The New York Times News Articles
Remember the Nixon Doctrine
November 1995
Also available on the New York Times Website
ARLINGTON, Va. —The Clinton Administration's insistence on
putting 20,000 American troops into Bosnia should be seized on by
national leaders, particularly those running for president to force
a long-overdue a debate on the worldwide obligations of our
military.
While the Balkan factions may be immersed in their
struggle, and Europeans may feel threatened by it, for Americans it
represents only one of many conflicts, real and potential, whose
seriousness must be weighed, against one another, before allowing a
commitment of lives, resources and national energy.
Today, despite a few half-hearted attempts such as Gen
Colin Powell's superior force doctrine," no clear set of principles
exists as a touchstone for debate on these tradeoffs. Nor have any
leaders of either party offered terms which provides an
understandable global logic as to when our military should be
committed to action. In short, we still lack a national security
strategy that fits the post cold war era.
More than ever before, the United States has become the
nation of choice when crises occur, large and small. At the same
time, the size and location of our military forces are in flux. It
is important to make our interests known to our citizens, our allies
and even our potential adversaries, not just in Bosnia but around
the world, so that commitments can be, measured by something other
than the pressures of Interest groups and manipulation by the Press.
Furthermore, with alliances increasingly justified by power
relationships, similar to those that dominated before World War I,
our military must be assured that the stakes of its missions are
worth dying for.
Failing to provide these assurances is to continue the
unremitting case-by-case debates, hampering our foreign policy on
the one hand and on the other treating our military forces in some
cases as mere bargaining chips. As the past few years demonstrate,
this also causes us to fritter away our national resolve while
arguing about military backwaters like Somalia and Haiti.
Given the President's proposal and the failure to this
point of defining American stakes in Bosnia as immediate or
nation-threatening, the coming weeks will offer a new round of such
debates. The President appears tempted to follow the
constitutionally questionable (albeit effective) approach used by
the Bush Administration in the Persian Gulf putting troops in an
area where no American forces have been threatened and no treaties
demand their presence, then gaining international agreement before
placing the issue before Congress.
Mr. Clinton said their mission would be "to supervise the
separation of forces and to give them confidence that each side will
live up to their agreements." This rationale reminds one of the
ill-fated mission of the international force sent to Beirut in 1983.
He has characterized the Bosnian mission as diplomatic in purpose,
but promised, in his speech last night, to "fight fire with fire and
then some" if American troops are threatened. This is a formula for
confusion once a combat unit sent on a distinctly non-combat mission
comes under repeated attack.
We are told that other NATO countries will decline to send
their own military forces to Bosnia unless the United States assumes
a dominant role, which includes sizable combat support and naval
forces backing it up. This calls to mind the decades of
over-reliance by NATO members on American resources, and President
Eisenhower's warning in October 1963 that the size and permanence of
our military presence in Europe would "continue to discourage the
development of the necessary military strength Western European
countries should provide for themselves."
The Administration speaks of a "reasonable time for
withdrawal." which if too short might tempt the parties to wait out
the so-called peacekeepers and if too long might tempt certain
elements to drive them out with attacks causing high casualties.
Sorting out the Administration's answers to such
hesitations will take a great deal of time, attention and emotion.
And doing so in the absence of a clearly stated global policy will
encourage other nations, particularly the new Power centers in Asia,
to view the United States as becoming less committed to addressing
their own security concerns. Many of these concerns are far more
serious to long-term international stability and American interests.
These include the continued threat of war on the Korean Peninsula,
the importance of the United States as a powerbroker where
historical Chinese, Japanese and Russian interests collide, and the
need for military security to accompany trade and diplomacy in a
dramatically changing region.
Asian cynicism gained further grist in the wake of the
Administration's recent snubs of Japan: the President's cancellation
of his summit meeting because of the budget crisis, and Secretary of
State Warren Christopher's early return from a Japanese visit to
watch over the Bosnian peace talks.
Asian leaders are becoming uneasy over an economically and
militarily resurgent China that in recent years has become
increasingly more aggressive. A perception that the United States is
not paying attention to or is not worried about such long-term
threats could in itself cause a major realignment in Asia. One
cannot exclude even Japan, whose strong bilateral relationship with
the United States has been severely tested of late, from this
possibility.
Those who aspire to the Presidency in I996 should use the
coming debate to articulate a world view that would demonstrate to
the world, as well as to Americans, an understanding of the uses and
limitations - in a sense the human budgeting of our military assets.
Richard Nixon was the last President to clearly define how
and when the United States would commit forces overseas, in 1969, he
declared that our military policy should follow three basic tenets:
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These tenets, with some modification, are still the best
foundation of our world leadership. They remove the United States
from local conflicts and civil wars. The use of American military to
fulfill treaty obligations requires ratification by Congress,
providing a hedge against the kind of Presidential discretion that
might send forces into conflicts not in the national Interest. Yet
they provide clear authority for action required to carry out
policies that have been agreed upon by the government as a whole.
Given the changes in the world, an additional tenet would
also be desirable: The United States should respond vigorously
against cases nuclear proliferation and state-sponsored terrorism.
These tenets would prevent the use of United States forces
on commitments more appropriate to lesser powers while preserving
our unique capabilities. Only the United States among the world's
democracies can field large-scale maneuver forces, replete with
strategic airlift, carrier battle groups and amphibious power
projection.
Our military has no equal in countering conventional
attacks on extremely short notice wherever the national interest
dictates. Our bases in Japan give American forces the ability to
react almost anywhere in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, just as the
continued presence in Europe allows American units to react in
Europe and the Middle East.
In proper form, this capability provides reassurance to
potentially threatened nations everywhere. But despite the ease with
which the American military seemingly operates on a daily basis, its
assets are limited, as is the national willingness to put them at
risk.
As the world moves toward new power centers and different
security needs, It Is more vital than ever that we state clearly the
conditions under which American forces will be sent into harm's way.
And we should be ever more Chary of commitments, like the looming
one in Bosnia, where combat unit, invite attack but are by the very
nature of their mission not supposed to fight.
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS