The George W. Bush Presidency - Foreign Policy

POLITICAL LEADERS AND THEIR ASSESSMENT

THE GEORGE W. BUSH PRESIDENCY VOLUME III FOREIGN POLICY

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POLITICAL LEADERS AND THEIR ASSESSMENT

THE GEORGE W. BUSH PRESIDENCY VOLUME III FOREIGN POLICY

MEENA BOSE AND PAUL FRITZ EDITORS

New York

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CONTENTS Preface

vii Meena Bose

Introduction

xi Paul Fritz

Part I: Ideas and Ideology Behind George W. Bush’s Foreign Policy Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

The ‘Imperial’ Presidency Revisited: Lessons from the Administration of George W. Bush Byron W. Daynes and Glen Sussman

Chapter 7

3

‘The Evil Soil of Poverty and Strife’: Similarities and Differences between the Bush Doctrine and Truman Doctrine Dane J. Cash

17

“American Empire: Get Used to It”: How Deeply Did the Neocon Fantasy Penetrate the Bush Administration?

Peter J. Kuznick

31

Communicating a Rationale for War: George W. Bush and the Rhetoric of Imperial Righteousness Ann E. Burnette and Wayne L. Kraemer

45

Commentary: National Security And International Law Michael V. Hayden, Peter Feaver, John Bellinger and Matthew C. Waxman

Part II: The War on Terror and Iraq Chapter 6

1

59

67

George W. Bush and the United Nations: Idealism’s Departure from Collective Security Jerry Pubantz

69

Presidential Decision Making in Iraq: Bush vs. Bush/Phronesis vs. Faith Michael A. Genovese

83

vi

Contents

Chapter 8

Occupying Iraq: A Tragedy Foretold Carolyn Eisenberg

Chapter 9

Commentary: The Bush Administration and the Decision to Go to War in Iraq John D. Negroponte, Porter J. Goss, Tom Basile, Robert James (Jim) Nicholson and Lawrence B. Wilkerson

Part III: Foreign Policy Beyond the War on Terror Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 14

119

129

Beyond the Standard Interpretation of George W. Bush’s National Security Policy: Decision Making on North Korea William Newmann

131

Tracing Rhetorical Shifts in US-Sino Relations: George W. Bush’s Discourse Regarding Taiwan and the PRC Michelle Murray Yang

145

President Bush’s Rhetoric and Policy Against Genocide Ben Voth

Part IV: George W. Bush in the Eyes of the World Chapter 13

107

161 175

Cause or Effect? Anti-Americanism and U.S. Foreign Policy under George W. Bush Max Paul Friedman

177

Europeans’ Views of the Bush Presidency: Reaction to U.S. Interventionism Francesca Vassallo

191

List of Contributors

207

Index

211

PREFACE Meena Bose Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, US

The George W. Bush Presidency transformed American politics and public policy. From economic policies to domestic initiatives to foreign affairs, the legacy of the 43rd presidential administration will endure well into the twenty-first century. Many policy choices sparked heated public debate during the presidency and continue to do so today: tax cuts, education reform, interrogation policies, surveillance of suspected terrorists, military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, to name a few. How these and other decisions will be evaluated historically remains to be seen; for now, perhaps the clearest consensus is that the Bush 43 presidency’s actions were highly controversial – and consequential.

The chapters in these three edited volumes provide a comprehensive assessment of the George W. Bush presidency’s leadership and policies.1 They include selected scholarly papers as well as commentary from administration officials and other speakers who participated in Hofstra University’s Conference on the George W. Bush Presidency, March 24-26, 2015.2 (Scholars revised their papers following the conference for the volume, and speakers reviewed their commentary to make stylistic changes and clarifications.)

In planning for Hofstra’s twelfth presidential conference, the program committee discussed whether the conference was taking place too close to the Bush 43 presidency.

Would the passage of time and ability to view long-term results of policy choices permit more complete analyses? Hofstra decided to move forward with the conference because of the importance of developing an early historical assessment of the presidency that encompasses perspectives from scholars, journalists, and administration officials, and these edited volumes provide a record of those evaluations.

The Hofstra presidential conferences, which began in 1982 with a conference on the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and have examined every presidential administration since then up to George W. Bush, are renowned for producing a unique historical study of the modern presidency.

Subsequent analyses will expand our understanding of this presidency and its place in American politics, and the broad, interdisciplinary approach and multiple perspectives in these volumes will inform those analyses.

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Organizing a conference with more than thirty sessions, approximately 60 scholarly papers, and more than two dozen administration officials and other speakers, is a monumental task, as is developing volumes of selected papers and commentary. For help with conference planning, Hofstra thanks the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, especially Director Alan C. Lowe, who participated in the conference (some of his commentary is in the first volume), as well as the Office of George W. Bush. The administration officials and invited speakers who participated in the conference all made special efforts to join us for the sessions, and Hofstra extends deepest gratitude to them for taking the time to inform the historical record.

Hofstra gives special thanks to the Joseph G. Astman Distinguished Conference Scholar, author and New York Times journalist Peter Baker, for sharing his insights on the Bush presidency in multiple conference sessions (some of his commentary is in the first volume); and to Dr. Jeffrey A. Engel, Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, for indispensable advice in conference planning. Hofstra also thanks Dr. Engel, Dr. Graham C. Dodds, Associate Professor of Political Science at Concordia University, Dr. Martha Joynt Kumar, Director of the White House Transition Project and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Towson University, and Dr. Shirley Anne Warshaw, Harold G. Evans Chair of Eisenhower Leadership Studies at Gettysburg College, for sharing their insights about leadership and the George W. Bush presidency in the highly instructive closing plenary session of the conference.

Many offices and individuals at Hofstra were indispensable to making the conference a success, including, but not limited to: the Board of Trustees; Hofstra Cultural Center; Office of University Relations, Hofstra University Museum; Hofstra University Library Special Collections; President Stuart Rabinowitz; former Provost Herman A. Berliner; Dean of the Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Bernard J. Firestone; the conference program committee; faculty who served as panel and forum chairs; and student panelists and hosts.

Hofstra conveys its deepest gratitude to Mr. Peter S. Kalikow for establishing the University’s Peter S. Kalikow Chair in Presidential Studies in 2006 and the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency in 2007. Mr. Kalikow inspires students and faculty alike with his dedication to advancing scholarly and public understanding of the American presidency. His continuing encouragement, counsel, and assistance in organizing events such as the Conference on the George W. Bush Presidency are instrumental in developing that understanding.

Developing the conference and these three edited volumes would not have been possible without the intellectual contributions, sage advice, and tireless efforts of three individuals at Hofstra: Dr. Rosanna Perotti, chair of the Department of Political Science and a former presidential conference organizer; Dr. Richard Himelfarb, associate conference director and co-editor of the second volume; and Dr. Paul Fritz, coordinator for student hosts for the conference and co-editor of the third volume. Their absolute dedication to informed, respectful analysis in presidential studies is a model for scholarly discourse, and their expertise informs each of the three volumes.

The Kalikow Center has worked with Nova Science Publishers on several edited volumes, and gives special thanks to Nadya Columbus, Alexandra Columbus, and their fine editorial staff for their continuing dedication to and steadfast support of presidency studies.

Preface

ix

ENDNOTES 1.

2

The three volumes are: Meena Bose, ed., The George W. Bush Presidency, Volume I: The Constitution, Politics, and Policy Making (Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2017); Meena Bose and Richard Himelfarb, eds., The George W. Bush Presidency, Volume II: Domestic Policy (Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2017); and Meena Bose and Paul Fritz, The George W. Bush Presidency, Volume III: Foreign Policy (Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2017).

For more information on Hofstra’s March 2015 Conference on the George W. Bush Presidency, see the conference website, www.hofstra.edu/gwb.

INTRODUCTION Paul Fritz Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, US

Presidential candidate George W. Bush spoke of the need to project American strength while practicing a humble foreign policy.1 But after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, President Bush’s foreign policy was anything but humble. Rather, the “war on terror” was a bold demonstration of American might with the intent of creating “a balance of power that favors human freedom.” 2 Arguably no modern president has pursued a more ambitious or controversial foreign policy agenda.

A horrific attack like that of 9/11 was bound to define U.S. foreign policy, no matter who sat in the Oval Office. Yet the exact policy response was not predetermined. The Bush White House, with its particular ideological orientation and cast of key administration figures, launched a militarized and largely unilateral response to 9/11. Having tremendous international support but implementing an initial military strategy dominated by the United States, the Bush administration first invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and cripple al Qaeda. This was quickly followed up with the extremely controversial 2003 invasion of Iraq, supported by a “coalition of the willing” but largely a U.S. effort. The United States is still dealing with the aftermath of these wars and other elements of the Bush administration’s war on terror in many ways, and likely will for years to come.

As important as the war on terror and invasion of Iraq are for President Bush’s foreign policy legacy, these events do not completely define it. A rising China, a nuclear North Korea, alliance relations, and international humanitarian efforts all constitute critical elements of the President Bush’s foreign policy. In addition, it is clear that there was a marked shift in the second term of the Bush presidency where some of the unilateralism of the first term gave way to more emphasis on traditional multilateral diplomacy and foreign policy efforts outside the realms of terrorism and war. Thus, President Bush’s foreign policy legacy is a complex and multifaceted one, even if there is little doubt that it is and likely will remain controversial.

The essays and commentaries in this volume take up many of these issues and represent an effort to assess the foreign policy of President George W. Bush. All were presented at the 2015 Hofstra University Conference on the George W. Bush Presidency, which gathered scholars, journalists, Bush administration officials, and others to examine the Bush administration’s domestic and foreign policy legacies. The foreign policy discussion at the

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conference included many critics but also defenders of the Bush administration, and the essays and commentaries presented here reflect the debates at the conference.

The first section of the volume explores the ideas that shaped the Bush administration’s foreign policy. Exploring issues of presidential power and evoking the notion of the imperial presidency, Byron W. Daynes and Glen Sussman argue President Bush held an expansive view of executive authority and, driven by 9/11 as well as his own political ethos and world view, ultimately “created a legacy that was antagonistic to aspects of the constitutional Presidency.” Dane J. Cash argues the Bush Doctrine of protecting and promoting democracy and free markets was similar to the Truman Doctrine in end goals, but Bush’s prioritization of preemptive military action and regime change over a reactive military posture and focus on economic stabilization led to the foreign policy disaster of the Iraq War. While there were many foreign policy realists in the Bush administration, Peter Jeffrey Kuznick demonstrates the arguably outsized influence of key figures from neoconservative movement on Bush’s foreign policy during his first term. Kuznick argues the resulting “Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity” to strengthen Pax Americana led directly to the disastrous decision to invade Iraq. Arguing that rhetoric is critical to give meaning and framing to potential military action, Anne E. Burnette and Wayne L. Kraemer look to Bush’s use of the rhetoric of “imperial righteousness” to justify the war on terror.

Burnette and Kramer suggest Bush’s imperial righteousness framing not only justified preemptive military action post-9/11 but also stifled domestic deliberation in the lead up to military action.

The commentary from administration officials in this section provides context for post9/11 decisions and complements the scholarly examination of Bush’s foreign policy in a number of ways. Michael V. Hayden notes the urgency of the post-9/11 world and highlights some differences between the Bush administration and key allies over the war on terror. Peter D. Feaver suggests that far from ignoring international law, the Bush administration was hyper-legalistic, and that many of the policies of the Bush administration have been vindicated by the continuation of those policies by the Obama administration. John B. Bellinger and Matthew C. Waxman also argue that the Bush administration took international law extremely seriously, and Waxman presents a legal justification for the doctrine of preemption and suggests that any president would have accepted such a doctrine after 9/11.

The second section of the volume looks directly to the most controversial and arguably consequential aspects of Bush’s foreign policy: the war on terror and the Iraq War. Jerry Pubantz argues the Bush administration’s doctrine of preemption and decision to invade Iraq with a “coalition of the willing,” driven by a deep moralism combined with a unilateral impulse into a cohesive foreign policy approach, shook the foundations of the U.S.-built world order and ultimately missed an opportunity to rethink the concept of collective security.

Michael A. Genovese compares the decision making of George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, ultimately arguing the first President Bush employed a better process of decision making in the 1991 Gulf War than the second President Bush did in the 2003 Iraq War. Carolyn Eisenberg argues an overwhelming drive to invade Iraq in 2003 led the Bush administration to ignore the warning signs seen clearly in 1991 about overthrowing the Saddam Hussein regime and occupying Iraq, leading not only to the chaos of post-2003 Iraq but also to the high human costs for both Americans and Iraqis.

Much of the administration commentary in this section defends the war on terror and the Iraq War. John D. Negroponte illuminates the division at the United Nations leading up the

Introduction

xiii

invasion of Iraq, but suggests the Bush administration was able to work effectively with Security Council in the aftermath of the invasion and that the second term of the Bush presidency saw a return to traditional multilateralism. Porter J. Goss notes the Bush administration began looking at Iraq in 2001 and ultimately got a lot wrong about the situation, but argues the post-9/11 world required a wide view of potential threats. Offering a defense of the Iraq War, Thomas J. Basile argues the Bush administration was forced to deal with a fundamentally new type of threat to national security post-9/11. Robert James (Jim) Nicholson suggests that while there were multiple missteps in the war and occupation of Iraq, leaving Saddam Hussein in power posed a significant threat to the U.S. and the world.

Lawrence B. Wilkerson strongly critiques the Bush administration’s use of intelligence to justify the Iraq War and argues the invasion shattered the unity the U.S. could have capitalized on post-9/11.

The third section of the volume addresses a few critical aspects of foreign policy beyond the war on terror and Iraq. Examining President Bush’s approach to North Korea, William Newmann argues the President wanted robust debate on policy options but eventually sided with the traditional realist approach of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the neoconservatives and hegemonic realists in the administration. Michelle Murray Yang examines Bush’s rhetoric toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan, showing as a candidate he articulated a tough policy toward the PRC but as president softened support of Taiwan and sought increased ties with mainland China. Ben Voth looks to President Bush’s rhetoric against genocide, noting a consistent rhetorical doctrine that led Bush to speak strongly against human rights abuses throughout his time in office.

The final section of the volume seeks to illuminate how the world saw George W. Bush as president. Max Paul Friedman takes up the issue of anti-Americanism during the Bush presidency, arguing the marked drop in support for the United States shortly after the post9/11 upswing was driven not by dislike for the America or its values, but by the Bush administration’s policies that eschewed multilateralism and international institutions.

Francesca Vassallo, examining public opinion in long-standing European allies, finds consistently negative views of the U.S. and George W. Bush over both terms and suggests a European public unwilling to forgive a president for policy choices can hinder transatlantic relations.

