Posted on 09/12/2005 7:06:48 AM PDT by dead
George Bush has squandered the public mandate he received after the September 11 attacks, writes Francis Fukuyama.
As we mark four years since September 11, 2001, one way to organise a review of what has happened in US foreign policy since that terrible day is with a question: to what extent has that policy flowed from the wellspring of American politics and culture, and to what extent has it flowed from the particularities of this President and this Administration?
It is tempting to see continuity with the American character and foreign policy tradition in the Bush Administration's response to September 11, and many have done so. Americans have tended towards the forcefully unilateral when we have felt ourselves under duress; and we have spoken in highly idealistic cadences in such times, as well. Nevertheless, neither American political culture nor any underlying domestic pressures or constraints has determined the key decisions in American foreign policy since September 11.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Americans would have allowed George Bush to lead them in any of several directions, and the nation was prepared to accept substantial risks and sacrifices.
The Bush Administration asked for no sacrifices from the average American, but after the quick fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan it rolled the dice in a big way by moving to solve a longstanding problem only tangentially related to the threat from al-Qaeda - Iraq. In the process, it squandered the overwhelming public mandate it received after September 11. At the same time, it alienated most of its close allies.
The Administration could instead have chosen to create a true alliance of democracies to fight illiberal currents coming out of the Middle East. It could also have tightened economic sanctions and secured the return of arms inspectors to Iraq without going to war. It could have had a go at a new international regime to battle proliferation.
All of these paths would have been in keeping with American foreign policy traditions. But Bush and his Administration chose to do otherwise.
The Administration's policy choices have not been restrained by domestic political concerns any more than by American foreign policy culture.
Much has been made of the emergence of "red state" America, which supposedly constitutes the political base for Bush's unilateralist foreign policy, and of the increased number of conservative Christians who supposedly shape the President's international agenda. But the extent and significance of these phenomena have been exaggerated.
So much attention has been paid to these false policy determinants that a different political dynamic has been underappreciated. Within the Republican Party, the Bush Administration got support for the Iraq war from the neoconservatives (who lack a political base of their own but who provide considerable intellectual firepower) and from what the US foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead calls "Jacksonian America" - American nationalists whose instincts lead them towards a pugnacious isolationism.
Circumstance then magnified this unlikely alliance. Failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the inability to prove relevant connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda left the President, by the time of his second inaugural address, justifying the war exclusively as part of an idealistic policy of political transformation of the broader Middle East.
Bush's Jacksonian base, which provides the bulk of the troops serving and dying in Iraq, has no natural affinity for such a policy but would not abandon the commander in chief in the middle of a war, particularly if there is clear hope of success. This war coalition is fragile, however, and vulnerable to mishap. If Jacksonians begin to perceive the war as unwinnable or a failure, there will be little future support for an expansive foreign policy that focuses on promoting democracy. That in turn could drive the 2008 Republican presidential primaries in ways likely to affect the future of American foreign policy as a whole.
Are we failing in Iraq? That's still unclear. The US can control the situation militarily as long as it chooses to remain there in force, but Americans' willingness to maintain the personnel levels necessary to stay the course is limited.
The all-volunteer army was never intended to fight a prolonged insurgency, and both the army and marine corps face manpower and morale problems. While public support for staying in Iraq remains stable, powerful operational reasons are likely to drive the Administration to lower force levels within the next year.
With the failure to secure Sunni support for the constitution and splits within the Shiite community, it seems increasingly unlikely that a strong and cohesive Iraqi government will be in place any time soon.
If the United States withdraws prematurely, Iraq will slide into greater chaos. That would set off a chain of unfortunate events that will further damage American credibility around the world and ensure that the US remains preoccupied with the Middle East to the detriment of other important regions - Asia, for example - for years to come.
We do not know what outcome we will face in Iraq. We do know that four years after September 11, the whole foreign policy of the United States seems destined to rise or fall on the outcome of a war only marginally related to the source of what befell America on that day. There was nothing inevitable about this. There is everything to be regretted about it.
