Foreign policy elites hate Bush's war
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By James O. Goldsborough
Columnist
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
April 26, 2004
Americans, even the most patriotic, have an innate feeling something is wrong about the war in Iraq. But how do they explain their gut feeling, translate it into words?
In the latest CBS News poll, President Bush's handling of the war has fallen to a low point, with only 37 percent of Americans now believing it is worth the price.
More than pragmatism is at work against Bush's war. There is a rising intellectual and psychological distress with it, even among Republicans. The causes of this distress can be traced back across debates this country has had about foreign policy for more than 200 years.
The situation is particularly vexing for foreign policy elites. For example, Henry Kissinger, who once symbolized "realism" in foreign policy (and was opposed by "idealists"), must truly hate Bush's war with its Christian and moral connotations. But Kissinger, now a businessman, is silent.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who opposed Kissinger's "realistic" negotiations with Moscow during the Cold War, today is transformed into a realist and eloquent opponent of Bush's war. Opportunism may explain these two flip flops, but Brent Scowcroft, who served President Bush I, is consistent. Less political than Kissinger or Brzezinski, Scowcroft, a classic realist, hates this war and makes no bones about it.
The discomfort over Iraq stems from the war's character. Pre-emptive wars followed by bloody occupations against nations that do not pose a serious threat are not our style. Americans who gave Bush the benefit of the doubt at first have begun to ask questions. Bush says he'll never "cut and run" from Iraq, but that's not the question. Americans ask – why are we in Iraq? If it's not working, why stay?
Kissinger apart, realists (or pragmatists) hate Bush's war because it violates so many traditional principles. Realists don't make war because they don't like a foreign leader or to make some country democratic. For a realist, the question is – will this action enhance U.S. power or weaken it?
Wars can weaken nations. Vietnam weakened U.S. power, which is why Hans Morgenthau, the dean of realist thinkers, opposed it. U.S. policy to arm Afghanistan's muhajadeen in 1979 was designed to "induce a Soviet military intervention," in Brzezinski's words, which it did, weakening Moscow, contributing to Soviet demise.
For Morganthau, America's most influential foreign policy thinker, Vietnam depleted U.S. power. "Instead of embarking upon costly and futile interventions for the purpose of building nations and viable economies abroad," he wrote in 1969, "the United States ought to concentrate its efforts upon creating a society at home which can again serve as a model for other nations to emulate."
If that statement seems to apply to Iraq, try this: "The deficiencies of policy in Vietnam result from faulty modes of thought rather than from defects of personality or errors of execution."
The realist school of foreign policy remains strong in America but is absent from the Bush administration. Colin Powell was once a realist, but has been co-opted. Bush's neoconservatives are above all crusaders, people who see the world in terms of black and white, good and evil.
These people are driven by morality, not national interest. Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction were a pretext for war, but the real neoconservative goal was to persuade Bush that war was God's will, and he was the instrument. Bush consulted with God on war, he told Bob Woodward.
The gulf between what Bush said a year ago and what he says today contributes to our rising doubts, as does evidence that things are not going well on the ground. Even an idealist-moralist foreign policy needs success. If you bomb the communists to smithereens and they surrender, maybe you can claim success. If they keep on fighting, you have a harder case.
Realism in American foreign policy is not dead. It played a dominant role in the Bush I administration, which may be why Bush II refused to consult his father on Iraq. Bush I, Scowcroft and James Baker are realists, as they demonstrated in the Gulf War, in ending support for Nicaragua's Contras and in keeping America out of Balkan conflicts on their watch.
George Kennan, 100, a guiding light throughout the Cold War, wrote two books on realism as a nonagenarian. Despite Kissinger's defection, Morganthau's legacy is carried on by scholars such as Kenneth Waltz at Columbia and John Mearsheimer at the University of Chicago. Out of favor now, they will be back in vogue, as was Morganthau during Vietnam, as the Iraq quagmire grows deeper.
The trouble with a morality-based foreign policy, Kissinger liked to explain during the Cold War, is that it makes war inevitable. If each side believes God is with it and the devil with the other, agreement is impossible.
Policy based on national interest is a more sensible and historically more successful way to proceed. We should know that by now. Says Mearsheimer:
"Realists tend not to draw sharp distinctions between 'good' and 'bad' states, because all great powers act according to the same logic regardless of their culture, political system or who runs the government."
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James O. Goldsborough is foreign affairs columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and a member of the newspaper's editorial board, specializing in international issues.
Goldsborough spent 15 years in Europe as a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, the International Herald Tribune and Newsweek magazine. He is a former Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment.
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