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GARY EICHTEN: Six minutes now past 12:00, and welcome back to Midday, here on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten.

One of the more curious aspects of recent political campaigns in America, especially the presidential campaigns, is the apparent lack of emphasis on foreign policy issues. After all, how a president does or doesn't respond to a given problem can have enormous consequences. In some cases, it can be the difference between war and peace. But so far, at least, foreign policy has gotten very little attention in the presidential campaign. And it's been that way for the last few elections.

We thought today we would spend the hour touring some world hotspots, taking a look at some of the major foreign policy issues that Bill Clinton or Bob Dole will have to deal with. Try to get a better idea of how they will deal with some of these problems.

We're going to be focusing on Russia, Bosnia, Asia. We'll take a look at the Human Rights issue. But we're going to begin today with the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, the worst violence since 1967 erupted in Israel this week. Hundreds of people have either been killed or injured. All of this at the same time that US troops have been sent back to the Gulf to counter possible military action by Saddam Hussein.

University of Minnesota Political Science Professor Martin Sampson, former Director of the U's International Relations Program, has been following that part of the world for years. And in fact, is just back from a trip to Turkey. And he joins us now.

Good morning, professor.

MARTIN SAMPSON: Good morning.

GARY EICHTEN: The Middle East-- Let's start with the Middle East. Is the peace process dead? Is the next president going to have to deal with a fairly dramatically changed situation?

MARTIN SAMPSON: Well, I think the two things that confront any president are, number one, the issue of oil and oil dependency, which is a problem that's deepened. I think it's become more complicated. We've not had a president since Jimmy Carter that tried to persuade Americans to use less oil. And one of the major underlying risks is some kind of threat to the flow of oil to the outside world.

The second thing, of course, is the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The 1993 Rabin-Arafat Accord, I think, for many people, was somewhat disappointing. It seemed to move very slowly, but it held together. Had there been no assassination of Rabin, I think it's likely that the next US president or the next term of US president would have confronted problems of trying to keep that thing on track, also of having finally to steer the issue of Jerusalem as it relates to the identity both of Palestinians and Israelis straight in the face and try to nurture some sort of reconciliation of conflicting claims about Jerusalem.

But we're not there anymore. The thing is no longer close to being on track. The policies of Netanyahu, Rabin's successor, toward the peace process, I think, at best, the most charitable light would have to be described as cavalier. At worst, it seems, to me, that they have to be described as a determined effort to rescind or perhaps, even simply destroy the process.

GARY EICHTEN: Does the United States have any real leverage in the Middle East at this point, to bring the Israelis and Palestinians back together?

MARTIN SAMPSON: Election years are not times that US presidents or presidential candidates risk imaginative kinds of policies toward the issue. And I think, most people's expectations would be that it's going to be a week after the election in November, before a significant US policy is likely to emerge in the event of the reelection of Clinton. If Clinton is not reelected, then, of course, it goes into the next year.

Yeah. They're levers. I mean, the economic assistance to Israel is one of those levers. I'm not sure it's as meaningful a lever as it might be. The history of American involvement in negotiations and the offering of its good offices as a mediator is another kind of leverage.

But I think what's going on now is a kind of violence between Israelis and Palestinians that is going to be very difficult to stop. Netanyahu won't meet Arafat, then finally, he meets him, and all of a sudden now, he needs Arafat to keep the lid on. Notwithstanding, a variety of kinds of policies Netanyahu has followed that, I think, undermine Arafat's political credibility among many Palestinians.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you see any significant difference in the approach that Clinton or Dole would take to the problems in Israel?

MARTIN SAMPSON: Well, I don't think, the US can solve this. And I think there's a risk of another sustained Intifada, at tragic cost to Palestinians and Israelis. A kind of thing that for Netanyahu, provide the kind of learning process that Rabin went through. Rabin, in the beginning, being very critical of Palestinian nationalism and so forth.

It also is an issue that threatens, I think, the unraveling of the relationships Israel has developed with Arab leaderships and some Arab economic interests as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian Accord. And along those lines, it's a very, very serious issue, but it's not something the United States unilaterally can solve.

GARY EICHTEN: In the Persian Gulf, is there a danger, a genuine danger, that we're going to get into another war with Iraq?

MARTIN SAMPSON: The oil issue, even though Bush was unable to sell it to the American people in 1991, is a profoundly important issue. I mean, that's the kind of thing that can directly affect the daily life of every American and indeed, the daily life of most people around the world.

The oil dependency has not eased. With increased demand for oil from East Asia and so forth, in some respects, the Middle East seems to become even more important to the well-being of the world economy.

And the possibility of Saddam or another Iraqi leader at some point threatening the oil structures in Saudi Arabia is certainly something that the next presidential term will have to take account of. But there's also the whole issue of what's happening inside Saudi Arabia, and whether the forthcoming succession to a new king is going to be anywhere near as persuasive or smooth as the leaders of the Saudi royal family would hope.

