The US Heads Home: Will Europe Regret it? by Mark Leonard
HEADLINE: The US heads home: will Europe regret it? The assertive policy of
George W. Bush was supported by three factions that are now blaming each
other for the mess in Iraq. What went wrong with the 'Bush Revolution' - and
is the US on the verge of isolationism again? Mark Leonard's in-depth
investigation is based on 40 interviews with senior officials from every US
administration since Ford, as well as academics and think-tankers in
Washington, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston and New
York.
BYLINE: By MARK LEONARD
Washington had been preparing for their airborne invasion for months. Every
17 years, the cicadas descend on the nation's capital like a biblical
plague. They hatch, crawl out of the ground, mate, lay eggs - and then
disappear for another 17 years. The Darwinian theorist, Stephen Jay Gould,
says their evolutionary strategy of appearing periodically with overwhelming
force and then retreating has allowed them to outwit their predators.
Observing them, a European in the imperial capital, I have come to regard
their lurch from activism to retrenchment as a metaphor for American foreign
policy. The French writer Raymond Aron - a rare intellectual of the right -
described American policy as a series of "swings between the crusading
spirit and a withdrawal into isolation far from a corrupt world that refused
to heed the American Gospel". Well, we've seen the orgy of activism: an
increase in military spending to match all of the rest of the world; the
bonfire of international treaties (Kyoto Accord, International Criminal
Court, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty) and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The trinity of American military supremacy, unilateralism and pre- emptive
war was heralded as a "Bush Revolution" that would define an assertive
foreign policy for a generation. But now, just four years after the man was
elected, an insistent beat of comment says that America could be on the
verge of retrenchment, leaving its dream of an imperial foreign policy on
the streets of Falluja.
A few blocks from the White House, 150 people gather to mark the first
anniversary of the end of fighting in Iraq. It is a warm and sunny day in
May. The speaker is a thin-lipped, grey man, an unlikely revolutionary -
more John Major than Che Guevara. Douglas Feith, under-secretary of state
for policy (number three) at the Pentagon, is one of the key architects of
the Bush Revolution, a dogged, dependable ally of defence secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and vice-president Richard Cheney. The gathering is taking place at
1150 17th Street, a Silicon Valley for rightwing thinkers and home to the
American Enterprise Institute, the Weekly Standard and the Project for the
New American Century. Only a year ago the big joke making its way around the
building was, "Baghdad is for wimps, real men go to Tehran". But Feith isn't
here to lay out the next wave of intervention in the Middle East. Instead,
he sounds defensive: "I think no one can properly assert that the failure so
far to find Iraqi WMD stockpiles undermines the reasons for the war," he
says. He finds himself fielding questions about the need for United Nations
involvement, strategies to get allies on board, the treatment of prisoners
in Abu Ghraib and the lack of planning for the aftermath of war.
Outside, in the political whirlpool of Washington and in the world over
which he wishes to strengthen American hegemony, Feith knows that events are
not going his way. On Iraq, the administration has turned to the UN, with
President Bush and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice both doing the
rounds of European capitals asking for help. On Iran, it has tacitly
supported the European engagement strategy. And on North Korea they are
relying on multilateral six- party talks.
Part of the reason for this, says Joseph Nye, dean of the John F. Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard, is that the so-called Bush Revolution was
based not on a single view of the world but a marriage of convenience
between three schools of foreign policy, which for shorthand are linked to
historical figures: the founding secretary of the Treasury Alexander
Hamilton and presidents Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson.
Nye, who coined the concept of "soft power" to describe the kind of
culture, political and technological influence he thinks America should be
projecting, says that the "revolutionary coalition" is unravelling: "There
really isn't a coherent Bush ideology but three strands of opinion competing
with each other. That's why the administration has been so divided. Look at
Bush's argument for intervening in Iraq. First there was WMD - which appeals
to traditional security people. Then the connection with 9/11 - which
appeals to assertive nationalists. And finally democratising the Middle East
- which appeals to the Wilsonians (the right-wingers so-called after
President Wilson)."
These groups, which stood together behind the invasion, are now falling
apart and blaming each other as the situation in Iraq unravels and the Bush
administration suffers in the polls. I decide to take an American journey,
to observe the process close up.
