"G
VIEW
COMMENTS
THINK AGAIN
Think Again: Bush’s Foreign
Policy
Not since Richard Nixon's conduct of the war in Vietnam has a U.S. president's
foreign policy so polarized the country -- and the world. Yet as controversial as
George W. Bush's policies have been, they are not as radical a departure from
his predecessors as both critics and supporters proclaim. Instead, the real
weaknesses of the president's foreign policy lie in its contradictions: Blinded by
moral clarity and hamstrung by its enormous military strength, the United
States needs to rebalance means with ends if it wants to forge a truly effective
grand strategy.
BY MELVYN P. LEFFLER | OCTOBER 23, 2009, 7:57 PM
eorge W. Bush’s Foreign Policy Is Revolutionary"
No. Bush’s goals of sustaining a democratic peace and disseminating
America’s core values resonate with the most traditional themes in U.S. history. They
hearken back to Puritan rhetoric of a city upon a hill. They rekindle Thomas Jefferson’s
vision of an empire of liberty. They were integral to Woodrow Wilson’s missive that "the
world must be made safe for democracy." They flow from Franklin Roosevelt’s four
freedoms. They echo the noble rhetoric of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, to
"oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty."
Nor is unilateralism new. From America’s inception as a republic, the Founding Fathers
forswore entangling alliances that might embroil the fragile country in dangerous Old
World controversies and tarnish the United States’ identity as an exceptionalist nation.
Acting unilaterally, the United States could prudently pursue its own interests, nurture
its fundamental ideals, and define itself in opposition to its European forbears. This
tradition is the one to which Bush returns.
Critics argue that Bush’s "revolutionary" foreign policy repudiates the multilateralism
that flowered after World War II and that served the United States so well during the
Cold War. These critics have a point, albeit one that should not be exaggerated. The
wise men of the Cold War embraced collective security, forged NATO, created a host of
other multilateral institutions, and grasped the interdependence of the modern global
economy. Nonetheless, they never repudiated the right to act alone. Although they
reserved the option to move unilaterally, they did not declare it as a doctrine. They did
precisely the opposite. Publicly, they affirmed the U.S. commitment to collective
security and multilateralism; privately, they acknowledged that the United States might
have to act unilaterally, as it more or less did in Vietnam and elsewhere in the Third
World.
The differences between Bush and his predecessors have more to do with style than
substance, more to do with the balance between competing strategies than with goals,
with the exercise of good judgment than with the definition of a worldview. The
perception of great threat and the possession of unprecedented power have tipped the
balance toward unilateralism, but there is nothing revolutionary in Bush’s goals or
vision. The U.S. quest for an international order based on freedom, self-determination,
and open markets has changed astonishingly little.
"The Bush Doctrine of Preemptive War Is Unprecedented"
Preemptive strikes to eliminate threats are a strategy nearly as old as the United States.
Securing the nation’s frontiers in its formative decades often required anticipatory
action. When, for example, Gen. Andrew Jackson invaded Spanish Florida in 1818,
attacked Indian tribes, executed two Englishmen, and ignited an international crisis,
Secretary of State John Quincy Adams told the Spanish ambassador that Spain’s failure
to preserve order along the borderlands justified preemptive American action.
More overtly, President Theodore Roosevelt announced in 1904 that the United States
would intervene in the Western Hemisphere to uphold civilization. Otherwise, he
warned, the Europeans would deploy their navies to the hemisphere, seize national
customs houses, and endanger U.S. security. Decades later, another president named
Roosevelt renounced his distant cousin’s corollary to the Monroe Doctrine and declared
a Good Neighbor Policy. But Franklin Roosevelt did not eschew the preventive use of
force. After war erupted in Europe, he deemed it essential to supply the European
democracies with munitions and food. When Nazi submarines attacked the U.S.
destroyer Greer in September 1941, Roosevelt distorted the circumstances surrounding
the incident and declared, "This is the time for prevention of attack." Thereafter,
German and Italian vessels traversing waters in the North Atlantic would do so "at their
own peril." In one of his trademark fireside chats, Roosevelt explained his thinking: "
[W]hen you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before
you crush him."
