Al Gore on Foreign Policy 2000 Democratic Nominee for President; Former Vice President

Sub-sections under Foreign Policy:
• China
• Internationalism
• Other issues under Foreign Policy

In 2000 debate, supported nation-building while Bush did not

At the time, I worried about overextending our military by undertaking peacekeeping missions as we had in Bosnia and Somalia. But after 9/11, I changed my mind. Afghanistan was the ultimate nation building mission. We had liberated the country from a primitive dictatorship, and we had a moral obligation to leave behind something better. We also had a strategic interest in helping the Afghan people build a free society.

Bush’s division into good vs. evil is Christian heresy

The day after 9/11, Bush announced, “This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil, but good will prevail.” Two days later, Bush proclaimed that his “responsibility to history was to rid the world of evil.” I remember being astonished at the grandiosity & hubris of his claim that he could & would “rid the world of evil.” Really?

The following week, Bush addressed Congress, saying God had foreordained the outcome of the conflict. Bush’s view of his policies in the context of a fateful spiritual conflict between good & evil does not really represent Christian doctrine. It actually more closely resembles an ancient Christian heresy called Manichaeism, that sought to divide all of reality into two simple categories, absolute god and absolute evil.

New security agenda based on addressing global problems

We have an opportunity to forge and follow a new agenda for national and world security.
• First and foremost, our security is threatened by the global environmental crisis, which could render all our other progress meaningless, unless we deal with it successfully.
• Second, there is a looming water crisis that reflects both the sharp growth in demand for freshwater, global warming’s [freshwater supply disruption], and a decline in water quality owing to the effects of pollution.

  Third, we must conquer the global challenge presented by terrorism, magnified by a growing access to new WMDs.

• Fourth, the global challenge of defeating drugs and corruption, which now spill across our borders, has never been more serious given the growing strength and sophistication of international crime organizations.
• Fifth, new pandemics like HIV/AIDS are laying waste to whole societies, a problem compounded by the emergence of new strains of old diseases that are horrifyingly resistant to antibiotics.

Drought from global warming set stage for Darfur genocide

Just 40 years ago Lake Chad was as large as Lake Erie--formerly the 6th largest lake in the world. But now due to declining rainfall and ever-intensifying human use, it has shrunk to 1/20th of its original size. The lake’s dissipation has led to collapsing fisheries and crops.

While Lake Chad withered, intense drought set the stage for the violence that erupted in neighboring Darfur, a war-torn region of Sudan.

The more we understand about climate change, the more it looks as if we may be the real culprit--the US emits 1/4 of the world’s greenhouse gases. We helped manufacture the suffering in Africa, and we have a moral obligation to try to fix it.

1990s: Joint commission with Russia worked out many problems

When Yeltsin and I got together on April 3, we agreed to institutionalize our cooperation, with a commission headed by Vice President Gore and Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. The idea worked better than any of us could have imagined, thanks largely to the consistent and concentrated efforts made over the years by Al Gore and his Russian counterparts in working through a host of difficult, contentious problems.

Bush sought to destroy foreign policy consensus

Damage done at Abu Ghraib was serious

Policy based on domination creates enemies

Our future depends on our moral authority to lead

Violation of the Geneva Conventions damaged freedom

Paired evils perpetrated in the name of America

Gore calls for resignation of Bush foreign policy team

Vietnam: Trade will improve human rights & help with MIAs

A: I believe that we must ratify and fully implement important new trade agreements, and as president, I will insist on and use the authority to negotiate and enforce worker rights, human rights and environmental protections in those agreements. I believe that the US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement provides important benefits to American businesses and workers, including dramatic new market access for American goods, services, and agricultural products; intellectual property protection; investment protection provisions; and transparency and rule-of-law measures. The treaty also represents an important step in the normalization of our relations with Vietnam, a process which will strengthen cooperation on bringing American POW-MIAs home, promoting religious freedom and combating narcotics.

Chernomyrdin Commission produced results despite corruption

Supported force in Mideast, Balkans, Haiti, not Somalia

Rwandan genocide: no military, but more humanitarian aid

GORE: We did actually send troops into Rwanda to help with the humanitarian relief measures. I think in retrospect, we were too late getting in there. We could have saved more lives if we had acted earlier. But I do not think that it was an example of a conflict where we should have put our troops in to try to separate the parties for this reason. One of the criteria that I think is important in deciding when and if we should ever get involved around the world is whether or not we can really make the difference with military force, [and] if we have allies. In the Balkans we had allies, NATO, ready, willing and able to go and carry a big part of the burden. In Africa we did not. [Hence] I think it was the right thing not to jump in, as heartbreaking as it was. But I think we should have come in much quicker with the humanitarian mission.