There is little doubt scholars and policymakers will continue to debate George W. Bush’s foreign policy legacy for years to come. This volume offers many critical insights into these issues, and sets the foundation for further research about President Bush’s ambitious and controversial foreign policy.

ENDNOTES 1

2

Presidential Debate, October 11, 2000. Commission on Presidential Debates, http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=october-11-2000-debate-transcript.

George W. Bush, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002 (preface), http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/63562.pdf.

PART I: IDEAS AND IDEOLOGY BEHIND GEORGE W. BUSH’S FOREIGN POLICY

In: The George W. Bush Presidency. Volume III Editors: Meena Bose and Paul Fritz

ISBN: 978-1-63485-783-3 © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 1

THE ‘IMPERIAL’ PRESIDENCY REVISITED: LESSONS FROM THE ADMINISTRATION OF GEORGE W. BUSH Byron W. Daynes1 and Glen Sussman2 1 2

Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, US Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, US

ABSTRACT George W. Bush has been out of office for eight years. In this chapter, we intend to subject his presidency to an examination based on several factors that have bearing on presidential power or perhaps, in this case, presidential abuse of power. The primary question we will focus on concerns to what extent did the presidency of George W. Bush strengthen or weaken the “institution” of the American presidency? In examining this question, we focus on three personal factors of President Bush -- namely, his political ethos, his world view, and his go-it-alone attitude. We then analyze the potential impact of the Bush presidency on future presidents.

INTRODUCTION When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.

Richard Nixon, 1977

On the Fly Leaf of the Popular Library edition of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s The Imperial Presidency (1974), Schlesinger asks the following question: “. . . When did our presidents begin to think they had the power to lie, spy, wage secret war, defy the law, tamper with the political process and override Congress?”1 Although this question was directed at Richard Nixon’s presidency in 1973, it is a question that we need to ask of any individual who

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assumes this office and particularly, from what we have observed, it needed to have been asked of George W. Bush.

Schlesinger went on to argue in the Foreword of his book that the constitutional concept of “separation of powers” creates a “permanent tension between the Presidency and the other branches of government.” He then observed how “presidential primacy” turned into “presidential supremacy” and by the 1970s we saw the transformation of the “Constitutional presidency” into the “imperial presidency” that may evolve into a “revolutionary presidency.”2 Three decades later, Schlesinger stated in the Introduction to the Mariner (Houghton Mifflin) edition of The Imperial Presidency that: . . . the American presidency has come to see itself in messianic terms as the appointed savior of a world . . . This view seems hard to reconcile with the American Constitution.

The impact of 9/11 and of the overhanging terrorist threat gives more power than ever to the Imperial Presidency and places the separation of powers ordained by the Constitution under unprecedented, and at times unbearable, strain.3

IN SEARCH OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRESIDENCY It was quite clear from the beginning that George W. Bush sought to expand the power of his presidency, e.g., rejecting the Kyoto Protocol only two months into his administration. He also linked executive power derived from 9/11 in hopes it would give him added leverage over other decision-makers and allow him to more easily extend the power of his presidency vis-a-vis those decision-makers. Having said this, other actors in the Bush administration including Vice President Dick Cheney, David Addington, General Counsel at the Pentagon, and John Woo among others pushed for a “unified executive” that frames the issue at hand - namely, the “president’s hierarchical control over implementation (“execution”) of federal law.”4 This is discussed later in this chapter.

While some previous presidents have attempted to expand presidential power, it took on a new and threatening character during the presidency of George W. Bush. For instance, in Saving the Constitution from Lawyers, Robert Spitzer details the shaping and development of Bush’s “Unitary Presidency” and his expansion of the Commander in Chief powers, an argument that provides us with great insight into how decisions were made and by whom during the Bush years in office.5 Or, as Dana Nelson wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “if people have found Bush’s exercise of executive power alarming, they should not only begin questioning presidential candidates about it, they should make it clear to their congressional representatives that they want these excess powers checked.”6 To what extent did Bush respond to domestic crises? How did he compare with Lincoln and FDR, for instance, who were confronted with profound threats? As Jack Goldsmith informs us in his book, The Terror Presidency, although Lincoln and FDR in exerting presidential power circumvented constitutional limits, they avoided these limits for very different reasons from that sought by Bush.7 For Lincoln and FDR, survival of the nation came first. For George W. Bush, it was for extending the power of the presidency to prevent another 9/11, regardless of the consequences.

The ‘Imperial’ Presidency Revisited

5

Michael Genovese, in his intriguing book Memo to a New President, writes a cautionary note to the next president indicating that: We renounced kings over two hundred years ago. We replaced the king with the law, not a presidency. And if your power and authority have swelled in the past two hundred years, it is still a nation of laws over which you preside.8

Along these lines, as Jane Meyer argues in her book The Dark Side about the war on terror, President George W. Bush and his Administration used extreme tactics against terrorists in the name of national security while violating the Constitution.9 John Dean, a central figure in the Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon presidency also offered his assessment of the Bush administration.10 Here was a former counsel to the president of the United States who was clearly aware of the consequences of the exercise of excessive power by a president and his associates. When turning his attention to the Bush administration, he argued that based upon the evidence he saw, he concluded that the actions taken by the president and vice president constituted scandal that was “worse than Watergate.”

THE POLITICAL ETHOS OF GEORGE W. BUSH The institution of the presidency has evolved over time and it has taken on the individual characteristics and idiosyncrasies of each of its forty-four occupants. Such changes have been important to the extent that they have affected the office of the presidency. To what extent have personal traits affected personal behavior? Which personal traits are identified with George W. Bush? In Bush’s case, religion offered a foundation upon which he was guided in politics and policy. James Pfiffner saw that religion became a fundamental aspect of George Bush’s personal and public life when he made the decision in 1986 to stop drinking alcohol at the age of forty. Once he stopped drinking, Pfiffner also added that this led Bush to even grander aspirations. As he states: “According to a Bush friend, Bush told him when he was Governor of Texas, ‘I believe God wants me to run for president.” 11 And Stephen Wayne added that in preparation for the war in Iraq, Bush indicated that: Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord’s will. . . . I’m surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible. And then, of course, I pray for personal strength and for forgiveness. 12

While religion offers a foundation upon which Bush was guided in politics and policy, ideology was the prism through which he saw a specific course of political action. As Stephen Wayne has argued, where “Religion provides the foundation for doing what is right and for justifying actions on high moral grounds,” it is clear that “ideology provides a clear vision for Bush. It enables him to perceive and understand events and actions within a larger world view.” Wayne also explained that “. . . [i]deology. . . enables him to perceive and understand events and actions within a larger worldview. It is a tool for cognition, comprehension, and consistency as well as a shortcut for quick and decisive decision making.13 Taken together,

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the cumulative impact of religion and ideology on Bush’s vision of the world leads us to a proposition that it is not surprising that in the political world, Bush identified with Christian conservatives. David Paul Kuhn, CBSNews.com’s chief political writer during the 2004 presidential campaign captured the Christian conservative view of Bush and his politics in the words of Rev. Lou Sheldon, chair of the Traditional Values Coalition, a network of 43,000 conservative churches: the “[Republican] platform is our Bible,” and “George W. Bush is one of us,” and “as long as the Republican Party adheres to conservative Christian values,” Rev. Sheldon “will adhere to it.”14 Moreover, as Kuhn explains, “Mr. Bush has walked the conservative line. He has backed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, a partial-birth abortion ban and public funding for religious schools as well as charities.” These factors help to clarify the political ethos that made-up George W. Bush.

BUSH’S “WORLD VIEW” In addition to the personal traits of religion and ideology guiding his actions, two major concerns that framed these traits were his world view and his go-it-alone attitude that he held during the time he was in office. His world view, we maintain, led him to virtually ignore diplomacy and peaceful relations with a good portion of the world, and encouraged him to reinforce American supremacy in the eyes of the world.

Bush’s view of the world encouraged him to set a far-reaching goal to, in the words of Pat Buchanan, “make the world democratic”15 - - regardless of consequences. This goal bears some similarity to Woodrow Wilson’s international objective of making the world “safe for democracy,” 16 except Bush extended this concept even further. In Pat Buchanan’s words: Bush has gone Wilson one better. He is not only going to make the world safe for democracy, he is going to make the world democratic. . . . So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” 17 [italics were added by the authors of this chapter]

What this means, suggests Buchanan, is that “. . . Mr. Bush has just asserted a right to interfere in the internal affairs of every nation on earth. Why? Because the ‘survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.” 18 Yet it is the rule of law that we must enthrone in our democratic system and not the rule of any one president. As Gene Healy has written: Today, ever-increasing numbers of Americans resent President Bush’s arrogant insistence that he is the sole ‘decider’ on all matters relating to national security. Many see his repeated appeals to the war metaphor as a cynical attempt to concentrate power and eliminate checks and balances. 19

Internationally, Bush justified his invasion of Iraq in 2003 creating the Bush Doctrine that formalized this aspect of his world view, announcing to the world that the U.S. reserved the right to initiate preemptive military action to protect the US. homeland. But, as one observer noted, “. . . [the] antagonistic quality of Bush’s words and deeds has no doubt contributed to

The ‘Imperial’ Presidency Revisited

7

the poor reception of the doctrine around the world” as it was “overwhelmingly negative.”20 President Bush’s “shock and awe” attack on Iraq resulted in regime change, nation building, insurgency, and civil war. During his second term in office, although public opinion began to turn against the war, the president remained committed to his original position. After all, as far as he was concerned he had made the “correct decision” and he would not deviate from his course; as he himself stated on February 11, 2008 in an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday: “I make decisions on what I think is right for the United States based upon principles. I frankly don’t give a damn about the polls.”21 Having said that, during his final years in office he had become more willing to accept changes in several areas including limited diplomacy with Iran and North Korea regarding nuclear issues. Early in his final year in office, perhaps it was the case that his concern with his legacy trumped continuing his hard-line references and lack of a diplomatic approach in global affairs.

George W. Bush’s “single-minded, “go it alone” view of the world was not limited to international affairs. Notwithstanding concerns raised about civil liberties and violations of the Constitution by the Bush administration, another clear example of his single-minded world view at home was his environmentally-friendly rhetoric and his assault on the environment in practice. For instance, the publishers of Robert Divine’s book Bush Versus the Environment state on the back cover that the “White House is quietly undermining the entire system of environmental safeguards that has developed over the past thirty years.” Bush had an opportunity to employ political capital in the environmental domain. However, he chose a different course. Instead of following the lead set forth by his father, Bush (41), who championed the Clean Air Act Amendments in 1990, Bush (43) decided to follow Ronald Reagan’s path, where economic growth overshadowed environmental protection, instead of finding commonality between these two values. Regulations on business were viewed as harming jobs and the economy and scientists in the federal government were silenced or had their reports revised in an effort by the Bush administration to minimize the threat posed by climate change. The Bush Administration did this, as it was explained, by introducing a series of lawsuits that challenged “existing environmental laws,” in “ignoring scientific evidence,” and in overestimating “the costs” and underestimating the “benefits of regulations that protect human health and the environment.”22 One can see this in his attitude toward energy, fossil fuels and Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). From day one, the Bush administration pushed to open up ANWR to oil and gas exploration and drilling. In seeking to reverse three decades of bipartisan pro-environmental policies of his predecessors, Stephen Wayne argued that: On the environmental front, it included reopening public lands set aside for protection to commercial exploitation, weakening protection of endangered species, easing standards on air and water pollution (including those covering arsenic, mercury, selenium, and perchlorate), and rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and climate change.23

Although President Bush attempted to characterize himself as a (Theodore) Roosevelt conservationist, he took anti-environmental actions that produced the opposite results. This disjuncture was noted by Martha Marks, President of Republicans for Environmental Protection, who wrote: “Even my Republican eyes can see that President Bush has a long way to go before his conservation record can hold a candle to TR’s.”24 The point is that the

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environmental domain was a clear example of the debate over environmental protection and economic development. Bush used the power resources of the White House to tilt environmental policy making in favor of business and industry to the exclusion of including aspects of a “green” economy or a “clean energy” approach to policy making. As New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, put it regarding Vice President Cheney’s Energy Task Force in the early days of Bush’s first year in office “Vice President Dick Cheney released a report that was widely derided as a document written by and for Big Energy” and moreover, when “the list of people the task force met with was eventually leaked,” the American public learned that it was a “who’s who of energy industry executives, with environmental groups getting a chance to make their case only after the work was essentially done.”25

BUSH’S “GO-IT-ALONE” ATTITUDE Bush’s “go it alone” attitude also served to guide policy and, at times, to ignore the Constitution, circumvent it, or, on occasion, even undercut its principles of checks and balances and separation of powers. In essence, it tended to isolate his presidency in the political system, which served to avoid Congressional oversight and court examination that may well have limited his overextended executive power. His war actions were motivated by his own sense of executive dominance, bolstered by those advisors closest to him. To secure public support for what he was doing, Bush developed the technique of using “fear”- - fear of the unknown. He even had Homeland Security “color code” this “fear,” with threatening conditions ranging from the lowest condition of “green,” to the most severe condition of “red.”26 Fear was used to convince Americans to follow his unquestioned lead in Iraq, warning the public that Americans needed to do everything possible to, in the words of Jack Goldsmith, former Assistant Attorney General “. . . stop the next attack.”27 In short, the “go it alone” policy was intended to influence the public by using fear thereby making it easier to secure public support. Democrats who were not so sure about giving support to Bush found themselves in a situation where Bush used 9/11 as if it was implemented by Saddam Hussein.

Bush was careful to cover his backside by seeking congressional authorization for engaging in military affairs and taking the advice of UK Prime Minister and ally Tony Blair.

Having said this, where Blair supported Bush, Bush did not return the favor when Blair wanted Bush to support the Kyoto Protocol.

Another strategy Bush used was to declare himself as the final and only “decider.” This, in effect, centralized decision-making regarding war and foreign affairs in the president’s hands despite the fact that Congress also has established Constitutional powers over warmaking including the power to “declare” war, “raise” Armies, “maintain” a Navy, fund wartime actions, as well as determining United States treaty obligations to other countries.28 As he vigorously stated, “I listen to all voices, but mine is the final decision. . . I'm the decider, and I decide what is best.”29 [Italics added by the authors]. While presidents since the Cold War have clearly attempted to avoid “interference” by Congress over war power, the comment that “I’m the decider, and I decide what is best” tends to present a portrait of a president who is more likely to employ force rather than engage in diplomacy. In short, Bush can be viewed as giving no appearance of consensus-building.

