Considerations such as promoting democracy, standing up to dictatorships and protecting America's strategic and economic interests overseas used to define U.S. foreign policy. Now it appears environmentalism is to become a key factor in shaping our relations with foreign countries, analysts warn.

A 10,000-word document entitled "Environmental Diplomacy," released by the State Department in April signals the shift. Taken seriously, it might mean that American troops could be sent overseas to enforce pollution regulations. Critics wonder if Americans would countenance such actions.

• With forewords by Vice President Al Gore and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, it states that environmental issues are now "part of the mainstream of American foreign policy" because "environmental problems are often at the heart of the political and economic challenges we face around the world."

• The document expresses concern about "the rapid conversion of land to human uses, increased pollution and the spread of exotic species to non-native habitats."

• It even claims that the World Bank must factor "environmental implications into its lending decisions."

• Critics say the document reads like a Greenpeace manifesto and, not coincidentally, like Gore's book, Earth in the Balance.

The aim appears to be to redefine traditional measures of economic activity -- replacing the quest for productivity growth with an aim for "environmental progress."

Political analysts see this as an attempt to obscure the costs of environmental protection by calling them "benefits" and to force businesses to list wealth-creating activity as societal "costs." If this profound ideological shift is permitted to succeed, companies worldwide would see their regulatory expenses skyrocket and their markets shrink, critics forecast.

Consumers would pay inflated prices for fewer products and higher taxes to support bloated bureaucracies, under such a worldwide "green" scenario.

Observers say Gore's environmental agenda has already infiltrated the workings of U.S. government.

• Since 1994, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis has used its so-called economic-environmental accounting framework to calculate the country's "Green GDP."

• Under such a system, traditional accounting considerations, such as depreciation of plant and equipment, are joined by "degradation of natural assets."

• Meanwhile, grants from the World Bank to radical environmental groups could be counted among the bank's income, while the value of electricity from a new dam financed by the organization could be counted among the bank's expenditures.

Many of the concepts in "Environmental Diplomacy" come straight from Gore's book Earth in the Balance, which uses the metaphor that those who believe in technological progress are as sinister as the perpetrators of the Holocaust, a notion one critic has labeled "eco-battiness."

Source: Henry I. Miller (Hoover Institution), "Gore Remakes Economics In His Own Image," Wall Street Journal, May 13, 1997.