Bush needs to soften hard-edged foreign policy

The strong mandate that the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush received from the American people on Nov. 2 raises the question of how it will use its new political capital in the foreign policy arena. The fact that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was removed from power and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pointedly ask to stay on suggests that the administration does not intend to turn in a more conciliatory direction, and is likely to keep up its hard-nosed relationship with the rest of the world. There will be at least four areas of policy in which the administration will be tested very soon after the beginning of the new year.

The first concerns Iraq and the problem the administration created for itself there. Bush and Rumsfeld continue to talk about "progress" and it is not clear whether they have admitted to themselves how serious the problem is that the United States faces. The central issue concerns the grave weaknesses of the Iraqi National Guard, police and army: without strong Iraqi forces, the United States and the coalition it leads have no exit strategy. The administration has been unaccountably slow in training these forces, and the performance of the latter in places like Mosul and Fallujah has been very disappointing.

The insurgency, which has grown now to sever al tens of thousands of fighters, has been extremely successful in targeting Iraqis who collaborate with the United States. The insurgents cannot defeat the U.S. Army, but the U.S. Army cannot stay in Iraq forever: neither the American people nor the government that will emerge from the elections on Jan. 30 can contemplate an occupation that stretches out for the next 10 years.

The January election is likely to produce a government representing the country's majority Shiite population, but will have only minimal participation on the part of the 15 percent to 20 percent of the country that is Sunni and the traditional rulers of Iraq. The key decision that the administration will have to make after January is whether to continue to co-opt the Sunni community into some kind of political process, or to write it off completely and try to build a new Iraq on the basis of an alliance between the Shiites and the Kurds in the north.

As part of a strategy for ultimately getting out of Iraq, the administration may feel driven to expand the war beyond Iraq's borders. The insurgents are receiving support from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Iran and Yemen--indeed, all across the Middle East--and the United States could attack these supporters with or without the help of the governments concerned.

The second major issue will revolve around another event that will take place in January--the election in the Palestinian territories of a leader to replace the recently deceased Yasser Arafat.

Arafat's passing and the impending Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip opens up a genuine opportunity to make progress toward a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on a two-state solution--something like the agreement reached at Camp David, Md., and Taba, Egypt, in 2000 at the end of the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton. The Bush administration has an enormous amount of work to do to help bring into being a legitimate post-Arafat Palestinian state that can face down radical groups like Hamas and actually negotiate a peace with Israel. This will inevitably require demanding things of the Israelis, such as a halt to West Bank settlement activity while negotiations are restarted. The capital earned during the first administration could be spent here, but there is little indication that Bush is inclined to do so.

The third issue concerns the other two members of the so-called axis of evil, Iran and North Korea. The administration has responded to both problems in a similar way during the first term in office. In both cases, Washington did not have a good military option for stopping these countries' nuclear weapons programs, as it once thought it did in Iraq. But the hard-liners in the administration pushed instead for what might be called "regime change by means other than war," that is, an effort to bring about the fall of the regimes of the mullahs in Iran and Kim Jong Il in North Korea through some combination of sanctions, propaganda, support for domestic opposition groups, blockade, and the like.

While Powell was secretary of state, the U.S. State Department kept pushing for some type of negotiation to limit the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs. The problem was that the White House National Security Council staff, led by the incoming U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, was never able to drive either policy process to a clean decision as to whether the United States would pursue a strategy of negotiations or regime change. Since it was preoccupied with Iraq in any case, both crises were allowed to percolate without a clear policy on how to resolve them from Washington.

This situation cannot go on forever. The Europeans have recently boxed the administration in by getting the Iranians to agree to stop their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, while allowing it to continue efforts to enrich uranium. The Bush administration is not happy with this outcome, but does not have a clear ground on which to undercut the deal. If the Iranians show any sign of backing away from their deal with the Europeans in the new year, Israel may drive the issue to a decision point by telling Washington that if the United States does not take military action against Iran's nuclear facilities, it will.

If this scenario turns out to be correct, the Bush administration will be faced with one of the most important early decisions of its second term. In my view, a U.S. decision to launch an air strike at Iran's nuclear facilities will be a huge mistake. It is unlikely to seriously retard their program, because the Iranians have had plenty of time to hide and scatter their facilities around Iran (and in any event, U.S. intelligence on weapons of mass destruction has been anything but impressive in this region). More importantly, a military strike will undermine the democratic aspirations of younger Iranians and push the country back to the radicalism of the late 1970s. The Iranians have many cards left to play against the United States in terms of support for terrorism and their ability to destabilize Iraq, which they will almost certainly use if attacked.

U.S. choices with respect to North Korea are even more constrained, because of the possibility that the North Koreans already have a nuclear weapon. Here the hard-line position that the administration could take would be to give up on trying to attract Pyongyang back to the six-party talks, and move instead to sanctions, blockade, and other measures meant to undermine the North Korean regime.