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President Bush also relied on secrecy to prevent others from limiting his authority when it came to domestic and international affairs. As we noted above, early in his presidency, Bush appointed his Vice President to head an energy task force. Conflict arose between the president and the task force on one hand and members of Congress on the other hand when allegations were made that the task force met in secret with representatives from business and industry to shape energy policy while environmentalists were excluded from the meetings.

It is evident that presidents over the last several decades have given more responsibility to their vice presidents. From Mondale to Bush (41), from Gore to Cheney, modern vice presidents have wielded more power as they carried out the president’s agenda. This is a reflection of what has become known as the Unitary Executive. The Unitary Executive and its threat to constitutional democracy can be described as follows. First, Bush’s view of presidential power was that the president has inherent and limitless powers in his role as Commander in Chief above the system of checks and balances. Second, while Cheney personally advocated for a stronger president his view of a unitary executive took on a threatening character that was put into practice when President Bush (43) used executive power by issuing Executive Order 13292, “a little known document that grants the greatest expansion of power of the vice president in American history. The order gives the vice president the same ability to classify intelligence as the president. By controlling classification, the vice president can in effect control intelligence and, through that, foreign policy.”30 Secrecy was also used in incarcerating prisoners overseas and in the United States. There was a major effort made by the Bush Administration to prevent those persons, allegedly involved with Al Qaeda, to have access to the courts, or to attorneys or in knowing the specific charges brought against them. All the president had to do to ensure this, was to designate detainees as “unlawful enemy combatants” rather than simply “enemy combatant.”

This small distinction dramatically impacted those labeled, since an enemy combatant, according to the laws of war, must be thought to be a prisoner of war (POW), given all of the protections of the third Geneva Convention, but an “unlawful enemy combatant” was to receive no such protection. Yet Bush’s personal understanding of these two classifications allowed him to view these prisoner categories inconsistently in the way the detainees were treated, whether they were “enemy combatants,” or “unlawful enemy combatants.”

The Justice Department’s Inspector General’s Report of June 10, 2008 revealed that FBI agents witnessed those incarcerated at Guantánamo Bay: 1) being subjected to the use of bright strobe lights along with loud rock music, as well as 2) prolonged “short-shackling” where detainees hands were shackled close to their feet making it difficult to sit and\or stand, as well as 3) sleep deprivation, among others.31 The agents did not mention, nor apparently witness, any of the more extreme measures some prisoners and reporters talked about including the so-called “waterboarding”, where water was forced down the throats of cuffed detainees, being sodomized, or having phosphoric acid poured on them.32 Certainly George W. Bush could not be blamed for all that went on in the treatment of detainees, but he could be held accountable for setting a climate wherein such actions could take place, and in staffing his Administration with such persons as Dick Cheney, who felt quite comfortable in using such interrogation methods on detainees—all in the name of “national security.”

Finally, a conservative Supreme Court exercised its power and in a short period of time ruled against President Bush on four different occasions for some of these actions. The

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president was first chastened for attempting to strip habeas corpus from both citizens held captive and foreign persons labeled enemy combatants. It was in the Hamdi v. Rumsfeld case in 2004,33 that involved a United States citizen being held as an enemy combatant in the United States. The Supreme Court indicated that any U.S. citizen must receive a “meaningful opportunity”34 to find out why he/she was being detained. In that same year in the Rasul v.

Bush (2004) case, the Court indicated that those being held in Guantánamo Bay were under the jurisdiction of the United States and also had the right to the appeal process in U.S. courts.35 Two years later in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006) case,36 the Supreme Court accused George W. Bush of overstepping his authority in establishing a Military Commission to try detainees in Guantánamo Bay without first getting approval from the Congress to do so, since Hamdan, according to the Court, needed to be tried in a civilian court and not before a Military Commission. And in the final case of Boumediene v. Bush (2008),37 two years later, the Court ruled that prisoners in Guantánamo Bay had the right in federal courts to challenge the reasons they were being held.

This did not stop the president from expanding executive authority as Bush utilized an executive instrument known as signing statements. Signing statements are “written comment[s] issued by the President at the time of signing legislation” that “merely comment on the bill signed” but “more controversial statements involve claims by presidents that they believe some part of the legislation is unconstitutional and therefore they intend to ignore it or to implement it only in ways they believe is constitutional.”38 Bush found that adding critical signing statements attached to legislation was a useful method to increase his decision-making authority. As far as the signing statements were concerned, it was not so much the number of statements as it was the type of challenges to the Congress posed by the statements that made the difference. As political scientists, Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein, indicated, “[t]he president has not simply objected to an overall law – he has said flatly that he will not enforce, or will use his own interpretation, for specific provisions of the laws.”39 The Congressional Research Service (CRS) added, in examining all the signing statements of presidents since Ronald Reagan, the Bush signing statements raised more constitutional opposition to what Congress had done than the signing statements of the other presidents.40 It is interesting to note that Bush employed this tactic despite having a Republican majority in both houses of the Congress. The CRS determined that Bush had issued a total of 152 signing statements, 118 of which (78%) contained some type of challenge or objection to what Congress had done. Moreover, each of the signing statements included multiple objections, resulting in more than 1,000 challenges to distinct provisions of the law.41 The other presidents beginning with Ronald Reagan had issued the following number, as determined by the CRS: President Reagan issued 250 signing statements, 86 of which (34%) contained provisions objecting to one or more of the statutory provisions signed into law. President George H. W. Bush issued . . . “228 signing statements, 107 of which (47%) raised objections.” President Clinton . . . issued “381 statements, 70 of which (18%) raised constitutional or legal objections.”42 It is evident that on the one hand, other presidents have used the technique of signing statements in order to exercise power over the legislative branch. On the other hand, Bush (43) was clearly excessive in his use of signing statements (despite Republican majorities in both legislative chambers) thereby exercising the employment of executive and legislative power.

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The President also frustrated separation of powers through the overuse of executive privilege, holding back documents from Congress as well as preventing the Congress from questioning Administrative staff witnesses. In 2001, for example, the president indicated that: “It is my decision that you should not release these documents or otherwise make them available to the committee … I have decided to assert executive privilege with respect to the documents.”43 [Note: italics were added by the authors]. The documents being withheld consisted of memoranda from the Chief of the Campaign Financing Task-Force recommending that a Special Counsel be appointed to investigate a matter under review by the Task Force.44 The ensuing reaction by members of the Congress was what one might expect.

Conservative Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), who had been chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the 105th Congress, indicated that "If this unprecedented policy is permitted to stand, Congress will not be able to exercise meaningful oversight of the executive branch. . .” 45

CONCLUSION In 2012, Robert Spitzer presented two critical reasons why Bush and Cheney failed to “learn the lessons of Watergate.”46 We focus on one of these reasons that provides insight into the Bush-Cheney approach to executive power - - namely: in December 2005, the New York Times revealed that the George W. Bush administration had engaged in widespread warrantless surveillance, in plain violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Far from either denying or decrying, these plainly unlawful actions, Bush and Cheney extolled them, claiming inherent power to bypass such laws if the president thought it best to do so.47

The following year, Chris Edelson tied the theory of the unitary executive with practical examples from the Bush presidency as follows: The unitary executive theory as implemented by the Bush administration was claimed to justify effectively unchecked presidential power over the use of military force, the detention and interrogation of prisoners, extraordinary rendition and intelligence gathering. Simply put, since the Constitution assigns the president all of ‘the executive power,’ he can set aside laws that attempt to limit his power over national security.48

In 2014, the New York Times published an editorial that called for the prosecution of high ranking officials involved in Bush’s unitary executive who were directly or indirectly involved in the torture of terrorism suspects.49 Included on the list of officials in addition to Bush and Cheney, several other officials were highlighted including the vice president’s chief of staff David Addingtion; the former CIA director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos among others. The publication of this editorial brought to light that a unitary presidency is not limited to the president him/herself but rather a president is supported by a coterie of officials all part of the unitary executive.

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Byron W. Daynes and Glen Sussman Table 1. Characteristics of President George W. Bush Political Ethos  Stubbornness  Highly partisan  Highly ideological  Religious orientation  Slow to respond to crises  The Decider World View  Single-minded  Reject rule of law for rule by the president  Abolish tyranny from the world at any cost  Subordinate civil liberties at home for homeland security  Pursue policy at home and abroad without support of Congress and in opposition to public opinion Go-It-Alone Policy  Unilateral action over collaboration  Use of fear  Challenge checks and balances  Excessive secrecy to avoid checks and balances and oversight  Chastened by the Supreme Court over violations of questionable Constitutional actions  Excessive use of signing statements  Administration-written legislation  Overuse of executive privilege Consequences of Bush’s World View and Go-It-Alone Policy  Shaping and development of a unitary executive, increasing the power of the president and the vice president  Enhancing the size and scope of the federal government  Creation of a polarizing presidency above the law without restraint  The “shock and awe” attack on Iraq in 2003 resulted in regime change and nationbuilding as well as insurgency and civil war. When public opinion turned against the war, Bush’s world view was evident - - he had made the right decision, he would not change course, he would not be subject to legislative or critical evaluation  Against a background of bipartisan protection of the environment, Bush pushed an antiregulatory, anti-environmental policy Lessons to be Learned (What We Need to Know)  A strong presidency working within constitutional limits  Presidents who recognize that there are other decision makers in the Madisonian separation of powers system that have responsibilities in the domestic and international arenas  Avoid replacing Bush’s “runaway presidency” with a “messenger-boy presidency,” in the words of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.  A reassuring presidency that rejects using fear as an instrument of policy making  A mutual and collaborative approach to governing that enhances democratic values at home and abroad

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The same year George W. Bush began his presidency, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in the editor’s note introducing Louis Auchincloss’ new book Theodore Roosevelt, reminded us of the sort of presidents we may attract to the office. As he suggested: The nation, the Supreme Court has said, ‘has no right to expect that it will always have wise and humane rulers, sincerely attached to the principles of the Constitution.

Wicked men. . . with hatred of liberty and contempt of the law, may fill the place once occupied by Washington and Lincoln.’50

Our assessment of President George W. Bush, as summarized in Table 1, has led us to the conclusion that the forty-third president, guided by his religious orientation and ideology, framed by his world view and go-it-alone philosophy, created a legacy that was antagonistic to aspects of the Constitutional presidency. What flows from the Bush presidency is the shaping and development of a “unitary executive” with a chief executive working toward increasing and enhancing his power resources. The implications of a presidency that was “worse than Watergate” should raise fundamental and serious questions for those who are concerned about maintaining a Constitutional presidency.

How do we begin to restrain a president’s world view, when it is based on war-like American supremacy, and a go-it-alone attitude that does not seem to respect Constitutional limits and other institutional constraints? Will future presidents fall into the same pattern of overextending presidential powers beyond constitutional limits as George W. Bush seems to have done? It was Schlesinger, in reflecting on the post-Watergate period, who indicated that despite problems of a “run-away presidency” we still need “a strong Presidency - - but a strong Presidency within the Constitution.”51 The Bush Presidency was certainly a “strong presidency,” but it was a strong presidency outside many of the limits of the Constitution. Ironically, in the last year of his presidency, George W. Bush may have found the answer himself as to what to do about a “run-away presidency.” Dan Eggen and Paul Kane observed that in the last seven months of the Bush presidency, “The decider has become the compromiser.”52 Now not all analysts are willing to accept this explanation. Thomas Mann, for example, indicated that “There hasn’t been wholesale change, but there has been definite movement toward compromise. . . . What you’re seeing is a willingness to bend some when you’re getting a broader objective. On other things, you finesse it.”53 The people seemed to have tired of this sort of president. As Stuart Taylor, Jr., senior writer for the National Journal suggested, the Bush approach to power concentration has ironically ended up weakening the overall powers of the presidency by his “claiming almost unlimited, unilateral wartime powers and using secrecy to circumvent the checks and balances established by the Constitution.”54 In short, the Bush presidency became a model for what should not be done by a president. Let us have a president who is not afraid to admit publicly that he made a mistake. Bush should have taken seriously the warning set forth by Samurai Hagakure who wrote: It is said that one should not hesitate to correct himself when he has made a mistake.

If he corrects himself without the least bit of delay, his mistakes will quickly disappear.

But when he tries to cover up a mistake, it will become all the more unbecoming and painful.55

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However, how do we assess a president given his refusal to accept responsibility for mistakes? In short, is it the case that Bush didn’t make mistakes? Certainly George W. Bush himself was not to blame for all that occurred during his presidency. However, we can hold him responsible for setting a climate where actions could take place, and in staffing his Administration with such persons who feel quite comfortable in violating the constitutional powers in the name of national security.

The study reported here raises important questions about the character and role of President George W. Bush, his world view and his efforts as president that have pushed government toward a unitary executive. Given this background, we offer the conclusion set forth by Andrew Rudalevige in his essay, “A New Imperial Presidency” where he states that “it is George W. Bush’s presidency that provides the clearest . . . case study of presidential unilateralism in the post-Watergate era.”56 With the Bush presidency we had the “strong presidency,” but the efforts of the president did all that he and his Administration could do to make it a strong presidency outside constitutional limits. In short, as Schlesinger argued: The American democracy must discover a middle group between making the President a czar and making him a puppet. The problem is to devise means of reconciling a strong and purposeful Presidency with equally strong and purposeful forms of democratic control.57

Presidential power as demonstrated by Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal and later by George W. Bush during the first decade of the twenty-first century, should be models of what we don’t want to see in a president. In the case of Nixon, his political ambition ultimately resulted in his resignation as president. George W. Bush completed two terms as president and saw his poll numbers spike twice, once with 9/11 and again with the invasion of Iraq. However, according to The American Presidency Project, Bush’s job approval rating at the end of his first 100 days in office (prior to 9/11) was 62% and dropped precipitously to a final rating of 34% when he left office.58 Bush’s overall poll numbers during his presidency provide an appropriate portrait of a president, year after year for eight years, in a free fall. In his attempt to create a unitary executive, he lost the support of the American public.

In the end, as Michael Genovese put it, President Bush has been “unwilling to place himself within the rule of law. He exercised extra-constitutional power and claimed that his acts were not reviewable by Congress or the courts. Such a bold interpretation of the president’s powers is unsupportable in law or history.”59

ENDNOTES 1 2 3 4

5 6

7

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency (New York: Popular Library, 1974), fly leaf.

Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency (New York: Popular Library, 1974), Forward, 10.

Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., --Mariner Book, 2004), xxiv.

“What the “Unitary Executive” Debate Is and Is Not About,” The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog, August 6, 2007, http://uchicagolaw.typepadcom/faculty/2007/08/what-the-unitar.html Robert Spitzer, Saving the Constitution from Lawyers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Dana Nelson, “The ‘Unitary Executive’ Question,” Los Angeles Times, October 11, 2008, www.latimes.com/opinion/la-oe-nelson11-2008oct11-story.html.