Dallas, Texas. Downtown, the gleaming skyscrapers huddle together as if to
draw strength from their numbers. All around this small copse of glass and
marble (adorned with logos including AT&T, KPMG, Fannie Mae) is an endless
sprawl of low-rise buildings that stretches as far as the eye can see - this
is big-sky country. The journalist Robert Bryce tells me that Texas is the
"front porch of the American psyche", explaining that Texas was a nation
before it was a state, and that "the Texas myth has become America's myth.
The Alamo, the Indian fighter, the cowboy, the oil man, the rough neck - all
of these have become American archetypes."
On a sleepy Sunday afternoon, I drive into a suburb not unlike the one that
George and Laura Bush chose as their home when they settled here in 1989 to
run the Texas Rangers baseball team. Making my way between the sprinklers,
palm trees, neo-classical columns, manicured lawns, fountains, stone
cladding and mock-Tudor thatched roofs, I realise that nothing is more than
10 years old - a symbol of growing Texan affluence and the demographic
explosion. In this idyllic neighbourhood of McMansions or Faux Chateaux (as
a non- Texan calls them) I find the stunning house of Jim Falk, the head of
the Dallas World Affairs Council, who has organised a barbecue to introduce
me to the pillars of the liberal and business establishment in the town that
George W. Bush thinks of as home. Sitting by the pool eating chicken and
chunky burgers laced with 15 different relishes, my fellow guests and I talk
about how the Bush coalition was formed.
Lynn Minna, an attorney who is also head of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce,
explains that, "Dallas is the home of the Baptist church. A lot of business
contacts are made in church. At the beginning of meetings of the chamber of
commerce, you need to hold your hands and pray." Bill McKenzie, a columnist
on the Dallas Morning News, tells me how Bush has tapped into this seam of
religiosity: "I remember interviewing Bush in 1997 about running for
president and he said, 'I don't mean to sound too Presbyterian about this,
but we are wrestling with whether this is what we are called to do. ' I
don't think he feels that God put him in the White House, but he does feel
he has a purpose: to defeat terrorism."
John Stephenson, who is the head of a Dallas law firm and an active member
of the Dallas World Affairs Council, tells me I should remember that
"foreign policy down here means Mexico". Bush came to the office even less
prepared on the world's issues and problems than that other southern
governor, Bill Clinton. But knowledge isn't the point. The consensus among
the guests is that it's Bush's way of doing business that's important. If
you know that, you can see the shape of his policies as president.
First, he's willing to spend political capital. In February this year,
journalist Paul Burka wrote in Texas Monthly that "once Bush decides to take
a bite of the apple, it's going to be the biggest chunk he can sink his
teeth into. The argument that the status quo in the Islamic world would not
change unless America did something to change it would have appealed to him.
Of all the reasons to oust Saddam, the boldest was to change the paradigm."
The second thing that everybody agrees on is his ability to focus on a
single strategic priority to the exclusion of almost everything else. "As
governor, Bush had an intense focus, he used to say 'when everything is a
priority nothing is a priority.' When he zeroes in on something he does it
to the exclusion of (almost everything)," says McKenzie. "I can only assume
that he is focusing on stopping another 9/11 like a laser - and that
includes pre- emptive strikes. And if the Europeans don't get it," he says,
smiling sweetly at me, "that's just too bad."
The third poolside topic was Bush's impatience with institutions and laws.
Bush has a small-businessman's attitude towards legislation and
institutions: they are things to be worked around, and are rarely seen as
the solution to any problem. "I think Bush is more entrepreneurial and the
EU more statist, more process- driven. For better or worse Bush is
intuitive, like a lot of entrepreneurs. He gets an idea and then it is:
'Let's go!' You probably couldn't find two more distinct approaches than
Bush the wild catter and the European bureaucrat," says McKenzie.