During the Cold War, preventive action in the Third World was standard operating
procedure. If the United States did not intervene, falling dominos would threaten U.S.
security. In other words, containment and deterrence in Europe did not foreclose
unilateral, preventive initiatives elsewhere. The United States took anticipatory action
to deal with real and imagined threats from Central America, the Caribbean, Southeast
Asia, and the Middle East. In each case, policymakers employed the same rhetorical
justification that Bush uses now: freedom.
Contrary to the public caricature, the Bush administration does not use preventive
military action as its only — or even principal — tool. It has hesitated to act
preventively in Iran and North Korea, calculating that the risks are too great. It acts
selectively, much as its predecessors did. Vietnam, like Iraq, was a war of choice.
"Bush’s Policies Are a Radical Departure from Clinton’s"
What is striking about President Bill Clinton’s foreign policy is that it actually increased
U.S. military preponderance vis-à-vis the rest of the world. During the late 1990s, U.S.
defense spending was higher than that of the next dozen nations combined. The overall
goal, according to Clinton’s joint chiefs of staff, was to create "a force that is dominant
across the full spectrum of military operations — persuasive in peace, decisive in war,
preeminent in any form of conflict."
Neither liberals nor neoconservatives want to acknowledge it, but the Clinton
administration also envisioned the use of unilateral, even preemptive, military power.
Prior to the September 11 attacks, the last strategy paper of the Clinton administration
spelled out the nation’s vital interests. "We will do what we must," wrote the Clinton
national security team, "to defend these interests. This may involve the use of military
force, including unilateral action, where deemed necessary or appropriate."
Clinton himself already had approved the use of preemptive force. In June 1995, he
signed Presidential Decision Directive 39, regarding counterterrorism. Much of it
remains classified, but the sanitized version is suggestive of a preemptive stance. The
United States would seek to identify groups or states that "sponsor or support such
terrorists, isolate them and extract a heavy price for their actions." And responding to al
Qaeda attacks against U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, Clinton authorized the bombing
in Sudan of the al-Shifaa chemical plant, which was suspected of manufacturing
weapons for Osama bin Laden. Some in the White House raised concerns about the
legality of preemptive bombings against a civilian target in a nation that had never
threatened the United States. But National Security Advisor Sandy Berger made a
compelling case: "What if we do not hit it and then, after an attack, nerve gas is released
in the New York City subway? What will we say then?"
President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talked nobly and worked
tirelessly to preserve alliance cohesion and to enlarge NATO. Unlike Bush, they sought
to contain and co-opt the mounting parochial nationalism in the United States, a
nationalism that wavered between isolationism and unilateralism and that increasingly
rejected international norms and conventions. But, notwithstanding these efforts, it
was the Clinton administration, not Bush’s, that appointed the bipartisan U.S.
Commission on National Security in the 21st Century. This commission was chaired not
by neoconservatives, but by former Democratic Sen. Gary Hart and by former
Republican Sen. Warren Rudman (who is a moderate internationalist). The commission
ruefully acknowledged that "the United States will increasingly find itself wishing to
form coalitions but increasingly unable to find partners willing and able to carry out
combined military operations."
In short, the preemptive and unilateral use of U.S. military power was widely perceived
as necessary prior to Bush’s election, even by those possessing internationalist
inclinations. What Bush did after September 11 was translate an option into a national
doctrine.
"September 11 Transformed the Bush Administration’s Foreign Policy"
More than that, it transformed the administration’s worldview. Prior to September 11,
the Bush team prided itself on a foreign policy that embraced realism. American power,
future National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice boldly declared during the 2000
presidential campaign, should not be employed for "second order" effects, such as the
enhancement of humanity’s well-being. Bush argued that freedom, democracy, and
peace would follow from the concerted pursuit of the United States’ "enduring national
interests." This foreign policy would reflect America’s character, "The modesty of true
strength. The humility of real greatness."
The changes in the Bush administration’s thinking and rhetoric after the terrorist
attacks are therefore all the more striking. Heightened threat perception elevated the
focus on ideals and submerged the careful calculation of interest. The overall goal of
U.S. foreign policy, said the Bush strategy statement of September 2002, is to configure
a balance of power favoring freedom. "Our principles," says the strategy statement —
not our interests — will "guide our government’s decisions… [T]he national security
strategy of the United States must start from these core beliefs and look outward for
possibilities to expand liberty."