Jack Goldsmith, The Terror Presidency (New York: WW Norton and Company) 2009).

The ‘Imperial’ Presidency Revisited 8 9 10

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13 14

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16 17

18 19 20

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22 23 24 25

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27 28 29

30

31

32

33 34

35 36 37 38

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40

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Michael Genovese, Memo to a New President (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 167.

Jane Meyer, The Dark Side (New York: Anchor Books, 2009).

John Dean, Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2004).

James P. Pfiffner, “George W. Bush: Policy, Politics, and Personality,” in New Challenges for the American Presidency, eds. George C. Edwards III and Philip John Davies (New York: Longman, 2004), 167.

Stephen J. Wayne, “Presidential Decision Making: The Influence of Personality on George W. Bush’s Decisions to go to War,” in Readings in Presidential Politics, ed., George C. Edwards III (Belmont, CA: Thompson/Wadsworth, 2006), 147.

Ibid.

David Paul Kuhn, “George W. and the Christian Right,” CBSnews.com, August 31, 2004 www.cbsnews.com/news/george-w-and-the-chrisitian-right/.

Patrick J. Buchanan, “The Anti-Conservatives: Who Convinced the President That Our Democracy Depends on the Worldwide Crusade,” The American Conservative, (February 28, 2005): 13-14.

Woodrow Wilson, “War Messages,” 65th. Cong., 1st sess., 1917, S. Doc.5, serial 7264, 7-8.

Patrick J. Buchanan, “The Anti-Conservatives: Who Convinced the President that our Democracy Depends on the Worldwide Crusade,” The American Conservative (February 28, 2005): 113-14.

Ibid.

Gene Healy, The Cult of the Presidency (Washington, DC: CATO Institute. 2008) 53.

Cameron G. Thies, “The Bush Doctrine: Redefining the U.S. role in World Politics for the Twenty-first Century,” in George W. Bush: Evaluating the President at Midterm, eds. Bryan Hilliard, Tom Lansford, Robert P. Watson (Albany: SUNY Press, 2004), 133.

George W. Bush, interview by Chris Wallace, Fox News, February 11, 2008, Accessed April 8, 2014, http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/02/11/transcript-president-bush-on-fox-news-sunday/.

Robert S. Devine, Bush versus the Environment (New York: Anchor Books, 2004) back cover.

Gary Jacobson, A Uniter, Not a Divider (New York: Longman, 2008), 72-73.

Martha Marks quoted in Robert S. Devine, Bush Versus The Environment (New York: Anchor Books, 2004), 7.

Paul Krugman, “Renewable Energy is Growing Fast, So Why Does the GOP Hate It So,” Virginian-Pilot, October 6, 2015, p.2 President, Proclamation, “Homeland Security Presidential Directive-3,” March, 12, 2002, accessed April 15, 2014, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020312-5.html.

Jack Goldsmith, The Terror Presidency (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), 213.

See Article I, section 8; as well as Article II, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution.

President, Proclamation, “Remarks on the Nomination of Rob Portman To Be Director of the Office of Management and Budget and Susan C. Schwab To Be United States Trade Representative and an Exchange With Reporters,” April 18, 2006, accessed May 16, 2008, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/ releases/2006/04/20060418-1.html.

Sidney Bluementhal, “Cheney’s Coup,” Salon, February 23, 2006, www.salon.com/2006/02/23 /cheney_power/.

Glen A. Fine, Inspector General, U. S. Department of Justice, before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary concerning “Detainee Interrogation Techniques,” June 10, 2008, accessed June 23, 2008, http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/testimony/t0806a/.

Kate Zernike, “Detainees Depict Abuses by Guard in Prison in Iraq,” New York Times, January 12, 2005, A1 and A10.

Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 US 507 (2004).

Jonathan Mahler, “Why This Court Keeps Rebuking This President,” New York Times, June 15, 2008, accessed July 15, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/weekinreview/15mahler.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref.

Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466 (2004).

Hamdan v. Rumsfeld,, 548 US 557 (2006) Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. (2008).

Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, “Presidential Signing Statements,” The American Presidency Project at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/signingstatements.php. Accessed January 4, 2015.

Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, “The Threat of Bush’s Signing Statements,” San Diego Union Tribune, July 7, 2006, B-7.

Christopher Kelley recognizes three different types of signing statements that include: (1) the constitutional signing statements—which address a “constitutional defect in a bill,” (2) the political signing statement—where

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Byron W. Daynes and Glen Sussman the focus is on the political nature of the law rather than its legal aspects; and finally, (3) the rhetorical signing statement—where the president may respond or comment on those Congress persons who worked on the bill.

Christopher Kelley, Executing the Constitution: Putting the president Back into the Constitution (Albany, New York: State University of New York press, 2006), 74-75.

T.J. Halstead, Congressional Research Service, Presidential Signing Statements: Constitutional and Institutional Implications, September 17, 2007, Order Code RL33667, accessed May 15, 2008, http://www.fas.org/ sgp/crs/natsec/RL33667.pdf.

Ibid.

President, Memorandum, “Memo for Attorney General on Executive Branch Documents,” December 12, 2001, accessed June 2, 2008, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/ 2001/12/20011213-1.html.

President, Memorandum, “Memo for Attorney General on Executive Branch Documents,” December 12, 2001, accessed June 2, 2008, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/ 2001/12/20011213-1.html.

“President Invokes Executive Privilege: Blocks Congressional Access to Justice Department Documents,” CBS News, December 13, 2001, accessed May 15, 2008, http://www.cbsnews.com/ stories/2001/12/13/ politics/main321239.shtml.

Robert J. Spitzer, “Why We’ve Learned Nothing From Watergate,” Huffington Post, June 20, 2012, www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-spirzer/watergate-anniversary-lessons_b_1612923 Ibid.

Chris Edelson, “Exploring the Limits of Presidential Power,” ACSblog, December 2, 2013, www.acslaw.org/acsblog/exploring-the-limits-of-presidential-power/.

The Editorial Board, “Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses, New York Times, December 21, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/opinion/prosecute-torturers-and-their-bosses.html?_r=0.

See Schlesinger, Jr., editor’s note to Theodore Roosevelt, by Louis Auchincloss (New York: Times Books, 2001), xiv.

Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency (New York: Popular Library, 1973), Forward, X. Dan Eggen and Paul Kane, “Deciding to Compromise: Bush Embraces a Tactic that he has Mostly Avoided,” The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, July 21-27, 2008, 17.

Dan Eggen and Paul Kane, “Recent Bush Victories Smell of Compromise,” Washington Post, July 13, 2008, accessed April 17, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/12/ AR2008071201616.html.

Stuart Taylor, Jr., “Law Should Trump Loyalty,” National Journal, September 1, 2007, 15.

Quoted in Genovese, Memo to a President, 95.

Andrew Rudalevige, The New Imperial Presidency, (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2005), 15, 275.

Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency (New York: Popular Library, 1973), 11-12.

Gerhard Peters, “Presidential Job Approval Ratings Following the First 100 Days,” The American Presidency Project, Ed., John T. Wooley and Gerhard Peters, Santa Barbara, CA: University of California, 1999-2009.

Available from the World Wide Web: //www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/100days_approval.php; Gerhard Peters, “Final Job Approval Ratings,” The American Presidency Project, Ed. John T. Wooley and Gerhard Peters, Santa Barbara, CA: University of California, 1999-2009. Available from the World Wide Web: //www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/final_php.

Genovese, Memo to a New President (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 163, 188).

In: The George W. Bush Presidency. Volume III Editors: Meena Bose and Paul Fritz

ISBN: 978-1-63485-783-3 © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 2

‘THE EVIL SOIL OF POVERTY AND STRIFE’: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE BUSH DOCTRINE AND TRUMAN DOCTRINE Dane J. Cash Carroll College, Helena, MT, US

ABSTRACT The ultimate goal of both the Truman and Bush Doctrine was to create conditions favorable to democracy and free market prosperity throughout entire regions of the globe, thereby winning hearts and minds and eliminating the appeal of extremism, whether Communist or Islamist. Despite this similarity in motivation, however, this paper will argue that the Bush Doctrine is critically different from the Truman Doctrine in its embrace of preventive military action. While the Truman administration sought to take proactive action against Communism via economic policies such as the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine remained reactive in military terms. The Bush Doctrine, by contrast, saw regime change in Iraq as the necessary first step toward creating a new democratic order in the Middle East. In this way, the Bush Doctrine may have shared the same ultimate goals as the Truman Doctrine, but differed markedly in the means of achieving those goals.

INTRODUCTION George W. Bush has repeatedly expressed an expectation that his legacy as president will be similar to that of Harry S. Truman. Truman left office tremendously unpopular and in the midst of a controversial war, only to see his reputation rehabilitated substantially decades after he left office. This is not the only way in which Bush has viewed his presidency as potentially similar to Truman’s. Almost immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, many observers, as well as Bush himself, began making comparisons between the Cold War and the War on Terror. Truman, of course, had erected the edifice of containment policy that would guide American foreign policy for four decades via the Truman Doctrine,

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as laid out in his historic address to Congress on March 12, 1947. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, history, it seemed, had laid a similar task at Bush’s feet: To create a policy framework from which to defeat the extremist ideology of al-Qaeda and similar terrorist groups. The Bush administration announced its grand strategy, which came to be known as the “Bush Doctrine,” in the National Security Strategy of the United States of America in September 2002. This paper will critically analyze the Bush Doctrine by comparing and contrasting it with the Truman Doctrine, which preceded it by 55 years.

The paper will argue that the Bush Doctrine has much in common ideologically with the Truman Doctrine. Both presidents laid out a view of the world divided into stark black and white, and both saw their foreign policy visions as of indefinite duration. More substantively, the ultimate goal of each was to create conditions favorable to democracy and free market prosperity throughout entire regions of the globe, thereby winning hearts and minds and eliminating the appeal of extremism, whether Communist or Islamist. For all these similarities, however, the Bush Doctrine is nonetheless critically different from the Truman Doctrine in its embrace of preventive military action. While the Truman administration sought to take proactive action against Communism via economic policies such as the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine remained reactive in military terms. The Bush Doctrine, by contrast, saw regime change in Iraq as the necessary first step toward creating a new democratic order in the Middle East. In this way, the Bush Doctrine may have shared the same ultimate goals as the Truman Doctrine, but differed markedly in the means of achieving those goals.

THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE SPEECH The immediate reason for Truman’s address was to secure permission from Congress to send aid to Greece and Turkey in the face of the threat of a Communist insurgency in Greece, coupled with Britain’s retrenchment from its worldwide commitments. Aid to Greece, he argued, was “imperative if Greece is to survive as a free nation.”1 Truman then made the reason for such an imperative clear: “The very existence of the Greek state is today threatened by the terrorist activities of several thousand armed men, led by Communists.” These terrorists, “a militant minority,” thrived by exploiting the “human want and misery” that was the legacy in Greece of the Second World War. “Meanwhile,” stated Truman, “the Greek Government is unable to cope with the situation” because Britain, effectively bankrupt from the Second World War, could no longer continue to provide aid to the Greek government.

Truman then indicated that the role of world’s greatest power had indeed shifted from Great Britain to the United States by saying simply, “There is no other country to which democratic Greece can turn.” In short, the destruction of World War II had left the United States in the unchallenged position of most powerful democracy on the planet.

Although Truman devoted a good deal of his speech to outlining the specifics of the dire situation in Greece, and, less so, in Turkey, he was also sure to cast the net of American concern wider than just those two countries. Greece and Turkey, he said, represented only “one aspect” of a grave global situation that threatened the very security of the United States of America. Further, and more bluntly, he admitted that he was “fully aware of the broad implications involved.” To elaborate, he stated that “One of the primary objectives of the

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foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion.” But, We shall not realize our objectives…unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.

Here, then, Truman made a direct link between the maintenance of democracy in the world (and, by extension, the containment of totalitarianism) and the security of the United States of America. After all, the world had just fought the bloodiest war in the history of humanity to defeat Nazism and Japanese militarism. Here, however, President Truman was not talking about Nazi Germany or imperial Japan. Rather, although he never once mentioned the Soviet Union by name, the speech was clearly directed at America’s erstwhile ally during the war. “The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will,” said Truman, “in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria.” Stalin and Roosevelt, of course, had agreed at Yalta to free elections in Poland, among other countries. No such elections were ever held, and the occupying Soviets set up Communist regimes in Poland and elsewhere.

Then the president arrived at the core of what would become the “Truman Doctrine.” He explained that the postwar world had become bipolar; people everywhere had but two ways of life from which to choose. Truman lamented that “The choice is too often not a free one.” The first choice, said Truman, “is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.” The alternative, he ominously explained, “is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies on terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.” “I believe,” Truman said famously, “that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” Here, in essence, was the doctrine that would broadly guide U.S. policymakers through all the dangerous twists and turns of the struggle with Soviet communism that, although in its infancy at the time, would last more than forty years.

Truman then tied together the specifics of the situation in Greece with this broader struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of oppression.

It is necessary only to glance at a map to realize that the survival and integrity of the Greek nation are of grave importance in a much wider situation. If Greece should fall under the control of an armed minority, the effect upon its neighbor, Turkey, would be immediate and serious. Confusion and disorder might well spread throughout the entire Middle East. Moreover, the disappearance of Greece as an independent state would have a profound effect upon those countries in Europe whose peoples are struggling against great difficulties to maintain their freedoms and their independence while they repair the damages of war.

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Indeed, “Should we fail to aid Greece and Turkey in this fateful hour, the effect will be far reaching to the West as well as to the East.” Truman thus elaborated a kind of early domino theory, painting a grim picture of the regional, then global, spread of totalitarian Communism should the United States fail to shoulder the burden that Great Britain could no longer bear in southern Europe and the Near East. To avoid this horrifying eventuality, the United States “must take immediate and resolute action” to preserve democracy and freedom in Greece, Turkey, and ultimately, the world. Although Truman acknowledged the “serious course” upon which he was setting his country, he claimed that inaction in the face of the Communist threat would be even more serious than the action he was recommending. As we shall see, the theme of serious action vs. the far more serious consequences of inaction is central to both the Truman and Bush Doctrines.

Truman next articulated the philosophy that very soon thereafter led to the Marshall Plan, one of the most important applications of the Truman Doctrine during the early Cold War.2 “The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want,” he said. “They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive.” The great vision of the Truman Doctrine, then, was not merely that the expansion of Communism must be perpetually contained, but that the long, hard battle could and must be won by eliminating the underlying causes of Communism’s appeal, namely, poverty and hopelessness, and replacing them with economic prosperity, political freedom, and democratic government.