Internal problems in Saudi Arabia, it seems to me, are a profoundly serious threat as well, to the oil issue.

GARY EICHTEN: How serious long-term is this issue, the split among the Kurds, in northern Iraq?

MARTIN SAMPSON: I think that if Saddam had been overthrown two weeks ago, for example, or let's say two months ago, and a new Iraqi leader said, "I've got to reassert control over the northern part of my country," I don't think US policy would have paid a great deal of attention.

Tragically, I think the Kurds often have been lost in the shuffle. The divisions within the Kurdish world increased the potential for that to happen.

But that points at something. That certainly is one of a number of possible things that could bedevil the next presidential-- holder of the presidential term, of the next term. Namely ethnicities, whether it be Kurds or others in the Middle East, attempting either to improve their situation vis-á-vis whoever controls them, or attempting finally to secure a states of their own. I would list that as one of a number of kinds of issues that potentially could erupt in the next four years.

GARY EICHTEN: Finally, I can't help but ask you, since you're just back from Turkey, what's going on there, now? Are they moving away from the West, or is that going to be a significant change over the next four years?

MARTIN SAMPSON: I think the significant thing in Turkey, which is the largest democracy in the Middle East, is that at the moment, it's really the only place where you have, under Democratic processes, a situation that is forcing cooperation among Islamists and secular kinds of people. The combination doesn't appear to be any more-- have any-- have more prowess in dealing with Turkey's problems than the prior governments did.

But nonetheless, I think there is a chance of something distinctive emerging from this, in a sense, experiment that is occurring now in Turkey.

And in the next four years, I think, there may well be moments where an American president has to decide, am I going to badger Turkey over human rights kinds of problems, or on the other hand, do we value Turkey, because it is the one place in the region where, under Democratic processes, there is dialogue and political competition going on among Islamists and the secular people?

GARY EICHTEN: Thanks, Martin.

MARTIN SAMPSON: Thank you.

GARY EICHTEN: Good talking with you.

Martin Sampson, who is a Political Science professor at the University of Minnesota, he is the former Director of the University's International Relations Program. We're touring the world's hotspots this hour, trying to get a reading on what the next president of the United States will likely face in the form of foreign policy challenges, be that President Bill Clinton or President Bob Dole.

And we're going to move along now to Bosnia, the other part of the world, in addition to the Persian Gulf, where American troops are currently in harm's way. And joining us here in the studio to discuss that world hotspot is Hamline University History Professor Nick Hayes, who, of course, has been to Bosnia several times in recent years, including an extended stay as part of the Fulbright Program. You've heard him frequently here on our Midday program.

Nick, always good to have you back.

NICK HAYES: Always glad to be here, Gary.

GARY EICHTEN: The US troops are supposed to leave Bosnia starting December 20. Is there any reason to believe that, oh, a year from now, we will be totally disengaged from Bosnia?

NICK HAYES: No, I mean, one, the United States troops have a chance at, let us say, within a year, not being engaged in Bosnia. Some form of NATO or European force clearly will have to remain there. Who knows how long? Probably something like the situation in Cyprus, 5, 10 years, if we want to prevent partition.

I guess the real issue is why we don't talk about this in the election, I noticed-- I just did a quick check-- any discussion of NATO troops is fourth or fifth page on your newspaper these days, and it never really comes up as a serious issue.

GARY EICHTEN: Why do you suppose that is? I mean, I would think that this would be something that a lot of people would talk about. After all, we actually have troops over there.

They're supposed to leave right after the election. It appears, they're not going to be leaving. Not all of them, anyway.

NICK HAYES: Well, we come to a larger issue. Why don't we talk about Foreign Affairs in the presidential campaign at all? And the answer is because neither candidate probably really wants to discuss it. But that takes us in a different direction. The last time we really did this was, of course, the Vietnam War years, and that's a negative memory for virtually all presidential candidates.

But let's just take a look at how we think about Bosnia today. Actually, the public doesn't really think about the issue much. And well, we were here a year ago, Gary, probably talking about serious issues about the coming of the troops, about negotiations.

What's happened? In our minds, Bosnia has gone from being a hotspot on the foreign policy screen to being a managed spot. It has the image. We have the image that elections occurred, that somehow a solution is working its way out, that the NATO troops have been successful. And the bottom line is that's probably what all Clinton wanted out of it.

He wanted to create the image. The image that Washington and the Clinton administration acted, that NATO was united, and that somehow, democracy triumphed.

The reality is, all he received was an agreement that all of the parties would more or less give him the appearance of bringing about a solution.

NATO is terribly divided on this issue, and to call this a triumph of democracy, let us say that the corruption there would have made old Richard Daley of Chicago blush. I mean, the elections on anybody's mind were a joke.

But more seriously, if the goal of US foreign policy was to prevent ethnic partition, consider the irony is that elections have now become the means, finally, to ratify exactly that. What was Bosnia is really three separate ethnic states.