One thing his Texas friends don't understand is what happened to Governor
Bush. My fellow barbecue guests say that the single distinguishing feature
of Bush as governor was his capacity to reach out across political
boundaries. Burka in Texas Monthly wrote that "he had all the qualities of a
great governor. He was a uniter, not a divider - a centrist who fought the
extremists in his own party. I would never have imagined that the person I
knew would have been characterised in a Time cover story as the 'Great
Polariser.'" Many people were shocked to see that he has become such a
polarising figure, and one apparently careless of some of his conservative
base's concerns. Chip Pitts, a corporate lawyer, said: "A lot of
conservative Republicans do care about deficits. Then you add in the Gulf
War. "
Chicago, Illinois. The elite in the Windy City share the view of foreign
policy proposed by Alexander Hamilton, the founding secretary of the
Treasury under George Washington. A New Yorker, he saw the world as a
marketplace, in which foreign policy's main purpose was to enhance America's
share of it. The Chicagoan corporate leaders are conservatives - nothing neo
about them - who do not believe that human nature is essentially benign (or
can be improved). The mark of their foreign policy is stability, and their
most senior representative in the current administration is secretary of
state Colin Powell.
In the wake of 9/11, Powell was at the heart of attempts to build a
coalition for the invasion of Afghanistan and he played a central role in
attempts to get UN backing for the war on Iraq. But he was also careful to
distance himself from the zeal of his more assertive colleagues. I spoke in
Chicago to Edward Djerejian, a former US ambassador to Syria and Israel, who
is very close to Powell. "The war in Iraq," he said, "will be debated in
terms of whether it is a war of choice or necessity. There is no doubt that
the Pentagon has taken the leadership over the reconstruction of Iraq. The
responsibility should have been shared with the state department which would
have avoided some of the mistakes that were made. But these voices were not
heard. I feel very strongly that these people (civilian leadership in the
Pentagon) just did not understand the political, economic and cultural
situation on the ground."
Richard Lugar, the senator for the neighbouring state of Indiana, is one of
the long-serving Republican foreign policy leaders and is acting chair of
the Senate foreign relations committee. He spoke for many when he said in a
recent speech: "To win the war against terrorism, the US must assign US
economic and diplomatic capabilities the same strategic priority that we
assign to military capabilities. We have relied heavily on military options
and unilateral approaches that weakened our alliances."
The head of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, Marshall Bouton,
tells me that "Midwesterners don't care much for revolutions. The Midwest is
like the fulcrum of the US body politic. The coasts go up and down but the
Midwest tends towards centrist pragmatism."
In the run-up to the election, Condoleezza Rice - at that stage a member of
the Bush campaign team - wrote a famous piece for Foreign Affairs that
captured the Chicagoan creed: "Foreign policy in a Republican administration
will proceed from the firm ground of the national interest, not from the
interests of an illusory international community. America can exercise power
without arrogance and pursue its interests without hectoring and bluster."
Few policy statements have been so comprehensively destroyed by their
author.
And the about-face was not restricted to Rice. John Mearsheimer, professor
of political science at the University of Chicago, explains: "If you look at
Cheney's statements about why the US didn't invade Baghdad in 1991 he sounds
exactly like those who opposed the recent war in Iraq. There is no question
that he has undergone a profound change in world view since then."
One of the differences between these conservatives and the neo-cons is a
dramatically different evaluation of US power. Mearsheimer takes umbrage at
the description of the US by neo-conservatives as an "empire". He even says
the term "hegemon" is an overstatement. "The US is a hegemon in the western
hemisphere but when you get out of the western hemisphere it is a more
complicated world."
The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations says the tide of opinion among the
business community is turning. "A lot of people went along for the ride
because they trusted Bush," says director of studies Christopher Whitney.
"Some of that has been eroded. I think the revolution is over unless Bush is
suicidal." Bouton says some of the council's most popular speakers have been
anti-Bush: "We had the largest turn-out for a single event with George Soros
- 1,600 people came to hear him attack Bush's foreign policy."
The allies of Colin Powell are certainly feeling emboldened. One of his
closest friends, speaking off the record, is jubilant: "One of the things
that is clear is that the sun has set on the neo- conservatives. The
Cheney-Rumsfeld-Feith group no longer has any tailwind. The realists or
pragmatists led by Powell are reasserting themselves."
