Ian BoyneGEORGE BUSH'S Iraq strategy is in shambles and his credibility in tatters over his Iraq debacle, and while he was more conciliatory in his State of the Union address, it is clear he is now eating crow.
He has now seen that democracy is no cure-all for terrorism, as witnessed by the victory of Hamas in Palestinian elections. Serious policy analysts and international relations experts were warning all along that democracy promotion could well strengthen the Islamists and those who use terrorism as a strategy.
As the director of the Middle East studies programme at the University of Vermont, Professor F. Gregory Cause says in an essay in the September/ October 2005 issue of Foreign Affairs, "Based on public opinion surveys and recent elections in the Arab world, the advent of democracy there seems likely to produce new Islamist governments that would be much less willing to cooperate with the United States than are the current authoritarian rulers."
Which is not an argument to keep supporting authoritarianism and to eschew democracy; just another indication of the naiveté of President Bush in foreign policy matters; another manifestation of the faith-based foreign policy he has been pursuing.
DEMOCRACY REQUIRES RULE OF LAW
Bush was forced to admit in his State of the Union address last week that "Raising up a democracy requires the rule of law and protection of minorities and strong, accountable institutions that last longer than a single vote." Good to have his belated acknowledgement of that. It would be good if he would press his allies in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia about those matters, too.
Bush was disingenuous in his union address, raising the canard of isolationism in an obvious answer to the mounting pressure on him to withdraw from Iraq. The critics pressing him to pull out the troops from Iraq and leave the Iraqi people to solve their own problems and manage their sovereignty are not pushing an isolationist foreign policy; they are simply telling him to cut his losses, save American lives and end the debacle in Iraq.
To talk about 'retreating within our own borders' and rejecting 'the false comforts of isolationism' is a red herring to dupe the simple-minded. Riding the strong tide of the American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny myth in American history, Bush intoned: "We are the nation that saved liberty in Europe and liberated death camps and helped raise up democracies and faced down an evil empire. Once again we accept the call of history to deliver the oppressed and move this world toward peace."
Yet, President Bush is not as eager to attack North Korea and Iran to liberate those oppressed masses as he was eager to liberate the Iraqis whose weakened Government and military could hardly withstand the military of another
Third World country, let alone the most powerful military nation of all history. Iraq was a mountain the Bush administration could climb; it was a 'winnable war' in terms of occupation, though not governable.
The Bush policy of pre-emption, which has been quietly toned down in the latest National Security Strategy document, is not only misguided; it is unenforceable and impracticable. The U.S. has neither the military capabilities, organisational ability nor administrative capacity to undertake pre-emptive strikes and occupy all the areas which represent threats to its vital interests. What the Bush Doctrine has encouraged is the very opposite of what it intended: It has encouraged countries to strengthen their military capacities and to gain nuclear power so that the U.S. might think twice about an attack.
KNEE-JERK FOREIGN POLICY
The best foreign policy experts and scholars have consistently pointed out the folly of the Bush administration's knee-jerk, unthinking foreign policy and have argued so brilliantly in
journals such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy as well as in think tank papers and books.
By deposing Saddam, admittedly a brutal, corrupt and cruel dictator, the Bush administration opened up the country to greater influence from Iran and the Shi'ite leadership there. While The Baatists were secularists who opposed the aims of Radical Islam and Sharia, the Bush administration has facilitated the rise of people whose aims are to promote an extremist version of Islam. Will the U.S. stay there forever to guarantee that the Islamists have no firm footing there?
Al Qaida has greater opportunities in Iraq today than they did under Saddam, whom they abhorred for his secularism. Saddam, make no mistake about it, needed to go and his departure has been good for the oppressed Iraqi people. But the view that dictators can be removed by any means and outside the framework of international law and multilateralism is outside the norms of the civilised world order. That would return us to the Law of the Jungle.
