By Franz Schurmann

---

Prediction #55 for Tuesday, April 11th, 2000

Foreign Policy Successes Could Make Clinton Kingmaker Even After November 7

If by the end of May Clinton gains the big trophies he now boldly pursues, then his power, influence and access to campaign funds will be enormous. This lame duck president will wind up looking a lot like a soaring eagle, diving again and again from great heights to snatch one success after another.

The latest international trophy Clinton has snatched comes in the form of the first summit ever between the two Koreas. President Clinton and his first term secretary of Defense William Perry played key roles in this historic breakthrough.

Two other trophies are close to being snatched, one in East Asia and the other in West Asia. In East Asia the civil war between the Chinese Communists and Chinese Nationalists that began in April 1927 looks like it is coming to an end. The world will know one way or the other by May 20, when Chen Shui-bien, Taiwan's newly elected president, gets inaugurated.

Chen won 39 percent of the vote. But his two Nationalist opponents, one a dissident and the other the party favorite, together got 61 percent. Chen's party, the Democratic People's Party (DPP), originated some years ago from a movement calling for Taiwan independence. However, the Nationalists agree with their Communist foes that there only is one China.

Chen knows he has a wobbly power base. That is why he named a fiery pro-independence woman as his vice president but an old Nationalist war horse as his prime minister.

Two other factors are pushing Chen away from confrontation towards accommodation. One is the tidal waves of Taiwan entrepreneurs rushing to invest in China. The other is diminishing support for Taiwan from the American White House and the Pentagon. And no one has played a bigger role in this diminution than President Clinton.

In West Asia the ethnic war between Israelis and Arabs that began in 1948 when Britain surrendered its Palestine mandate also looks like it is coming to an end. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has announced and the Knesset has agreed that Israeli forces will be out of southern Lebanon before July. UN general secretary Kofi Anan is busily arranging for UN forces to take over in southern Lebanon.



When Clinton met with Syrian president Hafiz al-Assad in Geneva on his way back from South Asia, the Western media quickly labeled the meeting as a "failure." But as one informed Arab observer, Basim Abu Shareef, noted in a column, "Not only wasn't it a failure but rather a great success with ramifications for Syrian-Israeli peace talks which will soon resume."

These two Asian trophies are linked. China president Jiang Zemin is now in Israel, the first leg of a 15-day trip taking him to three other key American allies (Egypt, Turkey and Greece). As the WTO vote comes closer members of Congress will note the "firm relations," as Beijing puts it, between China and Israel.

The WTO vote will be his biggest domestic trophy. Now it looks like both the Senate and the House votes will come in May. That leaves more time for the eagle to snatch the two remaining Asian trophies.

Clinton has put a big pile of chips on the gaming table to get the measure passed in both the Senate and the House. Passage seems certain in the Senate. But he needs at least 70 votes from his own party to assure it . But many Democratic Congressmen need support from groups that are fiercely hostile to China. In Seattle Clinton compromised with anti-WTO protesters. This time he has less wiggle room for compromise.

With the Democratic and Republican conventions only a few months away, what explains Clinton's frenetic drive to score so many successes? Some think it's to assure his place in the history books but the payoff would be at least thirty years away.

A more likely explanation is that he is leading a drive to make the Democratic Party the majority party for decades to come. Were the Democrats to win the White House and both houses of Congress on Nov. 7, Clinton would be credited with a political miracle.

The key to pulling it off is Clinton's extraordinarily successful fundraising -- the biggest single source of his power and influence. And the key to his fundraising is the seemingly everlasting bull market. Only a month ago, Americans seemed to be undergoing a severe oil crisis. But Clinton was unperturbed and soon enough, oil prices started falling dramatically. Fed chairman Alan Greenspan still scares people with his inflation talk but the NASDAQ rollercoaster rolls merrily along.

Bill and Hilary Clinton enjoy a huge popularity in the U.S. Despite Monica, they form a political couple without precedent in American history. Last year Clinton identified peace, prosperity and freedom as his foreign policy goals. If East and West Asia gain peace and the WTO successfully navigates around the political shoals of Washington, then the world will have taken a giant step toward lasting global prosperity. And global democracy may not be far behind.

There is a good chance that next January 20 when Bill Clinton leaves office, his power, influence and fundraising skills will go with him. He will control the new majority Democratic Party and President Gore will have to accommodate to that historic reality.