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SPEAKING
FREELY
Bush's
bid for a Wilsonesque legacy
By
Sung-Yoon Lee
Speaking Freely is an
Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click here if you
are interested in contributing.
Mulling over the substance of US President
George W Bush's stylish State of the Union
Address, an odd thought came over me: Could it be?
Is Bush the Woodrow Wilson of our time?
The next day at a colloquium at Harvard I
decided to put the idea to the test. Rather than
pose the question to our unsuspecting speaker
straight as it had come to me, I prefaced it with
the proviso, "This is actually a serious
question." The young Harvard historian, just
wrapping up a talk on the Korean nationalist
movement in 1919 inspired by Wilson's doctrine of
"right to self-determination", took it in stride.
He aptly pointed out that both presidents had
limited audiences in mind despite the rhetorical
universality of their grand proclamations.
Call it "Wilsonian idealism" or "Bush's
Messianic Complex"; one thing was clear: Neither
men could have quite literally meant what he had
preached ... could he?
In 1919, in spite
of Wilson's grandiloquent pledge to "make the
world safe for democracy", the subjugated peoples
beyond Europe soon found out under Wilson's
stewardship that theirs was a world still beset by
colonialism and far from safe for democracy. And
as inspiring an icon as Wilson became for the
downtrodden people from such diverse places as
East Asia and India to the Middle East and Africa,
the world was still not ripe for dismantling the
web of colonialism. Instead in these places
disillusionment and disappointment set in.
However, Wilson's ideas had unintentionally
engendered powerful forces of nationalism in
various corners of the world, and however
unsuccessful the various national efforts at
independence may have proved in the short term,
the symbolism and the legacy of such movements,
especially in the context of national
historiography, including that of the US, still
resonate.
In the case of President Bush,
as he enters his second and final term, perhaps he
too will find his place in history following in
the footsteps of some of his renowned predecessors
who had made to the world grand, proactive, and
unequivocally unenforceable pronouncements.
If Woodrow Wilson had set the tone for his
would-be-proselytizers-of-democracy successors,
then Harry Truman in the mid-20th century took it
in a much more ambitious and bellicose direction
with his doctrine of containment, that "it must be
the policy of the United States to support free
peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by
armed minorities or by outside pressure", and that
the US "must assist free peoples to work out their
own destinies in their own way". This would later
morph into a much more martial message, in what
would be labeled the "Truman Doctrine": that the
US would provide military and economic assistance
whenever and wherever an anti-communist government
was threatened.
On to the fire that Truman
had lit John F Kennedy poured fuel with another
impracticably noble and forceful contention. In
Kennedy's inaugural address of 1961 the world was
treated to an alliterative affirmation of US
ambitions: "Let every nation know, whether it
wishes us well or ill, we shall pay any price,
bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any
friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and
success of liberty."
As historians go on
arguing about the extent to which such strong
words and their selective implementation in terms
of actual military, political and economic policy
bore on winning the Cold War, the rest of the
world will remember those who spoke them more for
the spirit of hope and justice contained in their
words. In comparing the open-ended idealism
advanced in these past statements to that
expressed in the two high-profile speeches over
the past two weeks, Bush's rhetoric stands up
surprisingly well.
Say what you will about
the inconsistency of Bush's foreign policy during
his first term, or the astonishing advances
recently apparent in his oratorical skill; with
his State of the Union Address it became clear
that he really meant what he had read in his
Inaugural Address 10 days before: that US policy
henceforth shall be "the ultimate goal of ending
tyranny in our world". On both occasions, with the
world as his audience, Bush confidently declaimed,
"When you stand for liberty, America will stand
with you."
If the president's message in
his inaugural speech had come across as little
more than a pleasing paean to "freedom", then the
word was truly given flesh in his address to the
joint session of Congress. Specific countries were
called out by name, as Bush exhorted their
governments and people to embark on reforms:
Afghanistan, Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi
Arabia, Egypt and, of course, Iraq. To the Syrian
government a veiled threat was thrown in addition:
End all support for terror. To North Korea Bush
showed restraint and lured the hostile nuclear
state back to the negotiating table. In the case
of US support for political, economic, and
security reforms in Palestine, Bush even mentioned
a specific sum - US$350 million. But the most
emphatic pledge of US commitment to promoting
freedom abroad came when Bush, relishing the
spotlight of the world, looked straight into the
camera and proclaimed, "And to the Iranian people,
I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty,
America stands with you."
Whether
President Bush follows through on his pledges
remains to be seen. We know that far more than
idealism or rhetoric or even grand design, it is
real events and the exigencies of disasters - such
as wars, terrorism and tsunamis - that shape
foreign policy. But the tenor and spirit of US
foreign policy over the next four years have now
been set, with hitherto unseen eloquence and
sophistication. Even conscious of the
American-centric connotation in the word
"democracy", Bush has reiterated that the United
States "has no right, no desire, and no intention
to impose [its] form of government on anyone
else". Instead he has chosen as his mantra
"freedom" - a word, a value, an ideal that not
even the most ardent detractors of Bush or the US
can decry, and that which only the world's most
hardened tyrants can reject.
In the vein
of Wilsonian idealism, a generation or two from
now, whether or not Bush has delivered on his
pledge will perhaps matter less than the hope he
has given the oppressed people of the world.
Alexis de Tocqueville's prediction in the mid-19th
century that democracy is "universal and
irresistible", though yet to be proved, seems
today less and less likely to be disproved. Many
years from now, in many parts of the world, the
descendents of formerly oppressed people just
might remember the US under George W Bush less for
the controversial conservative domestic policies
or even the invasion of Iraq, and far more for the
spirit embodied in a simple rhetorical message:
"All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can
know: the United States will not ignore your
oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you
stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."
US presidents should beware; their lofty
invocations sometimes find unintended audiences.
Sung-Yoon Lee is a professor of
international politics and Korean history at the
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts
University, Boston.
(Copyright 2005
Sung-Yoon Lee.)
Speaking Freely is
an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click here if you
are interested in contributing. |
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