The Metropolitan Club, Washington DC. It is as if a piece of London's
clubland in Pall Mall - complete with shabby leather armchairs and a
billiard room - has been implanted in the heart of America's capital. This
gentlemen's club, a block away from the White House, is a favourite haunt
for neo-conservatives. They will often be found in the bar drinking Martinis
and comparing notes about political developments. Joshua Muravchik of the
American Enterprise Institute explained who they are in "The Neo-
Conservative Cabal", a 2003 article in Commentary magazine, by pointing to
their heroes: Henry "Scoop" Jackson (a Washington state senator), Ronald
Reagan and Winston Churchill. "All three believed in confronting democracy's
enemies early and far from home shores; and all three were paragons of
ideological warfare."
Ironically, most of those who call themselves neo-conservative were opposed
to Bush in the Republican primaries. They preferred John McCain, who remains
their ideological soulmate. (As Craig Kennedy, president of the German
Marshall Fund, points out, it is a further irony that the people most
opposed to Bush's neo-conservatism wanted Democratic presidential candidate
John Kerry to pick McCain as a running mate.) Their main difference with the
traditional conservatives is their willingness to see American power used to
advance political goals. They were, for example, in favour of action in
Kosovo when President Clinton was under constant attack from traditional
conservatives in Congress. Second, they believe in the pro-active promotion
of democracy and want to bring about the political transformation of the
Middle East. This is what has led them to be described as the Wilsonians of
the right, after the president who believed in "making the world safe for
democracy".
They do not, though, share all of Wilson's beliefs: "To the extent that
neo-conservatives are Wilsonians," says Francis Fukuyama, professor of
international political economy at Johns Hopkins University, "it is
Wilsonianism minus international institutions such as the UN. This is
because of their belief in the fundamental illegitimacy of the UN and
related bodies, due in the first instance to their undemocratic character,
but based also on the way they have treated Israel and the Middle East
conflict."
Within the administration, deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz is
usually identified as the key actor, together with under-secretaries of
state Douglas Feith and John Bolton, National Security Council staff member
Elliott Abrams and Dick Cheney's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby. This
is a very small proportion of the leading players, but the neo-conservative
influence comes not from their position at the apex of the administration,
but the power of their ideas, which offered an explanation for 9/11 and a
bold prospectus for the future.
A senior administration official, speaking under the condition of
anonymity, argues that the president's embrace of Wilsonianism has increased
the gulf between the US and Europe. "Europe is like America before world war
one: an 'it's not our problem' continent. They are a 'status-quo, don't
change anything, so what if there is no freedom, so what if there is no
human rights, so what if there is torture' continent. So long as we can do a
trade deal most Europeans are satisfied. Americans cannot accept this. That
status quo is producing toxic threats. There is some short-term surgery we
need to do, and then we can focus on the long-term."
One evening at the Metropolitan Club, a couple of weeks after Spanish prime
minister Jose Maria Aznar was defeated in the elections, I met one of his
senior advisers and a group of young neo-cons. Aznar's adviser is still in a
state of shock. His party has paid the ultimate price for its links with the
Bush administration. He had been planning to come to Washington to discuss
how Aznar, as the successful former prime minister of a victorious party,
could come out to help in the Bush campaign. Now he fears that no one will
want to be seen with a loser. But the discussion is practical and to the
point. The neo-cons show their support; they are not fair-weather friends,
they say, and offer their help - ideas for universities and think-tanks
where Aznar could be based, speaking agencies, foundations. In a town where
politics is a revolving door, they have plenty of experience in
rehabilitating former politicians.
In many ways they are a deeply attractive group. They are highly
intelligent, idealistic and loyal to each other and to those who take their
side. They tend to be extremely well informed about the areas they are
interested in and they use their knowledge to good effect. They are not
creatures of fashion and will toil away on territorial disputes in countries
such as Georgia or Moldova that have dipped out of the limelight. There is a
studied modesty about their significance in the American political system
that is married to a dogged devotion to the causes they espouse.
