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Time for Bush to Re-Think Foreign Policy Legacy
Share / Recommend - Comment - Print - Friday, Mar 17, 06, 9:26PM
I scribbled the following piece when in Jerusalem and sent to friends in Tokyo to consider publishing. It has just appeared in Japan's largest English language daily, the Daily Yomiuri.
Daily Yomiuri -- March 18, 2006
Time for Bush to Turn Realist
by Steven Clemons
The various denominations that have demarcated the U.S. foreign policy spectrum are in serious disarray and are rapidly evolving into substantially different movements.During the first term of U.S. President George W. Bush's administration, there were three camps vying for control of the foreign policy helm. First were the neoconservatives under the lead of personalities like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff Lewis Libby, and Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith. The second was a realist pocket of personalities led by the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. The third was not a school of thought but rather an individual--the soldier-statesman and then Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Today, the situation is more complex. The DNA of these classic schools of foreign policy as practiced in this terrorist-focused era is under genetic modification. Cheney's team combines the muscular Wilsonian idealism espoused by leading neoconservative ideologues with a pugnacious U.S. nationalism bordering on isolationism that former Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Jesse Helms typified.
Realism--the sort of serpentine interest-calculating realism that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger personified--has been incrementally morphing into a "kinder, gentler" realism since the time of President George H.W. Bush's administration, when then national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, a clear realist devotee, began to include in his calculations the global affinity for the "American brand"--how the United States looks to the rest of the world, what its essential ethical character and great purposes are perceived to be--and melded these concerns into national security prognostications.
However, Rice, a protege of Scowcroft's, is clearly taking realism in new directions, adopting more mechanistic approaches to "democracy transformation" globally--and advocating a global democratic values agenda that talks the talk of human rights, individual empowerment, and self-determination--but which still seems rooted largely in realist calculations.
Rice, now secretary of state, for instance, is launching a new and as yet largely unnoticed initiative to get the United States back into the game of discussing international law--everything from discussions about the rights of combat detainees and rendition practices to the international criminal court.
Rice apparently feels that even though there are serious divisions between the United States and many other global stakeholders on these topics, it has not served U.S. interests to be absent from these debates. Rice's plans to get the United States back into the discourse on international law can be seen both as a new strand of realism and liberal internationalism morphed together as well as an unambiguous challenge to Cheney's pugnacious antiinternationalists.
But where is George W. Bush?
Those who note the third anniversary of the United States' Iraq war--that began with a stealth bombing effort to decapitate Iraq's government on March 19, 2003 (U.S. time)--believe that the president fully subscribed to the neoconservative posture of hard-edged democratization and abandoned any pretense of realist cost-benefit analysis.
But given the clear quagmire the United States has fallen into in Iraq--and the puncturing of the mystique of U.S. power in the world in which enemies are now moving their agendas and allies are counting on the United States less--Bush's foreign policy soul may be out for bid again.
Competition for Bush's attention was also part of the character of this administration prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
On March 19, 2001--two years to the day before the start of the campaign against the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein--Bush was getting a tutorial on contemporary foreign policy realism from journalist Robert Kaplan--author of "The Coming Anarchy," "Balkan Ghosts," "Warrior Politics," and most recently, "Imperial Grunts."
Kaplan had long aspired to be a modern-day Machiavelli, advising "the prince," or in this case the U.S. president, on how best to organize U.S. military and economic resources to unashamedly pursue fundamental national security priorities and interests.
Rice wanted to instill in Bush--using policy intellectuals like Kaplan--the importance of redesigning U.S. engagement in world affairs during a time of perceived U.S. ascendancy. Rice knew that an inertia rooted in Cold War realities rather than contemporary strategy still drove most military and foreign policy decisions, and she was trying to shake this up. Rice was also trying--though she failed at that time--to modernize the "realist church" of foreign policy and make Bush the first major patron of a "neorealist" movement that used realism as a vehicle for limited democratic transformation abroad.
