Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy

Abstract

In foreign policy, conservatives are adrift. They disdain the Wilsonian multilateralism of the Clinton administration; they are tempted by, but so far have resisted, the neoisolationism of Patrick Buchanan; for now, they lean uncertainly on some version of the con servative realism of Henry Kissinger and his disciples. Thus, in this year s election campaign, they speak vaguely of replacing Clinton s vacillation with a steady, adult foreign policy under Robert Dole. But Clinton has not vacillated that much recently, and Dole was re duced a few weeks ago to asserting, in what was heralded as a major address, that there really are differences in foreign policy between him and the president, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. But the fault is not Doles; in truth, there has been little attempt to set forth the outlines of a conservative view of the world and America's proper role in it. Is such an attempt necessary, or even possible? For the past few years, Americans, from the foreign policy big-thinker to the man on the street, have assumed it is not. Rather, this is supposed to be a time for un shouldering the vast responsibilities the United States acquired at the end of the Second World War and for concentrating its energies at home. The collapse of the Soviet Empire has made possible a return to