In times of crisis, U.S. political leaders have long asserted values and ideals to evoke
public support for the mobilization of power. But this shift in language was more than
mere rhetoric. The terrorist attacks against New York and Washington transformed the
Bush administration’s sense of danger and impelled offensive strategies. Prior to
September 11, the neocons in the administration paid scant attention to terrorism. The
emphasis was on preventing the rise of peer competitors, such as China or a resurgent
Russia, that could one day challenge U.S. dominance. And though the Bush team
plotted regime change in Iraq, they had not committed to a full-scale invasion and
nation-building project. September 11 "produced an acute sense of our vulnerability,"
said Rice. "The coalition did not act in Iraq," explained Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, "because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq’s pursuit of WMD
[weapons of mass destruction]; we acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new
light — through the prism of our experience on 9/11." Having failed to foresee and
prevent a terrorist attack prior to September 11, the administration’s threshold for risk
was dramatically lowered, its temptation to use force considerably heightened.
"Bush’s Foreign Policy Has Inflamed Anti-Americanism Worldwide"
To be sure, anti-Americanism has plagued previous administrations. Violent
demonstrations greeted Vice President Richard Nixon in various Latin American cities
in 1958; so much rioting was expected in Tokyo in 1960 that President Dwight
Eisenhower canceled his visit. In the late 1960s, the war in Vietnam aroused passionate
anti-Americanism in Europe; so did President Ronald Reagan’s decision more than a
decade later to deploy a new generation of intermediate-range nuclear weapons.
But the breadth and depth of the current anti-Americanism are unprecedented.
According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press,
favorable attitudes toward the United States in Europe plunged during the last two
years, dropping from 75 percent to 58 percent in Britain, from 63 percent to 37 percent
in France, and from 61 percent to 38 percent in Germany. It’s even worse in the Muslim
world, where substantial majorities think the United States is overreacting to the
terrorist threat and that Americans seek to dominate the world. Most worrisome of all is
the reaction among "friendly" Muslim nations: 59 percent of Turks, 36 percent of
Pakistanis, 27 percent of Moroccans, and 24 percent of Jordanians say that suicide
bombings against Americans and Westerners are justified in Iraq.
In retrospect, these numbers are not surprising, given that heightened threat
perception tempts U.S. officials to obfuscate interests and stake their policies on the
universality and superiority of American values. Yet a careful calculation of interests is
essential to discipline U.S. power and temper its ethnocentrism. There is no greater and
sadder irony, perhaps even tragedy, that while Bush officials assert the superiority of
American values, the overweening use of U.S. power breeds cynicism about its motives
and distrust of its intentions. Indeed, preemption and unilateralism complicate the
struggle against terrorism. Terrorism, at least in part, is spawned by feelings of
revulsion against U.S. domination and by a sense of powerlessness and humiliation.
Preventive wars and intrusive occupations intensify such sentiments and breed more
terrorists. By elevating the hegemonic posture of the United States to official doctrine,
these policies make the United States and its citizens even more attractive targets for
terrorists. According to recent State Department data, terrorism is waxing, not waning.
"The Bush Administration Has the Right Strategy but Implements It Badly"
Strategy links means to ends, designing tactics capable of achieving goals. Bush’s
foreign policy is vulnerable to criticism not because it departs radically from previous
administrations, but because it cannot succeed. The goals are unachievable because the
means and ends are out of sync.
Rice says the Bush administration’s strategy rests on three pillars: First, thwarting
terrorists and rogue regimes; second, harmonizing relations among the great powers;
third, nurturing prosperity and democracy across the globe. But the effort to crush
terrorists and destroy rogue regimes through preemption, hegemony, and unilateralism
shatters great power harmony and diverts resources and attention from the
development agenda. An effective strategy cannot be sustained when the methods
employed to erect one pillar drastically undermine the others.
