Therefore, the objective that the Administration should aim to achieve in the area of political economy within the regional context, has to focus on encouraging multilateral trade between the European Union and North America. However, robust obstructions on the sale of U.S. goods in Europe has increased, thus causing discontent at home and reinforces the negative impact of the widening U.S. trade deficit with Asia due to drastic devaluation of Asian currencies. This negative economic trend might have a tremendous negative impact on the fundamental strategic objective that the U.S. leadership has chosen to pursue. That is, the threat of economic recession might prompt the observers at home to insist upon a foreign policy direction that pushes the United States towards a new isolationism. Thus, the U.S. will not be able to abide by, what is formulated as “the imperative of engagement” (“National Security Strategy,” 1997, p. 5) around the world to secure its vital interests as a global power.
Consequently, the imperative for opening foreign, especially European Union markets for U.S. exports should be followed through the negotiation of a Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA) agreement between the United States, Britain and Canada. The framework of such an agreement should include market opening deregulation and competition principles with focus on non-tariff barriers impeding transatlantic commerce and investment. Negotiated trade agreements should centre upon sectors in which the U.S. is most competitive, in the fashion of the Information Technology Agreement and the TWO Telecommunications Services Agreement. Also, by negotiating the free access of American exported goods and services to the British markets, the U.S. will gain an indirect but secure access to the increasingly protectionist European Union markets, with British markets used as a “gateway.”
From the preceding discussion, it becomes evident that the protectionist tendencies on the world trade markets can be decisively overcome to the advantage of America’s economic prosperity. Thus, a perceived threat may be efficiently turned into an opportunity through skilful diplomacy. However, the direction of the most intense challenge to U.S. foreign policy in the region?the foreign policy direction of the Russian Federation, is unclear. With the retirement of Yeltzin, the executive power is in the hands of the Russian communist leader Gennady Zhyuganov and Yevgenii Primakov remains prime minister. Since the International Monetary Fund with the active support of the U.S. suspended further negotiations with the Russian government, the foreign policy objectives that the Russian leadership has chosen to pursue are highly obscure for so is the motivational system of the prime agents of the decision-making process within the Russian Federation?President Zhyuganov and Prime Minister Primakov.
Until the Russian policy position is clarified and in concert with the requirements of U.S., the E.U., Russia will not be provided with a new loan from the I.M.F. or the World Bank. The argument can be made, however that the National Dignity motivational pattern is on the first level of intensity in the motivational system of the Russian leadership. As a consequence, the probability that Russia will reveal its true foreign policy objectives in the foreseeable future, is extremely low. Without having a perception of Russian motivations that is based on observable facts, the risk that the U.S. will formulate and implement wrong strategy vis-?-vis Russia remains.
The implications of a strategy regarding Russia, that is based upon gross misperception of Russian motivations, will be dire. The strategy described as Pax Americana, is fundamentally rooted in the assumption that there is not a major regional power in the world that is aggressively motivated towards the U.S. and has the relative power capability to threaten vital U.S. interests. The ensuing assumption is that Russia is essentially a Status Quo rather than imperialistic power. During Yeltzin’s Presidency, Russia communicated the willingness to co-operate with the international community and institutions like the I.M.F. in trying to introduce liberal democratic reforms. Since Primakov was appointed Prime Minister in 1998, the Clinton Administration has been trying to determine the general direction that Russian foreign policy will take. The reason for the concerns within the Administration were prompted by Primakov’s foreign policy behaviour during the Cold War and while he was Foreign Minister in 1997.
Ariel Cohen, a senior policy analyst in the Heritage Foundation, has done a profound inferential analysis of Primakov’s motivations in his 1997 article titled The “Primakov Doctrine”: Russia’s Zero-Sum Game with the United States. The careful analysis of Primakov’s (Russian Foreign Minister at the time) political behaviour leads Cohen to conclude that the Russian new post-Cold War foreign policy, designed by Primakov, is intrinsically rooted in a larger strategy to challenge America’s leadership role in global security. In his world view there is no place for a single superpower, despite the current dominant status of the U.S. (Cohen, 1997, p. 1). Cohen also observes that Primakov articulates the country’s yearning for recognition as a great power as well as its widespread resentment of the United States. This bitterness and resentment may prod Russia, through Primakov, to challenge America’s interests and allies…” (Cohen, 1997, p. 2), Cohen ends his article with an insightful and important recommendation to Washington’s foreign policy decision makers: that they “should take note of [Primakov’s] efforts [to challenge American interests and allies] and proceed with caution when faced with Evgenii Primakov’s neo-Soviet foreign policy” (Cohen, 1997, p. 5).
