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This is a thread devoted to non-partisan appraisal of Bush's competence in world affairs. Over the last few weeks I have become convinced that Bush is incompetent when it comes to IR. I used to think he was tolerably bad, but I am now convinced that he's a complete cowboy (in the British sense as well).
Let me be very clear, I am not a person who sympathises with Republicans or conservatives of any brand. I think they are in most cases slightly mad and in many clearly deranged. On the question of economic policy, which is where most thinking people give conservatives credit, I am also of the opinion that they are generally hopeless ideologues with a poor understanding of efficiency and the role of government in the economy. All that being said it is apparent that I do not hold Bush and company in high regard.
However, that is not ostensibly the purpose of this thread. What I want to propose is that when it comes to foreign policy and diplomacy the Bush administration is simply incompetent. I?m no admirer of Bush senior or the Reagan administration but I would never make this claim about them - they were clearly superior players. However, I think there is a good case for a non-partisan judgement of incompetence when it comes to the current bunch (bad pun
).
International relations is a delicate and difficult business. Almost every state, and elements within states, have their own agenda. Given that it is impossible to prevail on everyone by means of force to get one?s way, considerable skill is required. As a general rule, which holds in most political situations, you should be happy with getting about half of what you really want and overjoyed if you manage to get most of it with a significant amount of compromise. This holds for even the most powerful international actors: other people exist and have different aims than you, so you will never get all you want at a price you are prepared to pay. This is sufficient reply to those dreamers on this forum who believe that the US can simply do anything it likes whenever it wants to. If you believe this, then you shouldn?t be talking about international relations and should devote yourself to some socially useful activity, like gardening.
As I write, Bush has placed himself in the position of having to wage war, with or without UN approval. He can?t afford to back down because it would be a major victory to Saddam Hussein and a major loss of face for the United States, which would promptly dump him at the next election. I think Blair has placed himself in an even more precarious position for various reasons, but I will not go into that here.
So what?s wrong with the Bush administration? Well it is not unilateralism per se, after all the Clinton administration was remarkably unilateralist (quote Madeleine Albright, ?We will act multilaterally if we are able to, unilaterally if we must?). What it is, is the way in which the Bush administration has gone about it. Let?s look at a few of the dumb things he and his mates have done.
Case one: North Korea. The United States has an interest in overthrowing the North Korean regime (so indeed do many others, including the North Korean people) and replacing it with one more friendly to itself. Unfortunately, North Korea has a huge well-equipped army and is not a sufficient threat to the US mainland to make an all out war politically feasible. Moreover, it?s right next to China which makes a military solution much more tricky, and many South Koreans would take a dim view of the war on their fellows.
When Bush came to power North Korea was on its way to being effectively contained and the previous eight years considerable positive progress had been made. People on either side were being allowed to see their relatives for the first time in 50 years and there was a definite thaw in relations between North and South and de-escalation in North Korea?s military ambitions. This thaw was almost all in the direction of the South Koreans and thus in favour of the US position. The reason for this is that the North Korean state was failing, people were starving and the heavy military expenditures forced on it by the regime were unsustainable (we?ve heard this story before: the Soviet Union). The very first steps in what would have been the long (very long) process of an eventual reunification and the end of communist rule in North Korea had been taken. I admired the Clinton administration for their efforts in this area. There is more, but that?s the main outline.
Then that idiot Bush, for no sound reason (at least according to international affairs critics) announces in his (post 911) state of the Union speech that North Korea is part of an ?Axis of Evil? and needs to be dealt with severely. What this had to do with 911 is opaque to everyone since NK has no ties with OBL. Now the North Koreans are a pretty bad lot and everyone knows this, but to come out and say it in public was an absolute howler. Add to this stuff the new ?pre-emptive strikes? policy and it is reasonable, from the North Korean point of view, to believe that the US intends to overthrow the regime by force. So North Korea withdraws from the non-proliferation treaty and begins the process of credibly arming itself with nuclear weapons. It also starts threatening its neighbours and acting very badly. There is a reason for this behaviour, what NK wants is for the US to sign a non-aggression treaty ? in short they want to go back to the situation as it was under Clinton.
In short, years of hard diplomatic work that had begun to yield tangible results gone in a few weeks. Even if Bush had wanted to deal with NK in a couple of years time, he should have kept his mouth shut and the North Koreans would have been less prepared for it.
Case two: Iran. Now the situation in Iran had improved immensely (comparatively speaking) in the last few years. The forces of reform were in the ascendant and the forces of religious conservatism were slowly losing their grip. Most Iranians were pro-US (this from an Iranian I know) and would have liked to work towards normalising relations with the US as a way of increasing the power of the reformers. The Iranians want to US to recognise that they are a sovereign state and treat them with some respect. If this happened it would undercut the anti-American radicals in that country. Again, this was a slow improvement, but an improvement nonetheless, and moreover an improvement that showed no signs of regressing.
