The Evolving Bush Doctrine
President George W. Bush is still weeks off from the 100 day mark of his presidency. Already his critics have accused him of starting a new cold war, destroying the environment, and of course jeopardizing peace by forging ahead with National Missile Defense (NMD), which they argue will set off a new arms race.
There will no doubt be consequences from Bush’s emerging foreign policy-there always are. This time it seems that the policy begins with talking straight with citizens at home, allies’ abroad, and rivals alike.
So what is the Bush Doctrine?
At the christening of the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan on March 4, 2001 President Bush began outlining just that. “America, by nature, stands for freedom. And we must always remember, we benefit when it expands. So we stand by those nations moving toward freedom. We’ll stand up to those nations who deny freedom and threaten [their] neighbors or out vital interests. And we will assert that the future will belong to the free.”
It was fitting that Bush delivered those remarks dedicating an aircraft carrier named Ronald Reagan. The bush doctrine looks like it is a continuation of Reagan’s “Peace through Strength” foreign policy.
“The early indications are that Mr. Bush intends to make a main feature of his Administration the use of American power and influence to challenge and delegitimize the governments of those nations who are enemies of freedom,” wrote Frank J. Gaffney, Former Deputy Defense Secretary under Reagan. “Although this approach has not been a prominent part of U.S. government policy for most of the past decade, it has been used in the past to powerful effect.”
This is a huge departure from the Clinton presidency. “We have had eight years of a foreign policy that frequently rested on the notion that wishing can make a thing so, or at least can make it go away-and it can, for a while, if by ‘away’ one simply means ‘off the evening news’,” wrote Michael Kelly in a Washington Post Column. “Now is the time for dealing with the realities of what was left behind, and it is a logical time to listen to the realists.”
This return to the international relations theory known as “realism” is not an accident. Since the early days of Campaign 2000 Bush looked to Condoleezza Rice who now is his National Security Advisor to provide the ideological center of a Bush foreign policy. The Bush Administration also features conservative people like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz.
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