This in my view will work no better than an air strike against Iran: Japan may agree to work with the United States for sanctions, but neither China nor U.S. ally South Korea is in any mood to participate in this type of tough policy against North Korea. It is hard to see how such a policy could succeed without their cooperation. Indeed, a U.S. attempt to impose sanctions by itself or with Japan will lead to a very severe crisis in U.S.-South Korean relations, which have been deteriorating steadily since the first Bush term.

The United States has a bigger problem in Asia, which is the fourth issue for the new administration. While Washington has become preoccupied with terrorism and Iraq, the Chinese have been moving ahead steadily to consolidate their own leadership position in the region, most recently by promoting ASEAN plus Three, involving the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, China, Japan and South Korea--an all-East Asian group that excludes the United States. While Bush goes around promoting a narrow U.S. agenda (chiefly help in the war on terrorism), the Chinese have been giving other Asian countries what they want--access to Chinese markets and other economic benefits. It is not clear that the administration even realizes how successful Beijing has been in displacing U.S. influence, or has ideas for how to stop this from happening.

The new Bush administration thus faces a series of tough choices across a range of issues in the coming months, in some cases--like the Iraq insurgency--driven by forces beyond its control. It could opt to continue its forceful unilateralist policies from the first term by expanding the Iraq war, striking militarily (or colluding with an Israeli strike) against Iran, sanctioning North Korea, and failing to push strongly for a new effort to drive the Israelis and Palestinians toward an agreement. Or it could seek serious political strategies to limit nuclear weapons proliferation and reduce the political damage from the ongoing Palestinian and Iraqi conflicts.

The big question is whether Bush has himself drawn any lessons from the first four years of his administration. It should have taught him that U.S. military power could not reshape the political landscape of the Middle East, and that even the world's sole superpower faces limits to what it can accomplish alone. The administration might have come to understand that its "soft-power" institutions that handle post-conflict reconstruction, public diplomacy and democracy promotion are seriously broken, that they were necessary to soften the hard edge of U.S. power, and that Washington needed to formulate a hearts-and-minds strategy if it was to ever win the war on terrorism.

Nothing the president has said up to this point suggests that he accepts any of these lessons, so it may take a further setback--perhaps in Iraq or in the war on terrorism--for this realization to sink in. One only wishes there were a more optimistic note on which to start the new year and the new administration.

"...and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pointedly ask to stay on suggests that the administration does not intend to turn in a more conciliatory direction, and is likely to keep up its hard-nosed relationship with the rest of the world."

Bull-flippin horse-hockey. "Conciliatory?"

When are these jack-asses going to realize that America is a sovereign country. If I were W, I'd do my best to pi$$ off every unfriendly nation on the planet. I'd bitch-slap France in the most dignified manner as possible. I'd issue and Executive Order to have the UN evacuated, call the Army Corps of Engineers and have the building demolished.

[the first four years] should have taught [Bush] that U.S. military power could not reshape the political landscape of the Middle East.Bush's failure is to let Rummy run a war that doesn't require a bunch of outmoded ship's produced by Lott's hometown shipyard.

Francis Fukuyama - Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy - The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

Well, well well. Strange bedfellows.

If I were W, I'd do my best to pi$$ off every unfriendly nation on the planet. I'd bitch-slap France in the most dignified manner as possible. I'd issue and Executive Order to have the UN evacuated, call the Army Corps of Engineers and have the building demolished.

Same here and when attacking enemies I would be even more agressive. I would not tell ANYONE what I was about to do and I would not go through the UN/multilaterial bull_shit either. Iran would never know what hit them. Instead of risking troops in house-to-house combat I would level any building that enemy fire was emanating from. I would take care to level mosques especially. The only thing our enemies respect is force and I would deliver such a powerful blow that their world as they knew it would be no more.

Bush needs to soften hard-edged foreign policy

Softening can usually be achieved be a judicious application of high explosives.

The first concerns Iraq and the problem the administration created for itself there.

Lose the DRUGS Francis and perhaps your perceptions will be more palatable.

BTW--whatever happened to Kerry's secret plan for getting out of Iraq? Is he just going to let the country fall to pieces without his incredible plan? Isn't he condemning people to death because he's not sharing the super-secret escape plan? I'm sure the DU crowd would back him stepping forward with his Five-Year Plan.

Daily Yomiuri is one of the leading newspapers in Japan. This appears to be a guest editorial or op-ed piece. Yomiuri has the largest circulation of any newspaper world-wide.

The doctrine of denial and appeasement has never worked anywhere,ever..ask the europeans who continue to flagellate themselves if they see their own shadow....didn't you yanks invent the saying..'walk softly but carry a big stick'...it works for me but when dealing with radical Isalamists, I like... "Back off or I'll fire a warning shot between your eyes"...the Fallujah Islamoterrorists caught on to that warning shot announcment real fast and I think that the surviving turkeys are getting the message real quick even though the msm will never let us know about that developement because it might suggest that the war on terror is succeeding

What a pile of horse manure. Essentially the message is do nothing to disturb the bad guys.
"US. military power could not reshape the political landscape of the Middle East..." It sure as hell as reshaped the lanscape. Lybia gave up, Iran is worried, Syria is sweating, palestinians are voting...I would say there is some reshaping going on.

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