Francis Fukuyama is Professor of International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University and the author of The End of History and the Last Man.
only marginally related to the source of what befell America on that day
That’s the fundamental flaw in his premise. What “befell” (so benign, that verb) America that day was an attack from fundamentalist islamic nutjobs that thrive under anti-American dictatorships in the middle east, and are ultimately funded through oil money from the same region.
Saddam Hussein ran an anti-American dictatorship on top of the second largest oil reserves on earth. He openly and covertly funded international terrorism and provided safe haven and training facilities for the same.
He had to go, and he has. There’s still work to be done on the mess he left behind.
Bush's fault
Fukuyama was completely wrong about "the end of history" and he's completely wrong about this.
Call this an unfair generalization if you must, but Fukuyama is no good at everything.
"The Bush Administration asked for no sacrifices from the average American, but after the quick fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan it rolled the dice in a big way by moving to solve a longstanding problem only tangentially related to the threat from al-Qaeda - Iraq. In the process, it squandered the overwhelming public mandate it received after September 11. At the same time, it alienated most of its close allies."
PURE BS. All of our closest allies are with us in Iraq. The Aussies, the Brits, the Danes, the Italians, The Japanese, and several others. The fact that Britain and the US are doing the lions share of the heavy lifting in this world is nothing unusual.
Fukuyama is anything but a Middle East or Muslim expert, and this is the weakest of any essay he has ever produced. He is really concerned that we will take our eye off Asia even though the India-USA entente grows stronger year by year. What should worry him is the belligerance demonstrated by both Russia and China (both Asian powers), attitudes that we can do little to change. Finally, he seems to think that the military has "manpower and morale problems", again despite a score of recent reports to the contrary. If he thinks muzzy essays like this will get him a Secretary of State job some day, I believe he is quite mistaken.
And remember, you can't have "Francis Fukuyama" without "Fuku".
Who is this Fukyumama guy anyway?
This "Bush has squandered 9/11" article is repeated by every columnist in the country at least once. If you run out of ideas for a column, you run the "squandered" column.
Our elite has failed the WOT and very miserably to boot. With no mention of "Jihad" they have stuck us in a morass of political abstract tar.
It is the Leftist 5th column that is sabotaging everything and then reporting that we are failing and that its Bush's fault.
I have one word for Francis Fukuyama. Fuku.
Have we really made the country more secure by taking out Saddam? Well, four years of no terrorist attacks on our own soil tend to support that view. But then again, the intense hatred directed towards us from many quarters across the globe, hatred that has undeniably degraded our status as a moral superpower, has made taking shots (thus far metaphorical shots) at America a popular sport among erstwhile allies, and that certainly cannot be good for the longterm security of the American people.
We need some good and final outcomes in Iraq. And we need them in the very near future.
Francis should stick to the end of history and the last man... it's about as wrong and dire as this crap.
Typical white elephant academic gibberish.
But then again, the intense hatred directed towards us from many quarters across the globe, hatred that has undeniably degraded our status as a moral superpower, has made taking shots (thus far metaphorical shots) at America a popular sport among erstwhile allies
Do you honestly believe that there are people in Europe who once loved us and now suddenly despise us because of Iraq?
Personally, I think Iraq just gave those who already despised us a peg to hang their emotional hat on.
And I'm not going to worry about that.
I'm one of the Jacksonians Fukuyama references. My patience with "nation building" in Iraq is fast running out.
You didn't answer my question.
Here's how I see it. I remember circa 1999 having a long and quite friendly online political discussion with a woman in Denmark. She was a reasonable person, tending towards an anti-US bias but honest enough to admit that much of her distaste sprung from a bit of envy at our success and dominance. In the end, we agreed that in all truly important spheres, the USA had been a benevolent superpower whose impact on the world was mostly positive and reassuring.
I have not encountered that woman again, so I can't tell you what she thinks of us post Iraq. But I did encounter someone else online recently, also a European. She opened her remarks to me by expressing her pity for anyone so unfortunate as to be born in America, a country "so rich yet so poor and ignorant." She then disappeared, not even caring to talk to the ugly American. This is something new in Europe, and the class of people who feel this way are not to be confused with the knee-jerk leftists who've always hated us. These are just regular folks, and their alienation from us is disturbing.
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