I was honored to speak on Monday to the annual meeting of Citizens for Global Solutions, a nationwide organization that encourages Americans to engage the world. CGS is particularly interested in seeing the U.S. government cooperate with allies, and work through multilateral institutions, to confront global challenges.

The theme of the meeting “Building a Bipartisan United States Foreign Policy for the 21st Century,” was the jumping off point for our panel, chaired by the ubiquitous Steve Clemons. Steve, of course, is the director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, the author of the popular blog The Washington Note, and a board member at Citizens for Global Solutions. He also serves with me on the Executive Committee of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy.

The panelists, Lawrence J. Korb of the Center for American Progress; Marcela Sanchez of The Washington Post, and I, attempted to answer the question “Is a Bipartisan U.S. Foreign Policy Possible?” Our different perspectives revealed several important areas of agreement, but also a few key differences. 

Larry Korb seemed the most skeptical of the three of us that a bipartisan foreign policy was possible. He pointed to the bitterness of the partisan divide, and was a bit dubious of President Bush’s newfound appreciation for bipartisanship after the election. Marcela Sanchez stressed the possibilities for bipartisan legislation on both immigration and trade, a matter of particular concern for U.S. relations in the Western Hemisphere, but she conceded that a considerable number of Democrats, including many in the incoming class, were opposed to free trade agreements such as NAFTA and CAFTA, and would likely also cast a skeptical glance at bilateral free trade agreements in the Americas.

I share Marcela’s concern about the Democratic Party’s turn away from free trade, and in my remarks I warned that a bipartisan foreign policy could take the form of protectionism and xenophobia, as populists on both the left and the right of the political spectrum attempt to preserve economic and physical security by closing the United States off from the rest of the world. That would be a tragic turn of events, but it cannot be ruled out.

Only slightly less problematic, however, is another form of bipartisanship which has governed U.S. policy for a number of years: bipartisan support for U.S. military intervention. Indeed, the U.S. military has intervened more times, and in more places, in the fifteen years since the end of the Cold War than it did during the 45 years of the Cold War. It is probably true, as Larry Korb pointed out, that Democrats prefer that such interventions be conducted within a multilateral framework. To oversimplify, if the Democrats’ mantra is “multilateral when possible, unilateral when necessary” the GOP turns this on its head: “unilateral when possible, multilateral when necessary.”

It is also true, however, Republicans and Democrats have crossed the aisles on numerous occasions over the past two decades in support of foreign policy initiatives, even those advanced by a sitting president from the other party.

For example, Tom Lantos, the incoming chairman of the House International Relations Committee, supported the Clinton administration’s interventions in the Balkans, but he also voted in favor of President Bush’s war in Iraq. John McCain likewise favored U.S. military intervention in both instances, and his chief criticism was that Presidents Clinton and Bush, respectively, were not willing to send more troops into the fight. (Ever consistent, McCain is still advocating more troops for Iraq, this despite the fact that only 18 percent of Americans who voted last week favored such a change in course. Kudos to Tim Russert for picking up on this on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.”)

Perhaps the greatest exemplars of bipartisanship are the editors of The Weekly Standard, who have supported military interventions initiated by both Democratic and Republican presidents. They have likewise been quick to criticize, irrespective of party, when presidents refuse to deploy U.S. troops into trouble spots that have only a tangential, at best, relationship to U.S. national security.

The problem is not a lack of bipartisanship, per se; the problem is the unwillingness to embrace a compelling alternative to the bipartisan view that the United States is capable — and therefore must — intervene militarily everywhere, all the time. Neither assertion was true, but the illusion of American omnipotence prevailed in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, as triumphalism mixed with the absence of any single challenger to American power to convince many Americans, but especially pundits and politicians here in Washington, that American Unipolarity would endure for many years, or even for a century.

The debacle in Iraq has pierced this illusion. Our inability to quell the violence in Iraq reveals the very real limits of American military power, and is correctly forcing a reappraisal of the interventionist impulse. A better solution, rather than relying on the United States as the world’s sheriff, would be to encourage other countries, including our allies in Europe and Asia, to play a larger role in advancing peace and security within their own region, but also in regions of mutual concern — such as the Middle East.

Such a policy shift could attract bipartisan support, but that is really beside the point. U.S. foreign policy should advance U.S. security, but we have seen bipartisan support for a policy (the war in Iraq, especially) that has made us less safe these last few years. Obviously, bipartisanship by itself does not hold the answer. 

A considerable segment of the U.S. population recognizes the importance of being engaged in the world. But engagement can come in many forms, not all equally appealing. Trade produces tangible economic benefits, and person-to-person interaction through tourism and other forms of cultural exchange are valuable as well. By contrast, ill-advised military interventions abroad arouse anti-American sentiments and put the limits of American power on embarrassing display. We need more of the former, and less of the latter.

The question, therefore, is not whether a bipartisan foreign policy is possible. Several options are on the table. The question we must ask is “Which policy, bipartisan or otherwise, will prevail?” 

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