Bush met Kaplan personally at the White House and then they enjoyed a 90-minute conversation that focused on the Caucasus and former Soviet states with Rice and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card saying nary a word.
The bottom line to what Kaplan shared with the president was that the post-Cold War world was dangerous and messy and that great states were going to vie over increasingly limited sources of oil and natural gas supplies.
That meant that the United States needed comprehensive military and economic strategies in these countries to secure our interests lest China, Russia or other unforeseen future competitors tried to tilt these nations in directions counter to U.S. vital interests.
The bottom line conveyed to Bush was that while the president had to "talk the talk of democracy," he had to deal in the real world with thugs and dictators. Democratizing undemocratic parts of the world was a time-consuming and long-term process worthy of pursuit--but more important was that the fundamental U.S. security interests were managed and shored up as "transformative" efforts were pursued.
Kaplan's impact on Bush was evident in part when the president vetoed an effort led by Wolfowitz to use the Chinese EP-3 spy plane incident in April 2001 as a way to engineer a neoconservative takeover of the foreign policy helm. Wolfowitz wanted to feed the U.S.-China clash so as to secure the administration's commitment to a containment strategy on China. It did not hurt that the senior Bush's advice to his son ran parallel to the views of Kaplan.
But Sept. 11 broke the back of Rice's efforts, which were stymied as well in part because she did little to inculcate these neorealist views across the broad swath of foreign policy practitioners embedded across the executive branch.
An interesting contrast was former U.S. President Bill Clinton's famous "think-fests" with academics, in which Clinton would have wide-ranging discussions with policy intellectuals and invite many minds to senior level staff from the White House to sit in and actively participate--less for his people to learn from the academic but more for his staff to sense the president's views and direction. As mentioned, the Kaplan meeting with Bush in contrast involved only three people and not disclosed to the public by the president's staff.
Now, three years after the start of the war in Iraq, new battle lines between these factions are surfacing inside the Bush White House--and the emergence of a potential Iranian threat to the international order is raising the stakes.
The new breed of strident, hypernationalist neoconservativism is advocating an aggressive, military-dominated strategy in dealing with Iran.
In contrast, the Rice-led international realists, are promoting a package of diplomacy, democracy promotion, alliance-coordination, and a more complex program of costs and benefits to attempt to influence the direction of the Iranian regime--or at minimum to insert wedges between different factions in Iran's political order as a way to constrain populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The battle lines are evident in a plethora of issues--including how to deal with Iran, what the right course is in the Palestinian-Israeli standoff, how to approach China and Russia, or an ongoing struggle over the norms the United States exhibits when engaged in conflict--particularly with regard to detaining, rendering, or interrogating enemy combatants.
The fault lines between the factions have been clear inside the Bush administration from the outset, but now, neoconservatives and realists have tinkered with their ideology, toughened up, and prepared for a new collision.
But as March 19, 2006, approaches, Bush would be well advised to spend some time thinking about his foreign policy legacy.
Does he want to leave on the books the image of a United States disdainful of the rest of the world and one that requires either complete assimilation of foreign, particularly Arab, societies--or as a backup builds high walls and fortresses that the United States hides behind?
Conversely, is the United States going to marshal its considerable military and economic resources--and its impressive ecosystem of democratic empowerment and civil justice--and get back to a grand strategy that depends on enlightened--but not naive--U.S. global engagement?
In other words, as Bush thinks about the world's big problems in the two years and nine months left in his term, he has to choose whether he is going to be defined by the image and objectives of his vice president, or whether he is going to stand by the insurgent perspective that his secretary of state is now pushing.
Steven Clemons is Senior Fellow and Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation as well as publisher of the popular political blog, The Washington Note.
More later.
-- Steve Clemons
The new breed of strident, hypernationalist neoconservativism is advocating an aggressive, military-dominated strategy in dealing with Iran.
New?
There is nothing new at all about the Neocon approach to Iran.
As you must know, their designs on the ME date since the 1990s.
