The two most likely candidates for the presidency next year have taken the pledge: Whichever one of them wins in 1996, the United States will reject isolationism, keep its military strong and carry on its tradition of world leadership.
The two men in question - Kansas Republican Bob Dole and White House incumbent Bill Clinton - made those promises in separate appearances this past week before an audience of foreign policy gurus gathered here to honor the late Richard M. Nixon.Withdrawing from the world and expecting that some other nation, hopefully benevolent, will take up the challenge of leadership isn't an option, both Dole and Clinton concluded.
But listen carefully, because this is Washington and election fever, however premature, is in the air. Dole and Clinton may agree that America needs to be great and strong, but that's about as far as it goes.
If their speeches are an indication of what's to come, foreign policy may turn out to be a major theme in the 1996 campaign. Even if it doesn't turn out to be the major theme, the Republicans will try to use foreign policy to bludgeon the Democrats in the months to come.
Dole got in the first whacks this week by accusing the administration of failing miserably to act in the former Yugoslavia, letting the Chinese cheat us on trade, negotiating a disastrous nuclear weapons deal with North Korea and placing far too much confidence in Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
Instead of leading to peace and stability, Dole said, the collapse of communism had created a series of challenges that "will test America's resolve and her leadership.
"If we fail those tests, if we refuse the mantle of leadership, any declaration of victory will be a long time coming."
And Clinton, Dole contended, was failing those tests and refusing that mantle.
The Senate majority leader was especially critical of Clinton's unquestioning support of Yeltsin, noting that the Democrats were doing exactly what they accused the Republicans of doing with Mikhail Gorbachev. Dole also noted that the White House had so far failed to counter Russia's apparent meddling in the nuclear weapons agreement with North Korea.
Even without the Russian meddling, he said, the weapons accord with Pyongyang "has little prospect of addressing the North Korean threat and apparently already has been violated."
Clinton used his appearance at the Nixon center later in the day to strike what you might call a more presidential pose. Instead of going after Dole himself, the president took on his party, or at least those isolationist Republicans (and a few Democrats, too) pressing for a U.S. withdrawal from the world stage.
And though Clinton didn't mention it specifically, much of his criticism seemed aimed at the Republicans' "National Security Revitalization Act."
The act, part of Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" program, calls among other things for sharp cuts in U.S. financing of U.N. peacekeeping operations and a greater say in foreign policy for Congress.
We'll be hearing a lot more about all these foreign policy issues over the next year and a half. And if the coming presidential campaign is anything like the past ones, it will be increasingly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.