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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tekboy who wrote (65318)	1/10/2003 5:31:10 PM
From: paul_philp	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Tekboy, Thank you for your analysis of the Bush administration foreign policy. I note that your analysis is based on style (non-interventionist) and domestic policy. You don't imagine that Bush has a valid but incorrect foreign policy, simply that he his foreign policy is entirely driven form abstract principles and political objectives. I think this assumption underlies much of the fear of Bush's policy. I cannot disprove that idea so I let it stand as a possible interpretation. My analogy, which I have used here before, it that Bush is like the new CEO of a company. The new CEO sees the situation as a mess and views the mission as cleaning up the mess. A new CEO will mistrust not only the people who created the mess but also the people who think like them (in this case, the 'technocrats' LB mentioned). The people around from before the new CEO squeal like pigs on the way to slaughter: "He doesn't get it. He doesn't know this business. He is going to ruin it all." The new CEO will often misperceive the mess and think things are worse than they are in reality. The new strategy can be too determined by 'not like the old way' rather than 'what do we need to do now'. The rhetoric of the new CEO will be 'getting back to basics', 'returning to first principles', etc. Two examples come to mind - Gerstner at IBM and Steve Case at AOL-TW. Case failed because his read of the situation was incorrect from the ground up but he continued to insist on inflicting the AOL-way on the TW people. His edge never matured. Gerstner was successful because his analysis of the situation was basically correct - IBM had lost touch with the customer, become to self-involved and lost it's innovative edge. He also managed to mature on the job. He learned to work the IBM culture to his advantage without giving up his strategy of getting IBM back to basics. Of course, the advent of the Internet helped IBM but Gerstner had perpared the company to be able to respond to the new opportunity. It isn't clear yet if Bush will be Steve Case or Lou Gerstner. Paul