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Potomac Crossings --By George Mason Bush Foreign Policy The good news is that the Bush Administration may well have assembled the most powerful foreign policy team ever. The bad news is that we may need it. The administration inherits not only a hollow military force but a feminized one. The team is made up of proven veterans of foreign crisis. Should President-elect Bush select an Asian expert to head the CIA, his appointment task would be complete. Given the evenly divided Congress and an openly hostile establishment Left, Bush’s best chance to establish his challenged legitimacy is decisive action abroad. The great power players – China, Russia, Europe and Japan – don’t offer much in the way of opportunities for quick success. Regional quick sand may offer immediate challenges, and thus opportunities. The major regional conflicts include Israel, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Columbia. The prospect of low-level international situations is great. The Powell doctrine opposes U.S. military intervention unless American vital national security interests are at stake, there is truly no other option, the mission is clear, the forces are overwhelming and an exit strategy exists. It’s a strategy that may be sorely tested in Israel, Columbia, Kosovo or even Taiwan. The CIA recently released its report – Global Trends 2015. The agency looks at the state of the world’s economy, governments, technology and terrorism. It expects a continuation, even an acceleration, of the current economic trend towards globalization – defined as the free flow of goods and services, financial capital, information and culture between nations. There are potential pitfalls, however. The report cites the uneven distribution of various benefits, a volatile international financial system, a possible sustained downturn in the U.S. economy due to a huge trade deficit and absurdly low savings rate, aging populations in the major economies such as Europe and Japan; a lack of sustainable growth in China and India and failed financial reforms in emerging markets. Energy demands will increase by 50 percent but supplies are sufficient. Some 80 percent of the world’s oil and 95 percent of its natural gas remain in the ground untapped. The underlying doubt is a disruption of energy supplies. Projections for the Middle East are almost exclusively negative. The report concludes that the global economy driven by information technology clearly benefits the United States. The major challenge is managing the downside of globalization, i.e. dealing with nations, groups and people who feel that they have been left behind. The networked global economy is very compressed and marked by financial volatility and an ever-widening economic divide, the report concludes. There are eight major and significant events that the panel considers "unlikely, but possible." * A de facto geo-strategic alliance between China, Russia and India to counterbalance the uni-polar power of the United States. * A collapse of the U.S.-European alliance over trade and political differences. * The formation of an international terrorist coalition which would foster access to chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons. * Serious upheaval in the Middle East because of deteriorating living standards in the Arab world and the lack of a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinian state. * Divergent demographic trends as aging nations need to import workers to keep their economies growing. Legal and illegal migrants account for more than 15 percent of the population in more than 50 countries. The pursuit of economic dynamism will increase social and political tension and alter national identities. * Food supplies are adequate to feed the world’s population surge from 6.1 to 7.2 billion people by 2015. Famine, however, is caused by politics, war and poor distribution systems. * Water supplies are more problematic. Some three billion people live in "water-stressed" countries, mostly in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and north China. The potential for war exists in the 30 of 191 nations that receive more than a third of their water from outside their borders. * A missile attack involving chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons increases for the United States, its allies, its forces and its overseas facilities. The threat, however, is from short and medium range missiles far more than from intercontinental ballistic missiles. Covert land missions or surface ships would provide the launching pads. What happens and when it happens will be greatly influenced by the economic fortunes of the United States in 2001. The economic contraction appears to project as a fairly short one. It will look sharper than it really is, because investors have been more spoiled than seasoned over the past five years. The S&P 500 rose in nearly a straight line for five years. A fall that retraced half of that gain would neither be un-thinkable nor inconsistent with the long-term bull market that began in 1982. While the recession may be over in six months, the crisis in confidence (fanned by politics) may linger. Asian economies are much more dependent on exports than investment capital. A decrease in U.S. imports spreads an economic slowdown to export-dependent countries. In a tighter market, Washington will be far less tolerant of Chinese backsliding on its WTO commitments, for example. According to Stratfor.com’s Global Forecast for 2001, the incoming administration has advocated two conflicting goals – expanding global trade and putting national security first. Clinton foreign policy rested on the belief that economics drive the world, and that integration of competing powers into the global marketplace would give nations a vested interest in international peace, stability and rising economic activity. Economic engagement was the core of U.S. policy. With the Bush appointments, a second school of thought will now compete for policy attention. This new paradigm rejects the notion that economics has rendered geopolitics obsolete and thus places its priorities on maintaining American power in the world to protect against emerging challenges from Russia, China and single or allied lesser nations. Beijing, Moscow or others cannot ignore a major foreign policy faction advocating a much less accommodating policy toward them. None of them is prepared militarily, politically, socially or economically to weather prolonged and serious hostility with the United States. The Chinese economy depends upon a steady flow of direct foreign investment from the U.S. and its friends. It has no secure access to oil supplies and its sphere of influence has only just begun to expand. Russia needs Europe as a market, investor, advocate and partner. Russia’s population is aging and in decline. Their military is in a shambles. In order to maintain its relationship with Europe as a reliable supplier of oil and natural gas, Russia feels that it must re-establish dominance over Central Asia. We will see in 2001 what we thought we had eliminated a decade ago – the return of the great power proxies. The so-called rogue states, insurgent factions and small countries simply caught in the middle will find sides to take and be drawn to take them. Encouraging secondary and tertiary power blocks distracts American attention and resources while delaying major power confrontations with the U.S. Moscow and Beijing will finance mischief once again. Opposition to American National Missile Defense (NMD) is just one example. Fortunately, proxie politics is a tactic the Bush appointees are very familiar with and have handled before. There will be little of note in the first quarter as the Bush team goes through confirmation and the selection of the second and third level appointees who provide strength, direction and reality. By the second quarter, the nation will be embroiled in what to do about the economic downturn. In the second half of the year, however, we can look for a series of foreign crises and threats as the administration attempts to extricate itself from non-strategic military commitments and openly defend national interests against would-be challengers, especially China. ####

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