TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/122391/1223101.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 9.1 KB | 182 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 32

POLITICS

Can "America First" Bring Jobs Back?


Even though it's a bad idea, the cry for the U.S. to withdraw
from the world is staging a revival -- and Pat Buchanan hopes
to exploit it

By LAURENCE I. BARRETT/CONCORD


    In declaring his long-shot challenge to George Bush for
the Republican presidential nomination, conservative columnist
Pat Buchanan toned down some of his reactionary ideas. But he
retained enough traces of xenophobia to sound like a flashback
from the isolationist 1930s. Launching his campaign in New
Hampshire, where the first 1992 presidential primary is only
nine weeks away, Buchanan demanded no less than America's
retreat from the world at flank speed.

    The debater's edge he has polished as a television
shout-show panelist helped Buchanan frame his differences with
Bush in only 41 words: "He is a globalist and we are
nationalists. He believes in some Pax Universalis; we believe
in the old Republic. He would put America's wealth and power at
the service of some vague New World Order; we will put America
first." Buchanan believes that the U.S. has no business
promoting democracy abroad now that the cold war is history. He
wants to end direct foreign aid and curtail U.S. participation
in the World Bank. Buchanan would rapidly withdraw all American
ground forces from Europe. Some of the troops, he suggests,
should be used to reinforce border patrols that intercept
illegal immigrants from Mexico. As for legal immigration from
Third World countries, Buchanan would curb that too.

    While Buchanan is by far the most extreme neo-isolationist
to declare his candidacy, other versions of that creed are
erupting all along the political spectrum. The redefinition of
U.S. priorities and interests in the post-cold war world is a
subject that cries out for cool debate. But what the country has
been handed in the slow-starting presidential campaign is mostly
warm mush.

    Whatever the merits of Buchanan's arguments, mushiness is
not his problem. His goal is not to win the nomination --
though he would surely accept it if a near-miracle occurred --
but to pressure Bush to move to the right by garnering a large
share of votes in several primaries. Though Buchanan's
America-first ideology is dismissed as unrealistic by those he
derisively labels "the globalist foreign policy contingent in
both parties," appealing to isolationism is a powerful political
weapon.

    The desire to pull back from foreign entanglements is an
enduring part of the American psyche that rears up whenever the
nation tires of exertions abroad. After World War I, the U.S.
rejected membership in the League of Nations, adopted a
restrictive immigration policy and eventually enacted high
tariff barriers. It took Pearl Harbor and then communist
expansionism to make internationalism the basis of U.S. foreign
policy. Even during the heyday of the effort to contain
communism, "the public never fully bought the challenge," says
Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution. "Only a bipartisan
consensus among elites kept the country's latent isolationism
at bay."

    That consensus has imploded with the collapse of the
Soviet Union. Now that the Red Menace is gone, so-called
paleoconservatives like Buchanan see no justification for
vigorous American involvement abroad. Like many liberals -- and
most of the Democratic presidential candidates -- Buchanan
initially opposed Bush's aggressive response to Iraq's invasion
of Kuwait. He contended that U.S. security interests defined
only in the most narrow sense warranted going to war. Meanwhile
some Democrats are arguing that all could be made well at home
if the U.S. would only adopt a more protectionist trade policy,
shielding American firms from foreign competition.


    New Hampshire, hit harder than most areas by the
recession, is an excellent place to make that case -- especially
since the state's G.O.P. has a strong right-wing faction that
has long distrusted Bush. Both moderate and conservative New
Hampshire Republicans, who rescued Bush's faltering nomination
campaign in 1988, now feel resentful and abandoned. In that
contest Bush vowed not to raise taxes, a pledge he broke in
agreeing to the 1990 deficit-reduction deal. Buchanan slams the
President on that issue in every speech.

    Buchanan, at minimum, can embarrass Bush by harping on the
President's seeming indifference to the nation's domestic
problems. Bush's obsession with foreign affairs would have
caused him little political grief had the recession been short
and shallow. But the downturn's severity, together with Bush's
slowness in taking steps to combat it, have left him open to the
charge that his attention begins at the ocean's edge. The
President betrayed his worries about such attacks last week when
he responded to Buchanan's charges, "We must not pull back into
some isolationist sphere, listening to this sirens' call of
America first." Protectionism, Bush said, will only "shrink
markets and throw people out of work."

    The President is right. Despite the $66 billion trade
deficit, U.S. exports have been growing, in constant dollars,
as a proportion of the gross national product. Says Robert
Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International: "A
country that exports 15% of its GNP cannot turn its back on the
world economy and hope to prosper." But Bush only grudgingly and
recently has begun to consider measures to make the U.S. more
competitive. His muzzy pronouncements about creating a new world
order fail to address the need to redirect the energies formerly
focused on the cold war to long-term economic revival.

    Even if Buchanan's underfinanced campaign flops early,
Democrats will continue to bash Bush for his preoccupation with
foreign affairs. Well before the plunge in Bush's poll ratings
lured Buchanan into the race, some Democrats were honing
variations on isolationist and protectionist themes. Virginia
Governor Douglas Wilder came to New Hampshire in August to tout
what he calls a "Put-America-First Initiative." He echoes Iowa
Senator Tom Harkin, who has stridently attacked Bush for his
foreign travels, lambasted the free-trade treaty that the
Administration is negotiating with Mexico and carped about
foreign aid. While insisting that he is neither an isolationist
nor a protectionist, Harkin often sounds like both. When he
declared his candidacy, he spoke approvingly of Abraham
Lincoln's decision to buy expensive railway track from domestic
foundries rather than import cheaper supplies from Britain.

    Japan is a favorite target of most of the Democrats.
Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey has accused Tokyo of using unfair
trade practices to undermine prosperity in the U.S. and impede
the development of poorer countries. Former Senator Paul Tsongas
of Massachusetts gets laughs in neighboring New Hampshire when
he says, "The cold war is over and Japan won." But Tsongas has
a more sophisticated approach than most of his Democratic
rivals, emphasizing restoring American technological and
industrial primacy rather than lashing out at foreign countries.

    Of the announced Democratic candidates, Arkansas Governor
Bill Clinton has gone furthest in framing a coherent approach
that includes efforts to promote fair trade but avoids
nostalgic appeals to isolationism in economic or political
terms. Last week he outlined his differences with his Democratic
rivals -- and with Bush -- in a major speech on national
security policy. He argued that the U.S. must maintain its
influence in a world still groping for stability and at the same
time address domestic problems. In Clinton's view, national
security depends as much on economic vitality as it does on a
strong military. One way to accomplish both goals, he said, is
to accelerate cuts in defense spending already under way while
modernizing the military-force structure.

    The savings would be devoted to domestic development
programs and deficit reduction. Further raids on the Pentagon
budget are probably inevitable; all the Democratic candidates
favor diversion of military funds to domestic purposes, and the
Administration is inching in that direction. But doing that will
require rewriting the budget accord struck by Congress and the
Administration last year, which forbids any savings from reduced
defense spending to be shifted to domestic programs. Still,
Clinton's proposal is a serious attempt to treat national
security and domestic needs as complements to each other rather
than as an either-or proposition.

    Some dedicated internationalists, in fact, have been
trying to move the debate over national security in that
direction since the Soviet collapse began. "Curing our domestic
ills," says William Hyland, editor of Foreign Affairs, "is part
of good foreign policy." He argues that throughout the cold
war, fighting communism almost invariably prevailed over
domestic needs. Now the balance must be shifted back toward the
homefront if the U.S. is to retain the strength it needs to play
an important role in the world.