Again, Bush names them ?evil? and basically undoes most of this.
Case three: Israel. Clinton worked tirelessly to try to find some sort of solution to the Palestinian problem. The US has considerable influence here and has an interest in finding some sort of tolerable arrangement for no other reason than a large portion of anti-American feeling in the Middle East (and hence a large factor in forging terrorists) is based on the poor treatment of the Palestinians. An American mediated solution to the Palestinian problem would win praise from most of the world and help to rehabilitate the image of the US among ordinary Muslims. In other words: it?s the world?s premiere political eyesore and it destabilises the (geopolitically important) region.
Bush?s solution: effectively do nothing and thus create as much resentment as possible in the Islamic world and more troops for AQ. Again ? years of painstaking diplomatic work undone in a very short time.
Case four: Iraq. Here Bush has managed to get himself committed to a war and has narrowed his options so much that he will have to go to war, whatever the consequences. In short this has been an international nightmare that threatens to ruin what fragile international institutions there are. In Europe, the United States has gone from being viewed by ordinary citizens as a bit of a pain in the neck to being seen as an international menace. The repercussions of this will make it more difficult for the US to act in Europe and places pressure on NATO (the US really needs NATO more than Europe needs it: the reasons for this are clear but would take too long to explain).
It didn?t have to be this way. I watched the aforementioned Ms. Albright in an interview the other day and she thinks (and I am inclined to agree) that a more conciliatory (or diplomatic ? in the other sense of the word) approach would have given the US much of what it wants, a substantial degree of wiggle room and less opposition. She amusingly described the way she used to ?massage? the Europeans (a horrifying image
) into getting her way.
In short, he?s gone at it like a bull at a gate, which is what you should never do in these situations. Furthermore, the US was internationally humiliated at the UN on Friday and across most of the word on Saturday.
There is more (the World Court, the Kyoto Accord, the ABM treaty, etc.) but the overwhelming impression to me is that the Bush administration is incompetent when it comes to foreign affairs ? it is paying a far too high diplomatic price for the gains it has made. The Clinton administration is a case in point (BTW - I absolutely loathe Clinton, but he was a smooth negotiator). Under Clinton the US pretty much did what it wanted and managed to slip it under the radar of most of us. Why can?t Bush do the same?
And before you retort ? no I don?t think that 911 is the explanation for all this (there are various reasons). I?m of the opinion that Bush has squandered much of the goodwill (and there was a lot) that the US gained from that.
Let me be very clear, I am not a person who sympathises with Republicans or conservatives of any brand. I think they are in most cases slightly mad and in many clearly deranged. On the question of economic policy, which is where most thinking people give conservatives credit, I am also of the opinion that they are generally hopeless ideologues with a poor understanding of efficiency and the role of government in the economy. All that being said it is apparent that I do not hold Bush and company in high regard.
However, that is not ostensibly the purpose of this thread. What I want to propose is that when it comes to foreign policy and diplomacy the Bush administration is simply incompetent. I?m no admirer of Bush senior or the Reagan administration but I would never make this claim about them - they were clearly superior players. However, I think there is a good case for a non-partisan judgement of incompetence when it comes to the current bunch (bad pun
). International relations is a delicate and difficult business. Almost every state, and elements within states, have their own agenda. Given that it is impossible to prevail on everyone by means of force to get one?s way, considerable skill is required. As a general rule, which holds in most political situations, you should be happy with getting about half of what you really want and overjoyed if you manage to get most of it with a significant amount of compromise. This holds for even the most powerful international actors: other people exist and have different aims than you, so you will never get all you want at a price you are prepared to pay. This is sufficient reply to those dreamers on this forum who believe that the US can simply do anything it likes whenever it wants to. If you believe this, then you shouldn?t be talking about international relations and should devote yourself to some socially useful activity, like gardening.
As I write, Bush has placed himself in the position of having to wage war, with or without UN approval. He can?t afford to back down because it would be a major victory to Saddam Hussein and a major loss of face for the United States, which would promptly dump him at the next election. I think Blair has placed himself in an even more precarious position for various reasons, but I will not go into that here.
So what?s wrong with the Bush administration? Well it is not unilateralism per se, after all the Clinton administration was remarkably unilateralist (quote Madeleine Albright, ?We will act multilaterally if we are able to, unilaterally if we must?). What it is, is the way in which the Bush administration has gone about it. Let?s look at a few of the dumb things he and his mates have done.
Case one: North Korea. The United States has an interest in overthrowing the North Korean regime (so indeed do many others, including the North Korean people) and replacing it with one more friendly to itself. Unfortunately, North Korea has a huge well-equipped army and is not a sufficient threat to the US mainland to make an all out war politically feasible. Moreover, it?s right next to China which makes a military solution much more tricky, and many South Koreans would take a dim view of the war on their fellows.