Much like President Bush would do 55 years later, Truman painted the United States as a power that history had chosen to be the defender of liberty and justice, rather than as a selfinterested seeker of global hegemony. “The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms,” he said. Moreover, “If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world—and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.” Truman had left little room for misunderstanding. The world was divided into two camps, the free and democratic world led by the United States, and the oppressive, totalitarian world led by the Soviet Union. It had fallen to the United States to stand up for those peoples who desired freedom but could not achieve it alone when faced with Communist aggression.

The very hope of the world rested on the shoulders of the United States of America. Indeed, in order for America herself to be secure, the world had to be made and kept safe for democracy. The national security of the United States required that Communism not be allowed to expand any further, for if it were able to gain a toehold in Greece and/or Turkey, there might be no stopping it from sweeping across Europe, the Middle East, and beyond, thereby endangering the strategic position of the United States itself.

THE BUSH DOCTRINE Like President Truman in 1947, President Bush in 2002 faced new threats in a new world. After World War II, the international order had been turned on its head, and it was only with the emergence of the Cold War that the world was given a new paradigm for international relations. Similarly, the end of the Cold War left the United States victorious, but unsure of its role in the world—that is, until September 11, 2001, the day that the War against Terrorism implicitly began. Neither president knew precisely how long his respective

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struggle would last, but both were aware of the global and national significance involved and both were confident that the struggle could and would ultimately be won by the “forces of freedom” led by the United States of America.

The National Security Strategy of the United States of America of September 2002, which articulates what has come to be known as the Bush Doctrine, begins with a three-page statement by President Bush, in which he summarizes the main themes of the more detailed 31 pages that follow. The first sentence reads, “The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom— and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.”3 Fascism was defeated and discredited after World War II. Communism was defeated and discredited after the Cold War. President Truman’s bipolar world in which the United States and Soviet Union were locked in a death struggle no longer applied. Hence, the world had been left with, as President Bush put it, “a single sustainable model for national success.” This is as Truman had predicted it would be in his farewell address: “when history says that my term of office saw the beginning of the Cold War, it will also say that in those eight years we have set the course that can win it…. I have a deep and abiding faith in the destiny of free men. With patience and courage, we shall some day move on into a new era….”4 Here, striking similarities can be found in the two doctrines’ visions of achieving national security. President Bush writes, “We seek…to create a balance of power that favors human freedom: conditions in which all nations and all societies can choose for themselves the rewards and challenges of political and economic liberty.” Later, Bush adds, “the United States will use this moment of opportunity to extend the benefits of freedom across the globe.

We will actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world.” This was largely the ideological motivation for the Truman Doctrine as well. Like Truman, Bush employed the rhetoric of the preservation and expansion of democracy while always keeping it tied to American national interests. One final statement from the Introduction to the National Security Strategy that sounds like it could have been lifted from any of various pronouncements supporting the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan reads thusly, The United States will stand beside any nation determined to build a better future by seeking the rewards of liberty for its people. Free trade and free markets have proven their ability to lift whole societies out of poverty—so the United States will work with individual nations, entire regions, and the entire global trading community to build a world that trades in freedom and therefore grows in prosperity.5

However similar their ideological grounding, what the Bush Doctrine wound up looking like in practice was quite different from how the Truman Doctrine was implemented. To win the “war against terrorists of global reach,” according to Bush, required that America “act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.” He continued, “History will judge harshly those who saw this coming danger but failed to act. In the new world we have entered, the only path to peace and security is the path of action.”6 This was the first hint of a radical new strategic posture for the United States for which the Bush Doctrine would become famous: the embrace of preventive war.7 After warning that the U.S. “will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively

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against…terrorists8,” the document goes even further. It announces the United States’ intention to defend against the threat of a WMD attack by a rogue state, such as Iraq or North Korea, “before it is unleashed.” Such a defense requires, of course, that “the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.” The Bush administration considered such threats from rogue states and terrorists as so immediate that “the United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past.”9 One important implication of a would-be preventive war against a rogue state is that the ultimate elimination of the threat it allegedly posed would require regime change by force. A dictatorial regime with WMD would have to be removed from power preventively and replaced by a form of government friendlier to American interests, i.e., a Western-style democracy.

Preventive war, regime change, and the expansion of democracy were therefore at the center of the Bush Doctrine’s grand strategy to secure American national interest and defeat terrorism. Such a dramatic reorientation of American national security strategy would seem to have been motivated by an equally traumatic event: the shocking attacks of September 11.

But a careful examination of the historical record reveals that momentum toward the policy that was codified in the National Security Strategy began gathering well before the horror that unfolded on the morning of September 11, 2001.

THE PATH TO THE BUSH DOCTRINE In March 1992, not long after the Persian Gulf War, a draft of the Defense Planning Guidance for fiscal years 1994-99 was leaked to the New York Times and the Washington Post. The draft was written under the direction of then Undersecretary for Policy at the Department of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz. The draft of the Guidance, a blueprint for strategic planning over a six-year period, called for the maintenance of America’s status as the world’s lone superpower. “The U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role.”10 More directly relevant to the Bush Doctrine, Wolfowitz’ draft included the possibility of using the U.S. military to preempt the use of WMD “even in conflicts that otherwise do not directly engage U.S. interests.” The document even went so far as to say that “if quick victory is not possible” in a conventional war, “an opponent must remain convinced that U.S. strategic assets may be employed.”11 This last notion did not survive to be incorporated into the Bush Doctrine. In any event, another key aspect of the memo was the promotion of “the spread of democratic forms of government and open economic systems.”12 As for specific regional issues, the draft stated that “In the Middle East…our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region’s oil.”13 Once leaked, the draft stirred up a tremendous amount of controversy and unease among both the American public and America’s European allies. The Guidance was subsequently watered down and rewritten. Instead of hegemony, multilateral cooperation was stressed. The final version contained no mention whatever of preemption. And as for the Middle East, instead of “to remain the predominant outside power in the region,” the final copy read, “to foster regional stability.”14 But overall, Wolfowitz’ draft was significant for its boldness and willingness to break with previous post-Cold War strategic assessments by stressing global

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American hegemony, preventive action against WMD, the spread of democracy and open markets, and U.S. dominance in the Middle East. All of these notions, in one form or another, hold a prominent place in the Bush Doctrine. Paul Wolfowitz, of course, would later serve as President Bush’s Assistant Secretary of Defense.

Five years later, during the Clinton administration, an organization that called itself the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) released its statement of principles. The group consisted of prominent conservatives who called themselves neo-Reaganites, or neoconservatives, and included, among others, future Bush administration officials Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. Not surprisingly, much of the group’s philosophy eventually found its way into the Bush Doctrine. An excerpt from the statement reads, As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world’s preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?15

As we have seen, that the United States, victorious in the Cold War, then stood as the greatest power in the world is the point from which the Bush Doctrine begins. That the United States had both the opportunity and ability to reshape the world in its own democratic image is one of the most important underlying principles of the Bush Doctrine. PNAC’s Statement of Principles also calls for preventive war to be included as part of America’s twenty-first century foreign policy. “The history of the 20th century,” the statement reads, “should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire.” To achieve this, “we need…to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values; we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;” and “we need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.”16 These ideas form the most bare-bones expression of the Bush Doctrine, and were articulated in 1997 by the PNAC, more than four years before the attacks of September 11, 2001.

In early 1998, PNAC wrote an open letter to President Clinton outlining its position on the threat posed to the United States by Iraq. The signatories, including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, future Deputy Secretary of State Dick Armitage, and future Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle, argued for preventive action against Iraq in almost precisely the way that President Bush argued for action in 2002-03. “The only acceptable strategy,” reads the letter, “is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power.”17 Once George W. Bush took office in January 2001, the president began setting the stage for Bush Doctrine policy from day one. Consider the following from his Inaugural Address: We will build our defenses beyond challenge, lest weakness invite challenge. We will confront weapons of mass destruction, so that a new century is spared new horrors.

The enemies of liberty and our country should make no mistake: America remains

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In this passage, we can clearly see the influence of thinkers like Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Cheney. Indeed, might President Bush have been preparing the American people for a new conflict with Iraq on the very day of his inauguration? As Terry Anderson argues persuasively in Bush’s Wars, the administration had begun discussing plans to remove Saddam Hussein from power almost immediately after the inauguration.19 It is also worth noting that the phrase “a balance of power that favors freedom” was taken verbatim from this speech and repeated several times in the NSS. Finally, it is of critical importance to note that Bush stated, “we will meet aggression and bad faith with resolve and strength.” This seems to be a hint of the doctrine of preventive war to come.

In further speeches prior to September 11, Bush continued to lay out some of the basics of what would become the Bush Doctrine. In February 2001, he spoke of America’s goal being “to turn this time of American influence into generations of democratic peace” and proclaimed that “America will set its own priorities, so that they’re not set by our adversaries or the crisis of the moment.”20 Such rhetoric is clearly neoconservative in character, and here we can see one of the biggest differences between the Truman Doctrine and the Bush Doctrine. Whereas the Truman Doctrine, although economically and politically proactive, was more suited to dealing with national security crises that had already emerged, Bush Doctrine policy was rather more proactive in seeking out and preventing potential future crises, even if through military force.

In light of the information cited above, it is clear that the foundation of the Bush Doctrine was already being laid prior to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. But it is also clear that following September 11 the United States was a changed nation. Political divisions stemming from the 2000 election debacle now seemed petty and insignificant. George W. Bush was no doubt changed, as was the relationship between the nation and its president. If nothing else, the tragic events of September 11, 2001 thrust American foreign policy to the forefront of public interest. Foreign policy began to matter again in a way that it had not since the Vietnam War, except this time the people of the United States rallied to the flag, making a comprehensive new foreign policy politically possible. Just as Greece and Turkey provided the Truman administration with the justification it needed to launch a new American foreign policy, so too did September 11 provide Bush with a similar opportunity.

Shortly after that dark day, on September 20, 2001, President Bush delivered an historic speech to a joint session of Congress in which he drew a direct line between the extremist movements of the twentieth century to the twenty-first century extremism of al-Qaeda.

These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life.

With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us, because we stand in their way.

We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before.

They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions—by abandoning every value except the will to power—they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And

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they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies.21 Then, echoing Truman’s conception of a world in which nations must choose between competing and mutually exclusive ways of life, Bush stated, “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

Further pushing the ideas that would a year later be incorporated into the NSS, Bush said, “But this country will define our times, not be defined by them. As long as the United States of America is determined and strong, this will not be an age of terror; this will be an age of liberty, here and across the world.” Finally, Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom—the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time—now depends on us. Our nation—this generation—will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.22

Thus far, Bush had employed similar rhetoric to past presidents, including Truman, but had not yet explicitly laid out the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. Indeed, the first military action taken after the 9/11 attacks was reactive, not preventive, targeting al-Qaeda and their Taliban sponsors in Afghanistan. American strikes began on October 7, 2001.

Where the Truman Doctrine and the Bush Doctrine simultaneously mirror and depart from one another, however, is in the ambitious goal of shaping the political and economic landscape of entire continents and regions. Although Truman would get involved in a land war in Korea in 1950, the region his administration was most concerned with was Europe, and Truman sought to shore up democratic institutions in that part of the world via the Marshall Plan and the creation of NATO. For the Bush administration, the primary region of concern was the Middle East, but the means would go well beyond economic intervention and collective security. In Iraq, the Bush Doctrine of preventive war would be given its first and only test.

THE MIDDLE EAST TRANSFORMED President Bush’s State of the Union address in January 2002 constituted a major step along the path to the NSS that would be released in September of the same year. Reflecting on gains already made in the war against terror in Afghanistan, Bush also looked forward, speaking of two “great objectives.” The first was to continue the war against al-Qaeda, and the second was to “prevent the terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological or nuclear weapons from threatening the United States and the world.” Given the events of September 11, Bush Doctrine thinking that had been in the works for at least a decade acquired a new urgency. Famously, Bush went on to name North Korea, Iran, and Iraq as members of the “axis of evil.” These three countries seemed prime candidates for the strategy of preventive war that Bush next outlined. “They could attack…or attempt to blackmail the United States. …the price of indifference would be catastrophic.” Bush continued, “I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer.”

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But Bush was not only concerned with eliminating supposed threats from rogue regimes. He also intended to use such military action to do nothing less than remake the world in America’s image: “we have a great opportunity during this time of war to lead the world toward the values that will bring lasting peace.” This statement was a hint of the even more explicit language to come in the NSS. Finally, in closing the State of the Union, Bush echoed a sentiment expressed in a different time by President Harry S. Truman when he said, “In a single instant, we realized that this will be a decisive decade in the history of liberty, that we’ve been called to a unique role in human events. Rarely has the world faced a choice more clear or consequential.”23 As the official release of the NSS grew nearer, the President continued to speak more and more clearly about preventive war, about Iraq, and about America’s role in the world. At West Point’s Commencement, Bush once again took the Truman administration’s route of making clear America’s lack of imperialist designs. “America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish. We wish for others only what we wish for ourselves—safety from violence, the rewards of liberty, and the hope for a better life.” In this speech Bush himself even drew a direct parallel between the onset of the Cold War and the onset of the war on terror: Because the war on terror will require resolve and patience, it will also require firm moral purpose. In this way our struggle is similar to the Cold War. Now, as then, our enemies are totalitarians, holding a creed of power with no place for human dignity.

Now, as then, they seek to impose a joyless conformity, to control every life and all of life.24

Then, echoing Truman’s vision of a black and white world, Bush bluntly stated, “We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name.”25 This kind of plain-spokenness was reminiscent of Harry Truman, who at an early age was taught that “right was right and wrong was wrong,” and always to “say what you mean.”26 Even later in life, Clark Clifford appraised Truman as a man who “liked things in black and white.”27 On September 12, 2002, just five days before the release of the National Security Strategy, President Bush addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations to rally international support for his goal of regime change in Iraq. Towards the end of this speech that challenged the UN to ensure its relevance by backing up its resolutions with force if need be, Bush explicitly articulated his vision of a transformed Middle East. Speaking of the responsibilities of the international community in relation to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, Bush said, If we meet our responsibilities, if we overcome this danger, we can arrive at a very different future. The people of Iraq can shake off their captivity. They can one day join a democratic Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine, inspiring reforms throughout the Muslim world. These nations can show by their example that honest government, and respect for women, and the great Islamic tradition of learning can triumph in the Middle East and beyond. And we will show that the promise of the United Nations can be fulfilled in our time.28

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The Gauntlet was thus thrown down. A preventive war in Iraq would only be the beginning of a grand strategy to transform the Middle East into a prosperous and democratic region, thereby eliminating in the long-term the appeal of al-Qaeda’s extremism.

