1 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign ...

policy going to be, and the articulation of that in position papers, many of which were
expansions of major themes that were delivered in speeches during the campaigns.
Despite occasional heated rhetoric, the area of foreign affairs is on the whole, very
conservative. The differences between Democrats and Republicans are not very great. In
the end, there was not a great difference in overall policy. The Bush II administration is
different - hard-line, unilateralists, who believe in the active the use of military power and
military measures to achieve regime change. This is a radical departure from the past. But
up until Dubya’s time, I would say, the difference between Democratic and Republican
on the major questions was not great. There were different personalities, of course, and
different styles of personal leadership, but the post Cold War agenda was the same
basically, for both Republicans and Democrats.
So from the outset, I was involved in the writing of policy papers. There wasn’t much that
needed to be written during the Clinton administration because their emphasis was to stay
on message. Staying on message is the modern approach in presidential elections for both
parties, not very many messages, carefully honed to acceptable generality, with the further
emphasis of, “It is the economy stupid?” So foreign affairs were all the more conservative
because there was no interest in creating unnecessary domestic political waves that could
be attacked. Within the consensuses, these international consensuses that the end of the
Cold War brought about a sense of assured security and peace, an unusual feeling of
euphoria, of possibility, that things were going well. The sense of danger that pervaded
the Cold War was gone. So the major foreign policy issues were, “How are we going to
manage the United States – that is, how is the United States going to manage the
opportunities that the end of the Soviet Union had presented, how were the issues of
globalization going to be advanced. The United States’ economy was booming, the hightech
revolution was reflected in the great economic bubble of that time, where so many
dotcoms were created to take advantage of the new opportunities in the new world of
information technology.
Trade and economic policy became very important. The two pillars of economic and
political policy were to be support for institutional democratic governance and free
market. In some cases, free market was first and democratic government was second.
Arms control was no longer the overriding danger except in countries like Ukraine where
getting rid of the existing nuclear weapons stocks, was a priority. The great fear of the
Cold War, that these weapons might be used, was gone. The remaining fear was that the
weapons lying around in unguarded stockpiles might get stolen by an irresponsible group;
so the elimination of stockpiles was still a priority in arms control. There were briefing
books put together, as they had been from the beginning of the campaign, which covered
every issue. They were similar to the briefing books that the secretary of state has when
he goes up to testify before the Foreign Relations Committees in the House or Senate.
Every issue was reduced to short essay, a one-pager and talking points; the points tend to
be eloquent or arresting, or that’s the attempt. It’s not a very profound process, it’s a
summary of thinking up to that point. There’s a value in that.
The selection process really was in the hands of those who had won the election. They
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