And, as the situation in Iraq lurches from crisis to crisis, they are quick
to point the finger at other factions in the administration. Some, like the
neo-con thinker Max Boot, have called for Rumsfeld to resign. Others have
tried to pin the blame on Powell. At a recent seminar, former policy adviser
and now columnist Robert Kagan said: "If the secretary of state had spent as
much time speaking to allies as he did talking to (writer) Bob Woodward, we
might have had some support on the ground." In a stinging article in The
Washington Post last month, Kagan hit out at the whole administration: "All
but the most blindly devoted Bush supporters can see that Bush
administration officials have no clue about what to do in Iraq tomorrow,
much less a month from now. The Bush administration is evidently in a panic,
and this panic is being conveyed to the American people."
Hoover Institution, Stanford, California. On a cool, cloudy morning in the
spring of 1998, Texas governor George W. Bush travelled through Silicon
Valley to the Stanford campus for an introduction to foreign policy. The
master of ceremonies was George Schultz, Reagan's hawkish secretary of
state, who had brought together half a dozen of his colleagues from the
conservative Hoover Institution at the university (including Rice, then the
Stanford provost). As he sat chewing the fat with these professors, Bush had
still not formally announced his intention to run. The conversation
meandered from one topic to another and, gradually, this group of foreign-
policy hawks, who had been close to Reagan, discovered that they were
growing to like the young Bush.
Many of these thinkers had as much belief in power as the neo-cons, but a
less idealistic view of human nature. They have been labelled "assertive" or
"Jacksonian" nationalists after Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the
US. Jacksonians have consistently supported spending for defence and have
never been reluctant to use weapons once purchased. Yet their aim is to
enhance American power, not to save the world.
Robin West, an oil man and former assistant secretary of interior in the
Reagan administration, explains: "Cheney and Rumsfeld are different from the
neo-cons. They have a lot of experience. Their attitude is that these are
problems that have to be dealt with. If not now, when? If not by us, then by
whom?"
In the Ford administration in 1975, Rumsfeld and Cheney led the offensive
against secretary of state Henry Kissinger's policy of detente towards the
Soviet Union - which they believed undersold American power. Morton
Abramowitz, who served in the Pentagon at the time, is quoted as saying "I
remember vividly (Rumsfeld) beat the pants off Kissinger."
This history of hawkishness is confirmed by a very senior former official
who looks back to the debates in the first Bush administration. "I think
Cheney in the first Bush administration was the odd man out on Iraq," he
says. "He wanted to go into Baghdad but was surrounded by George Bush Snr as
president, General Powell as chairman of the joint chiefs, Brent Scowcroft
as national security adviser and James Baker as secretary of state. I'm not
as surprised by his subsequent behaviour as some."
James Lindsay, an analyst at the Council of Foreign Relations who served on
Clinton's National Security Council, explains the difference between the
Jacksonian and the Wilsonian strands of hawkish thinking: "If you want to
understand what they believe in, look at what they do, not what they say.
Within a year of the invasion of Afghanistan they introduced a budget with
zero dollars for rebuilding Afghanistan. If they were interested in
democracy they would have done it in Haiti."
Although Jacksonians believe that international institutions can be more of
a burden than a benefit, and that an America unbound will be better able to
defend itself from terrorism, they are pragmatic enough to be willing to use
institutions when it serves their purposes. "The administration does not say
it will not work with others, but it has strong preferences about how to
work with others," says Lindsay. "First, it prefers coalitions of the
willing to international institutions or permanent alliances. Second, it
will go to international institutions, but it does so out of pragmatism to
achieve a particular goal rather than out of principle - it is
'multilateralism a la carte'."
What distinguishes the Jacksonians is their belief in the extent of
American power, and their optimism about its impact in securing US
objectives. Stephen Krasner, a professor at the Hoover Institution and a
close colleague of Rice, says the US has had the most successful foreign
policy of any country ever. "Vietnam is the only major blip. The French have
not won a war since Napoleon. The Germans have had a catastrophic foreign
policy. This means that neither country is in a position to have great
confidence in foreign-policy projects." But, after the cold war, the
Jacksonians have been concerned to maintain US power in the face of
terrorism and rogue states. "What's new is that there is a disconnect
between underlying levels of power (gross domestic product, military power)
and the ability to create massive disruption. A country such as North Korea
with less than 1 per cent of the GDP of America, or a terrorist group, can
create a strategic challenge killing hundreds of thousands or even millions
with a conventional or dirty nuclear weapon," says Krasner.