And President Clinton, or perhaps President Dole, is going to have to face the next two serious issues. Do we keep troops there a long time to prevent what probably is inevitable? At least two of those states, the Croatian component and the Serb component, will align with their home countries, Croatia and Serbia proper.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you see much difference in the way those two gentlemen would approach that dilemma?

NICK HAYES: No, I don't. I mean, just for the record, both prior to 1992 were fairly hawkish on the issue. Both Clinton-- prior to 19-- Clinton campaigned in 1992, indicating that he would be more aggressive, more of an interventionist in the area.

Just for the record, if you go back to Bob Dole, the Senator, he paid a visit to a place called Kosovo. There was a riot there. Kosovo is an Albanian enclave within Serbia proper.

Dole, according to all personal reports, was absolutely outraged by the situation. It's apparently something he feels very strongly about. But yet, given the limits of what public opinion will tolerate or more important, what our NATO allies will tolerate, there's not a lot of difference between what either can do.

GARY EICHTEN: Bosnia was certainly a test case for a multilateral approach to problem solving, both at the United Nations level and in terms of NATO. How will that play out over the long-term, in terms of how a president would have to deal with the United Nations, with a NATO, in terms of trying to get some force organized in Bosnia in the future or someplace else?

NICK HAYES: Well, the answer is it was a test case, and everybody flunked. First of all, the European Union flunked. Secondly, the UN flunked. And in reality, NATO dithered and dithered and dithered.

What really triumphed was, for whatever reasons, a year ago, the Clinton administration realized they had to do something. They had only one key ally, that was Germany, within the alliance, who advocated the type of position they took.

But even as we speak, the French have indicated, they're not going to sit on the ground for a year with troops there if the United States thinks it can just give air power. They're already divided on the issue. And the British have always made it quite clear, they want to get out of there.

So I'm afraid the real conclusion is the United States has not found an effective vehicle for collective military action in Europe since the end of the Cold War. The long-term solution will inevitably be some kind of European force that will assume those responsibilities, and probably the United States will not be a participant in it.

GARY EICHTEN: Now, you said that the elections, well, really the whole process, has kind of ratified the partition of Bosnia. What about peace itself? Are they going to start shooting at each other again?

NICK HAYES: Well, I mean, to give Clinton and NATO some credit, I mean, the greatest achievement of the intervention is it has preempted the escalation and return to major all-out conflict. That's not solely the victory of NATO. It happens to be that the three parties, more or less, obtained a certain military balance on the field themselves.

What you will see is kind of low-scale military conflicts, village by village, recurring conflicts between a number of the parties. The Bosnian Muslims are now more heavily armed. They're getting a bit more aggressive. You'll see some action by them, some counteraction by the Serbs.

But the real issue, we think about it too small, Gary. I mean, it's the whole ex-Yugoslavia.

The real issue is coming up in December. The Eastern portion of Croatia around the city of Vukovar is still occupied by Serbs. They are supposed to be elections and a withdrawal at that time. Nearby is a critical Bosnian city called Brcko. I don't want to give our listeners here a geography quiz, but that should be returned to the Bosnians. The Serbs indicate they will not allow it to be returned.

Come December and January, we have a real potential hotspot right in that little corner, although-- and that's totally excluded from the current election.

GARY EICHTEN: You were in Bosnia for quite a long while in that general--

NICK HAYES: In Croatia and Bosnia, yes, together.

GARY EICHTEN: Does it-- do you suppose it makes any difference to those people who gets elected president of the United states?

NICK HAYES: Who gets elected president of the United States? No, of course not.

There was a great deal of enthusiasm, I'm told-- This was before I came-- for Clinton, because Clinton had spoken out more aggressively. And that's speaking among Bosnians and Croats. Anti-American opinion has become exceptionally strong among the Serbs, so it's a plague on both their houses.

I think this is a general European trend. I did a little check on European newspapers this week just for fun. Kind of went through a bunch of them at the University of Minnesota libraries over the last few evenings.

Yeltsin's heart-- Yeltsin's heart condition is getting far more coverage across all of Europe than the American presidential election. And certainly, one of the downsides of the war in the ex-Yugoslavia is it started with a great deal of belief and hope that the new Millennium was really the American Millennium. That the United States would not tolerate what had happened before. By 1994 and '95, there's generally a bitterness and disillusion that the United States really is not an effective player in European affairs.

GARY EICHTEN: Last question. One other aspect of the war in Bosnia or one other outgrowth of the war in Bosnia was the war crimes tribunal. Do you expect that either Clinton or Dole would push hard to try to make sure that the people who've been charged with war crimes actually are tried for war crimes?

NICK HAYES: No. Every indication is quite the opposite.

Just for the record, by the way, yesterday, the UN Investigating and Forensic team suspended further excavations in a place called Srebrenica, where some of the worst massacres occurred. The grounds are that the weather is getting too severe.

I mean, I have been around there at this time of year. It's about the same climate as here. I think you could still dig now.

