WASHINGTON ‹ Sandy Berger, a top Clinton-era National Security Council aide, has written a long essay on President Bush's foreign policy. It's friendly ‹ but only for the first few paragraphs.
He begins by praising a Bush speech last fall in which the president ''rightly argued'' that the lack of political freedom in Muslim countries drives people toward ''shadowy, violent alternatives.''
Berger also notes, though, that Bush ''fairly criticized'' past administrations for having been too tolerant of authoritarian Arab regimes.
From then on, Berger has almost nothing good to say about Bush's foreign policy. Perhaps that's not surprising, given Berger's Democratic pedigree.
''The administration's high-handed style and its gratuitous unilateralism have embittered even those most likely to embrace American values and invited opposition even from those with most to gain from American successes,'' Berger writes.
''Although the United States has never enjoyed greater power than it does today, it has rarely possessed so little influence. We can compel, but far too often we cannot persuade.''
Berger's 6,500-word essay, ''A Foreign Policy for a Democratic President,'' appears in the May-June issue of ''Foreign Affairs'' magazine.
Berger, 58, served as Clinton's No. 2 official at the National Security Council before being promoted to No. 1. He is touted by some as a possible secretary of state should Sen. John Kerry be elected president.
There are other names out there, including Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.
The world clearly was a quieter place during the Clinton years compared to now. What passed for a crisis in those days was the 1999 U.S.-led air war over Yugoslavia. The number of American casualties: 0.
Foreign policy issues normally are reduced to sound bites in presidential campaigns. Berger's essay fleshes out some of the gaps, although it is unclear whether Kerry, the Democrats' presumptive nominee, subscribes to all of Berger's thoughts.
Berger says the Bush administration is not responding adequately to terrorism and other dangers the country faces.
Where the administration ''has gone badly wrong is in applying its 'with us or against us' philosophy to friends as well as foes,'' he writes. ''Put simply, our natural allies are much more likely to be persuaded by the power of American arguments than by the argument of American power.''
He suggests that the administration's failure to win the support of allies such as France, Germany and Turkey for its Iraq policy ''vastly increased the human, financial, and strategic costs of the war and has threatened the success of the occupation.''
Leaders in Germany and South Korea have won elections based on anti-American platforms, he notes. Both countries, he says, ''owe their existence to the sacrifice of American blood.''
Berger also comments on the relationship between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, saying they are the embodiment of a ''clash of civilizations'' within the administration ‹ a phenomenon, he observes, that is not unknown in the Democratic Party.
Powell sides with ''liberal internationalists in both parties who believe that our strength is usually greatest when we work in concert with allies in the defense of shared values and interests,'' Berger says.
On the other side are those ''who seem to believe that the United States should go it alone ‹ or not go it at all.'' Berger clearly is aligned with the former view.
Without foreswearing unilateral use of military power, Berger says a Democratic administration ''will have no more urgent task than to restore America's global moral and political authority, so that when we decide to act we can persuade others to join us.''
He suggests that the United States strike a strategic bargain with European and other allies, promising to act in concert with them ''as a first, not last, resort.''
George Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The Associated Press since 1968.