When Bush came to power North Korea was on its way to being effectively contained and the previous eight years considerable positive progress had been made. People on either side were being allowed to see their relatives for the first time in 50 years and there was a definite thaw in relations between North and South and de-escalation in North Korea?s military ambitions. This thaw was almost all in the direction of the South Koreans and thus in favour of the US position. The reason for this is that the North Korean state was failing, people were starving and the heavy military expenditures forced on it by the regime were unsustainable (we?ve heard this story before: the Soviet Union). The very first steps in what would have been the long (very long) process of an eventual reunification and the end of communist rule in North Korea had been taken. I admired the Clinton administration for their efforts in this area. There is more, but that?s the main outline.
Then that idiot Bush, for no sound reason (at least according to international affairs critics) announces in his (post 911) state of the Union speech that North Korea is part of an ?Axis of Evil? and needs to be dealt with severely. What this had to do with 911 is opaque to everyone since NK has no ties with OBL. Now the North Koreans are a pretty bad lot and everyone knows this, but to come out and say it in public was an absolute howler. Add to this stuff the new ?pre-emptive strikes? policy and it is reasonable, from the North Korean point of view, to believe that the US intends to overthrow the regime by force. So North Korea withdraws from the non-proliferation treaty and begins the process of credibly arming itself with nuclear weapons. It also starts threatening its neighbours and acting very badly. There is a reason for this behaviour, what NK wants is for the US to sign a non-aggression treaty ? in short they want to go back to the situation as it was under Clinton.
In short, years of hard diplomatic work that had begun to yield tangible results gone in a few weeks. Even if Bush had wanted to deal with NK in a couple of years time, he should have kept his mouth shut and the North Koreans would have been less prepared for it.
Case two: Iran. Now the situation in Iran had improved immensely (comparatively speaking) in the last few years. The forces of reform were in the ascendant and the forces of religious conservatism were slowly losing their grip. Most Iranians were pro-US (this from an Iranian I know) and would have liked to work towards normalising relations with the US as a way of increasing the power of the reformers. The Iranians want to US to recognise that they are a sovereign state and treat them with some respect. If this happened it would undercut the anti-American radicals in that country. Again, this was a slow improvement, but an improvement nonetheless, and moreover an improvement that showed no signs of regressing.
Again, Bush names them ?evil? and basically undoes most of this.
Case three: Israel. Clinton worked tirelessly to try to find some sort of solution to the Palestinian problem. The US has considerable influence here and has an interest in finding some sort of tolerable arrangement for no other reason than a large portion of anti-American feeling in the Middle East (and hence a large factor in forging terrorists) is based on the poor treatment of the Palestinians. An American mediated solution to the Palestinian problem would win praise from most of the world and help to rehabilitate the image of the US among ordinary Muslims. In other words: it?s the world?s premiere political eyesore and it destabilises the (geopolitically important) region.
Bush?s solution: effectively do nothing and thus create as much resentment as possible in the Islamic world and more troops for AQ. Again ? years of painstaking diplomatic work undone in a very short time.
Case four: Iraq. Here Bush has managed to get himself committed to a war and has narrowed his options so much that he will have to go to war, whatever the consequences. In short this has been an international nightmare that threatens to ruin what fragile international institutions there are. In Europe, the United States has gone from being viewed by ordinary citizens as a bit of a pain in the neck to being seen as an international menace. The repercussions of this will make it more difficult for the US to act in Europe and places pressure on NATO (the US really needs NATO more than Europe needs it: the reasons for this are clear but would take too long to explain).
It didn?t have to be this way. I watched the aforementioned Ms. Albright in an interview the other day and she thinks (and I am inclined to agree) that a more conciliatory (or diplomatic ? in the other sense of the word) approach would have given the US much of what it wants, a substantial degree of wiggle room and less opposition. She amusingly described the way she used to ?massage? the Europeans (a horrifying image
) into getting her way.In short, he?s gone at it like a bull at a gate, which is what you should never do in these situations. Furthermore, the US was internationally humiliated at the UN on Friday and across most of the word on Saturday.
There is more (the World Court, the Kyoto Accord, the ABM treaty, etc.) but the overwhelming impression to me is that the Bush administration is incompetent when it comes to foreign affairs ? it is paying a far too high diplomatic price for the gains it has made. The Clinton administration is a case in point (BTW - I absolutely loathe Clinton, but he was a smooth negotiator). Under Clinton the US pretty much did what it wanted and managed to slip it under the radar of most of us. Why can?t Bush do the same?
And before you retort ? no I don?t think that 911 is the explanation for all this (there are various reasons). I?m of the opinion that Bush has squandered much of the goodwill (and there was a lot) that the US gained from that.
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