Haiti: Intervention gave them a chance at democracy

Cuba: Hard-liner on Castro; keep sanctions

A. No, I’m a hardliner on Castro. I still find it incomprehensible that he would release mentally ill criminals, prone to violence, onto an innocent population here in the US. I find his whole penchant for repression and his whole style abhorrent. We have been asking Castro to have elections for a long time [with no response]. Cuba has been moving headlong in the wrong direction. I do not favor any openings to the Castro government.

North Korea: Continue exploring rapprochement

A. Incredibly enough, we have seen a positive response to initiatives there. The strategy for getting North Korea off its nuclear bent has yielded some tentative positive results. Of course, the jury is still out. We have seen a very emotional beginning of rapprochement on the peninsula. There is clearly a desire to explore the changes that would make it possible for them to have a more normal relationship with the rest of the world.

Russia: US’s abiding interest, but troubled by Putin

A. I am very troubled by his apparent backtracking on press freedom for Russia in the postcommunist era. I am very troubled obviously by their conduct in Chechnya. We have to put first things first, and recognize that the US has an abiding interest in continuing to manage the nuclear threat, and we should not ever forget that Russia has thousands of nuclear warheads and the delivery systems capable of targeting them on the US.

[But we have] all kinds of leverage. We are very deeply involved in helping them construct the institutions of a free society, helping them write their basic contract law, helping them put in place basic accounting standards. We just completed an effort on disaster assistance. The space station, of course, is one of the flagship cooperative efforts. So we certainly have leverage with them, there’s no question about that. And they do listen. They do listen to us. There are limits to the use of leverage.

Russia’s transition is accomplishment, if over-optimistic

Gore has said the major accomplishment of the administration is that “we have worked hard to help Russia make a transition to a market-based democracy.” He has also cited Russian acquiescence in NATO expansion, cooperation with Russia in the Balkans and the creation of additional safeguards against nuclear materials theft.

But critics, including Bush, have charged that the administration was overly optimistic about what could be accomplished & that it turned a blind eye to the underside of Russia’s economic transformation. When Gore recently called for “forward engagement” with Russia, one of Bush’s top foreign policy advisers countered that engagement has to be “in a realistic way, not a romantic one.”

Africa: give the poorest countries a hand up

Chechnya: Keep aid that helps US; cut off aid that helps war

A: As a matter of fact, we have. We have opposed new IMF provisions. There has been no direct state-to-state aid for more than a year now. Now, particular programs that go toward dismantling nuclear warheads, you wouldn’t want to cancel that. Particular cooperative ventures where no companies or the state agencies involved are implicated in any of the activity in Chechnya or in proliferation activities, that’s a separate matter. But we have, in fact, enforced a real cutoff of a lot of forms of aid.

Mantle of leadership means responding to violence abroad

OpEd: compares U.S. to a dysfunctional civilization

Supports New Security Agenda and Third-World debt relief

Gore was one of a handful of hawkish Democrats who voted in favor of the Gulf War in 1991. His speeches emphasize traditional balance-of-power questions, such as arms control. But he also has a fondness for the “new security agenda” - issues that affect the security of states and the stability of regimes, but which are immune from traditional diplomatic or military pressure. As president, he would:
• resubmit to the Senate for ratification the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), rejected in 1999
• would campaign for further increases in the defense budget
• will urge Congress to grant more debt relief for developing countries
• is prepared to engage in humanitarian interventions abroad
• treats missile-shield idea with some caution, and would negotiate both revisions to the ABM treaty and cuts in nuclear missiles with Russia
• would ratify the Kyoto accords on climate change

To union: we disagree on China; but agree elsewhere

Do not reveal strategy and inflame China or Taiwan

Engage China, but demand respect for human rights

A: In China I think that we need to demand the respect for human rights and religious freedom. But bringing China into the community of nations, fostering peace between China and Taiwan and engaging them in a way that furthers our values, I think that’s in our interest.

Diplomacy with both Taiwan and China

Gore supports vigorous intervention abroad; Bush less so

He describes how the experience of seeing the Clinton administration move too slowly to end the killing in Bosnia drove him to conclude that America must be prepared to prevent disaster, and how two successive global financial crises reshaped his understanding of the central role economic stability must play in the foreign policy agenda.

Bush, on the other hand, has woven a middle ground between two battling factions of his party - internationalists who support engagement with great powers like China and isolationists who are deeply suspicious of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization.

The world is looking to US for leadership

GORE: One of the big issues that doesn’t get enough attention is corruption in official agencies like militaries and police departments around the world, customs officials. That’s one of the worst forms of it. We have to lead by example and help these other countries that are trying to straighten out their situations. This is an absolutely unique period in world history. The world’s coming together. They’re looking to us. Are we going to step up the plate as a nation the way we did after World War II, the way that generation of heroes said, O.K., the United States is going to be the leader. And the world benefited tremendously from the courage that they showed in those post-war years. I think that in the aftermath of the cold war, it’s time for us to provide the leadership on the environment, leadership to make sure the world economy keeps moving in the right direction.