Iraq --- > Iran ---> Syria
What's with all the Rice-buffing up stuff lately?
Awhile ago, she was at the gym. Then in the WaPo I think. Now here.
All are complimentary and uncritical.
Complimentary and uncritical or not, Steve is positing that someone is standing forth across from the Pentecostal Mullahs who 15 years or so ago deigned that Christianity must become political to fufill prophecy. I step over the God line at my own peril. How about the rest? When I think I understand God, that's arrogance. Perhaps Ms. Rice is on the humble side of the God line rather than the arrogant. Eh? Whether George has any true political power, or the courage to make a choice, to relate to something beyond images and weightlifting rushes, hey, referees in hockey games let the boys play free in the last period. Can they hear Ms. Rice play the piano though?
Kaplan had long aspired to be a modern-day Machiavelli, advising "the prince," or in this case the U.S. president, on how best to organize U.S. military and economic resources to unashamedly pursue fundamental national security priorities and interests.
I couldn't agree more.
The guy is a sick hole...
There ain't a trace of fecundity in his works...
He is just slaver and saliva...
Interesting piece. Isn't "neo-realism" just pragmatism cloaked in post cold war moralism?
Ms. Rice has made some great speeches, thinly published, about our cold war legacy of having traded tyranny for security during the cold war. Unfortunately, those we traded into tyranny for our security haven't forgotten, and she is unlikely to have sufficient power during this administration to make much of a change.
The Administration was the victim of too many ideologies under a leader who was unqualified to referee the infighting. Now, even if the neo-cons are in retreat, some say disgrace, they still hold the reins of power, in prominent positions and the bureacracy.
She may attempt to bail the ship of state for the next two years, but the sea is pouring through the holes in our credibility, we have rejected our traditional allies, and surrendered our moral standing, and as she looks to set things right, most of the crew is neo con biding their time for a comeback.
"She may attempt to bail the ship of state for the next two years, but the sea is pouring through the holes in our credibility, we have rejected our traditional allies, and surrendered our moral standing, and as she looks to set things right, most of the crew is neo con biding their time for a comeback."
Like a suicide bomber in a marketplace, the neocons believe the ends justify the means. If their grasp on power is seriously threatened, we will experience another staged terrorist attack of epic proportions. It worked for them once, there is no reason to believe it won't work again. It is tme we dropped the denial and the mincing of words when discussing events that we know could not have occurred as they were presented to us. We must speak the unspeakable, for the unspeakable reality is that we have dangerous fanatics and criminals pulling the strings of history right now. And they will NOT be removed by employing the illusionary machinery of "democratic process", for that process is broken by design. I think Bush will be sacrificed and cast aside by these people, and someone closer to the head of the snake will be placed at the symbolic helm.
See following Haaretz.com article:
"Time for Bush to Re-Think Foreign Policy Legacy"
The big flaw in your argument is right there, Steve. You used the words "Bush" and "think" in the same sentence.
It's really very simple: on foreign policy
and domestic policy, on leadership and any other
dimension that you would like to name, the "legacy"
of G.W. Bush will be a weakened United States
and a reputation as the worst president of the
modern era. Worse than Nixon.
"The Administration was the victim of too many ideologies under a leader who was unqualified to referee the infighting. Now, even if the neo-cons are in retreat, some say disgrace, they still hold the reins of power, in prominent positions and the bureacracy."
Well said, mlaw. Well said. I would expound that further by pointing out that he appears to be unqualified to utilize logic and reason when problem-solving, and unable or unwilling to consider long-term consequences (i.e., anything that may extend beyond his term, 2008).
I hope that Rice's influence can neuter, or at least delay, what is looking more and more like an irrational military attack on Iran around the corner...
Wow, this is a very insightful, thoughtful article. Some of you are too cynical. Isn't it strange that we don't see more of this kind of writing and analysis.
Thanks Steve Clemons for doing what you do. I'll be back often.
