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Nickdfresh
02-15-2005, 03:21 PM
A dangerous foreign policy

Bush doctrine is a recipe for endless war

By JEROME SLATER
Special to The News
2/13/2005

Associated Press
”It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every national culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” President George W. Bush, in his inaugural addresshttp://www.buffalonews.com/graphics/2005/02/13/0213viewsa.jpg

http://www.buffalonews.com/graphics/2005/02/13/0213convoy.jpg
Associated Press
U.S. Army soldiers pursue Iraqi insurgents after a firefight last week in Mosul.

Associated Press
“We will not rest until every person that lives in a fear society (that is, a tyranny) receives freedom.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

Throughout American history, there have been two very different conceptions of the role that the promotion of democracy should play in U.S. foreign policy, often characterized as "Washingtonianism" vs. "Wilsonianism." Not only George Washington, but other Founding Fathers and early American presidents, including Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, favored a modest role for the United States in world affairs.

Misleadingly termed "isolationism," the policy did not call for complete withdrawal from foreign affairs, and certainly not from trade, investment and diplomacy, but it did frown on the use of military force for any purpose other than the protection of vital American interests.

While Washingtonians believed that it was desirable that democracy spread throughout the world, the best way for America to contribute to this goal, they believed, was to perfect its own democracy, serving as a model or example for others to emulate. What was out of the question was to attempt to "export democracy on the tip of the bayonet," as the saying went. Adams famously articulated this philosophy when he counseled Americans to "go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy."

For our first 150 years, the basis of American foreign policy was Washingtonianism. It clearly served the country well, as we generally stayed at home, developed and prospered. Since the end of World War II, however, it has been Wilsonianism that has dominated American foreign policy.

Although he wasn't the first Wilsonian, it was Woodrow Wilson whose name came to characterize the crusading spirit in American foreign policy, the belief that the United States has a mission, in some versions a divine mission, to actively promote democracy throughout the world - sometimes, if necessary, by the use of force.

The inaugural speech of President Bush is pure Wilsonianism. In that speech - repeated, in essence, in the foreign policy sections of the State of the Union address - Bush announced what has already been termed the Bush doctrine: "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every national culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

In several recent interviews, Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have elaborated, with Rice proclaiming that, "We will not rest until every person that lives in a fear society (that is, a tyranny) receives freedom."

To be sure, the president says that the United States has "no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else" and that the American mission will not be "primarily the task of arms." However, both the rhetoric of the speeches and the war in Iraq - now remarketed from a war to destroy weapons of mass destruction to one devoted to bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq, and beyond that to the entire Middle East - strongly suggest that military intervention will play a very important role.

The new Bush doctrine has been widely criticized, including by a number of prominent conservatives, such as William Buckley, Patrick Buchanan and writers for the Wall Street Journal. Typically, though, the president is praised for his "vision," "idealism" and "eloquence," even as serious reservations are expressed over whether the doctrine is either consistent with actual American policies or a practical guide for the future.

In my view, however, the Bush doctrine merits much more severe criticism: It is quite simply the most dangerous pronouncement by an American president in living memory. If the president genuinely believes what he is saying, he is not so much idealistic as naive and detached from reality. On the other hand, if he doesn't believe his rhetoric, he is being cynical and hypocritical.

The Bush doctrine fails at every level: as rhetoric, as history and analysis, and above all, as policy.



Rhetoric

Far from being eloquent, the language introducing the Bush doctrine is cliched and grandiose - more like a high school valedictorian address than a mature reflection on what the American role in the world should be. Are rhetoric and language really important? You bet they are: Clarity in language closely correlates with clarity in thought. Who doubts that Winston Churchill's majestic language was inextricably linked to his majestic wartime leadership?



History and analysis

The Bush doctrine is based on three interrelated premises or propositions, all either simplistic or demonstrably false:

• Terrorism is produced by tyranny, therefore the solution to terrorism is the spread of democracy.

The problem with this argument is that there have been plenty of tyrannies that, in their own interests, successfully repressed terrorist movements. For example, in 1982 Hafez Assad of Syria ruthlessly destroyed the Muslim fundamentalist movement in his country, killing as many as 30,000 people.

Conversely, precisely because they allow more freedom than dictatorships, democracies are often more vulnerable to terrorism. For example, in 1992 the Algerian people freely voted into office a particularly vicious terrorist movement. It didn't take power, however, because a military coup and subsequent dictatorship prevented it - much to U.S. relief.

• The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.

On the contrary, throughout history as well as today, most people in the world have been ruled by autocracies. Yet for more than two centuries, American democracy and freedom have generally prospered and developed. Take Latin America, for example. During the 1970s, most Latin American countries, including our closest neighbors in Central America and the Caribbean, were ruled by repressive military dictatorships - many of them actively supported by the United States because they were reliably anti-communist - whereas today most of them have become democracies. Has there been any discernible difference, let alone improvement, in American democracy during this period?

• America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.

A comforting thought, but hardly accurate. Our deepest values, in the abstract, may indeed be those of democracy and freedom, but not if free elections bring into power fanatical Muslim fundamentalists, for in that case our vital national interests - including basic homeland security - may depend on their repression.