What they will do, that is what Clinton will push for, what, in fact, the State Department has pushed for, is some sort of appearance that at least men such as Radovan Karadzic will not run for office, or at least not appear to be the real power. And the European Union also seems willing to accept that. I do not see that there's going to be any effective prosecution at a senior level.

At best, you'll see a handful of Serbian soldiers, one Muslim, probably, and a few Croats, the orderlies, will get some flak from the Hague. The real people that gave the commands will go unpunished.

GARY EICHTEN: Thank you, Nick.

Hamline University History Professor Nick Hayes, bringing us up-to-date on Bosnia, and how that might affect the next president of the United States, be he Bill Clinton or Bob Dole.

This hour, we're touring some of the world hotspots, taking a look at some foreign policy issues to try to get a better reading on what problems the next president will face, and what we might expect from either one of those gentlemen in terms of dealing with those problems.

Since the Soviet Union collapsed, US-Russian relations have receded as a campaign issue. The Cold War has ended, and the world is no longer on the brink of an all-out nuclear war. But Russia remains very unsettled, and developments in Russia will almost certainly force the next president to make some difficult decisions.

Norma Noonan, a Political Science professor at Augsburg College, specializes in Russian affairs. She says the front page issue of the moment, the one that Nick alluded to, Boris Yeltsin's health and long-term future as Russia's president, may not turn out to be the major issue facing America's next president.

NORMA NOONAN: If, what you might call, the Yeltsin team remains in power, in other words, if Yeltsin dies, he would be succeeded for a short period by Viktor Chernomyrdin, and then elections would be called. And I think, ultimately, the question is, who would survive those elections?

But if it is someone from the same inclination as Yeltsin, it probably will not make a difference. If it is someone from a radically different inclination, then it may make a difference.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's put some names on those people. Chernomyrdin or Lebed, either one of those--

NORMA NOONAN: OK. Chernomyrdin, I think, very, very close to Yeltsin. Lebed, again, very close to Yeltsin. But at the same time, I think, a little bit more nationalist and perhaps more likely to make demands on the West.

My guess is that Chernomyrdin will be the more skillful diplomat, and Lebed will be the one that the people will like, because he will take various popular stands that the people back home will like, but that the West may not necessarily like.

GARY EICHTEN: I think it's fair to say, whenever people in this country hear about the instability in Russia, one of the first thoughts is, well, are we heading back to the bad old days of the Cold War, and the Soviet Empire, and the threats of nuclear war? Is that a realistic concern?

NORMA NOONAN: Not to me. I think even during the last election campaign, Zyuganov, who would-- the Communist leader, went out of his way to assure the West that nothing fundamental would change in foreign policy.

Probably, the greatest threat of change would come from someone like Zhirinovsky, who, I think, has lost whatever appeal he had a few years ago. I personally thought at the time that the media had exaggerated his influence, and had made him more of a media star than he deserved to be. But Zhirinovsky, I think, now, more Russians see him as being eccentric, and quixotic, and not very reliable at all. So he's not a real player.

But of the real players, I think they are all reasonable people that the West can deal with.

GARY EICHTEN: Lebed has talked about the possibility of an armed mutiny, because the troops in Russia aren't getting paid and fed. Is there a real danger of that, and where would that lead, as far as the West is concerned?

NORMA NOONAN: As far as the West is concerned, I think we would just have to sit back and watch. I think that kind of an alarm is more to tell the government that they have to pay attention to what's going on, and that they cannot just assume that the troops will be obedient, because troops have almost always been obedient.

So I think-- I look at that as an internal alarm, and not really something that, at this point, we should worry about.

GARY EICHTEN: Nuclear weapons, Russia still has many, many nuclear weapons. They are no longer targeted at the West, but could be retargeted fairly quickly. Are they still a danger? Are they still a threat to us? Is there a danger that somebody other than the official government will get their hands on all those nuclear weapons?

NORMA NOONAN: I doubt it. I doubt it. While there might be some mutiny among the troops, let's say, in the outlying areas, I think the officer corps, et cetera, would be 100% professional military. There'd be there'd be no problem there.

GARY EICHTEN: We have been pushing the idea of expanding NATO into Eastern Europe. And in fact, at one point, there was some talk about having Russia join NATO. Is there much interest in that, in Russia, at this point? Is there much concern about NATO expansion?

NORMA NOONAN: I would say that Russia is concerned about a NATO that is expanded to include Eastern Europe, but not Russia. A NATO that would have Russia as a full partner, they're not worried about. A NATO without Russia, they are very worried about, because if you were to admit, let's say, Ukraine, Poland, and a few of the other key powers of Eastern Europe, and not Russia, then Russia will say, that is against us.

So I think that the issue is, and here's where I see the power sharing, my guess is that the European powers would not want Russia in because however diminished a power she is, she is still a greater power than most of the countries of Europe. So that would-- it would diminish their relative voice within NATO. And I think France would be a case in point.

GARY EICHTEN: We promised Russia lots of economic aid. Did we ever deliver on that?

