Berger Outlines New Foreign Policy Goals Linking Russia To United Europe Top Priority For Second Term
President Clinton’s choice as national security adviser for his second term outlined five general foreign policy goals Sunday, chief among them to bring Russia into a democratic and united Europe.
Sandy Berger, in his first interview since his appointment Thursday, also told ABC’s “This Week” the United States will not have a permanent military presence in Bosnia, and U.S. troops will not be involved directly in tracking down suspected war criminals there.
The first priority of the administration’s new foreign policy team, Berger said, will be “building perhaps for the first time a democratic and united Europe around an expanded NATO and a partnership with Russia.”
Clinton has promised to move quickly to bring Warsaw Pact nations into NATO Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic are most often mentioned - and has tried to reassure Moscow that NATO’s expansion does not threaten Russia. He announced last week he will meet Russian President Boris Yeltsin next March in advance of a planned summer meeting of NATO leaders.
Other priorities Berger identified are to build U.S. bridges to east Asia; to deal with “a cluster of new security challenges” such as drugs, terrorism, rogue states and the environment; to recognize “that we are the indispensable nation which can contribute to peace where our interests and our values are engaged;” and to create American jobs by building the global economy.
Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Berger’s goals “offer some possibility for a strategic vision.”
But Lugar, appearing later on ABC, said that at the present time, “there is not strategic vision and secondly there isn’t money. And that’s true whether it is diplomacy or whether it’s defense.”
Berger, a longtime friend of the president who has served as deputy national security adviser in the first Clinton term, said U.S. troops will continue to help keep the peace in Bosnia, but “we can’t be there forever. Sooner or later the parties in Bosnia are going to have to make their own way.”
He said American forces may have a “backup role” in rounding up suspected war criminals, but “it is not the role of our troops there to be cops.”
House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, said a permanent U.S. presence in Bosnia would be “a major mistake” and said he was working with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to urge that American troops be withdrawn by spring.