CONCLUSION When Harry Truman stepped to the podium in March 1947, he broke with America’s tradition of isolationism in peacetime and set the direction of U.S. foreign policy for multiple generations. Containment strategy would be implemented in various parts of the globe, sometimes successfully and other times not, for the next four decades. On Truman’s own watch, the Marshall Plan aimed to bolster democratic institutions in Western Europe, thereby eliminating or lessening the appeal of communism’s false utopian promises. The Marshall Plan, in this sense, was the best kind of preventive measure—not military, but economic and ideological. When Truman did authorize military intervention, namely, in Korea, it was in response to the North Korean invasion of South Korea. The decision to cross the 38th parallel and destroy the North Korean regime was arguably preventive in nature, but was never the primary purpose of the intervention and was appropriately abandoned once Chinese intervention made that goal an impracticable one. The most glaring failure of containment policy, it is fair to say, came in Vietnam. Though Truman was by then more than two decades removed from power and while George Kennan, architect of containment policy, viewed the Vietnam War as a misapplication of containment strategy, the Vietnam War was nonetheless guided in general terms by the Truman Doctrine. Even still, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had intervened in Vietnam not preventively, but in reaction to the NLF/VC insurgency in South Vietnam.29 The Bush Doctrine, therefore, shares with the Truman Doctrine the broad goal of the expansion and eventual triumph of American ideals, prosperity, and power, but differs significantly in the means of achieving that goal. During the Cold War, U.S. policy may have been economically proactive via the Marshall Plan, but generally remained militarily reactive.

During the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, by contrast, U.S. policy was guided by the Bush Doctrine’s emphases on preventive war and regime change. While former President Bush is likely correct that his true legacy will not be able to be properly judged for decades more to come, I think it is fair to say that, from our vantage in 2016, the results do not appear to be encouraging. A scholarly consensus seems to be emerging that the Iraq war was a foreign policy disaster of historic proportions,30 while on the ground in the Middle East, George W. Bush’s vision of a region transformed outward from Iraq into an oasis of democracy has obviously not come to pass. Only time will tell what the future holds for Iraq, but as of this writing, the threats to its stability posed by ISIS and continued sectarian strife make it unlikely to serve as the seed for a democratic revolution in the region any time in the foreseeable future. Perhaps this will change after another decade or two of history has unfolded, but as of now, it does not appear that the historical memory of George W. Bush’s presidency, insofar as it is tied primarily to the war in Iraq, will undergo a similar renaissance to that of Harry S. Truman’s. The Truman Doctrine of containment was effectively vindicated by the implosion of Soviet Communism in the years 1989-1991. If the U.S. similarly “wins” the war on terror, however, it will do so almost certainly because radical Islam will be

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discredited due to a movement of reform and moderation from within Islam itself, not because of the Bush Doctrine of preventive war as implemented in Iraq, which as yet has failed to transform the greater Middle East into anything resembling post-Marshall Plan Western Europe.

ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6 7

8 9 10 11

12

13 14 15

16 17

18

19 20

21

22 23

24

25

President Harry S. Truman’s Address Before a Joint Session of Congress, March 12, 1947. In Joseph M. Jones, The Fifteen Weeks (New York: Viking Press, 1955), 269-274. All quotations in the remainder of this section are from Truman’s speech.

The Marshall Plan, which provided billions of dollars to the countries of Western Europe to rebuild after the devastation of World War II, was a stunning success. As European economies were rebuilt under American tutelage, the appeal of communist political institutions faded considerably.

The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002, Introduction, http://www.state. gov/documents/organization/63562.pdf .

Farewell Address: PP, HST, January 15, 1953, 1197-1202, cited in David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 919-920.

NSS. Introduction. These ideas are not unique to Truman and Bush. Rather, Truman was the ideological descendant of progressive internationalists Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. Others, like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, echoed similar ideas prior to George W. Bush.

NSS. Introduction.

A note on terminology: While the Bush administration preferred “preemptive war,” I am using “preventive war” as a more accurate descriptor of the policy. “Preemptive” war is typically defined as military action against a demonstrable, imminent threat to a country’s security, while “preventive” war is military action against a threat that may or may not materialize at some point in the future. See Joe Barnes and Richard Stoll, “Preemptive and Preventive War: A Preliminary Taxonomy,” (James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, 2007).

NSS, 6.

NSS, 14-15.

“Pentagon’s New World View,” Washington Post, May 24, 1992, a23.

Barton Gellman, “Pentagon Abandons Goal of Thwarting U.S. Rivals: 6-Year Plan Softens Earlier Tone on Allies,” Washington Post, May 24, 1992, a1.

Barton Gellman, “Keeping the U.S. First: Pentagon Would Preclude a Rival Superpower,” Washington Post, March 11, 1992, a1.

“Pentagon’s New World View,” Washington Post.

“Pentagon’s New World View,” Washington Post.

Statement of Principles, Project for the New American Century, June 3, 1997, http://web.archive.org/web/20070814183407/http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.html .

Statement of Principles, Project for the New American Century.

Letter to President Clinton on Iraq, Project for the New American Century, January 26, 1998, http://web.archive.org/web/20070814184054/http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.html .

President George W. Bush’s Inaugural Address, January 20, 2001, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/ news/inaugural-address.html.

Terry H. Anderson, Bush’s Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 58-63.

Remarks by the President to State Department Employees, February 15, 2001, http://georgewbushwhitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/02/20010215-5.html .

Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, September 20, 2001, http://georgewbushwhitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html .

Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, September 20, 2001.

President Delivers State of the Union Address, January, 29, 2002, http://georgewbushwhitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html .

President Bush Delivers Graduation Speech at West Point, June 1, 2002, http://georgewbushwhitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020601-3.html .

President Bush Delivers Graduation Speech at West Point, June 1, 2002.

‘The Evil Soil of Poverty and Strife’ 26 27

28

29

30

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McCullough, Truman, 54-55.

Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 137.

President’s Remarks at the United Nations General Assembly, September 12, 2002, http://georgewbushwhitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html .

The insurgency preferred to call itself the National Liberation Front (NLF), while the U.S. government preferred a more derogatory term, Vietcong (VC).

While most works written to date on the Bush foreign policy and the Iraq War in particular have been written by journalists (e.g., Fiasco by Thomas Ricks) rather than historians, some properly historical analyses have begun to appear. See for example Terry Anderson’s Bush’s Wars and “Anatomy of an Unnecessary War: The Iraq Invasion,” by Fredrik Logevall, in The Presidency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment, edited by Julian Zelizer.

In: The George W. Bush Presidency. Volume III Editors: Meena Bose and Paul Fritz

ISBN: 978-1-63485-783-3 © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 3

“AMERICAN EMPIRE: GET USED TO IT”: HOW DEEPLY DID THE NEOCON FANTASY PENETRATE THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION? Peter J. Kuznick American University, Washington, DC, US

ABSTRACT In September 1990, with the Soviet Union collapsing, neoconservative luminary Charles Krauthammer announced that America’s “unipolar moment” had finally arrived.

The United States, now globally hegemonic, would devise a set of policies to make certain that its supremacy was never again challenged. That neoconservative program was laid out in the first draft of the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance and in the 1997 founding statement of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Priorities included a massive increase in defense spending as part of a return to “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.” When George W. Bush took office following the disputed 2000 election, he appointed PNACers to key positions in the administration.

Following 9/11, they pounced on the opportunity to put their program into effect, invading Afghanistan and Iraq, curtailing civil liberties, abrogating treaties, and sending “defense” spending skyrocketing. Chest-thumping talk of empire abounded. But by 2005, the neocon hegemonic fantasy had been shattered and the Bush administration was widely reviled both at home and abroad.

On January 5, 2003, the New York Times provocatively titled its Sunday Magazine cover story “American Empire: Get Used To It.” For America’s neoconservatives, this was a moment of euphoria. It hadn’t come easy. In fact, it had been decades in the making. And the celebration was just starting. It would not reach its zenith for several more months when visions of the new American empire were fueled by early and decisive military victories on the battlefields of Iraq. Untrammeled American hegemony was back and, in the immortal words of Woodrow Wilson, the world would again know “America as the savior of the world!”1 But then it all came crashing down with stunning rapidity as the shallow hubris of

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neoconservative thinking would make a mockery of the swaggering triumphalism of these days of glorious vindication when the neocons and their fellow travellers put their ruinous stamp on the presidency of George W. Bush.

The neoconservative road to victory can be said to have begun on the heels of the humiliating U.S. defeat in Vietnam by what Henry Kissinger denigrated as “a little fourth-rate power.”2 Neoconservatives were determined to not allow the corrosive psychological and political effects of this debacle deter U.S. military intervention elsewhere. As early as July 1967, the Los Angeles Times described Congressional resistance to President Johnson’s intervention in the Congolese and Nigerian civil wars in very telling terms: Of overriding concern was the possibility that once the first step toward intervention was taken other steps would be inevitable. This feeling—what might be called the Vietnam syndrome—has been increasingly evident lately. It was visible during the recent Middle East crisis, when members of Congress almost unanimously urged no unilateral intervention.

The evident danger of the Vietnam syndrome is that it could lead to a paralysis of will and action in cases where unilateral U.S. efforts might indeed be necessary to protect American lives or vital American interests.

But the trauma of Vietnam also has its useful side. It has driven home the fact that the United States is not and cannot be the world’s policeman.

With all its military power and economic wealth, with all its generous intentions, it cannot control events everywhere. What has been called the “illusion of American omnipotence” is just that, and it is high time the government and people adjusted to the fact.3

For the next several years, however, the term “Vietnam syndrome” would be used to describe the troubled psychological state of returning veterans rather than the revulsion against the Vietnam War that made Americans squeamish about using force to settle international conflicts. Gen. Maxwell Taylor returned to the earlier usage in December 1973 when he bemoaned the fact that “national security has fallen into disrepute, the victim of the post-Vietnam syndrome and the consequences of Watergate.” “The national mood that followed Vietnam,” Taylor noted, “has inevitably been one marked by an antimilitary bias and a distrust of military solutions to foreign policy problems.”4 The term was mentioned only sporadically in subsequent years, resurfacing in late 1979 and early 1980 around the Iranian crisis. Veteran policymaker George Ball announced that the crisis had “put an end to the Vietnam syndrome.” Hawks in both parties celebrated. But not all were pleased. Historian Arthur Schlesinger, observed, “In Washington, legislators rejoice that ‘the Vietnam syndrome’ is dead. At last, it would appear, we are free to be fools again.’”5 The neoconservatives, who had been inveighing against the constraints the Vietnam syndrome placed upon U.S. actions, led the applause. In 1980, Commentary magazine, the leading journal of the first generation neoconservatives, published a series of essays decrying the lingering effects of Vietnam. President Reagan agreed. “For too long,” he intoned, “we have lived with the ‘Vietnam Syndrome.’ . . . Over and over they told us for nearly 10 years that we were the aggressors bent on imperialistic conquests. . . . It is time we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause. . . . We dishonor the memory of 50,000 young Americans who died in that cause when we give way to feelings of guilt.”6

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It was during the Reagan administration that the neocons would really make their influence felt, but they had begun planting seeds in the previous decade. Reacting to what they considered the excesses of the 1960s and the anti-Americanism emanating from the Vietnam antiwar movement, opponents of détente and arms control coalesced around several leading figures including RAND nuclear expert Albert Wohlstetter, Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, Public Interest editor Irving Kristol, and Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson.

This new breed of conservative, many of whom had migrated from the liberal and even left wing of the political spectrum, espoused a more resolute anti-communism and the need to bolster America’s defenses. Through Team B, several took aim at the nation’s intelligence community. They also formed organizations to push their agenda including the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, the Committee on the Present Danger, the Committee for the Free World, and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Funding came from a patchwork of major foundations. Thus fortified, they flexed their muscle within the Ford administration, helping engineer a major cabinet reorganization in 1975, replacing several of the moderates with hardliners.

But the early neocons were essentially clearing the deck for their real patron saint -Ronald Reagan -- to take office. And they flooded the new administration. Reagan appointed 33 members of the Committee on the Present Danger to positions high and low. In 1970, Attorney General John Mitchell had prematurely declared, “We are going to take this country so far to the right you won’t even recognize it.”7 It was Reagan, with the help of the neocons, who would turn Mitchell’s fantasy into a reality, unleashing death squads in Latin America and Islamic fanatics in Pakistan and Afghanistan, who would later mutate to form Al Qaeda and ISIS. But George H.W. Bush’s presidency gave the United States a chance to step back and take stock. With Gorbachev ushering in a new stage of history, stalwart anticommunist Jeane Kirkpatrick visited the Soviet Union in September 1989 and marveled at the openness and political freedom she witnessed. Much to her chagrin, it appeared that totalitarian states could indeed change their ways. It was time, she reckoned, for America to do the same. Upon returning home, she participated in a National Interest forum in which she called upon the U.S. to abandon its hegemonic pretentions: “The time when Americans should bear such unusual burdens is past. With a return to ‘normal’ times, we can again become a normal nation…. Most of the international military obligations that we assumed were once important are now outdated. Our alliances should be alliances of equals, with equal risks, burden, and responsibilities. It is time to give up the dubious benefits of superpower status and become again an unusually successful, open American republic.”8 Kirkpatrick’s moment of lucidity would not last long. She and fellow neocons seized upon the collapse of America’s principal antagonist as a chance to go on the offensive. The U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989 made clear that Gorbachev’s restraint in Eastern Europe would in no way deter U.S. actions in its own near abroad. To the contrary, Panama proved that the U.S. would act unilaterally and do so in defiance of world opinion as the OAS voted 20–1 to “deeply deplore” the invasion.9 Even Colin Powell declared, “We have to put a shingle outside our door saying ‘Superpower Lives Here,’ no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe.”10 The first Gulf War proved the U.S. would also do as it pleased in its not so near abroad.

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And then the Soviet Union itself collapsed. The unipolar moment was finally at hand.

Charles Krauthammer appropriately used the AEI’s annual Irving Kristol lecture to explain the way this felt to neoconservatives: And then it ended with one of the great anticlimaxes in history. Without a shot fired, without a revolution, without so much as a press release, the Soviet Union simply gave up and disappeared.