NORMA NOONAN: We have given quite a substantial amount of aid, but not as much as promised. The West, generally, in all of these big offers, tied aid in stages to various conditions. And so, in pretty much in every case, you might say some money was advanced, but if Russia could not meet all the targets, then the second stage and the third stage were not delivered. And that has pretty much been the pattern.

The country that has given the most aid to Russia is Germany. And that was, in part, in a sense, to get the Soviet troops out of Eastern-- the Eastern Zone of Germany. Germany had to promise to build apartments for them in Russia to take-- to help with the transition, because there was no place to move back all of those troops, the former Soviet troops, that were housed in Germany. So Germany has been the country that has given the most.

On the other hand, you could say, look what they got in return. They got the Eastern Zone back.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you see any major differences in the way that a Clinton administration and a Dole administration would approach Russia?

NORMA NOONAN: Personally, probably not. The party that is out of power has always-- always takes the stand that it would be firmer in foreign policy, that it would have a stronger foreign policy, et cetera. And certainly, Dole has, until very recently, been attacking the president for being weak on foreign policy until some of the president's recent strong stands with respect to Saddam Hussein.

My guess would be that Dole coming out of the moderate wing of the Republican Party would follow the general bipartisan line, which has characterized American foreign policy for the most part in the last 50 years.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you think the Russians care one way or the other, who wins the presidential election in this country?

NORMA NOONAN: Only in the sense that it is always better to deal with somebody you know than with someone you don't know. But when the Republicans come in, they will come in with a team that will include a lot of people that they worked with in the Bush administration or in the Reagan administration. So while Dole is a relative unknown quantity as a Senator, who had some international postures, but not a great many, there would be behind the Dole-Kemp team, there would be people that they know extremely well.

So my guess is that at the official level, no. But if you have a good relationship with the leader of another country, you really don't want to change it. So they might have some of the same trepidations that we do when we think of a Russia without Yeltsin. They might worry about an America without Clinton.

GARY EICHTEN: Finally, do you think, be it Bill Clinton or Bob Dole, that Russia is going to be one of those issues that keeps coming up over and over, that they're going to have to wrestle with, or can we look forward to four years or so of relative stability in the US-Russian relationship?

NORMA NOONAN: No, I think it will be an issue to wrestle with. And in fact, I-- almost no one, and I was pleased that you are, is paying attention to the whole NATO scene, because I think that, that is going to be a source of acrimony in the event that Russia is not admitted and some of these other nations are. And I would see that as a very interesting point of dispute.

The other-- another area of dispute will be if Russia and America may have some very different issues and interests in the Middle East, and that may be a point of difference. There are some differences in our approaches to the former republics that were part of Yugoslavia. So I see a number of tinderbox issues that are out there, so it will never be boring.

GARY EICHTEN: Russian expert Norma Noonan, who teaches Political Science at Augsburg College in Minneapolis.

Roy Grow teaches International Relations at Carleton College in Northfield. He specializes in Asia, China, Korea, Japan, and he joins us now.

Good afternoon, professor.

ROY GROW: Good afternoon, Gary. It's always good to talk to you.

GARY EICHTEN: Good to talk with you. What do you think will be the first major problem facing the new president in terms of Asian affairs?

ROY GROW: There's sort of three or four problems that are all coming to a head at the same time, and they're going to come to a head very, very quickly. The first has to do with Japan and the crisis, both economic and political, it's going through. The second has to do with the China world and the crisis that's approaching there, especially over Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The third, probably, is Korea, and the real tensions between North and South. And the fourth has to do with one of the things that Norma was just talking about, the disintegration of Russia, but the ripple effects that that's having all across Northeast Asia.

GARY EICHTEN: What kind of-- how is the US perceived in Asia these days?

ROY GROW: I think there's a sense in Asia of American drift, and the words that you hear on the part of people in Japan and China and even Southeast Asia have to do with words that we would call, sort of, denial. That Americans are sort of in denial that there are real problems in this part of the world that Americans can affect, that the current administration is, perhaps, a little more concerned with image than with substance. And as a result, there's a sense of almost a vacuum. Where American foreign policy had been strong in the past, there's a sense of pullback, of disinterest, and of a sense of maybe we're going to have to fight these things out primarily by ourselves.

GARY EICHTEN: It seems like the last few years have been marked by an annual showdown, sometimes more than annual showdown, with the Chinese and to some degree, the Japanese over trade issues, human rights issues, and the rest. Can we expect more of that to continue?

ROY GROW: I think, probably, we can. There's been a little bit of a growing sense of optimism over the last couple of months that the worst probably is over, in terms of the downturn in American relationships with China.

But I think as we look at what's going on inside China, one of the things that we see still is an increasing sense of real paranoia on the part of those Chinese who should be our natural allies, the reformers in China, the people who want better relationships with the outside world. They're still smarting over things like the Olympics, the 2000 Olympics, and not getting it, and the real struggle every year over most favored nations, and the sense of a lack of understanding, in this country, about what human rights in China really means, and how much progress there's been.