AXIS OF EVIL
The people of Saudi Arabia especially their women are also oppressed. There is no religious and political freedom and women do not even have the freedom to drive. Why is the U.S. not equally concerned about the 'march of freedom' there, if indeed its mission is to "accept the call of history to deliver the oppressed", Moses-style? What about the Pakistani people who are now under military rule? Does the fact that these nations provide a buffer to the Axis of Evil justify their continued
goodwill toward them?
Bush said in his State of the Union address that "by allowing radical Islam to work its will by leaving an assaulted world to fend for itself we would signal to all that we no longer believe in our ideals or even in our courage."
But what if, democratically, the sovereign peoples of the Middle East vote for Islamist governments which insist on
giving support to the Palestinian struggle against Israel because of its religious commitment to those lands being in Arab hands? Will the U.S. take on the entire Arab world?
HAMAS IDEOLOGY
The democratically-elected Hamas, for example, founded in 1987, sets out in its 1988 covenant which remains operative to this day the view that the land of Palestine 'from the river to the sea' is an Islamic waqf, or an 'endowment', and no Muslim has the right to cede any part of it. The covenant says that peace between Muslims, Christians and Jews should only be under the 'wing of Islam'. If this ideology should take root all over the Middle East, what would be the reaction of Christian America and its Evangelical President George
W. Bush, or his conservative successors?
As one scholar pointed out recently, terrorism is not an ideology; terrorism is a tactic. It's therefore a war on extremism.
And the U.S. can best fight extremism by not succumbing to its own form of extremism and international outlawry. The U.S. must fight extremism and expose it through its own espousal of superior values. In short, it has to utilise 'oft power', as it has been advised by leading Harvard international relations scholar Joseph Nye.
It is my own view, as I said at the re-election of George Bush, the second Bush administration will be more restrained, moderate and balanced in foreign policy. It is, indeed, proving to be so. The State of the Union speech mentioned working together with Democrats and even learning from critics. Bush made the important statement that "our offensive against terror involves more than military action," which is precisely what people like Joe Nye, Stephen Walt and others have been telling him for some time.
DEFEATING TERRORISTS
"Ultimately, the only way to defeat terrorists is to defeat their dark vision of hatred and fear by offering the hopeful alternative of political freedom and peaceful change," said the President. I agree with him for rejecting the view that somehow the Middle East is not suited for democracy or that we should take a relativistic view of human rights and democratic reforms.
There are universal human rights and a morality which must apply to all. There is no Middle East exceptionalism, no more than there are 'Asian values' which are somehow immune to concepts of universal human rights. (The term 'Asian values' was used by some to justify the curtailment of 'Western' democratic rights in Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore in the midst of their Asian miracle). President Bush is right: "Liberty is the right and hope of all humanity."
Significantly, in confronting Iran and its defiance, President Bush invoked not the language of unilateralism but multilateralism and liberal internationalism: "The Iranian Government," he said, was "defying the world" with its nuclear ambitions and "the nations of the world" must not permit it. America would continue to "rally the world" to confront the Iranian menace. That's a George Bush who has learned from recent history. Critics should not ignore these clues to a more restrained George Bush because of partisan bias or visceral anti-Americanism.
NO WORD ON ECONOMY
President Bush, though, was less than forthcoming on the economy, refusing to face the galloping current account deficits and worrying concerns over dependence on Chinese and Japanese savings, which has spurred a major debate on global imbalances. America also has a very serious energy challenge, as was argued forcefully in the new 604-page book, "Energy and Security: Toward a New Foreign Policy Strategy", edited by Jan Kalicki and David Goldwin. The book points out, for example, that while the U.S. imported a third of its oil before 1973, today it imports more than half of its oil. And most of its energy supplies for at least the next decade will come from unstable Middle Eastern nations.
President Bush clearly wants to bridge the partisan divide in America, which is commendable. He is not the belligerent extremist some people make him out to be, and the liberal media's caricature of him as a fanatical fundamentalist zealot is pure propaganda. But he does need to read more and to inform himself better. The war on illiberal ideas demands no less.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can reach him at ianboyne1@yahoo.com
