More strength to Bush's foreign
policy By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Earnest hopes that US President
George W Bush will be prepared to "reach out" seriously
to US friends and allies overseas to make his foreign
policy less aggressive and unilateral in his second term
are likely to be earnestly disappointed.
What
adjustments are made in a second term will probably take
Washington in a more isolationist direction, or at least
one that further estranges the United States from its
European allies, consistent with the administration's
unilateralist tendencies.
While much depends on
the anticipated reshuffling of senior posts that
traditionally takes place in a second term, the
consensus among experts here is that hardliners led by
Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been the strongest
single foreign-policy influence on the president, are
likely to be strengthened.
While many of those
hardliners are neo-conservatives whose rhetorical
support for Washington's "mission" to spread democracy
around the world is fervent, to say the least, they are
far more devoted to those aspects of the "Bush doctrine"
that exalt US exceptionalism, military dominance and
preemption, so long as they are used for the benefit of
Israel, as well.
The almost-certain departure of
Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose own powers of
persuasion and public stature will be impossible for any
successor to duplicate, will remove from the highest
councils of government the only real counter-force to
Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, whose fate is
uncertain. Powell is also the last remaining link to the
multilateralism practiced by both Bush's father and
former president Bill Clinton.
Cheney's
declaration on Wednesday that Bush now has a "mandate" -
despite scraping by with a bare 51% majority - signals
the inner circle's conviction that the election itself
confirms the essential righteousness of their global
agenda, beginning with its decision to invade Iraq as
part of the "war on terrorism".
"What is not
well appreciated is that this is a team that has a very
close relationship with a world view set in plaster,"
said Kurt Campbell, a former senior Pentagon official
who now serves as vice president of the Center for
Security and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.
"The election is seen by them not only as a mandate but
[as confirmation] that 'we are right and we are on the
right track'."
This interpretation of the
election results as a mandate is compounded by the
strengthening of the more extreme elements within the
Republican Party coming out of this election. The four
seats the party gained in the Senate - where it will
soon hold a solid 55-45 majority - were all claimed by
southerners identified with the Christian Right, many of
whose leaders see the "war on terror" as an apocalyptic
clash between Christendom and the Islamic world, and
view Europeans and Democrats as "appeasers" of evil.
"For [those] who might expect more 'moderation'
and 'bipartisanship' for the second term," wrote Chris
Nelson, whose daily newsletter is read closely by Asia
specialists and policymakers in Washington, "our experts
here just hoot, and say that the internal dynamics of
the 'new' Republican Party is open for all to see ... it
is socially conservative, religious, pro-gun,
anti-abortion and -gay rights, anti-government spending,
except on defense, and very, very aggressive in dealing
with 'opposition'. There's a war on, and don't you ever
forget it."
This does not mean that Bush and his
top aides, as they did during the protracted election
campaign, will continue to ignore or deny the serious
problems they face in the "war on terrorism", according
to experts, who note this week's announcement that the
Netherlands and Hungary will withdraw their troops from
Iraq in just five months underlines Washington's growing
isolation there.
Indeed, that the Pentagon's
neo-conservatives have largely lost control over Iraq
policy to the National Security Council (NSC) and the
State Department over the past year demonstrated that
Bush is able to shift policy in significant ways -
giving up, for example, on "transforming" Iraq into a
democratic model for the Middle East - even though he
refuses to admit it publicly.
Moreover, in Iraq
- which Campbell and others predict will continue to
monopolize the administration's attention for at least
the next six months - the administration faces serious
budgetary and military constraints - including real
shortages of personnel and equipment - that are of
growing concern even to Republican right-wingers.
Those factors will likely strengthen the party's
isolationist elements, who have loved Bush's
unilateralism but distrusted his larger, nation- and
democracy-building ambitions.
"Are we going to
continue on the offense, where we make more enemies than
we can defeat?" asked Paul Weyrich, a founder of the
Heritage Foundation and a major figure on the extreme
right for several decades, in a New York Times interview
on Thursday. "Or are we going to return to the
traditional foreign policy that we do not attack unless
attacked?"
According to Walter Russell Mead, a
foreign-policy specialist at the Council on Foreign
Relations, "It's true that there are a lot of people in
the Republican Party who are very uncomfortable with the
neo-conservative, neo-Wilsonian [approach] of the Bush
administration.
"They are traditionally
skeptical of democracy in foreign countries and
international entanglements. So you may start seeing
more Republican resistance to the most visionary and
sweeping elements of Bush's foreign-policy approach."
Some experts believe Iraq's continuing impact on
the record US budget deficit built up under Bush will
adversely affect Washington's ability and willingness to
address other foreign-policy and global problems in ways
that could further isolationist tendencies.
"There are going to be very significant
resources needed for global challenges, such as
HIV/AIDS, apart from the war on terrorism," noted
Teresita Schaffer, a former top South Asia policymaker
now with CSIS. "I've got to believe that's going to be
much more difficult to obtain in the future."
Much of the speculation now centers on who will
occupy key positions, including the two top posts in the
State Department, the Pentagon and the NSC especially,
if, as expected, Condoleezza Rice gives up the national
security adviser post and either returns to academe or
takes over at State or Defense.
Of particular
interest is the fate of John Bolton, now under secretary
of state for arms control and international security, an
ultra-unilateralist who, as a Cheney loyalist, has
played a key role in undermining Powell's efforts to
pursue a more moderate, multilateralist course on two
critical issues that, after Iraq, are already on the
front-burner: Iran and North Korea. Bolton's promotion
to deputy secretary of state, deputy national security
adviser or even national security adviser would signal a
clear rejection of the notion of the administration
"reaching out" to traditional US allies.
The
future of neo-conservative Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz is also a major subject of speculation, in
part because he has been made the major scapegoat in
Congress for Washington's setbacks in Iraq and may not
be able to be confirmed by the Senate for a senior
cabinet post. Although more multilaterally inclined than
Bolton, his selection as Bush's national security
adviser (which does not require Senate confirmation)
would also signal Cheney's continued influence, as
Wolfowitz and the vice president - as well as Cheney's
own national security adviser, I Lewis Libby - are
particularly close.