It's become one of the real issues and the struggles between leaders that's gone on in the last 12 months or so. And it's my guess that we've not seen the worst yet. That the next year is going to be a really telling one for American-Chinese relationships.

GARY EICHTEN: US-Japanese relations have mostly revolved around trade issues. Is there any reason to believe that the worst of those problems are behind us, and that the Japanese have opened their markets to US goods, and all of the friction points have been smoothed over?

ROY GROW: I think-- I think in that part of our relationship with Japan, the trade relationship is probably not going to be the worst thing that will divide our two countries. Probably even more difficult has to do with the really deep economic crisis that Japan is in right now.

The stock market crash of three or four years ago, they're still not pulling out of it. The sense of where property values have gone. And there's a growing sense in Tokyo politics that Americans just don't understand the depth of this crisis that the Japanese economy is going through.

Couple that with the problems over the bases in Okinawa-- The problems with one American sailor raping a young Chinese-- young Okinawan girl, and the recent knife attack on the part of another American military person on an Okinawan woman-- there's real pressure, I think, to renegotiate and rethink American-Japanese relations coming from within Japan.

Here, the Clinton administration, I think, is really quite fortunate, because unlike any of the other areas of the world, in Japan, the Clinton administration has a spectacularly good tool in Ambassador Mondale, who may be one of the real shining lights in a world of very few shining lights of foreign policy that this administration has.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you see him becoming secretary of State if Clinton is re-elected?

ROY GROW: I can't judge the internal politics of the Clinton administration, but I certainly think, he's one of the most competent people around. He has both the temperament for it, the managerial skills for it, and the insights about the world. If Warren Christopher retires, there's probably no better candidate than Ambassador Mondale.

GARY EICHTEN: You mentioned Korea and the continuing tensions between North and South Korea. A couple of years ago, there was talk, perhaps, we would even launch a military strike against North Korea to get rid of their nuclear facilities. Is there any sign that tensions on the Peninsula are going to be easing in the next while?

ROY GROW: No. There's no indication whatsoever. In fact, all of the indications are that it's getting worse. The North Korean economy is simply going back into the 15th century at the moment. It's a real disaster area.

And given the fact that their strong leader of the past several decades has died and his son has just taken over, there's a sense that this regime is not a regime that's really together, that's really consolidated. And there's a very, very real possibility that while we might not see a full-scale attack of the North on the South, the adventures that we saw last week, of the North Korean submarine landing on the coast of the South, those, I think, have very, very real possibility of reappearing.

Now, couple that with the political tensions in the South, where the current Korean president has just placed in jail, the previous two Korean presidents, and the students are again out in the street, you have a Peninsula that is really on the edge of perhaps, on the edge of real chaos.

GARY EICHTEN: And would the United States get involved, smack dab in the middle of that chaos?

ROY GROW: Well, we've got tens of thousands of troops there. And almost anything that happens in that Peninsula, by definition, we would be in the middle of.

Now, whether we could support them with the withdrawal of the military that's going on in Okinawa and the closing of the bases in the Philippines a couple of years ago, there's, I think, the real question for whoever is president in the next three or four years.

GARY EICHTEN: You said that we had a pretty firm and understandable foreign policy relative to Asia, or at least, China, a few years ago, that the Clinton administration has been drifting a bit. What do you see would be the differences-- What would be the differences between Clinton and Dole administration?

ROY GROW: I think it's a mixed bag in this regard. I think in terms of our relationships with Japan, again, I would say nobody will be the equal of Ambassador Mondale representing American interests there.

On the China question, I have a sense that the Dole people, the people who are around Senator Dole, have a somewhat less non-ideological position on things like Chinese human rights. That they're more able to see human rights issues than the trade issues in a broader context.

It's perhaps the case that our relationships with China would be a bit better, marginally better, under a Dole administration. But neither one seemed to be truly focusing on East Asia as a really important part of foreign policy.

GARY EICHTEN: Why is that?

ROY GROW: I think that there is a sense, a realistic sense, on both the Dole camp and the Clinton camp, that Americans simply don't want to look at foreign policy. And I've heard a lot of people say that, that is perhaps one of the most serious things that our leadership has not done for us in the last couple of years.

People have sort of equated this period to maybe the 1920s. That it was a period of relative calm, but it was a calm that masked the deeper tensions that were developing that led us to the 1930s in both the case of Japan, Germany, and Italy. And some people have said that, sure, there's a calm right now in the 1990s, but the tensions in all of the areas that your other guests have talked about and East Asia are becoming so strong, so immense that we ignore them really, at our peril.

And I think the American public, we're just not ready to focus again, on the tensions. We've come off a great victory, so to speak, from the Cold War. And I think we don't want to do Iraq all over again. We don't want to do the Soviet Union all over again.

I think there's a need in our community to focus inward. But I sense that if we drift too far, somewhere down the line in the next five to 10 years, we're going to have to pay the price.

