It is common now to charge that the invasion of Iraq was a
moment where America’s ambitions surpassed its abilities. Various
articles have surfaced of late declaring that even President George
W. Bush may be grasping the folly of his ways. A great deal of
attention earlier this month focused on a Time magazine
cover story declaring “The End of Cowboy
Diplomacy.” The July/August issue of Foreign Affairs
contains a piece entitled “The End of the Bush Revolution,”
as well as an essay by Joseph Nye proclaiming that the Bush Administration’s
transformational foreign policy is unlikely to survive. But has the
Bush Doctrine discredited itself? The facts speak for
themselves.
Following the overthrow of the Taliban and with American action
inevitable in Iraq, the question of empire surfaced both in the
United States and abroad with regards to America’s power and
far-reaching ambitions. At the time, this drew proponents of an
assertive foreign policy to offer the historical example of William
McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt’s leadership in the
Spanish-American War of 1898 and the Filipino insurgency that
followed. More recently, this same period of history has been
presented by detractors of American involvement in Iraq as an
example of presidents who had radically altered American foreign
policy and engaged the country in a prolonged struggle as they fell
to the temptation of overreach.
Joseph Nye notes in Foreign Affairs that this
relatively short period of assertive engagement at the dawn of the
20th century was doomed by an inability “to overcome long-standing
suspicions of balance-of-power politics in Congress and among the
American public.” Thus, the United States soon abandoned this
approach but remained wise enough to maintain the gains. It is
certainly worth noting that history has proven Roosevelt right as
the acquisitions of Puerto Rico, Guam, and even the Philippines
proved to be assets in the 20th century.
Puerto Rico’s neighbors Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic
have been far greater security vulnerabilities for the United
States than has the Caribbean American commonwealth. Guam has
become one of the most vital military instillations in the Pacific
and remains an asset for American power projection capability in
East Asia. Although the Philippines were lost to the Japanese in
the spring of 1942, General Douglas MacArthur’s retaking of the
islands on his advance on Japan was greatly aided by Filipinos,
with whom the United States had established strong relations over
the years.
It is also worth bearing in mind that the objection to
balance-of-power politics faded during the Second World War and
became a staple of American foreign policy throughout the second
half of the 20th century. Both Republican and Democratic
administrations maintained this approach until Ronald Reagan ended
the longstanding policy of containment in favor of defeating the
Soviet Union once and for all. As a result of Reagan’s policies,
the United States achieved relative superiority, and containment
along with the Soviet Union disappeared into the ash heap of
history.
BUT THIS LESSON HAS LARGELY BEEN FORGOTTEN by both Democrats and a
substantial element of the American public. Opponents of the war in
Iraq have come to frequently charge now that the proper approach to
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was containment. The claim put forth is that
if the Bush Administration had not recklessly overthrown the
Baathists in Baghdad, Saddam “could have been kept in his box.”
This is foolish. No one questions that the United States had
complete and utter supremacy over Iraq in terms of relative power,
but simply — and mistakenly — that the costs of the invasion have
far outweighed the costs of containment.
Let’s assume Saddam was still sitting happily in Baghdad and
examine this though counter-factual history. How would the Iraqi
tyrant react to one of his principal adversaries in Iran — the
Duelfer Report notes that Saddam’s WMD programs were primarily due
to these fears — now rapidly developing a nuclear weapons program.
Would he become more compliant with the Anglo-American efforts to
persuade him to conform to UN resolutions, or would he embark on an
expansive program of his own, not to be outdone by his Persian
rivals? The latter is plainly the more plausible outcome. Saddam
saw himself as the guardian not only of the Arab Middle East but of
the Muslim world as well.
Instead of American forces sitting on Iran’s borders, the United
States would likely be in the untenable position of facing a WMD
arms race between Baghdad and Tehran. Emboldened by the Security
Council’s failure to act on Iraq, both Hussein and Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would emerge to present a problem in
the Middle East that makes the current situation appear fortunate.
Iraq would still be providing gifts of $20,000 to the families of
Palestinian suicide bombers, exacerbating the current Arab-Israeli
conflict. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would have left his safe haven in
Iraq to return to Afghanistan — he was harbored by and provided
medical care from Saddam’s regime prior to the invasion of Iraq
after being injured in Afghanistan — to lead an al-Qaeda
mujahideen there. Washington would be finding itself to be
in state of diplomatic overextension.
Diplomacy has never been considered the Bush Administration’s
strong suit, and with the oil-for-food program enduring — that is
if sanctions had not been abandoned by now — it is difficult to
imagine how any alternative could have been more successful. Up to
this point diplomacy has failed in both Iran and North Korea, and
contrary to claims that President Bush has admitted to mistakes by
engaging in multilateral diplomatic endeavors with North Korea,
United States efforts to establish the six-party talks preceded the
invasion of Iraq.
MIKE ALLEN AND ROMESH RATNESAR assert in their Time
magazine piece that “in the span of four years, the Administration
has been forced to rethink the doctrine with which it hoped to
remake the world as the strategy’s ineffectiveness is exposed by
the very policies it prescribed.” The authors proceed to state that
the difficult occupation in Iraq “may have emboldened [Tehran and
Pyongyang] in their quest to obtain nuclear weapons.” This fallacy
is largely contradicted by the fact that in April 2001, nearly two
years before the initial invasion of Iraq, the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that North Korea “probably has one or
two nuclear bombs.” It is also no secret that Iran has maintained
its own long-standing nuclear program from well before the Iraq
invasion.
Implying that the Bush Administration is beginning to grasp the
need for change, Allen and Ratnesar contend that the president’s
oratory style has changed from one of unapologetic “Wild West
rhetoric” to one emphasizing multilateralism and diplomacy as they
offer the following:
Long gone were the zero-tolerance warnings that
peppered his speeches four years ago, when he made North Korea a
charter member of the “axis of evil” club and declared at West
Point that “the only path of safety is the path of action.”
Instead, Bush pledged to “make sure we work with our friends and
allies … to continue to send a unified message” to
Pyongyang.
While the White House has adopted more pragmatic language in some
cases, a diplomatic track was always the goal with North Korea. In
early February 2003, Bush told reporters, “I will continue working
diplomatically to convince Kim Jong Il that he will be further
isolated if he continues to develop a nuclear program.” At the
time, while Secretary of State Colin Powell was laboring to get all
sides — China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea — to
agree to convene at what would become the six-party talks, the Bush
administration agreed that in the meantime they would meet with
North Korean officials in Beijing to get the diplomatic process off
the ground. In other words, not much has changed in President
Bush’s approach to the North Korean problem, but few achievements
have materialized in the process. Washington should keep this in
mind.
While McKinley and Roosevelt’s polices of assertive engagement
may have faded after they were no longer behind the wheels of
power, many of the era’s accomplishments survived to help shape the
“American Century.” From expelling the Spanish from the Western
Hemisphere, to the acquisition of territory in the Caribbean and
the Pacific, to keeping a rising Germany out of Latin America,
history has shown that the assertive ambitions of the cowboy in
Roosevelt failed to outweigh the capabilities of the United States.
Currently, the Bush Doctrine has encountered many of the same
criticisms voiced a century ago. Despite the frequent and tired
charges of John Kerry that American efforts in Iraq are a
“diversion from the real war on terror,” success or failure in Iraq
will determine which side is destined for victory and which side is
bound for defeat. Al Qaeda has known this for quite some time; it’s
a shame so many freedom-loving people around the world still can’t
understand this. The United States will win in Iraq as a result of
not only American power, but even more so, old-fashioned American
ambition.