The Iraq war was a central plank of a new strategy of asserting American
power in this unstable world. However, instead of broadcasting American
power to the world, as the Jacksonians had hoped, the intervention has
simply shown its limits by getting 130,000 US soldiers bogged down in a
quagmire from which they cannot escape. The goal of this group was to keep
the troop commitments down to the lowest level possible - which put them on
a collision course with the Wilsonians, whose central goal was to build a
democracy.
"Iraq looks extremely bad now and, unless the administration can make it
look plausible, there will be very little appetite for military
intervention," says Krasner. "The single big question is, 'will we be able
to make Iraq work?' and if that isn't possible, then you will not see
decisive interventions in areas where there is any ambiguity. You will only
see intervention where there is a clear threat."
Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, argues that because of
the central tension between the Jacksonians and the Wilsonians the Bush
coalition has unravelled. "The neo-conservative agenda was a policy which
required a huge commitment of resources. The Jacksonian agenda was about
going in and coming out. In an odd way you got transformation on the cheap.
That meant that you got not an imperial foreign policy, but a failed
imperial foreign policy." Instead of concentrating their fire on their
Democratic opponents, the different groups in the administration seem to be
trying to pin the blame for Iraq on each other - and one of the keys to
understanding the durability of the revolution will be found in the result
of those arguments. But perhaps the real answer to whether the Bush
Revolution will continue lies in how far it has influenced his opponent.
The Rialto Restaurant, Cambridge, Massachusetts. This is Kerry country - on
the fringes of the Harvard campus, this restaurant is a magnet for political
thinkers and doers. A government-in-waiting is assembling. Dinner is hosted
by Nick Mitropoulis, the veteran Democrat organiser who was a senior aide to
presidential hopeful Michael Dukakis. The restaurant's celebrity chef, Jody
Adams, explains that her menu combines the best of local Boston food with
European influences. Is this another metaphor, like the cicadas, for a
future Kerry administration? Or does it signify that the pro- active,
interventionist, pre-emptive stance that Bush took is now common currency
between Republicans and Democrats?
It's a question troubling many of these Democrats as they think through a
return to power. Bill Antholis, director of studies at the German Marshall
Fund who served on Clinton's National Security Council, sets out the central
dilemma: "The question that is really bubbling away among Democrats is,
'just how different will we be able to be?'" Antholis's conundrum has two
components: the substance of policy and the style of diplomacy.
Kerry's campaign has not challenged any of the fundamental principles
behind the substance of US foreign policy. He has said frequently that he
wants to make sure that America maintains its military superiority; he has
echoed Bush's boast that he will not ask for "a permission slip" from
America's allies to protect its security; and he has been forthright in his
determination to carry on the war on terror. Graham Allison, professor of
government at Harvard who served as assistant secretary of defence in the
Clinton administration, agrees that a Kerry presidency coming in after 9/11
would necessarily share many of the features of Bush's foreign policy.
"Transatlantic tensions will get much worse whoever wins. The structural
factors are negative: no common enemy; military competence on one side but
not the other. Terrorism will divide more than it unites. Terrorists have
discovered that telling people 'stick with the Americans and you'll be a
target, keep your distance and you'll be fine' is powerfully persuasive."
Strobe Talbott, president of The Brookings Institution and former deputy to
Madeleine Albright, secretary of state in the Clinton administration, argues
that after 9/11 Democrats shared the Republicans' fears of terrorism and
weapons of mass destruction. "The Bush administration was right to identify
Iraq as a major problem. A President Gore or McCain or Bradley would have
ratcheted up the pressure, and sooner or later resorted to force."
Tony Blinken, the Democratic director of foreign policy at the Senate,
agrees: "There would be substantively very little difference between a Bush
and Kerry administration. There would be stylistic differences. I don't
think Europeans should be under the illusion that there would be a
substantive difference."
