Ever since the Senate vote October 11^th where the republican majority refused to ratify the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in a straight party line vote; anxiety over the future direction of American foreign policy has been mounting in world capitals and first and foremost in Washington itself. Not content with just defeating the treaty, Jesse Helms and other Senate Conservatives have now taken aim at the funding for the Global Monitoring System meant to make future enforcement of the treaty possible. At the same time, funding for foreign aid, the State Department, and an appropriation to settle America's 1.2 billion dollar debt to the UN have become the focus of bitter partisan negotiations between the White House and the Republican leadership. This raises the possibility that not only the US might lose its vote in the UN General Assembly this January for non payment of its arrears, but that the UN might have to vacate its New York headquarters which have become unsafe due to the UN's inability to pay for routine repairs to roofs and stairways or a reliable sprinkler system for fire control. A more fitting symbol for America's fading commitment to the Wilsonian ideal of collective security than the current state of deplapidation of General Assembly Building would be hard to invent.

The political maneuvering over the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty in Washington have taken on a sinister meaning in Paris, Beijing and Moscow because it coincided with two successful tests of ABM systems: one by the Americans in October and the other by the Israelis in November. Successful demonstrations of working ABM technology gave recent proposals by the Clinton Administration to renegotiate the terms of the 1972 ABM treaty with Moscow a new importance and plausibility. Taken together the treaty vote and the ABM tests could suggest that an important fraction of the American foreign policy elite was opting for a national/technical response to the spread of weapons of mass destruction and intermediate delivery systems among Third World Regional powers such as India and Pakistan and giving up on any multinational, collective approach to these issues.

The proposed solution a deployment of a scaled-down "Star Wars" shield for the American Heartland suffers from the twin disadvantage of being vulnerable to simple counter measures even while it degrades the credibility of the nuclear deterrent forces of the other major nuclear powers with whom we are presumably at peace or allied. An American decision to breaking with the current ABM regime would encourage not only a renewal of nuclear testing but inevitably nuclear build-ups by Russia, China and France. While the technical arguments against ABM deployment are well known in the US, for now they seem to be losing out to the core belief among American conservatives that it's safer to trust in a technical fix for political problems than to rely on governmental institutions a distrust which begins with our own political elite but quickly extends to include everyone else's.

Certainly in the aftermath of Monicagate and the failed impeachment campaign against President Clinton, it has become clear that American foreign policy has been taken hostage in the partisan warfare between the weakened Clinton Presidency and embittered Conservatives in the US Congress. Already last Spring, Congressional Republicans voted against the Kosovo Air campaign and threatened to block approval for the deployment of US ground forces as part of KFOR even as American pilots were flying missions against Serb cities. The anti-war votes by Conservative "Doves" in the House came to nothing last Spring, but did help to persuade a section of American public opinion that Serbia's surrender to NATO did not represent a real American victory.

The "neo-isolationist" turn among the Republican party leadership was confirmed this Fall, not only by the party line vote in the Senate but also by the support that vote received from the two leading Presidential candidates Governor George Bush of Texas and Senator John McCain of Arizona, and their leading foreign policy advisors - including Henry Kissenger. This policy shift has also been the occasion for Conservative politicians to display their disdain for the International Institutions from the UN to the World Bank as well as for the opinions of our European Allies. Whether we look at Jesse Helm's comic sketch mocking Clinton, Blair and Monica which he performed during the Senate treaty debate, or Dick Army's comment, (the Senate majority whip), that he had "been to Europe once and that was enough," conservative politicians were clearly playing to the cultural politics of the hard core isolationists among their activist base.

But if we put party considerations aside, it is debatable whether the shift among Republican party elites should be characterized as "neo-isolationism." Most of the senior advisors to the Bush and McCain campaigns would be better described as "neo-realists" with a preference for "machtpolitik" rather than for global disengagement. The only true spokesman for return to America's historic diplomatic stance of nonalignment is Patrick Buchanan - who is both an "America Firster" and a foreign trade protectionist. In many respects he's the American answer to the "rJpublicain/souverainiste" wing of the French ideological spectrum as well as being a Catholic authoritarian. Buchanan, however, has been forced to abandon his quest for the Republican presidential nomination and left the party on October 25^th to pursue the candidacy of Perot's Reform Party. While Buchanan has no hope of winning, his campaign could still have a major impact on the outcome of the 2000 Presidential election. First he has decided to put the issue of American imperial "overstretch" at the center of his campaign threatening to make the issue of NATO's enlargement and American defense commitments a matter of real debate. Secondly, with his potential of taking 12% of the total vote, a Buchanan candidacy could transform the 2000 election into a three way race- giving the Democratic candidate a chance to repeat Clinton's 1992 victory.

Condemnation of the "unilateralism" of the US Congress has featured prominently in recent statements made by President Chirac and Foreign Minister Vedrine, and following President Clinton's lead, spokesmen for the American Administration from Madeline Albright to Strobe Talbott have all joined in making stinging rebuttals of "republican neo-isolationism." Similarly defending our "global engagement" has become one of the major themes of Vice-President Albert Gore's faltering campaign to win the Democratic Presidential nomination and succeed Bill Clinton in the White House. Criticism of the US Senate vote on nuclear proliferation has become commonplace serving as both a rallying cry and a heaven sent opportunity for advancing different political and diplomatic agendas in Washington and Paris and beyond.

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