It was the end of everything – the end of communism, of socialism, of the Cold War, of the European wars. But the end of everything was also a beginning. On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union died and something new was born, something utterly new–a unipolar world dominated by a single superpower unchecked by any rival and with decisive reach in every corner of the globe.11

In September 1990, the sometimes prescient and usually wrongheaded Krauthammer laid out his vision for a new neocon foreign policy in his Henry M. Jackson Memorial Lecture to the AEI, which was subsequently published in Foreign Affairs with the title “The Unipolar Moment.” This vision would animate neocon thinking for the next decade and a half. In the talk, Krauthammer completely rejected the then prevailing notion that the post-Cold War world would be multipolar. Nor did he believe the U.S. could return to “1930’s style conservative isolationism.” The coming period, he contended, would bring a new kind of threat — the threat posed by “small aggressive states armed with weapons of mass destruction and possessing the means to deliver them,” which made the “coming decades a time of heightened, not diminished, threat of war.” If handled correctly, this unipolar moment would be more than a moment. U.S. preeminence as the “single pole of world power” would last at least decades. “American preeminence,” he averred, “is based on the fact that it is the only country with the military, diplomatic, political and economic assets to be a decisive player in any conflict in whatever part of the world it chooses to involve itself.”12 In laying out the precise nature of the new threat posed in the post-Cold War world, Krauthammer quoted Dick Cheney’s warning that “By the year 2000, more than two dozen developing nations will have ballistic missiles. Fifteen of those countries will have the scientific skills to make their own and half of them either have or are near to getting nuclear capability, as well. Thirty countries will have chemical weapons and ten will be able to deploy biological weapons.” Therefore, Krauthammer suggested calling the post-Cold War period “the era of weapons of mass destruction.”13 The only solution to the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) would be “destroying, disarming, and defending” and the latter would entail antiballistic missiles and air defense systems. He concluded by stating clearly that the “best hope for safety” in these “abnormal times” is “American strength and will…to lead a unipolar world, unashamedly laying down the rules of world order and being prepared to enforce them.”14 But the collapse of the Soviet Union proved to be a double-edged sword. With the United States’ principal enemy gone, talk turned immediately to the “peace dividend.” In early 1992, the chairs of the Senate Budget Committee and the Joint Economic Committee had unveiled a new Marshall Plan for America. Cuts in defense spending, they argued, would make it possible to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, including roads and bridges, and increase spending on education, research, and development.15 Senator Edward Kennedy called for a $210 billion cut over seven years.

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The neocons maneuvered to make sure this wouldn’t happen. They set about writing a new “Defense Planning Guidance” in 1992. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney assigned Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz the job of drafting the document.

Wolfowitz handed responsibility to Libby who passed the job on to Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-born U.S. citizen, who, like Deputy Secretary of Defense I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, had studied with Wolfowitz at the University of Chicago. Richard Perle and Albert Wolhstetter offered advice.16 In March 1993, someone leaked the document to the New York Times. It offered an early glimpse of the neocons’ “unipolar” world. According to the guidance, the U.S. would not permit any rival to emerge that could challenge U.S. global hegemony or dominate “a region whose resources would…be sufficient to generate global power.” In fact, the U.S. needed a military capable of “deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” It prescribed unilateral preemptive action against any country trying to acquire WMD, outlining seven possible war scenarios and demanding the ability to fight simultaneous wars against North Korea and Iraq while repelling a Russian advance into Europe. The report disavowed “the U.S….becom[ing] the world’s ‘policeman,’ by assuming responsibility for righting every wrong,” but made clear that the U.S. would “retain the pre-eminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which could seriously unsettle international relations.” The document went on to list the expansive U.S. interests that such authorization would cover, including “access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, threats to U.S. citizens from terrorism or regional or local conflict, and threats to U.S. society from narcotics trafficking.”17 The New York Times called it, “The clearest rejection to date of collective internationalism,” noting that “the document is conspicuously devoid of references to collective action through the United Nations.”18 Implementation, the Times warned, “would stall, if not reverse, the downward trend in military spending by the mid-1990s.” Senior Pentagon officials told the Washington Post that Wolfowitz and Cheney had a major hand in creating the document, which reflected their views. “This is not the piano player in the whorehouse,” one official assured the Post.19 Krauthammer applauded the new policy’s forthrightness — that “It starts with the fact that this is a one-superpower world.”20 But critics far outnumbered supporters. The New York Times decried the report’s “chestthumping unilateralism.” It was a “Pax Americana,” Senator Joseph Biden charged—“an old notion of the United States as the world’s policeman.” Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) dismissed the authors’ “love [of] being the sole remaining superpower in the world” as “myopic, shallow and disappointing.”21 Some analysts expressed forebodings. Michael Mandelbaum foresaw the possibility of “far greater involvement in the economy and democratization of the Russians and the Ukrainians.” Former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown feared that the prospect that the U.S. or NATO might extend security guarantees to Eastern Europe was a clear provocation to the Russians, even raising “the same grave danger of nuclear war” that had curbed U.S. actions throughout the Cold War.22 Leonard Silk reported that “Senior White House and State Department officials harshly attacked the document, … calling it ‘a dumb report.’”23 Even some conservatives were taken aback. Pat Buchanan recognized “a formula for endless American intervention in quarrels and war when no vital interest of the United States is remotely engaged.” Historian John Gaddis said he “was a little surprised somebody would put

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this kind of thing down on paper. Declaring oneself the world’s hegemon,” he observed, “is an invitation to trouble.”24 Cheney and Wolfowitz tried to distance themselves from the controversial document. The Pentagon denied that either had read or approved the report.25 Cheney privately thanked Khalilzad, who recalled, “He said to me, ‘You’ve discovered a new rationale for our role in the world.”26 Libby revised the plan, choosing language that was less inflammatory without changing the substance. The Wall Street Journal breathed a sigh of relief, recognizing that the rewritten plan “doesn’t back down at all from [the] strategy of maintaining America’s military pre-eminence.”27 In 1995, William Kristol, John Podhoretz, and Fred Barnes established the Weekly Standard, which quickly became the second generation neoconservatives’ house organ. The neoconservative movement became institutionalized in 1997 in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). PNAC executive director Gary Schmitt traced the group’s origins to an article by Robert Kagan and William Kristol titled “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” which proposed a foreign policy vision for Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole. The vision attracted the attention of a number of leading conservatives who urged Kagan and Kristol to set up an organization that could rally support behind that vision.28 PNAC had considerable overlap with both the AEI and the Center for Security Policy, which had been founded by Frank Gaffney. The choice of names was especially meaningful.

The group invoked the vision outlined by Henry Luce’s 1941 call for an “American Century” — a vision that was countered brilliantly by Vice President Henry Wallace in his insistence that the twentieth century instead become “the century of the common man.” Wallace envisioned a multipolar world in which the U.S. and the Soviet Union would work together to end colonialism and all forms of imperialism, ban cartels and monopolies, and spread the fruit of science and technology around the globe. Unfortunately, Luce’s vision prevailed and the neocons were about to extend it to a new century.

PNAC’s founding statement decried the fact that U.S. had lost direction and resolve under Clinton and demanded a return to “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity,” which required a significant increase in defense spending. The original signers - a Who’s Who of neoconservatives - included Elliott Abrams, William Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot Cohen, Midge Decter, Steve Forbes, Francis Fukuyama, Fred Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Norman Podhoeretz, Dan Quayle, Henry Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, Gaffney, and Wolfowitz. Signers of subsequent PNAC letters and statements would also include Perle, Kenneth Adelman, Richard Allen, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Kirkpatrick, Krauthammer, Daniel Pipes, and former director of central intelligence James Woolsey.

It was around this time that the neocon campaign to oust Saddam Hussein really took flight. In 1997, the Weekly Standard published an issue titled “Saddam Must Go” that contained an article by Wolfowitz and Khalilzad titled “Overthrow Him.” In January 1998, 18 PNACers signed a letter to President Clinton calling for “removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power.” Highlighting the fact that Iraq might possess WMD, the letter warned that “in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.” Therefore, they argued, it behooves the U.S. to circumvent the United Nations and take preemptive action to eliminate this threat. “In the near term,” they explained, “this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing.” In the long term, it meant ousting Saddam and

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toppling his regime.29 In October, Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act into law. Regime change in Iraq became official U.S. policy.

That George W. Bush would become the darling of the neocons was in no way certain when he began his campaign for the presidency. His principal foreign policy advisor — Condoleezza Rice — was more a Scowcroftian realist than a Reaganite interventionist. Time Magazine’s Romesh Ratnesar predicted during the campaign that Bush, unlike Gore, would be “at best, a reluctant interventionist.” He anticipated that Bush would “adhere closely” to the views of Colin Powell, who believed that military interventions “need to be in our vital interest, the mission needs to be clear and the exit strategy obvious” with local conflicts “better left to regional powers.” Ratnesar quoted Bush’s words from the second debate: “We can’t be all things to all people in the world. I’m worried about overcommitting our military.”

Ratnesar concluded that given the current messy global scene, Gore’s “crusading interventionism” might be preferable to Bush’s more measured approach.30 That same restraint had caused many neoconservatives, including Bill Kristol, to support John McCain in the primaries. Kristol told James Mann that the decisive factor was McCain’s support for military intervention in Kosovo. “I preferred McCain,” he explained, “and Kosovo was what did it for me, where he bucked a large chunk of the Republican party.”31 Robert Kagan went further. The difference between the two candidates, he averred, “is biography. McCain’s wartime heroism gives his call for American strength and idealism a power and a resonance that Bush can’t match. When Bush extols American moral leadership, it’s good rhetoric. When McCain declares that America is ‘the greatest force for good in the world,’ it is against the background of having nearly died in service of that noble sentiment.”

Kagan differentiated between McCain’s stalwart call for “more vigorous prosecution of the [Kosovo] conflict” at a time when Congressional Republicans and conservatives were condemning intervention and Bush’s “hedged, careful and late” support.32 But other leading neocons, including Wolfowitz and Perle, supported Bush over McCain from the start. Wolfowitz considered Bush “the ‘new Scoop Jackson.’” Perle admitted that Bush “didn’t know very much about foreign policy” but praised his eagerness to ask questions and willingness to learn. They both saw him as “educable.”33 The rest of Bush’s foreign policy team in early 1999 was a hodgepodge of neocons and realists, including Rice, Hadley, Armitage, Robert Zoellick, Dov Zakheim, and Robert Blackwill. Rice anointed them “the Vulcans.”

Just prior to the election, the PNAC issued an important report titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century.” Donald Kagan and Gary Schmitt co-chaired the project this grew out of. Thomas Donnelly served as the principal author. Participants included Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, Fred Kagan, Stephen Cambone, future PNAC director Mark Lagon, Abram Shulsky, Zakheim, Wolfowitz, Cohen, and Libby. In the introduction, the authors make clear that the goal is to preserve the United States’ position as “the world’s only superpower.” “But,” the authors lament, “years of cuts in defense spending have eroded the American military’s combat readiness.” They called for building upon the defense strategy outlined at the end of the George H.W. Bush administration by the Cheney Defense Department. The report stated, “The Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) drafted in the early months of 1992 provided a blueprint for maintaining U.S. preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.” But the 1992 document, they

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regretted, had been leaked prematurely and attacked as an attempt by “cold warriors” to maintain inflated levels of defense spending after the fall of the Soviet Union.34 The report identified the U.S. military’s four core missions, among which were “fight[ing] and decisively win[ning] multiple, simultaneous major theater wars” and “perform[ing] the ‘constabulary’ duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions.” To carry out the core missions, the report called for maintaining U.S. nuclear strategic superiority, increasing the size of the active duty armed forces to the 1.4 to 1.6 million in the first Bush administration, and repositioning U.S. forces to Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia, while “changing naval deployment patterns to reflect growing U.S. strategic concerns in East Asia,” modernizing U.S. forces, canceling certain exorbitant programs, developing and deploying global missile defense, controlling space and cyberspace, exploiting the “revolution in military affairs,” and increasing defense spending by $15 to $20 billion per year.35 Central to this effort to maintain American military preeminence was the need to undertake a thorough military transformation based on the incorporation of cutting-edge information technologies. And in the report’s most frequently cited phrase, it contended that this process of fundamental transformation “is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.”36 Neocons flooded the new administration. Eleven PNACers and other prominent neocons took positions, including Cheney (vice president), Rumsfeld (secretary of defense), Wolfowitz (deputy secretary of defense), Armitage (deputy secretary of state), Elliott Abrams (senior director for Near East, Southwest Asian, and North African Affairs on the National Security Council), John Bolton (undersecretary, Arms Control and International Security), Paula Dobriansky (undersecretary of state for global affairs), Khalilzad (president’s special envoy to Afghanistan and ambassador at large for free Iraqis), Perle (chair of the Pentagon’s semiautonomous Defense Policy Board), Peter Rodman (assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs), William Schneider, Jr. (chair of the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board), Zoellick (U.S. trade representative), Cambone (director of the Pentagon Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation), Cohen (Defense Policy Board), Devon Gaffney Cross (Defense Policy Board), Libby (Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff), William Luti and Shulsky (eventually, directors of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans), Woolsey (Defense Policy Board), and David Wurmser (special assistant to the undersecretary of state for arms control).

Though Cheney and Rumsfeld had not been part of the neocon inner circle, they were instrumental in bringing the neocons into the administration. Both had longstanding ties to leading neocons and shared the neocon worldview. When Cheney was secretary of defense under George H.W. Bush, Wolfowitz served as his undersecretary. Rumsfeld’s ties also went way back. As neocon foreign policy analyst Joshua Muravchik saw it, Rumsfeld was the “leading patron of neocons in the administration.” Rumsfeld, he explained, was “sort of the bridge by which some of the neocons got into the administration. So even though Rumsfeld was not part of us we were part of him, we were part of the Rumsfeld team.”37 Cheney also lent a hand. He took the lead in vetting potential Cabinet appointees and recommended neocons for positions throughout the administration.38 Many scholars believe that 9/11 transformed George W. Bush from a realist to a neoconservative. Robert Kagan told Assassins’ Gate author George Packer, “September 11 is the turning point. Not anything else. This is not what Bush was on September 10.” Kagan

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took credit for having helped “keep alive a certain way of looking at American foreign policy at a time when it was pretty unpopular.”39 Now Bush, Kagan stated, would join the fold.

Administration neocons, with Bush’s backing, had actually been making their presence felt long before that calamitous event shook the foundations of the American republic. Los Angeles Times reporter Robin Wright observed seven and a half months prior to 9/11 that the Bush administration, within weeks of taking office, “has generated anxiety among foreign policy specialists about a doctrine variously dubbed ‘unilateralism’ or ‘exceptionalism.’ The premise of the new doctrine is that the U.S. can do pretty much what it wants because its sophisticated democracy makes it politically and morally superior to the rest of the world — and sometimes even exempts it from international norms and treaties.” As the exponent of this view, Wright singled out not Rumsfeld or Cheney but Secretary of State Colin Powell, particularly his embrace of missile defense in defiance of the U.S.’s European and Asian allies. Powell had told the Senate that the ABM treaty was “no longer relevant.” Condoleeza Rice did Powell two better. Citing the United States’ “special role in the world,” she denounced both the Kyoto treaty on global warming and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.40 Others would add to this list prior to 9/11. In late July 2001, the Toronto Globe and Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson decried the takeover in Washington of a new breed who “are not only military hawks but diplomatic unilateralists who reflect a mixture of Republican muscularity, American triumphalism and deep-seated U.S. exceptionalism.” To the list of treaties and international agreements that Bush had “threatened, rescinded or scorned,” Simpson added the UN agreement on small-arms trafficking, new enforcement measures for the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, and both the 1996 nuclear test ban and the 1993 nuclear reduction treaties with Russia.