The power of example is America’s greatest power

The power of example is America’s greatest power in the world. And that means, for example, standing up for human rights. It means addressing the problems of injustice and inequity along lines of race and ethnicity here at home because in all these other places around the world where they’re having these terrible problems when they feel hope it is often because they see in us a reflection of their potential.

Nation-building: preferable to WWIII, and a stunning success

A. I think that phrase taps into a legitimate concern about how far we should go and how long we should be involved. But it’s not a new mission. The Marshall Plan was about nation-building. And the generation that won World War II, having seen the catastrophe of the interwar period in the 20’s and 30’s, wisely decided that nation-building was a preferable alternative to World War III. And it was a stunning success.

UN treaties are effective means for US to help Third World

New Security Agenda: keep old; build new; avoid isolation

Gore’s New Security Agenda is based upon three principles:
1. CONTINUING THE CLASSIC SECURITY AGENDA: Gore pledged to build upon our key alliances; to continue helping Russia make a transition to a market-based democracy; and follow a policy toward China that is based on results, not rhetoric.
2. BUILDING A NEW SECURITY AGENDA: Gore recognizes that “threats that were once local can have consequences that are regional and global.” America must address these global challenges with “reinvigorated international and regional institutions,“ and by ”confronting threats before they spiral out of control.“
3. RESISTING NEW-ISOLATIONISM: Gore warned of the equally dangerous threat of retreating within our borders and ignoring our leadership position in the world. Gore criticized Bush for his antiquated perception that Russia & China are primarily present or future enemies. Instead, Gore said, we must engage both countries and assist them in their transformations while being clear about our concerns. Source: Press Release on speech in Boston , Apr 30, 2000

   Strong defense for world leader; tie defense to other issues

   Starting with his own voluntary service in the US Army during the Vietnam War, Al Gore has stood for a strong national defense, and an America that leads the world toward peace, freedom, and prosperity, for his entire career. Gore has been a key player in American foreign policy for more than two decades, often serving as a critical direct channel to world leaders at times of conflict. As a member of President Clinton’s national security team, Gore has played a role in almost every critical foreign policy decision of the past six years.
   At the same time, Gore has been a leader in promoting the free trade, free markets, environmental protections, and fundamental human rights that are crucial to America’s leadership in the world. “A strong economy, a clean environment, and peace & security do go hand in hand,” says Gore. “As we move beyond the age of bipolar tensions and sharp ideological conflicts, nations are finding the wisdom that grows from our common values.” Source: Gore campaign statement on election2000.aol.com , Jan 1, 2000

   Intervention requires national interest, by our values

   Q: What principles would you use to distinguish cases that require US action and those that do not? A: I think that we were right to go into East Timor. I thought we were right in Kosovo and Bosnia. I think we were tardy, frankly, in Rwanda. We have to have a national interest. We have to be willing to accomplish the goal. We should have allies to help us, but our national interest should also be defined in terms of our values. And ethnic strife is important to address. Source: Democrat Debate at Dartmouth College , Oct 28, 1999

   Pay UN dues, as leader of the world

   We ought to pay our UN dues, as a leader of the world. Source: Democrat Debate at Dartmouth College , Oct 28, 1999

   Progressive Internationalism: globalize with US pre-eminence.

   Gore adopted the manifesto, "A New Agenda for the New Decade":

   Build a Public Consensus Supporting US Global Leadership
   The internationalist outlook that served America and the world so well during the second half of the 20th century is under attack from both ends of the political spectrum. As the left has gravitated toward protectionism, many on the right have reverted to “America First” isolationism.

   Our leaders should articulate a progressive internationalism based on the new realities of the Information Age: globalization, democracy, American pre-eminence, and the rise of a new array of threats ranging from regional and ethnic conflicts to the spread of missiles and biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. This approach recognizes the need to revamp, while continuing to rely on, multilateral alliances that advance U.S. values and interests.

   A strong, technologically superior defense is the foundation for US global leadership. Yet the US continues to employ defense strategies, military missions, and force structures left over from the Cold War, creating a defense establishment that is ill-prepared to meet new threats to our security. The US must speed up the “revolution in military affairs” that uses our technological advantage to project force in many different contingencies involving uncertain and rapidly changing security threats -- including terrorism and information warfare.

   Goals for 2010
   • A clear national policy with bipartisan support that continues US global leadership, adjusts our alliances to new regional threats to peace and security, promotes the spread of political and economic freedom, and outlines where and how we are willing to use force.
   • A modernized military equipped to deal with emerging threats to security, such as terrorism, information warfare, weapons of mass destruction, and destabilizing regional conflicts.
   Source: The Hyde Park Declaration 00-DLC12 on Aug 1, 2000

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