PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES FAVOR
ACTIVE ROLES IN FOREIGN POLICY   

The next president of the United States -- whether it is Vice President Al Gore or Texas Governor George W. Bush -- will play a strong, active role in U.S. foreign policy.

These were the consensus views of two separate panels of experts participating in recent discussions at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on how the candidates would govern.

AEI brought together advisors, think tank observers and journalists to explore such aspects of foreign policy as how the candidates conceptualize the world, how they would respond to crises and how they would build support for their initiatives. In the opinion of Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, foreign policy "is typically the least discussed but most important responsibility" for a new president.

In the panel discussing the vice president, his national security advisor, Leon Fuerth, said Gore has the ability to spot events coming up, to recognize things of major import long before many others do, and to start gathering information and thinking about the policy implications at an early stage. "If it is an issue that is international in its repercussions," Fuerth said, "his next stage is how to begin influencing opinion abroad in order to create the kind of international climate that will be needed one day to sustain an American initiative." Gore has done this on such issues as global warming and arms control, Fuerth added.

Noting that Gore was one of the first people in the Clinton administration to urge a Western Hemisphere summit, Fuerth said the vice president recognizes the hemisphere is the country's biggest economic partner, and culturally the United States is now demographically a nation which is, in part, Hispanic in its roots.

Discussing the vice president's role in the Gore-Chernomyrdin meetings with Russian foreign ministers on arms control and other matters in the mid-1990s, Fuerth said he would "leave it to historians" to figure out their lasting consequences, but "I think we did have an impact."

Attorney Dale Bumpers, a former U.S. senator from Arkansas who served with Gore in the Senate, said he believes Gore's foreign policy would be very similar to that of President Clinton but also more aggressive and more hawkish. "He's going to be a hands-on president and I think he understands all the problems with China, India, Pakistan, all of those things as well or better than anybody," Bumpers added. "So I'm going to feel very comfortable with him."

Attorney James Woolsey, a former director of central intelligence in the Clinton administration who worked with Gore on the intelligence budget, said he believed there would be "far more focus on long-term objectives and on substance" in a Gore administration.

Former New York Congressman Steven Solarz said the major strategic challenge Gore faces is to get the benefit of the successes of the Clinton administration while making it clear to the American public that a Gore administration will not be an exact replica of Clinton's. "One of the areas where the vice president has an opportunity to do that is in the area of foreign policy, particularly in the area of what we need to do about Saddam Hussein and Iraq," Solarz said.

Los Angeles Times journalist Doyle McManus said that while there would be a lot of continuity between Clinton and Gore, there are several points where the vice president would differ. "One is use of force," McManus said. "He has been readier to consider and to support military intervention, from Grenada in 1983, which was not the universal consensus among Democrats, to the Gulf War, to Bosnia in 1993. He is not a prisoner of the Vietnam syndrome." McManus added that while Clinton's interest in foreign policy has been "episodic," Gore "has been interested in foreign policy for a very long time and would immerse himself in the agenda more deeply and more passionately."

In the panel discussion on how Bush would govern, one of his foreign policy advisors, Robert Zoellick, a former undersecretary of state for economics, said the Texas governor has five priorities, the first of which is to focus on the big powers, "in particular, China and Russia, and to a degree India, and doing that through alliance relationships."

Zoellick said the other priorities are to get a fresh look at nuclear security issues, deal with the Western Hemisphere, trade issues and a Middle East peace process based on Israel's security.

Calling Bush a "big picture person," American Enterprise Institute resident fellow Richard Perle said that "on the occasions that I've heard the governor grappling with foreign policy issues, I've been impressed at how quickly he goes to the heart of the matter and how instinctively he understands the use of power."

Criticizing Clinton and Gore for what he called "unsuccessful" dealings with "the Saddam Husseins and the Milosevics and the Kim Jong Ils and others," Perle said "that will not happen in a Bush administration."

He said Bush has made it clear he would support opposition forces in Iraq by providing them with materiel and other assistance. Perle added that Bush believes the Iraq Liberation Act is "the right approach" and one that is capable of success.

Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that by referring to China as a "strategic competitor" of the United States, Bush did a "very clever thing -- he distanced himself not only from Clinton, but to some extent his father's (former President George H.W. Bush) old policy." China, Kagan added, is going to be "the most interesting and hard to predict element" of Bush's foreign policy.

Noting that the Texas governor has the ability to "bond" and has excellent relations with Mexico, Wall Street Journal writer Carla Robbins said Bush was willing to take risks because he is "a committed internationalist" and "a committed free trader."

Bush seems to think that "good relationships with good people and free trade is the fundamental of the foreign policy with Mexico," Robbins added. "It's an interesting start for a guy who, when I went into this, I thought had no experience at all and came out thinking that I learned something from it."

Syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer said that when she talks with foreigners, her judgment is that they feel "rather secure" with Bush, and "they have felt remarkably unsecure in the last seven years."