Just how different will the style be? Larry Summers, president of Harvard
University and former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration,
argues that the problems for the transatlantic relationship go beyond
perceptions of threat to structural changes that started with the end of the
cold war. "We have a problem of malign intent in Europe (a strategy of
containing the US) and malign neglect in the US (a failure to consult)," he
says.
Even under the Clinton administration, allies were not dealt with as
equals. The model was to talk to everybody, make a decision on behalf of
everybody - and then expect them to follow American leadership. Phil Gordon,
who served on the National Security Council as director of European affairs
under Clinton, says Clinton changed over time. "We came in talking about
'assertive multilateralism' and ended talking about the 'indispensable
nation'."
This seems to suggest that the transatlantic tensions are like a Russian
doll, with different layers of alienation piled on top of each other. Even
if you remove the outer coating of the Bush Revolution, you will simply
reveal another layer of tension caused by differing threat perceptions after
9/11. This in turn conceals the shift from a "great power" foreign policy to
a "hegemonic one" that came with the end of the cold war. Finally, in the
centre, you have the core difference between European and American societies
on the role of government, religion and the use of force. These differences
mean that a change of president will not change the underlying dynamics -
even if the differences in style go a long way to removing the bad blood of
the past year.
Although most people agree that the Bush Revolution has reached its
high-water mark, they also agree that its central components could live on
whoever wins the election in November. The grand strategist and historian,
John Lewis Gaddis, argues that this is because the "Bush Revolution" was in
fact no revolution at all. "Pre-emption, prevention and unilateralism are
not new, but date back to the first homeland security attack on Washington
in 1814." Bush differed, and was revolutionary not because he was the first
to have this vision but because he was the first man in the office who found
himself with both the desire and the opportunity - after 9/11 - to implement
this vision. And now he is finding that America lacks both the domestic will
and the international support to pull it off. New research by the
Texas-based political scientist, Richard Stoll, shows that Bush's ratings on
Iraq go down one point for every 30 American casualties.
This explains an emerging consensus that, having been through a period of
Wilsonianism, America is about to retreat into isolationism. It will not be
the isolationism of the past because America's economy is too globalised and
the country maintains troops in 130 countries around the world. Instead, it
will see a less ambitious foreign policy, focused on homeland defence and
dealing with threats rather than with spreading democracy.
The new multilateralism that is emerging is a sign of this. It is not a
multilateralism of conviction, but a new strand of isolationism for an
inter-dependent age. The new motto of the administration could be seen as a
shift from "multilateral if possible, unilateral if necessary" under
Clinton, to "unilateral if we care about it, multilateral if we don't". On
Iraq, Iran and North Korea, multilateralism is not driven by a desire to get
things done but by a desire to get out. It is seen as a geo- political pause
button, a way for America to regroup its political authority and rebuild its
military resources.
The Europeans may have the moral high ground for now, but they should be
careful what they wish for: this new humility in Washington may not be what
they really want. Stanley Hoffman, European studies professor at Harvard
University and a tireless critic of Bush's policies, is very worried about
the lessons that will be drawn from the failure in Iraq. "What I am
sometimes afraid of is that many people who supported him and are now
disillusioned could become isolationist: we should stop nation building,
stop fighting wars. We haven't got much from our allies - let them clear up
the mess." Michael Ignatieff, Carr professor for human rights policy at
Harvard University, goes even further: "This is not a country of fervent,
crusading imperialists. The extraordinary thing is the self-sufficiency of
the country. The big fact about liberal interventionism in the 1990s was
that it depended on American power and on the assumption that we could do it
with impunity. Now we are back to Black Hawk Down days. It's so bad in Iraq
that it has made the case for liberal interventionism impossible."
If they are right, the future for transatlantic relations is bleak. The
core feature of American foreign policy that Europeans dislike (hegemonic
leadership rather than a partnership of equals) will continue, while the
benefits they draw from the transatlantic relationship (engagement to solve
global problems) may not.
As Andrew Moravcsik, professor of government at Harvard, argues: "While
Europeans focus on avoiding the next Iraq, they might find it is a Kosovo
and that they want America to intervene." If the US gets a really bloody
nose in Iraq, they might not want to step in. It is a strange thing to imagine now, but Europeans may yet long for the activism of the "Bush
Revolution".