Thus, the Bush administration - and rightly so - cooperates with China and the increasingly autocratic government of Vladimir Putin in Russia, strongly supports autocratic governments in Jordan and Egypt and works closely with the nondemocratic Saudi and Pakistani regimes, which in the last few years have apparently begun to suppress fundamentalist terrorist movements.

In an obvious reaction to criticism of the inaugural message, Bush sought in his State of the Union address to refute the charges of hypocrisy by briefly and perfunctorily calling on Saudi Arabia and Egypt to "demonstrate (their) leadership in the region by expanding the role of (their) people in determining their future."

Nonetheless, Bush's foreign policy record makes it evident that when he calls for increased freedom and democracy, in practice he doesn't mean it to apply to autocracies who generally support his foreign policy objectives and methods - especially when autocratic leaders, like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, are considerably more pro-Western than their countrymen.



Policy

Above all, the Bush doctrine is bad policy, and highly dangerous to American national security. Indeed, there is even a serious danger that an ultimate success of the Bush policy in Iraq - or even an apparent success - might obscure the price we and the Iraqis have paid, and thereby embolden further U.S. adventures abroad. There is no shortage of monsters out there to be destroyed.

At present, of course, the danger is mainly hypothetical. As many columnists have observed, despite the heartening recent elections in Iraq, it would be highly premature to celebrate Iraq as a victory for the Bush doctrine. To begin with, free elections are only the first step toward creating democracy. Paradoxically, sometimes free elections bring tyranny - as already indicated, Algeria came very close to falling under a freely elected fanatical Islamic government. Alternatively, societies like Iraq, sharply divided along ethnic or religious lines, can be destabilized by elections, which can exacerbate the conflicts and even precipitate civil war.

For these reasons, the Iraqi elections should be understood as constituting only a beginning on the road to democracy and freedom. For the sake of analysis, consider the best possible case: The new Iraqi government avoids theocracy and is accepted by the Sunnis and Kurds as well as the majority Shiites, it governs both democratically and effectively, it starts on the road to economic recovery, the insurgency is decisively defeated, U.S. troops are withdrawn and there is lasting democratic stability in Iraq.

Even in such a highly remote case of success, however, the human as well as the economic and political costs - already very high - will inevitably become much higher, thus calling into question the very meaning and value of "success."

In human costs, more than 1,450 American men and women have been killed in Iraq, and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians - many of them, of course, at the hands of the unspeakable insurgents. But many of them were killed by the unintentional but nonetheless terrible "collateral damage" that is the inevitable consequence of the lethality of American weaponry, especially when employed in cities. Indeed, these staggering human costs are increasingly destroying the very rationale of intervention for freedom and democracy.

As for economic costs, the United States has already spent more than $200 billion on the Iraq war and its aftermath. Imagine how that same amount, spent at home, could have improved life in America.

The political and diplomatic costs can be measured by global anti-Americanism, which has never been so prevalent. The United States has never been more isolated, and we are regarded today not only by the Muslim world but by most of our closest Western allies with alienation and fear. Even as the threat of terrorism to the American homeland increases, there is likely to be a decline in the willingness of other countries to cooperate closely with us in the war on terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.



What's the alternative?

Despite Bush's assertions, there is often a large gap between our national values and the imperatives of our national interest in a nasty and dangerous world. Thus, the use of force must be reserved for the few cases in which the terrorist threat to the United States is obvious - Afghanistan after 9/11, for example, but certainly not Iraq, where the terrorist threat is far greater now than it was before the invasion.

Military interventionism rarely promotes democracy but nearly always leads to nationalist or religious outrage which, when linked to the spread of weapons of mass destruction, increases the threat of unbearable retaliation against our homeland.

This does not mean we should forego the promotion of global democracy and freedom, only that it should not be done by force. Rather, we can provide a model and example for aspiring democratic movements, and we can encourage and assist them with diplomatic and political support as well as with technical and economic aid.

History has demonstrated that, with but a few exceptions, the necessary precondition for democratic development is economic development. A recent international commission sponsored by the United Nations has proposed that the advanced nations of the world devote seven-tenths of 1 percent of their national incomes to development assistance. Many Western countries already have achieved this level, and many others have pledged to do so. Bush has made no such pledge, not even to increase America's international development assistance over its current level of less than two-tenths of 1 percent, the lowest per capita contribution of all major Western or otherwise wealthy countries.

The Bush doctrine assumes that we won't notice the preposterous grandiosity of its "vision," its disconnection from reality, its hypocrisy and, above all, the dangers it poses to our national interests and security.

To return to the succinct wisdom of John Quincy Adams, America should "go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." Or, in the words of conservative Patrick Buchanan - not often cited in the same context as a Founding Father (but when the man is right, he's right) - Bush in effect has asserted "a right to intervene in the internal affairs of every nation on earth, and that is quite simply a recipe for endless war. And war is the death of republics."


Jerome Slater is a university research scholar at the University at Buffalo.

The Buffalo News (http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20050213/1049019.asp)

That about says it all, doesn't it?