Making the World Safe From Evil (Page 3)

Usually the point of foreign affairs is to keep your allies happy and your enemies off balance: Bush has invented a way to fire up and miss on all cylinders, while pushing our allies to their wits' end. The result is the most incoherent US foreign policy in recent memory. The idea of a bipartisan consensus in foreign affairs seems not to have occurred to this crew; Democrats are also the enemy. By repudiating Clinton's proactive diplomacy, Bush has alienated two critical allies: Junichiro Koizumi, who broke with US policy in an unprecedented way to hold a successful summit with Kim Jong Il in September, and Gerhard Schröder, whose vocal opposition to an invasion of Iraq has "poisoned" American relations with Germany (according to Pentagon Czar Rumsfeld). In August these strains caused a huge falling out among Republicans, with Brent Scowcroft, Henry Kissinger and James Baker attempting in different ways and with different arguments and nuances to warn Bush about the consequences of attacking Iraq.

This is really the gang that can't shoot straight--now taking aim at everyone. Bush prides himself on staff loyalty and discipline, having arrived with three foreign policy bigwigs and one hallowed CEO in tow: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and O'Neill. That this experienced crew would tower over the President was a foregone conclusion, but who could have imagined that they would form independent kingdoms and fashion their own policies, while George jogs and lifts weights? It is inconceivable for this President actually to make a foreign policy decision based on his own superior judgment, as against Cheney or Rumsfeld or Powell. This is not to say that it doesn't happen, just that it's impossible to conceive of it happening, given the paucity of evidence that Bush knows or cares much about the rest of the world, and his apparent lack of a Harry Truman-like seat-of-the-pants common sense.

The absence of wise and steady presidential leadership is one key to this Administration's foreign policy chaos. A bigger problem is that the old guard doesn't work well together, and is more often at cross purposes. This gives space and standing to the multitude of independent kingdoms. Each man thinks himself capable of running everything, that is, of being the President. And so Rumsfeld stars as the Administration spokesman on war, Powell on diplomacy and foreign relations (if there is any; who could have imagined that Powell would be such a doormat?), Cheney on foreign and domestic policy, and O'Neill on foreign economic policy (although he barely has one, and neither does the White House).

Will Bush invade Iraq? History tells us that when push comes to shove in foreign affairs, the multilateralism of the Eastern wing always wins--at least it has since 1945. In the next several months Bush will finally have to make a critical decision (safely after the November elections). I believe that decision will reveal him to be a Connecticut Yankee after all. Reality bites George W. only in the face of crisis (as happened when our spy plane crash-landed in China last year). Daddy and Scowcroft will prevail and Saddam will remain in Baghdad. Bush will execute the kind of backflip that New York Times columnist Frank Rich believes to be his trademark. The Republican right will stew, Richard Perle will ventilate and Paul Wolfowitz may immigrate back to the private sector.

But even if war is averted, the Bush doctrine is real and it is dangerous. Saddam is a bête noire from central casting; that's more useful than a post-Saddam Iraq in ruins. The greater danger is that a restive world may present a sudden and unexpected crisis, for example with North Korea, where containment and deterrence could abruptly give way once again to pre-emption and disaster.

George Kennan, a 98-year-old major leaguer, gave a little-noticed interview to Albert Eisele on the day before Gore's September speech. Bush's new doctrine was "a great mistake in principle," he said; anyone who has studied history "knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind," but you end up fighting for things "never thought of before." Launching a second war with Iraq "bears no relation to the first war against terrorism," he thought, and anyway a decision for war "should really rest with Congress." But Congressional Democrats have been "shabby and shameful," he said, not to mention "timid," in their reaction to Bush's war plans. Not so Al Gore, however: Out there in California, Mr. X might as well have been his ventriloquist.

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