GARY EICHTEN: Thanks for joining us.

ROY GROW: Good to talk to you, Gary.

GARY EICHTEN: Roy Grow, who teaches International Relations at Carleton College in Northfield, he specializes in Asian affairs-- China, Korea, Japan.

It is about 14 minutes now, before 1:00, and a special edition of Midday coming to you here on Minnesota Public Radio today. Today, we're taking a look at some of the major foreign policy questions that the next president will likely face. We've been touring the globe today. The Middle East, Bosnia, Russia, Asia.

And besides all these geographical hotspots that we've been talking about today, of course, the next president will also have to deal with some overarching issues, economic development, the haves and have-nots, multilateral diplomacy, security, and of course, the issue of human rights. And joining us now to talk about that issue is Barb Frey. She is the Executive Director of Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights. Good afternoon.

BARD FREY: Hi, Gary. I'm delighted you're dealing with these issues today.

GARY EICHTEN: Well, I'm glad you could join us.

Do you think that the human rights issue is likely going to get much attention in the next four years, no matter who's president?

BARD FREY: Well, I suppose first, I'll deal with the Clinton administration. If the first four years are any indication, we're concerned that human rights is not an issue that is being taken seriously at the foreign policy level by the Clinton administration.

As for a Bush administration, it's always a little hard to predict. We know some of his advisors in the foreign policy area have been strong spokespeople on issues regarding countries like Turkey, the Tibet issue in China, and he's spoken out for early intervention on Bosnia. But it's very hard to predict. And if I were forced to predict, I would say that human rights would not be the battle cry of either administration's foreign policy.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you think the human rights issue should be the determining factor?

BARD FREY: Well, I don't know that they should be the determining factor. But as you suggested, they are an overarching set of issues upon which, I think it's fair to say that the American people have expressed their support. These are issues that we care about. Things like prevention of genocide, prevention of torture, of systematic rape, of trafficking in women and children. These are not issues that Americans want to ignore.

And the other aspect, I think, of this is that even if we-- if we choose to be more isolationist in our policies about other countries, sort of a live and let live policy, foreign policy issues are coming so close to home, at this era, in terms of immigration policies and terrorist policies, and this is all integrally related to how the United States is perceived on the international scene. As a protector of human rights and a promoter of fundamental standards, or are we seen as somebody who's willing to cynically stand by and let genocide and terrorism happen?

GARY EICHTEN: One area where human rights has come up frequently, human rights questions, is China. Do you sense that much has changed in China over the last four years? Have the Chinese improved their human rights record?

BARD FREY: Oh, by all means, no. If anything has changed, it's been a general deterioration. And unfortunately, US relations with China have deteriorated at the same time as human rights conditions have deteriorated in China.

And we see, for instance, that there are no public dissidents from the-- from the Tiananmen Square era who are still actively able to talk about democracy as a realistic political option in China. They have all been silenced, put in prison, certainly taken out of any kind of economic positions that would allow them to live a reasonable life.

The big question on the China front is going to be Hong Kong. Of course, in 1997, which will go back to China, and there are very troubling indications that China does not intend, for instance, to respect the Democratic decision-making of the Hong Kong citizens. And one of the things we're concerned about is whether or not China will abide by Hong Kong's previous ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is a kind of a global bill of rights that governments pledge themselves to protect.

Under Britain, Hong Kong ratified that document, and what we're afraid of is that the Chinese government will just refuse to abide by it.

GARY EICHTEN: We sent troops to Haiti, in part, to get the human rights situation squared away in Haiti. Has any progress been made there?

BARD FREY: Well, it's fair to say that Haiti is one of the relative successes, in terms of human rights. Certainly in terms of preventing what could have been really massive amounts of human rights violations.

Haiti continues to teeter on the brink. And there are indications that if-- unless the US and the international community remains vigilant, it could slide back into a situation where there are-- is serious citizen upon citizen brutality.

GARY EICHTEN: Mexico-- One of the reasons some people oppose the NAFTA agreement was Mexico's human rights record. What's happening there?

BARD FREY: Well, I think, there's good news and bad news in Mexico. The good news is that the world community is starting to scrutinize Mexico more. For a long time, it got away with a lot because it looked so good by comparison to its Central American neighbors.

But I think, President Zedillo and the government-- and the ruling party, the PRI Party, have been really criticized publicly in the past couple of years. In fact, the Organization of American States sent down its Human Rights Commission to do an in-country investigation of Mexico's human rights situation, which is a real slap in the face to Mexico. So I'd say that's good news in the sense that at least we're paying attention to Mexico's issues.

The bad news is that given the guerilla uprisings that keep sprouting up in some of the Indigenous regions, I think, we're likely to see both deaths from the conflict and also justification for excessive military violence against citizens.

GARY EICHTEN: Would you expect either the next Clinton administration or the Dole administration to pay much attention to human rights violations in, let's say, Africa?