Thanks for the compliment Punchy. But the root of the problem as you point out is the logic thing you mention but it isn't the "vision thing."
The visual picture I have of our president is the night of the 2000 election when he was sitting on an ottoman at his Dad's feet. He looked like one of those young kids waiting to see if he got picked in the NBA draft, completely out of his depth, a boy among men. I had the same feeling when he addressed the nation from some bunker on 9/11, it was perhaps unpatiotic to do so, but I noted that he looked, well... scared.
When the towers came down, he must have wondered what could possibly have brought him, a man who didn't even know who Musharaf was 2 months before, onto the world stage at a time of crisis. Searching for the meaning of it all, I think he let his religious faith take charge and he convinced himself that he was "chosen" and there were others around him who were happy to let him do so.
Perhaps that is a normal human response, but faith calls for the knowing suspension of logic and in some ways the less logical the path the more blessed is the perceived course. So, it is not a surprise to me that they had no plan for the occupation, he saw the conflict in biblical terms, and trusted in God to provide the right outcome, to have planned for an insurgency would have been to doubt His word. If God is for him who could be against him?
Clearly,some others were less sanguine, but most of the others had been advocating a pax americana for some time and in the hothouse of intellectual neoconservatism there were no nay sayers. they had (have?) a vision, it is just hopelessly utopian and wrong headed.
Beware, they are still convinced of their correctness. They have learned nothing, even if Bush is probably aware that evengalizing the world with the 3rd ID lacks some efficiency, Bolton and co, as Steve's article above indicates, still have strong positions, and they believe that conversion; religious, cultural and economic can be done by the sword. They will blame the debacle on soemthing else, the media, Foggy Bottom or even the troops but they are not in the business of negotiating, this is diplomacy free foreign policy, and they will sabotage all of Ms. Rice's efforts (BTW, I thought I heard a bit of tepidness regarding Bolton by Rice early on despite the quotes provided by others here, I think she just wanted him out of State)
Do you really think that GWB has a clue?
Not that he isn't concerned about his legacy, but does he actually have a clue as to what to do?
Can you share any example where W has shown some leadership, or an original thought?
Bush is a front man for a cabal. Remember his interview with Vargas? He said "I had the duty to call world leaders and talk to them and I did it." that was out of context but it was about iraq I think. Sure sounds like the man has a boss.
Bush has given every indication that he thinks his legacy on every front is secure and that if he does something, it's de facto the right thing to do. He's shown himself capable of of at least temporarily retrenching on issues he doesn't really care about, as with Social Security "reform," but there's no indication whatsoever that he's capable of rethinking his messianic approach to foreign policy or that he realizes he's not in control of events.
Rice ... if she can't control her subordinates, i.e., Bolton, what real impact can she have on foreign policy? She's fortunate to have at least one issue, Iran's nuclear program, about which our traditional allies are concerned enough to go along with US policy to this point. When the Iran situation, or any other for that matter, reaches a point where other governments think the US is behaving irrationally again, Rice will assume the cudgel again. Meanwhile, I still think she's simply taken over Colin Powell's role as foreign policy beard.
But the real problem on foreign policy, and particularly Iraq, is Bush and his conviction he's on a mission from God. The secondary but still significant problem is that very little of what the neocons hoped to accomplish in Iraq has happened, in particular the opportunity to establish permanent US bases in a peaceful environment there. I seriously doubt whether anyone in the administration of any foreign policy flavor has given up on that, since we don't actually have any place else to put the two or so Middle East divisions the administration thinks are necessary.
And in fact, I'm sure no likely Democratic president would either oppose the notion of a substantial permanent Middle East military presence or have any creative ideas about finding an alternative to Iraq as the host of that presence, although I do think a Democrat might be more willing to look for alternatives and more willing to engage other countries, including Syria and Iran, as part of its Middle East policy.
Meanwhile, we're well and truly screwed. Successors to Bush will be occupied with limiting the damage he's done and will continue to do.
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