Martin Wolf: Bush is not up to the job | Published: May 11 2004 22:10 | Last Updated: May 11 2004 22:10:
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Excerpts:
I am a huge admirer of the US.... neither hostile to Republican administrations nor opposed to the use of force.... I preferred Richard Nixon to George McGovern, in 1972, and George H.W. Bush to Michael Dukakis, in 1988.... But if I find the Bush administration›s foreign policy disturbing, so must the vast majority of humanity. If I feel Tony Blair has allied the UK too closely, then sympathy for this alliance must be perilously low.
So what is wrong with this administration? Put simply, it fails to understand the basis of US power, mis-specifies US objectives and is incompetent.... [T]he position of the US - and so of the west - is worse, in significant respects, than it was the day after September 11 2001. Then, a huge proportion of humanity viewed the US as the victim of an outrage. Today, after the revelations of the treatment of prisoners in Iraq, it is seen as a perpetrator of them. Then it had the support of all its allies, now it can rely on the public›s sympathy in very few.
Let us start with the administration's faith in the application of US military power. This is a double error. The first lies in its exaggerated belief in force.... The second error lies in its belief in the irrelevance of allies. A country containing 4 per cent of the world›s population cannot impose its will upon the world. It needs permanent allies, not reluctant stooges.... [T]he US had a bigger army than the Soviet Union, but because it offered a more attractive model. The more the US plays the unilateral bully, the more its attraction fades.
Turn then to definition of US objectives. Terrorism is a technique of the powerless adapted to the age of mass communications.... [P]roclaiming a war against terrorism justifies the indefinite suspension of the rule of law.... [T]he behaviour of the guards at Abu Ghraib is the natural, almost the inevitable, consequence of the position in which the administration has - in its pursuit of its war on terrorism - put detainees. These are... in a legal limbo for as long as the US decides that this so-called "war" continues. Interrogators have absolute power and... absolute power corrupts absolutely....
Now let us turn to the question of competence... [O]nly one institution has shown its effectiveness - the US armed forces.... [E]verything else has been a humiliating shambles. Afghanistan is, once again, in the arms of the war lords whose behaviour led to the Taliban invasion. The outcome in Iraq now looks far worse.... The decision to wage a war of choice, not of necessity, was a great risk. It could be justified only by discovering the weaponry Mr Hussein was alleged to hold or by leaving the country... in a reasonably stable condition. Having been so resoundingly wrong on the first point, the US must now succeed on the second. Always difficult, the chances of such an outcome now seem vanishingly small. What will Iraq be a few years from now - a military dictatorship, a theocracy, a divided country, an anarchy, or a permanent US occupation? Any of these, except the last, seems more plausible than stable democracy.
It is impossible to exaggerate the dangers attendant upon a US failure in Iraq: jihadis would conclude that they had now defeated a second superpower; friendly regimes would be shaken; and US prestige would be destroyed. Iraq is not another Vietnam. It is far more dangerous than that.... The US has... staked its prestige.. on leaving behind a thriving country. If, instead, it leaves behind despotism or chaos, it will be a grievous defeat, with huge long-run consequences. Responsibility for such a failure must rest with the White House. It cannot be blamed on any subordinate department, not even the defence department. This is the president›s policy and responsibility. The buck stops there.
Crafting a foreign policy for a new era is hard. The last time this had to be done was in the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman more than half a century ago. The institutions they established and the values they upheld were the foundation of the successful US foreign policy of the postwar era. Now, a task even more complex has fallen on this president. He is not up to the job. This is not a moral judgment, but a practical one. The world is too complex and dangerous for the pious simplicities and arrogant unilateralism of George W. Bush. |
