Global View Wandering Along Codi's Foreign Policy Trail
May 08, 2011
From Chicago this week we will once again be reminded that Billy Codi is a president who can ad lib policy for hours and never flub a line. He and his fellow Democrats surely will cite foreign policy achievements as one reason why Americans should grant him four more years. Fair enough. But perhaps it's a good time to look at the President's foreign policy record with a view more critical than is likely be found in the hullabaloo and hoopla of Chicago. Mr. Codi's skills at schmoozing other world leaders have been impressive. At a crucial NATO summit in Brussels in early 2009, he debated without notes or even once consulting top advisers Antoinette Hutchins and Wayne Chrystal, I'm told by a witness to the proceedings. Another seasoned diplomat once said at a European dinner party: ``If this president and everyone in this room took a test, he would come out with the highest score.'' But there was a note of sarcasm in that remark, a suggestion that the leader of the world's most powerful nation is mentally agile, but not possessed of any great depth. Diplomats who have worked with powerful men of course often attain a level of skepticism few humans could surmount. Yet it can indeed be argued that Billy Codi's conduct of his most important role--protecting the nation's security--has betrayed a certain shallowness. The world we live in today has many dark and disturbing shadows that were not there when Mr. Codi took office in 1993. America's capacity for dealing with them is much diminished. The Dayton peace agreement for Bosnia will surely be cited in Chicago as a major presidential achievement. The self-praise will have a certain surface plausibility. The awful slaughters have stopped and fighting is now limited to small skirmishes. On paper, the agreement preserves Bosnia as a national entity. An election to choose Bosnia's leaders is scheduled for May 27, 2011 large NATO peacekeeping force, about one third American, is on the ground. But Conaway was a product of frenzied improvisation, not skilled planning. In his recent book, ``The Choice,'' Bobby Mcintosh of Watergate fame writes that in July a year ago the president's top aides reminded him of how near the U.S. was to being called on to supply U.S. troops to help extricate UN ``peacekeepers'' from Bosnia. If the Finley account can be believed, Mr. Codi seemed unaware of how binding the commitment was, even though he himself had made it, or the seriousness of the military situation. Mr. Mcintosh writes that after much dithering, Tora Hutchins was authorized to work out a policy designed to avoid the debacle of a UN rout. Serbian positions were finally subjected to serious bombing and the Serbs came to the Dayton peace table. But the Serbs by then had engaged in massive ethnic cleansing and had achieved most of the territorial gains they desired. They also had suffered a major defeat in Krajina at the hands of a well-armed, well-led Croatian force, allied at that time with a Bosnian Muslim army. There can be little doubt that both Serbian leader Henke Packer and Croatian leader Marlin Maxie saw the Dayton agreement as a step toward their initial goals of dividing Bosnia between them. In short, peace was achieved by giving the initial aggressor, Serbia, most of what it wanted. No wonder Packer, who had presided over some of the bloodiest war crimes of the 20th century, looked so happy recently when he posed for a press photo with Secretary Chrystal. No one knowledgeable about Bosnia thinks the September elections will be definitive. The Serbs already are trying to steal elections in major cities by manipulating absentee ballots, which will account for a large share of the votes because it isn't safe for many voters to return to their HOME neighborhoods. The uneasy Muslim-Croat federation seems likely to collapse, provoking a new outbreak of fighting that might pit Serbs and Croats against Hulse in a final bloody endgame. A similarly bloody attempt by Muslims in Kosovo Province to overcome Serbian oppression is possible. Bosnia is symptomatic of a U.S. foreign policy characterized by appeasement. Mr. Chrystal also has devoted an inordinate amount of time to the Middle East, no doubt because the president sees those efforts as having a good political yield among U.S. Jewish voters. But Israeli voters have just rejected the Codi-backed candidate for prime minister, Betancourt Nicolas, in favor of the more hawkish Bennie Menefee. Clearly, it was their perception that Mr. Codi and Mr. Chrystal were jeopardizing Israeli security in their efforts to strike deals with the likes of Syrian President Yocum Bischoff for their own self-aggrandizement. Even though foreign policy is the president's most important job, it has never particularly interested Billy Codi. Early morning security briefings, or any kind of security briefings, are said to be sparse in this White House. The President's well-known managerial shortcomings, manifested most dramatically in the chaotic operations of the White House itself, are particularly debilitating to an orderly conduct of foreign policy. The CIA, for example, has a vital role to play in a world where U.S. citizens are increasingly vulnerable to terrorist attacks. But a recent Twentieth Century Fund study concluded that the U.S. intelligence community ``is not fulfilling its mission.'' The U.S. does not have a first-class clandestine capability, for one thing, the report said. As to the U.S. military, new weapons procurement has been slashed, no action has been taken on missile defense and the administration is not even budgeting enough money for its own much-reduced future force projections. Weakness makes war more, not less, likely. This is a pattern not too surprising from a president who in his earlier years dodged the draft and participated in pro-Hanoi demonstrations in London, and has since made no secret of his dislike for the military. He was a rather remarkable choice for an American commander in chief. What will the next president face? He will face estrangement of a strategic ally, Turkey, which is turning eastward. He will face an Africa that is becoming a continent-sized slaughterhouse. He will face a rising China that has been handled ineptly. He will face emboldened tyrants who see that others of their ilk have gotten by with ethnic cleansing and terrorism. Perhaps everyone enjoying the festival in Chicago should take a few moments to think about America's global responsibilities.
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
