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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, APRIL 13, 1984
PAGE 13
Party to conclude that the United States had no choice but to
play a major international role. The party took up a guarded
but, in the event, solid foreign policy alliance with the Demo
crats. The press, with few exceptions, backed the main lines of
a national policy of European alliance, support for Israel,
resistance to Communist China and to the Communists in Korea and
Vietnam, and aid to Asian, Latin American and African coun
tries.... This agreement broke down during and after the Vietnam
War. The consensus has never been reestablished.
It is thus impossible for the United States today to promise more
than a
very
limited policy consistency. If either Walter Mondale
or Gary Hart is elected to the presidency in November, large
changes will take place in American policy--just as Mr. Reagan's
accession in 1980 produced a big shift, and as Jimmy Carter's had
earlier done.
There now are Democratic and Republican foreign policies. There
probab-ry-i�ore than one-i5emocrat1c foreign policy. What Gary
Hart woulcr-d� probably not, on certain important issues, what
Walter Mondale would do. The focus of...Jesse Jackson's campaign
has been on domestic issues, but he differs seriously on Third
World issues, and on Israel and the Palestinians, from the main
stream Democrats•.•. If Mr. Hart comes in, the U.S. military
involvement in Central America may come to a sudden halt. Policy
toward Europe--continent of "corruption" and "radical extremes,"
so Mr. Hart informs us, and "less idealistic generally"--would
probably shift under Hart.
There simply is no longer a main line of American foreign policy
to which the two�aJor parti�dhere.�Th1s 1s the new reality.
Bfpart1san poITcy, where debate stopped at th�water�edge, was
a phenomenon of World War II and its aftermath. It became victim
of the Vietnam War and its aftermath.
That bipartisanship could revive is imaginable, but there is no
present reason to think it will happen. It could happen only
with a restoration of a popular consensus of belief on where
America stands in the world and what are its aims. That may come.
But when it comes, it seems likely to come on terms much closer to
the old isolationism than many of America's allies may today
appreciate.
Little wonder then that Europeans hold their breath every four years to see
who finally emerges from the exhausting trial of primaries, conventions and
elections.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau