too distasteful for the apostles of commercial engagement," such as Jeffrey Garten, who served as undersecretary of commerce for international trade during 1993–95. When Occidental Petroleum last year wanted to pump oil from a Sudanese field, Clinton provided an exemption from the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act. Syria, too, got an exemption, and "continues to enjoy millions of dollars in American investment." The White House now is considering lifting the trade embargo on Iran.

The official pariah status of such states as Syria limits trade done with them, but the Clinton administration "tirelessly promotes" business deals with equally egregious countries, Kaplan says. China is only the most prominent example. Despite the repressive policies of the Suharto regime in Indonesia, the late commerce secretary Ron Brown secured Indonesian contracts worth billions for American companies. Mexico—the source of three-fourths of the cocaine that flows into the United States each year— poses, according to the State Department, "a more immediate narcotics threat to the United States" than any other nation. Yet, even after learning "that the commander of Mexico’s much lauded anti-drug effort was himself a drug dealer," Kaplan notes, Clinton "certified the commitment of our third largest trading partner to fighting narcotics trafficking."

The administration also has encouraged American firms "to auction off previously restricted technologies to foreign bidders," Kaplan points out. It has abolished nearly all export restrictions on computer and telecommunications technology, and, brushing aside Pentagon concerns, has authorized the launching of commercial satellites to take high-resolution photos that could be used for military purposes.

While the administration gives "potential adversaries . . . lucrative trade deals and sensitive technology," Kaplan observes, it often uses trade "as a weapon with which to bludgeon our strategic allies," notably Japan.

"By promoting commercial diplomacy at the expense of our strategic interests," he warns, "President Clinton has essentially rolled the dice, betting that security issues represent nothing more than what one administration official described . . . as ‘stratocrap and globaloney.’ The White House assumes that the rest of the world will recognize the diminished utility of military power—the notion that war will soon go the way of dueling. Unfortunately, no evidence exists to suggest that nations such as China and Syria share that conviction."