BARD FREY: Well, I think our policy in Africa, as witnessed by our inability or unwillingness to get involved in the Rwanda and Burundi situations, is one of hands off. I think we see it as a no-win situation, especially after Somalia.

I think that what will be-- the ball that got rolling under the Clinton administration, which I don't think that Bush-- excuse me, that was a Freudian slip-- that Dole would switch is one of this free trade policy. And it's really-- I think, the legacy of the Clinton administration in human rights is that they have, instead of seeing our friends as our political and ideological friends like they were under the Cold War, we see them as our trade partners. And that we're willing to turn a blind eye on trading partner's violations as long as US companies are benefiting from trade and from manufacturing and cheap labor in those countries.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you see either Clinton or Dole pushing some of the proposals that surfaced at the Women's Conference a year ago in Beijing?

BARD FREY: Well, Clinton has put in place some mechanisms. There's been a lot of public rhetoric about women's rights as human rights.

What we would most be delighted about is to get the US Senate and approved by the president, to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, which has sat in front of the Senate for 10 years. And that would be a real true sign of the US's commitment to promote equality and non-discrimination for women.

GARY EICHTEN: Thanks, Barb. Good talking with you.

BARD FREY: Thank you.

GARY EICHTEN: Barb Frey, who is the Executive Director of Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights.

Well, that just about does it for our tour of hotspots around the world, some of the big issues that will be facing the next president of the United States.

But something that came up earlier this hour, in fact, it's come up several times during this hour, is, again, that question of, why foreign policy is not a bigger issue in the presidential campaign this year or most campaigns? And Nick Hayes is still here.

And, Nick, you want to take the last minute or so and ruminate on that? Why do you suppose we care so little about these big issues?

NICK HAYES: Well, I think, Gary, there's certainly a new isolationism going on in the American public. But I think part of the answer is there is really a conspiracy of denial from Washington to Peoria, from inside the Beltway to everyday life in America.

Everyone wants to retain a fiction that we won the Cold War. We like to think of it like it was some kind of football game or a game we won. The game's over. Go home with your trophy. And we don't like to accept the larger reality that, at best, we went through one successful round, and the game gets much, much more complicated and difficult.

And related to that is there's been no leadership on the top. I mean, there has been no galvanization from the Washington as how to discuss foreign policy.

Since the Cold War ended, we need to define what our policy should be, and foreign policy is a subject of ideals and place. That is, we need a frank public discussion of just what principles we are prepared to promote.

And also, it's place. Where? Where do you draw the line in the sand?

I mean, are we engaged in Europe? What is our commitment to the Middle East? Where are we engaged in Asia? These are the issues that simply have to be, frankly, discussed.

And we've had, and perhaps, it's the legacy of Bush, he had the image of being too engaged in foreign policy. Therefore, ever since Bush lost, no one wants to take the issues on.

GARY EICHTEN: You're a History professor. Has there ever been a time in American history when we've paid much attention to the rest of the world, other than when we were involved in a war?

NICK HAYES: Well, I mean, remember that FDR, on the eve of our entry into the Second World War, campaigned on isolationism. That he was not going to get engaged, and he knew full well he was going to be engaged. And I suppose, I should correct what I said earlier in the hour. The last time really was the Vietnam War years, and that was not a campaign about further commitment. It was a campaign about disengagement.

I suppose the reverse it is true, if we think that Reagan did campaign on taking a tougher line on the Soviet Union and condemned Carter for that, and he did make that into a campaign issue. But for the most part, no.

This is something Americans do not like discussed. It tends to be too complex. It frankly tends to tell them that maybe they're not in control of the really larger issues that ultimately are affecting their lives.

GARY EICHTEN: Well, hopefully, we haven't made this our too complex, and hopefully people have found something useful.

NICK HAYES: Well, I hope so.

GARY EICHTEN: Thanks, Nick.

That does it for our program today. Sure, like to thank you for joining us as we took a look at some of the foreign policy issues that will likely face the next president of the United States, be he Bill Clinton or Bob Dole.

We're going to continue our campaign-related coverage on Midday on Monday, and we hope you'll be able to join us on Monday. What we're going to do is rebroadcast a couple of things that are happening Sunday evening. We'll be rebroadcasting the Senate debate between Rudy Boschwitz and Paul Wellstone, and we're also going to rebroadcast the Congressional debate. The Congressional leadership, Republicans and Democrats, are debating on the Public Broadcasting system Sunday night. So we'll be rebroadcasting both of those programs from, oh, roughly, 12:00 until 1:30.

Our political commentators, Bob Meek and Tom Horner, will be here to talk about the issues in those campaigns, the Senate campaign and the larger congressional races. And so, this should be a great opportunity for you to catch up on those races, and we hope you'll be able to join us. That comes up on Monday, part of our continuing election coverage.

That does it for Midday today. Again, thanks so much for tuning in. Sara Meyer is the producer of our Midday broadcast, Mike Mulcahy is our associate producer. We had help this week from Rick [? Basinski. ?] I'm Gary Eichten. Join us on Monday.