News Clips: End of Cold War: U.S. Strategy(1990)

Foreign Policy News Clips: Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Foreign Policy News Clips: 1979-1990, edited by Harry Kreisler

1/19/90: The End of the Cold War and the Search for a U.S. Strategy

I. Bush Administration.

"All of these spectacular changes in the world are very unsettling to the Bush administration, as they would be to any administration. A prudent posture of watchful waiting is the most natural -- because most inertial -- reaction. But there is no reason it cannot be accompanied by a flexing of the political imagination."

Irving Kristol, Wall Street Journal, 12/1/89, p. A20

"The kind of audacity that is desirable in a political leader and whose absence we can rightly mourn as timidity, can, I think, be broken into two parts. One is a capacity and a willingness to think originally, independently, downright radically, about the world he deals with...The other half of the definition is related to this willingness to risk thinking radically. It is willingness to seize the moment, not to let it go by."

Meg Greenfield Washington Post, 11/7/89, p. A25

"What's wrong with America?

"Lousy leadership. Not just in government or politics. In business and labor, service and manufacturing, education, and other big institutions, and the media, too, for sure. Nobody's 'running down America' here. Spare me the whiny blather about how sickening and tiring it is to always be told what's wrong with America. Take your head out of the sand...

"Basically, we are lazy, dumb, and smug. We haven't woken up to the fact that the world changed after World War II. Foreigners -- working harder, working longer, working cheaper, saving more, manufacturing better, thinking better -- are eating our lunch. And our dinner. And maybe our kids' breakfast, too."

David Nyhan, Boston Globe, 5-7-89, p. 87

"What does Mr. Bush want? Or more precisely, what do Americans want their president to say and do? Leadership in the American system is resonant and echoing. A great president is one capable of sensing our needs and articulating them for us to the world. It's almost certainly the wrong job for the most famous bureaucrat in the world, our own President Bush. "

Richard Reeves, Baltimore Sun, 11/29/89, p. 15A

"Some critics of President Bush, dissatisfied with his approach so far, ascribe his caution to a fear of the right wing in the Republican party, or to apprehension over an acknowledgement of change that would lessen domestic support for a strong defense budget. Such factors may be present, but it is at least equally just to suggest that the President, with his past foreign policy experience, recognizes that this is a time for prudence and thoughtful action, despite the demands and expectations for those dramatic gestures common to presidents in the past."

David D. Newson, Christian Science Monitor, 11/30/89, p. 18

"Now it turns out that one era of history -- the Cold War -- is ending and a whole new set of challenges confronts him [President Bush]. The situation cries out for a President capable of imagining and describing the shape of a new world order and defining America's role in it. Bush has yet to show he can do that. "

David Broder, Los Angeles Times 12/6/89, p. B7

"It is sad that the president has chosen the sidelines. Political vacuums, however, can be filled, especially with the knowledge that Bush will come tagging along. It is better that he be a disappointment than an obstacle."

Thomas Oliphant, Boston Globe 11/19/89, p. A27

"We thus return to our original problem: whether this nation can, in a period of revolutionary change, develop objectives capable of shaping history. And this depends even more on the cast of mind of top policy makers -- executive and legislative -- than on the administrative machinery at their disposal.

"Thus there is reason to be concerned over the disparity between the description of our time as revolutionary and measures put forward to deal with it. Those are still quite conventional."

Henry Kissenger, Baltimore Sun, 11/6/89, p. 9A

"As for the Cold War model? This is not some well-tarnished antique to be cherished. It's an obsolete monster and we're well rid of it. What we need now, and quickly, are new models for the postwar world. There is no reason and no time for nostalgia. "

Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe, 12/16/89, p. 19

"Overnight, as it seems, tyranny has lost its grip on Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and Bulgaria...

"But there is something else in these events. There is the hope that our country may be released from a great fear: the fear of Communism that has haunted American society for so long, distorting our law and marring our democracy."

Anthony Lewis, New York Times, 11/23/89, p. A23

"Henry Kissinger's occupation's gone. I misquote Shakespeare, whose line is: 'Othello's occupation's gone'. Othello, saying, that of himself, laments the fact that he will no more be a soldier. He is unmanned and will not be soothed by drums in the future, lulled to sleep by battle cries. 'Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump.'

"That is roughly the plight of Cold Warriors who find their years of accumulated expertise suddenly obsolete."

Garry Wills, Baltimore Sun, 11/30/89, p. A25

"What strikes the strongest note of affinity between these two Presidents [George Bush and William McKinley] is that they were the receptors and molders of events rather than great initiators. By their reactions, however, they have both improved the odds for their party's longevity."

Ross K. Baker, Los Angeles Times 1/7/90, p. M7

These three men [James Baker at State, Brent Scowcroft at the National Security Council and Dick Cheney at Defense] share the bond of having fought in the same trenches during the presidency of Gerald Ford. Thus, like Truman's brain trust, they come to their new position of leadership with a particular frame of reference, shaped in their case, by the post-Watergate period of disorientation and reconstruction. Their shared lessons include:

"Play as a team. The backbiting and suspicion that pitted Kissenger vs. Schlesinger, Brezinski vs. Vance, etc. warps policy making and erodes presidential power.
"Govern from the top. Bureaucratic wrangling slows things down and produces unplanned leaks to the press, making life more difficult.
"Keep your guard up, especially in foreign affairs. Dètente looked good until we began to take it for granted."

David Gergen, Washington Post, 4/2/89, p. C2

"'Not crossing Jim Baker is a central fact of the way [National Security Advisor Brent] Scowcroft does his job,' said an Administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity."

Andre Rosenthal, New York Times, 11/3/89, p. A12

"In much the same way, Baker seems to be focusing on the President's political support as opposed to long-term diplomatic interests. In September, when he was asked why the Administration was not out in front in responding to the dramatic events in Eastern Europe -- something Democrats had been critical of -- Baker said, 'When the President is rocking along at a 70% approval rating on his handling of foreign policy, if I were the leader of the opposition, I might have something to say.' He did not seem to understand the ramifications of the matter at hand."

Jefferson Morley, Los Angeles Times, 1/14/90, p. M3

"Perhaps Baker's most unusual quality as secretary of state, unmatched in modern times except by Henry A. Kissenger, is his skill in dealing with the new media. When disasters occur, such as the failed coup in Panama, Baker is hard to find and his fingerprints on policy nowhere to be seen. At moments of positive public interest, though, Baker works the news media assiduously."

Don Oberdorfer, Washington Post 11/16/89, p. 1

"President Bush's current job approval rating of 80 percent is his all-time high and the second highest approval rating ever recorded in the Gallup Poll."

Graham Hueber, San Francisco Chronicle 1/10/90, p. 1

"The Panamanian affair demonstrates that we Americans still have not liberated ourselves from the intellectual forces responsible for repeated failure of U.S. foreign policy over three decades, and for military defeats and frustrations...

"The Panama intervention is the dead end of this: Inefficiently brutal overreaction to a provocation that past American policy did much to bring about, ending amid the silent reproach of the uselessly dead. Shakespeare wrote 'O God! That men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains' with drink in min; but ideology would do as well for Washington in the 1980's. Must it be so in the 1990's? It is time for brains, and a change."

William Pfaff, Newsday, 12/28/90, p. 58