The Clinton Administration should be very concerned with the possibility that the team which now occupies the highest echelons of power within the Russian Federation may prove to represent the globally volatile combination of Communist ideology with Russian nationalism (Scenario, Fall 1998, p. 5). Therefore, decisive measures should be taken to prompt a foreign policy action on behalf of the Russian leadership, that will reveal its true motivations. These measures are to be taken at the soonest moment possible. The most suitable context within which these measures are to be taken, is the sub-regional context of the Crisis in Kosovo, only if the internal dynamics of the conflict provide the necessary conditions for doing so.
The crisis in Kosovo should be contained until the conditions for a lasting negotiated peace agreement between the Serbs and the Kosovar Albanians are at hand. Any final resolution of the conflict should not go beyond the restoration of autonomy to Kosovo. However paradoxical it may seem, the international community and Milosevic share some of the same fundamental aims. The international community is opposed to independence for Kosovo just like Milosevic, although for very different reasons. As Richard Caplan observes in a recent article titled “International Diplomacy and the Crisis in Kosovo,” that the United States and the west European states?the chief architects of the Dayton agreement?are concerned that:
“…the establishment of an independent Kosovo will make it easier for the forces of separation to triumph over those of integration in Bosnia and that the fragile peace they have constructed there will be shattered…More serious still…is the danger that an independent Kosovo will destabilise neighbouring Macedonia where the Albanian minority, constituting at least a quarter of the population, is also unhappy with its status and might be drawn to joining a Kosovar state” (Caplan, 1998, p. 755).
The interests of the Clinton Administration to stay in power are absolutely incompatible with the idea of independence for Kosovo, because destabilisation of neighbouring Macedonia will imply greater commitment of ground troops in the country and one of the main criticisms addressed to Clinton’s foreign policy is focused on the expanding commitment of U.S. military forces to far flung humanitarian and peacekeeping operations which stretches thin American military forces around the globe and significantly erodes military readiness by interfering with training to sharpen warfighting skills (Feulner, 1996, p. 2). The present allocation of NATO military assets though, should be sustained. No U.S. ground troops should be re-deployed from other politically unstable regions of the world (like the Persian Gulf) to participate in “yet another open-ended Balkan commitment [deployment of troops in Kosovo]” (Anderson, 1998, p.2).
Furthermore, the commitment to use force, should Slobodan Milosevic stray from abiding by the provisions of UNSC Resolutions 1160 (1998) and 1199 (1998) has to be strengthened and restated by all NATO members involved. Instead of continual warnings addressed to Milosevic, a phased campaign of cruise-missile air strikes, so as to avoid any American or Allied casualties, against strategic Serb installations should immediately be carried out. The most important objective that these air strikes are to achieve, however, have little to do with containing or punishing Milosevic.
Through determined and co-ordinated air strikes against Serb strategic installations, NATO will forcefully prompt political response on behalf of the Russian Federation. Should the political rhetoric of the Russian leadership at this time grow into action?either direct confrontation with NATO forces or forward deployment of Russian personnel and weapon systems into Serbia, as well as immediate provision of the Serb Air Force with hi-tech Russian fighter planes, then the Russian Federation would have proven to be genuinely aggressively motivated and the fundamental direction of U.S. foreign policy strategy will have to be altered from Pax Americana to Containment of Russia and its allies, if any.
Though such a foreign policy “adventure” might at first glance seem far too risky and unsubstantiated to the extend of being preposterous, the argument holds that the sooner that the Clinton Administration reveals the true foreign policy motivations of Primakov and Zhyuganov, the better prospects for the regional stability in Europe and Eurasia. One might make the argument that the same effect of prompting a foreign policy reaction by the Russian Federation can be achieved far more cost-effectively by assessing Russian reactions to the acceptance of the Baltic states or the countries from Eastern Europe like Bulgaria and Romania into NATO. Again, the process of enlargement of NATO to reach the borders of the Russian Federation might take as long as twenty years to half a century. It will be far too late. Russia would have recovered from the economic stagnation (even on the expense of thousands of human lives lost due to hunger and cold) and modernised its qualitatively superior weapon systems. Attempted containment will surely be unthinkable at that point in time.