Page 2 of 2 BOOK
REVIEW More pro-Bush than Bush In
Defense of the Bush Doctrine by
Robert G
Kaufman
Reviewed by Colin Dueck
enthusiastic advocates. With regard
to current policy recommendations, Kaufman tells
us that a US retreat from Iraq would be taken as a
great victory by jihadi terrorists. This is
obviously true, as far as it goes; it is also true
only because the Bush administration put Americans
in this impossible position. Surely the lesson is
not more Iraqs, but rather much greater
prudence next time in where
and how the US intervenes militarily.
Kaufman is unclear on what course the
United States should follow in relation to North
Korea and Iran: containment or preventive strikes
- again, strange for a book on this precise
subject. Instead, he quotes Sun Tzu and leaves it
at that. Yet it is worth noting that out of sheer
necessity, the Bush administration has moved
pretty far in the direction of negotiations with
both of these remaining rogue states - exactly
what realists such as Brent Scowcroft have been
calling for from the start.
This brings us
to Kaufman's list of the many features and
failings of realism, laid out above: it is at best
a gross oversimplification and, in many respects,
downright inaccurate. With the dishonorable
exception of British historian E H Carr, most
realists view the appeasement of Hitler as a
catastrophic mistake; it was one of the errors
that motivated the formation of this school of
thought in the first place. Realists such as
containment advocate George F Kennan certainly did
not ignore the internal or ideological nature of
the Soviet regime.
Most realists have no
principled objection to the early use of force
under certain circumstances. Most realists support
the forward strategic presence of the United
States in Europe and East Asia precisely because
they do not view the world balance of power as
operating automatically. Some realists believe
unipolarity to be elusive; others do not. Some
realists opposed the first Gulf War; others
supported it. Realists such as Columbia
University's Kenneth Waltz emphatically do not
deny the importance of ideology and regime type in
foreign affairs; they only argue that
international pressures ultimately force states to
act in ways they might not want.
And to
say that foreign-policy realism represents a
retreat into an abyss of moral relativism is just
silly. Realists recognize the place of moral
considerations in foreign policy and always have.
They simply point out that such considerations are
often in tension with other interests; that moral
reasons can sometimes be a misleading and
sanctimonious rationalization for what is in fact
a self-interested approach; and that moral
considerations are in any case better thought of
in terms of actual results on the ground rather
than in terms of good intentions or ringing
declarations of principle. All of these
mischaracterizations matter, because if Kaufman
has gotten realism wrong, then he has gotten the
current policy implications wrong.
Finally, Kaufman advances the argument,
common among neo-conservative authors, that there
is a kind of hereditary lineage behind the Bush
Doctrine, going back to former presidents Ronald
Reagan and Harry Truman and, for good measure, the
late British prime minister Winston Churchill. I
admire Reagan, Truman and Churchill as much as
anyone, but I am getting a little tired of hearing
the current president compared to them.
What all of these historic leaders
possessed was the ability to pursue long-term
goals both strategically vital and morally
imperative, with immense short-term flexibility,
realism and pragmatism in relation to the facts
that stared them in the face. Bush no doubt showed
a kind of vision and courage in invading Iraq, but
can we honestly say that he showed sufficient
realism, flexibility or pragmatism in either the
conceptualization or implementation of that
decision?
Both Truman and Reagan, for
example, rejected preventive war against the
Soviet Union in favor of containment. The Bush
Doctrine, on the other hand, explicitly rejects
the containment of rogue states such as Iran, and
instead embraces a stated policy of rogue-state
rollback, preventive warfare or regime change.
This is clearly a break from the quite successful
strategy of containment pursued by successive US
presidents in relation to the Soviet Union.
Kaufman points out, quite rightly, that
circumstances have changed since the Cold War.
Fair enough, but then do not claim to be working
in the tradition of Truman and Reagan. Reagan, for
example, was, in practice, very careful and
cautious in relation to any major uses of force on
the part of the United States. There was simply no
equivalent of the invasion of Iraq during his
tenure. Bush's most ardent supporters therefore
need to be careful in how they invoke Reagan's
name to justify the current war in Iraq; it is not
at all clear that Reagan would have acted in the
same way as Bush on this score.
