Professor Dennis McLean: New Zealand-United States relations: a view from abroad.

• Author: Brown, Bruce

The NZIIA combined with the Institute of Policy Studies on 9 July to have a roundtable session with Denis McLean, currently Warburg Professor of International Relations at Simmons College, Boston, and formerly New Zealand Ambassador to Washington (1991-94) and Secretary of Defence (1979-88).

Noting that he was expressing personal views, McLean set out first a description of political processes in Washington--'where the politics are'. Few outsiders, he said, could appreciate the sheer size and complexity of the system --the armies of lobbies, the thousands of staffers and bureaucrats all involved in seeking influence and, amongst the bureaucrats, turf battles. The US administration had to deal in all policy questions including, increasingly, foreign policy with the Congress which under the US Constitution -- complex as it may seem to outsiders -- was nonetheless a valuable restraint on the exercise of power in America.

Since the end of the Cold War US foreign policy was havering about somewhat. The question was what America's vital interests really were? Further, this questioning was taking place at a time when other real problems of government were coming to the surface, and the administration had been obliged to confront serious questions such as the level of public debt, the problems of social welfare, and the problems of the management of health in the United States. The result of this was that domestic policy questions were predominant in the political minds in the United States and it was more difficult for foreign governments and other outsiders to get attention. That was a problem at any time with the scale of the Washington operation and it was particularly so now.

Touching on the domestic scene, McLean said that the American economy was in fact a successful one. It had increased productivity, been very successful in creating new jobs, had kept inflation under control, and got unemployment down to around 5 per cent, which compared well with almost any other member of the industrial developed world. Yet, at the same time, there was a sour feeling among many of the members of the American public, and for many the American dream had faded. The Republicans under Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House of Representatives, had attempted to deal with this in the so called Contract with America' by devolving the handling and financing of these problems to the states and down the line. That had brought social welfare entitlements into question...