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Bush's dangerous singleminded
dualism
By
Ehsan Ahrari
Watching President George W Bush at
the United Nations on September 20, I was reminded of
the foreign policy behavior of two major personalities
of the United States: John Foster Dulles and Lyndon B
Johnson. Dulles, who served as secretary of state during
the Eisenhower administration, viewed the Cold War as
essentially a struggle between "good" and "evil".
In his worldview, the USSR epitomized the devil,
while the United States symbolized everything virtuous
and good. By so portraying the international struggle of
the Cold War, he was scornful of the fence sitters (ie,
the non-aligned nations) as essentially immoral for not
joining the "good guys" in that epochal struggle. Even
though president Johnson inherited the Vietnam War from
John F Kennedy, the former's obsession of winning it,
never mind the cost, became an albatross around his
neck. He could not defeat the North Vietnamese because
of domestic political reasons. The worsening Vietnamese
imbroglio then drove him to the painful decision of not
seeking re-election.
Regarding Iraq, Bush is
manifesting the Dulles-Johnson complex in the following
way. First, he continues to view his "war on terrorism"
as a struggle between the good and the evil. The
terrorists were described in the days and weeks
following the September 11, 2001, attacks as the
"evil-doers". Invoking the Manichean (extreme dualism)
view of Dulles, Bush declared on September 21, 2001,
"Every nation and every region now has a decision to
make. Either you are with us, or you are with the
terrorists." Then, on January 29, 2002, he made his much
publicized speech when he lumped Iraq, North Korea and
Iran in the phrase "axis of evil".
Addressing
the international community on September 23 this year,
Bush posited the "clearest of the divides" along the
following axiomatic lines, "... between those who seek
order and those who spread chaos; between those who work
for peaceful change and those who adopt the methods of
gangsters; between those who honor the rights of man and
those who deliberately take the lives of men and women
and children without mercy or shame." Then he concluded,
"Between these alternatives there is no neutral ground."
Second, since Bush's arguments are so heavily
value-laden, he manifested no remorse or second thought
about invading Iraq by blatantly ignoring the will of
the international community. His September 2002 speech
at the UN will be remembered for its admonishment of the
world body that if it were not to support the then
impending US invasion of Iraq, it risked becoming
irrelevant. Ironically, the American president has
returned to the same world body this September seeking
for help.
However, even in that call for help he
did not express any willingness to accommodate those
countries who are insisting that the US share the ruling
authority with the UN and establish some sort of a
timetable for departure from Iraq. Bush's new line is
"because a coalition of nations acted to defend the
peace - and the United Nations - Iraq is free today ..."
One is left to wonder how the world body was defended by
foregoing its endorsement prior to the invasion of one
of its sovereign members, or how that action enhanced
its credibility.
Third, the Johnson aspect of
Bush's Dulles-Johnson complex is his tangible growing
emotional commitment not only to the notion of
"liberation" of Iraq, but in his resolve to link that
liberation to the larger proposition of a "transformed
Middle East". As the American occupation of Iraq is
becoming increasingly bloody, one wonders what Bush is
talking about when he stated, "Success of Iraq will be
watched and noted throughout the region. Millions will
see that freedom, equality and material progress are
possible at the heart of the Middle East." The
suggestion that his administration is "successful" in
transforming Iraq is dangerous in the sense that it is
not at all connected to the realities on the ground.
However, the worse aspect of such a frame of reference
is that it would keep the US from finding common ground
between its perspectives of what should be done in Iraq
and those of France, Germany and other allied and
friendly nations.
Contrary to the Dulles-Johnson
complex of Bush, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's
speech was not only closer to the ugly realities of the
international arena, but also to their implications for
the global order. In a speech that underscored the
growing chasm between the US and the international
community, Annan was quite critical of Bush's preemption
doctrine. That "logic" of preemption, in his words,
"represents a fundamental challenge to the principles on
which, however imperfectly, world peace and stability
have rested for the last 58 years".
He went on
to add, "My concern is that if it were to be adopted, it
would set precedents that resulted in a proliferation of
the unilateral and lawless use of force with or without
justification. But it is not enough to denounce
unilateralism unless we also face up squarely to the
concerns that make some states feel uniquely vulnerable,
since it is those concerns that drive them to take
unilateral action. We must show that those concerns can
and will be addressed effectively through collective
action."
It is not clear at this point how far
the US is willing to go in abandoning the Manichean
rhetoric of Bush's speech and incorporating the demands
of the international community for giving the UN and
multilateralism a chance before the security situation
in Iraq becomes hopeless. Bush has much to think about
the legacies of Dulles and Johnson. The US won the Cold
War by replacing the simplistic Manichean worldview of
Dulles with policies that were based on hardcore and
highly nuanced realism. The US lost in Vietnam largely
because Johnson failed to realize at what point he
should have cut his losses and extricated his country
from it. The US may not have reached that point in Iraq
yet. That is precisely why it should give its options in
that country a steely-eyed scrutiny.
Ehsan
Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based
independent strategic analyst.
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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