Churchill
is even more of a problem for Kaufman's reading of
history, since the grand old man was not only the
hero of the Blitz, but after all called for
comprehensive negotiations with the Soviet Union
during the 1950s - an uncomfortable fact for
Kaufman's overall thesis. But then Churchill was
always willing to think with both sides of his
brain; he was not slavishly committed to any
particular foreign-policy doctrine, if it came at
the expense of peace, security or core democratic
values.
As of September 11, 2001, the
self-evident enemy of the United States was
al-Qaeda and its supporters. Bush showed that he
understood the scale of al-Qaeda's murderous
ambitions; he said he was willing to do almost
anything to stop them. That is why he gathered the
support of so many Americans in the weeks and
months immediately following the attack. Then he
apparently became convinced that the best way to
undermine support for groups like al-Qaeda within
the Middle East - while simultaneously
demonstrating US strength and taking care of
unfinished business - was directly to overthrow
Saddam Hussein's dictatorship and put a stable
democracy in its place.
The arguments
offered in favor of such an invasion were no doubt
sincere, but not particularly compelling, even at
the time. Americans were told, among other things,
that Iraq had a culture unusually receptive to the
promotion of secular democracy; that it would be
better to fight the terrorists in Iraq than at
home in the US; that the reconstruction efforts
would be inexpensive; and that US troops would be
able to leave behind a stable, democratic Iraq
within a few months.
Not one of these
arguments has been vindicated by events. Instead,
Iraq has turned into a foreign-policy and military
fiasco for the United States, and continues to
degenerate into a multi-directional sectarian
struggle of intense brutality. The Bush
administration claims that "postwar" events in
Iraq could not have been foreseen, but this is
simply unacceptable: they were foreseen, and
warned of at the time, by numerous diplomatic,
military, area-studies and intelligence experts.
Yet the administration chose to operate on
only the most optimistic assumptions about Iraq,
assumptions that had little basis in reality. Now,
how is this record comparable to the
foreign-policy accomplishments of Winston
Churchill, Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan? And how
was it, of all things, prudent?
American
conservatives are going to have to regroup in the
coming months and years around a foreign-policy
approach more reflective of traditional
conservative insights into foreign affairs. In
particular, they will need to re-learn that the
traditional conservative skepticism regarding
government-sponsored social engineering applies to
foreign, just as much as domestic, policies. The
notion of forcible democracy promotion in
historically inhospitable regions such as Iraq
cannot be the centerpiece of any genuinely
conservative foreign policy.
This is not
to say that conservatives will not support the use
of force under certain circumstances; far from it.
Conservatives understand as well as anyone the
perennially violent and dangerous nature of world
politics, along with the need for military
preparedness. It is precisely for this reason, as
Kaufman says, that prudence is of such importance
in foreign policy. But an emphasis on prudence
ought to lead us to policies much more careful and
considered than the current Iraq war.
This
is not because the French don't like it, or the UN
doesn't like it, or Barbara Streisand doesn't like
a particular policy. It is simply a question of
whether the costs to the United States, in terms
of overall national-security interests, outweigh
the benefits of a given policy decision.
Any US president should and will reserve
the right to use force in a preventive, unilateral
fashion under certain circumstances. Clearly the
United States must be relentless and aggressive in
hunting down and destroying terrorists who would
attack it. Yet the Bush Doctrine as implemented in
Iraq has not actually contributed to that end. On
the contrary, thus far the Iraq war has had a
negative impact overall on US national security,
particularly in relation to such groups as
al-Qaeda.
Iraq has given new life to
recruiting efforts on the part of jihadi
terrorists; provided these groups with an
extensive base of operations that did not
previously exist; overstretched the US military;
and given unintended hope and inspiration to
America's very worst enemies. This does not mean
that the United States should now abandon the
Iraqis to their fate, however popular that notion
might become in the impending months. But it is
hardly an argument in defense of the Bush Doctrine
- a doctrine that has less and less practical
impact on US foreign policy these days, outside of
continuing and desperate attempts to stave off
disaster in Iraq.
In Defense of the
Bush Doctrine by Robert G Kaufman, Lexington,
Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2007.
ISBN-10: 0813124344. US$35, 240 pages.
Colin Dueck is an assistant
professor in the department of public and
international affairs, George Mason University,
Virginia.
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