The Morovian Telegraph

America Unbound is a book written by two former Clinton staffers who now work for The Brookings Institute.

It begins by rapidly tracing the major currents in American foreign policy from America's origins to the end of the Clinton presidency.

The gist is that America has always swung back and forth between isolationism and internationalism.

The internationalists - before the G. W. Bush revolution - were of two flavors, the unilateralists (who felt America must retain a free hand in looking after its own interests) and the multilateralists (who believed in exercising America's power within the framework of international law and multinational organizations).

The authors go on to examine the relationship between George W. Bush and the Vulcans, a group of foreign policy experts led by Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz.

This group sprang out of the internationalist side of the foreign policy divide, hawkish on the military and hegemonist in outlook (that is, they believed America to be the 500 pound gorilla in the world and that America must not be reluctant to use that strength forcefully and unilaterally (when necessary) to preserve American interests).

A minority within the Vulcans were the so-called neo-cons, whom the authors prefer to call democratic imperialists, led by Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, who believed that America needed to export - for both moral and security reasons - the gospel of liberty, capitalism and free markets to the world in an attempt to stamp other nations in America's image.

Having already received an impression from Misunderestimated by Bill Sammon and Bush at War by Bob Woodward that George W. Bush is a strong leader whose caricature as a puppet in the thrall of others is wrong, this book also stresses that Bush - not the Vulcans, not the neo-cons - makes the decisions and calls the shots.

Bush's own worldview, apparently, was already formed (as the authors document through his speeches going back to 1999) and, unlike his father, he had the 'the vision thing'.

And in surrounding his campaign (and later his administration) with Vulcans and neo-cons (rounded out with the ideologically out-of-step multilateralist Colin Powell and the "just plain conservative" conservative Dick Cheny), Bush merely chose a team that reflected his own foreign policy thinking.

And the hegemonist foreign policy world view Bush hammered out with his team had (according to the authors) five principles:

1. The world is a dangerous place a la Hobbes (the philosopher, not the comic strip :D )

2. The primary actors in the world are self-interested nation-states

3. Power (and the will to use power), especially military power, is "the coin of the realm" (p.42)

4. Multilateral relations and institutions are expendable in the pursuit of American interests]

Per the authors, this was all just sound political realism that other tough-minded administrations had pursued.

But it was the fifth principle, the principle of American exceptionalism, that provided the true revolution to the Bush revolution.

5. America is an exceptional nation-state, both in power and in its benevolent intentions "and other nations see it as such." (p.45)

This principle allows America, by the Bush Administration's lights (with Powell as the loyal opposition) to pursue action that even America's allies find objectionable because America's power will settle the issue (with the enemy) and America's benevolence (when the smoke clears) will be evident to friend and foe alike.

In other words, in the end, they all come around to America's way of seeing things.

The bulk of the book basically shows how the policy was applied before and after 9/11. The authors show how 9/11 made foreign policy the top priority and showed the strengths and weaknesses in Bush's pursuit of the adversaries he fought (Afghanistan and Iraq) and the adversaries he moved against through other means (Syria, Libya, Cuba, Iran, North Korea).

The end of the book provides a largely negative assessment of Bush's conduct of foreign policy on three main grounds.

First, if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything like a nail.

And the hammer in this case is military force.

Therefore, Bush's strategy does not work well for the worst of the other threats (Iran and North Korea come to mind), where the military option would cause unacceptable casualties. After all, North Korea is a de facto nuclear power and Iran is much more formidable, militarily, than Iraq with its own nuclear program well on the way. The authors paint a picture of a confused, largely ineffective strategy against both nations.

Second, Bush's team (and Bush himself) have an allergy to nation-building. They don't like it, they don't think it is the military's role and - in both Afghanistan and Iraq - they grossly underestimated how hard it would be to win the peace.

Third, the Bush team underestimated the backlash that would come from allies and most of the Islamic world in their unilateral use of force. In the end, most nations (even our friends) do not buy the argument from America's so-called exceptionalism - not even America can just do as it pleases on the world stage, not if it expects support and cooperation.

So America is left in a quandary at the end of the book: the only superpower in the world, it still remains dependent on the goodwill and cooperation of other nations to successfully pursue her goals in the world.

I have one more wonky book to read on policy, The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century[/i] by Thomas P. M. Barnett. He has worked in the G. W. Bush administration and it will be interesting to see his take on things.

Bill Bekkenhuis
(Courtesy of the Briesk Freethought Society)