SUNS 4350 Tuesday 22 December 1998



UNITED STATES: PARTISAN POLITICS TO DOMINATE FOREIGN POLICY

Washington, Dec 18 (IPS/Jim Lobe) -- If the last few weeks are any indication, 1999 will be a tumultuous year for the United States and its role in the world.

A host of challenges - ranging from Iraq's continued defiance of U.N. weapons inspectors and persistent worries about the health of the global financial system - confronts President Bill Clinton as he faces an impeachment trial in the Republican-led US Senate for "high crimes and misdemeanors," arising from his affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Air-strikes by U.S. and British warplanes in Iraqi targets - and accusations by many Republicans that they were politically motivated - showed the bipartisan backing Clinton will need to act forcefully on key issues abroad next year will simply not exist, analysts agreed.

"Somehow, the rules that have existed for many years about (not) criticising the president when he's abroad seem to have been broken," complained Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shortly after Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott - probably the single most important player in any Senate impeachment trial against Clinton, announced that he could not support the president's action against Iraq.

"If this (polarisation) persists, policy initiatives which require bipartisan support will be a lot harder," said I.M. Destler, a foreign policy and Congressional expert at the University of Maryland.

This was not the way it was supposed to be. After last November's elections, which resulted in an unexpectedly strong showing by Clinton's Democrats and the abrupt resignation of House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, many pundits predicted that 1999 would see the return of bipartisanship on issues ranging social security reform to the payment of on billion dollars in US arrears to the United Nations.

"Clinton may now regret Gingrich's departure," noted one veteran Congressional aide. "At least, he was a strong internationalist who was far more in tune with the president's general foreign-policy views than many of those who are now manoeuvring for influence in the (Republican) leadership."

The range and difficulty of foreign-policy issues confronting the administration in the coming year are considerable, and some of them are serious enough to provoke major international crises, if they get out of hand.

In addition to Iraq, where the administration is certain to come under still more Republican pressure to try to oust Saddam Hussein once and for all, there is also the ever-tottering and potentially explosive Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Then there is a looming confrontation over North Korea's missile and nuclear programmes, a continuing crisis over NATO intervention in both Kosovo and Bosnia and US efforts to defuse tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.

U.S. officials especially are concerned about the possibility that the Wye River accords, negotiated personally in October by Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat, may collapse or become indefinitely stalled - even as the five-year timetable for the implementation of the Oslo peace accords runs out in early May.

Arafat repeatedly has hinted that he may unilaterally declare an independent Palestinian state at that time, an action which Netanyahu has darkly warned against. With King Hussein, a longtime US ally, apparently terminally ill in neighbouring Jordan, "we could be headed for a crisis, big-time," one U.S. official said earlier this month.

Apart from specific flashpoints, Washington also is concerned by the deteriorating situation in Russia, as well as its own deteriorating relationship with Moscow, which, for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, withdrew its ambassador here this week to protest the raid on Iraq.

Heavy-handed US pressure on energy companies and former Soviet states in Central Asia to agree on the construction of oil and gas pipelines that will avoid Russia altogether also threatens good relations with Moscow which, despite its economic collapse and military weakness, retains the capacity to stir up trouble throughout the region.

Among the other great powers, the administration is also worried about growing strains with China over resurgent trade and human-rights problems. Even ties with traditional allies in Western Europe, notably France and the new government in Germany which, since its installation, has hinted that it may not be inclined to follow the United States quite as slavishly as former chancellor Helmut Kohl, could face new challenges as the European Union, fortified by monetary union, asserts its political independence.

All of this comes against a backdrop of persistent concern here over the health of the global economy and the impact of the Asian financial crisis on the United States itself.

While, with Gingrich's help, Clinton successfully wrested $18 billion from Congress for the IMF to contain the contagion, analysts do not believe the threat has passed by any means. Many remain very concerned over the possibility of a collapse in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America with major consequences for the still-robust US economy.

[But the OECD in its year-end Outlook has raised some questions about the stock-market levels in the US and elsewhere and the risks involved. Other analysts have noted that while the US consumer is still borrowing  and buying, and keeps the economy booming, the savings by consumers is even less now and the US economy is in danger of becoming, like the Japanese, a bubble-economy, kept going by the inflated asset values on Wall Street and the Federal Reserve's rate cutting, but with no IMF to discipline the US.]

Moreover, Washington's ballooning trade deficit - on track to hit a record $300 billion next year - is fuelling protectionist pressures in politically potent sectors, such as steel and microprocessors. Trade tensions with just about all of America's most important trading partners, including the European Union and Japan, clearly are on the rise.

As a result, Clinton's long-time quest for "fast-track" authority to negotiate new free-trade agreements, particularly with Latin American countries, appears doomed even before the year begins. Relatively uncontroversial trade legislation - such as new trade preferences for imports from Central America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan African countries - will face major obstacles in Congress, particularly given the current partisan atmosphere.

The same goes for the payment of Washington's U.N. arrears, which Clinton unsuccessfully has tried to resolve for three years. If, as seems likely, the administration and Republicans cannot agree on payment by the end of 1999, Washington will lose its vote in the General Assembly.

With so much on his plate, Clinton will find it very difficult to give attention to new foreign-policy initiatives or even follow up on those which had been put on the shelf as he dealt with more urgent matters, such as the Middle East, and the battle over his impeachment.

Less than nine months after his unprecedented tour of sub-Saharan Africa, Washington's has failed to assert itself convincingly in the ongoing conflicts in the Congo, Angola, and even between one-time allies Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Similarly, detente with Iran, seen one year ago as a hopeful possibility with major strategic implications for the US position in the Gulf, Central Asia and the Middle East, has stalled.

Given the partisan distrust, Clinton may even find it difficult to act on an initiative launched recently more than a dozen Republican senators, as well as two former Republican secretaries of state, to
convene a commission to review Cuba policy.