Consider, for instance, Bush’s quest for a democratic peace. He says that peoples
everywhere, including the Middle East, yearn for freedom and coexistence. The
democratic peace theory, which postulates that democratic societies do not wage war
against one another, is appealing. But the war on terrorism, as presently conceived,
makes it more difficult to democratize the Arab world. Waging preventive wars requires
basing rights throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. To satisfy its military needs,
the United States must sign agreements with and support repressive, even heinous,
regimes that despise democratic principles.
Democratizing the Middle East is a noble goal, but it is one unlikely to be achieved
through unilateral initiatives and preventive war. Democratization requires far more
resources, imagination, and patience than the Bush administration, or perhaps any U.S.
administration, is willing to muster. The ends of Bush’s foreign policy cannot be
reconciled with domestic priorities that call for lower taxes. A recent Rand Corporation
study concludes that the most important determinants of a successful occupation are
related to the "level of effort — measured in time, manpower, and money." Bush’s
domestic agenda simply does not allow for this level of effort, and he shows no
inclination to alter his programs at home in order to effect his strategic vision abroad.
"Bush Is Reagan’s Heir"
But is that a good thing? Bush and his advisors love to identify themselves with Reagan.
Bush, like Reagan, says Rumsfeld, "has not shied from calling evil by its name…." Nor
has he been shy about "declaring his intention to defeat its latest incarnation —
terrorism." Moral clarity and military power, Bush believes, emboldened Reagan and
enabled him to wrest the initiative from the Kremlin, liberate Eastern Europe, and win
the Cold War.
Yet most scholars of that period interpret the past differently. They know that the most
successful and far-reaching initiatives of the Cold War came in its early years, long
before the Reagan military buildup. In 1947, President Harry Truman and his advisors
grappled with agonizing trade-offs and chose to meet the Soviet threat in Europe with
reconstruction rather than a massive arms buildup. They were initially guided by
diplomat George F. Kennan, who warned against military thinking, overcommitments,
and ideological rhetoric. He did not talk about remaking and refashioning other
societies, but of containing and reducing Soviet power and invigorating U.S. domestic
institutions.
In 1950, the national security document NSC-68 institutionalized the emphases on
moral clarity and military prowess. Prompted by the Soviet acquisition of atomic
capabilities, the onset of McCarthyism, and then the outbreak of the Korean war, NSC-
68 accentuated the ideological war and accelerated the arms race. But moral clarity and
ideological purity made it difficult to assess threats and understand the international
environment. Blinded by ideology, U.S. officials found it difficult to discern the SinoSoviet
split and to grasp the roots of revolutionary nationalism in the Third World. In
the early 1980s, moral clarity prompted Reagan to assist repressive rightist regimes in
Central America. Cold War thinking encouraged him to support Saddam Hussein in
Iraq. And subsequent triumphalism over the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan led
Reagan’s heirs to ignore the ensuing turmoil and the emergence of a Taliban theocracy.
Nor do scholars readily agree that Reagan’s arms buildup and rhetorical
pronouncements brought victory in the Cold War. In fact, the most thoughtful accounts
of Reagan’s diplomacy stress that what really mattered was his surprising ability to
change course, envision a world without nuclear arms, and deal realistically with a new
Soviet leader. And most accounts of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s diplomacy
suggest that he was motivated by a desire to reform Communism, reshape Soviet
society, and revive its economy, rather than intimidated by U.S. military power.
Gorbachev was inspired not by U.S. democratic capitalism but by European social
democracy, not by the self-referential ideological fervor of U.S. neoconservatives, but
by the careful, thoughtful, tedious work of human rights activists and other
nongovernmental organizations.
Bush and his advisors seek to construct a narrative about the end of the Cold War that
exalts moral clarity and glorifies the utility of military power. Moral clarity doubtless
helps a democratic, pluralistic society like the United States reconcile its differences
and conduct policy. Military power, properly configured and effectively deployed,
chastens and deters adversaries. But this mindset can lead to arrogance and abuse of
power. To be effective, moral clarity and military power must be harnessed to a careful
calculation of interest and a shrewd understanding of the adversary. Only when ends
are reconciled with means can moral clarity and military power add up to a winning
strategy.
TAGS: 144, BUSH ADMINISTRATION, DEFAULT, FREE, THINK AGAIN, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
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