Sterling observed, “Classic international-relations theory suggests that two kinds of states distrust multilateralism: rogue states, which feel that the international system is holding them back or is systematically hostile to their ambitions, and the undisputed superpowers, or hegemons, that do not want their capacity hindered for unilateral action in their own interests.” “The United States,” he concluded, “is the world’s pre-eminent power and, as such, it might be argued that it is merely following the textbook rules for how hegemons behave in the international system,” a system, he noted, that the United States had done so much to build.41 What he didn’t realize is that the United States under Bush would become both a hegemon and a rogue state — a doubly dangerous situation.

The neocons had plans in place, but lacked the excuse to implement them. Founding neocon Irving Kristol lamented the situation in 1996. “With the end of the Cold War,” he explained, “what we really need is an obvious ideological and threatening enemy, one worthy of our mettle, one that can unite us in opposition. Isn’t that what the most successful movie of the year, ‘Independence Day,’ is telling us? Where are our aliens when we most need them?”42 9/11 provided the pretext.

The alacrity with which the neocons seized upon 9/11 has been thoroughly documented.

Within hours of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the neocons leaped into action. Their focus instantaneously shifted from al Qaeda to Iraq. Neocons both inside and outside the administration spoke with a single voice. Find out, they insisted, how Iraq and Saddam Hussein were involved in the attacks even though Iraq and al Qaeda were bitter foes.

Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Perle led the charge. Feith and Libby brought up the rear.

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Bush cheered them on. Osama bin Laden had given them their “new Pearl Harbor” and they weren’t about to let it slip away.

Rumsfeld declared that Iraq had better targets than Afghanistan. Counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke assumed he was kidding. He wasn’t. On September 12, Perle told CIA director George Tenet, “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility.”43 Bush instructed Clarke to “See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way.”44 Clarke quickly figured out what was happening. “At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq.”45 Saddam had been in the Bush administration’s crosshairs from its first days in office. At the NSC principals meeting in early February 2001, Rumsfeld interrupted Powell to say, “Sanctions are fine. But what we really want to think about is going after Saddam.” Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill later reported that concrete plans for the invasion and occupation were being discussed as early as March 2001.46 The New York Times named the administration insiders plotting the invasion the “Wolfowitz cabal.”47 On September 20, leading neocons published an open letter to Bush in the Weekly Standard. The writers raised the possibility that the Iraqi government had assisted in the 9/11 attacks but added that “even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terror.”48 They also urged action against Iran and Syria if those countries didn’t stop supporting Hezbollah, strengthening ties to Israel, and ending assistance to the Palestinian authority. The 41 signers included Bill Kristol, Robert and Donald Kagan, Gaffney, Perle, Krauthammer, Kirkpatrick, Bennett, Schmitt, Fukuyama, Midge Dechter, Norman Podhoretz, Martin Peretz, and Reuel Marc Gerecht.

With the invasion of Afghanistan, neocon spirits soared. In a remarkable and thoroughly hubristic essay published in late 2002, Krauthammer revisited his 1990 paean to American unipolarity and decided he had actually sold the U.S. short. He pointed joyfully to Paul Kennedy’s “classic recantation” of his earlier contention that the United States suffered from “imperial overreach.” After watching the U.S. level Afghanistan, Kennedy realized that in all the history of previous empires, “Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power; nothing.” Krauthammer concurred. Kosovo was “the first war ever fought and won exclusively from the air,” but it only hinted at “America’s quantum leap of military power.”

Afghanistan, Krauthammer proclaimed, had provided a more fitting stage, as the U.S. “showed that at a range of 7,000 miles and with but a handful of losses, it could destroy within weeks a hardened, fanatical regime favored by geography and climate in the ‘graveyard of empires.’”

That the U.S. was the greatest hegemon the world had ever seen was undisputed. But that didn’t make it invulnerable, according to Krauthammer. Although the U.S. had no “great power enemies,” it could still be undone by what he described as “an archipelago of rogue states (some connected with transnational terrorists) wielding weapons of mass destruction.”

In response to this threat, Krauthammer noted a series of doctrines that undergirded the new unilateralism, many of which had already been incorporated in the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy released in September 2002: “First came the with-us-or-against-us

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41

ultimatum to any state aiding, abetting or harboring terrorists. Then, pre-emptive attack on any enemy state developing weapons of mass destruction. And now, regime change in any such state.” The bottom line was not that the U.S. would reject the help of other countries but that the U.S. would not let a lack of international support determine its actions. That, he contended, was the problem with the Clinton years. They were “marked by an obsession with ‘international legality’ as expressed by this or that Security Council resolution”—a liberal legalist multilateralism privileging diplomacy, whose “trademark was consultation” and “principal objective was good international citizenship.” But unlike other hegemons, he argued, the United States “did not come to rule” and was “the first hegemonic power in history to be obsessed with ‘exit strategies.’”

In 1990, when Krauthammer first proposed his unipolar model, he suggested that “unipolarity could last thirty or forty years,” which, he reflected, “seemed bold at the time.”

Today, however, it seemed “rather modest,” because “the unipolar moment has become the unipolar era.” It was unbounded. Krauthammer ended on a particularly iconoclastic note.

“The choice is ours,” he wrote. “To impiously paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: History has given you an empire, if you can keep it.”49 Openly discussing American empire was not only impious, it was downright heretical outside of neocon circles. But amongst the neocons, it was standard fare or, to be precise, Weekly Standard fare. Within days of the October 7, 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard headlined its cover story by Wall Street Journal editorial features editor and Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Max Boot “The Case for American Empire.” Others came on board — slowly at first. But what began as a trickle soon turned into a flood. By January 5, 2003, the New York Times was headlining its Sunday Magazine cover story “American Empire: Get Used To It.” Publicly, administration neocons denied any imperial aspirations. On April 28, 2003, following the invasion of Iraq, an al-Jazeera reporter asked Rumsfeld if the U.S. was “empire building.” Boot noted that the Secretary of Defense “reacted as if he’d been asked whether he wears women’s underwear. ‘We don’t seek empires,’ he replied huffily. ‘We’re not imperialistic. We never have been.’” Boot corrected him, explaining that the U.S. had been an empire at least since Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803. Acknowledging the “historical baggage” associated with the term “imperialism,” Boot understood why the U.S. government might avoid its usage. “But,” he exclaimed, “it should definitely embrace the practice” of empire building. “U.S. imperialism,” he declared, “has been the greatest force for good in the world during the past century.” Boot’s biggest fear was that the U.S. would not commit enough money and troops and station them long enough in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond. He envisioned troops remaining in Iraq for years, “possibly decades.” “If that raises hackles about American imperialism,” he insisted, “so be it. We’re going to be called an empire whatever we do. We might as well be a successful one.’’50 For the neocons, that success started with Afghanistan. But it certainly didn’t end there.

All agreed that Iraq would be next. The only question was where they would go after that.

Iran made everyone’s target list. Undersecretary of State John Bolton opted to add Syria and North Korea. Norman Podhoretz wrote in Commentary that beyond Bush’s “axis of evil,” the “regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced” included “at a minimum…Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as ‘friends’ of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority.”51 A senior military staff officer told retired General Wesley Clark of plans for “a five year campaign” targeting “a

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total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan.”52 Neocon strategist Michael Ledeen envisioned the big picture: “I think we’re going to be obliged to fight a regional war, whether we want to or not. It may turn out to be a war to remake the world.”53 The neocons salivated over the prospect. Wiser analysts, inside and outside the government, tried to avert the coming disaster. Former U.S Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Charles Freeman warned, “It’s a war to turn the kaleidoscope, by people who know nothing about the Middle East.”54 Anthony Cordesman vented, “It may be excusable as a fantasy of some Israelis.... As American policy, however, it crosses the line between neo-conservative and neo-crazy.”55 The global community also tried to block Bush’s impending folly. But Bush was not to be deterred. Columnist Robert Samuelson observed, “To foreign critics, [Bush’s] Rambo-like morality confirms their worst stereotypes of Americans: stupid, incautious and bloodthirsty.”56 “Shock and awe” began on March 20, 2003 with an aerial assault. Harlan Ullman and James Wade, the authors of the 1996 study on which the strategy was loosely based, explained, that the attack would be so rapid and devastating that it would “achieve a level of national shock akin to the effect that dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese.” They cautioned that this approach will be “utterly brutal and ruthless” and “can easily fall outside the cultural heritage of the U.S.”57 The Iraqi army collapsed, putting up less resistance than expected. The neocons celebrated. Their moment had arrived. “We stand at the cusp of a new historical era,” Bill Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan gloated. “The mission begins in Baghdad, but it does not end there.”58 As the more sober analysts had predicted, the euphoria didn’t last. The situation in Iraq quickly spun out of control. The Bush team proved to be the Keystone Kops of nation building. Chaos reigned and civil war would later erupt. By September 2004, conditions had spiraled downward so rapidly that Amr Moussa, head of the Arab League, observed, “The gates of hell are open in Iraq.”59 The chorus of naysayers swelled. The neocons had been thoroughly discredited. By late 2006, even Krauthammer got it. He announced that United States’s unipolar moment had peaked in 2005. The U.S. was “past the apogee” of unipolarity.60 The unipolar era he had proudly trumpeted had turned back into the unipolar moment. Bush left office with the lowest approval ratings of any president since Harry Truman. After causing enormous damage to the United States and much of the rest of the world, the neocons had been thoroughly discredited. But they learned little from that debacle and are back today as Fox News pundits and Republican “statesmen,” continuing to push policies as wrongheaded — as “neo-crazy” – as they are old-fashioned dangerous.

ENDNOTES 1.

2.

3.

4.

66th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Documents: Addresses of President Wilson, 11, 120 (May–November 1919), 206.

Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990 (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991), 239.

“U.S. Intervention in the Congo,” Los Angeles Times, July 12, 1967.

Robert J. Donovan, “Nonmilitary Threats Worry Maxwell Taylor: ‘Our Concept of National Security Too Narrow,’” Los Angeles Times, December 19, 1973.

‘American Empire: Get Used to It’ 5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

43

Arthur Schlesinger Jr., “No, Let’s Debate Our Iran Policy,” New York Times, December 13, 1979.

Ronald Reagan, “Peace: Restoring the Margin of Safety,” delivered at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention, Chicago, Ill., Aug. 18, 1980, www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/reference/8.18.80.html.

Jon Wiener, Conspiracy in the Streets: The Extraordinary Trial of the Chicago Eight (New York: The New Press, 2006), 258.

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, “A Normal Country in a Normal Time,” National Interest 21(Fall 1990), 44.

John B. Quigley, The Invasion of Panama and International Law (Vienna: International Progress Organization, 1990), 3.

Gary J. Dorrien, Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana (New York: Routledge, 2004), 26.

Charles Krauthammer, “Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World,” The 2004 Irving Kristol Lecture, AEI Annual Dinner, Washington, DC, February 10, 2004, http://www.aei.org/ publication/democratic-realism .

Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs. 70(1990/1991), 11-12.

Ibid., 30.

Ibid, 32-33.

Eric Pianin, “Idea of Revising Budget Pact Advances,” Washington Post, January 4, 1992.

James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet, (New York: Penguin, 2004), 210.

“Excerpts From Pentagon’s Plan: ‘Prevent the Re-Emergence of a New Rival,’” New York Times, March 8, 1992.

Patrick E. Tyler, “U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop,” New York Times, March 8, 1992.

Barton Gellman, “Keeping the U.S. First; Pentagon Would Preclude a Rival Superpower,” Washington Post, March 11, 1992.

Charles Krauthammer, “What’s Wrong with the ‘Pentagon Paper?’” Washington Post, March 13, 1992.

Gellman.

Gellman.

Leonard Silk, “Economic Scene; Weak Economy Pins Bush Down,” New York Times, March 13, 1992.

“Hot Debate Over US Strategic Role Draft Pentagon Paper Stirs Up Controversy on How, and Why, Military Funds Are Spent,” Christian Science Monitor, March 16, 1992.

Barton Gellman, “Keeping the U.S. First,” New York Times, March 11, 1992; “America’s Not the Only Cop,” New York Times, June 7, 1992.

Mann, 211.

Maria Ryan, Neoconservatism and the New American Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 23.

Jesuls Velasco, Neoconservatives in U.S. Foreign Policy under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush: Voices behind the Throne (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010), 75.

Elliott Abrams et. al. to William J. Clinton, January 26, 1998 at http://www.newamericancentury.org/ iraqclintonletter.html .

Romesh Ratnesar, “Global Warnings,” Time, October 21, 2000, http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/ 0,8599,58358,00.html .

Mann, 259.

Robert Kagan, “The Biggest Issue of All,” Washington Post, February 15, 2000.

Velasco, 156.

“Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century,” Project for the New American Century, September 2000, www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf, i-ii .

Ibid, iv-v.

Ibid, 50-51.

Velasco, 37.

Velasco, 79.

George Packer, Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 38.

Robin Wright, “Powell Puts U.S. on Pedestal, Observers Say,” Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2001.

Jeffrey Simpson, “When the U.S. Won’t Listen to its Friends,” Globe and Mail, July 31, 2001.

Irving Kristol, “A Post-Wilsonian Foreign Policy,” August 2, 1996, American Enterprise Institute, http://www.aei.org/publication/a-post-wilsonian-foreign-policy .

George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), xix.

Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), 32.

44 45.

46.

47.

48.

49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

54.

55.

56.

57.

58.

59.

60.

Peter J. Kuznick Ibid., 30.

Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), 129.

Elaina Sciolino and Patrick E. Tyler, “A National Challenge: Saddam Hussein,” New York Times, October 12, 2001.

William Kristol et al., “Letter to President Bush on the War on Terrorism, September 20, 2001, Project for the New American Century, https://web.archive.org/web/20130112203252/http://www.newamericancentury. org/Bushletter.html .

Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment Revisited,” National Interest (Winter 2002/2003), http://www.lexisnexis.com.proxyau.wrlc.org/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=222885 .

Max Boot, “American Imperialism? No Need to Run Away from Label,” USA Today, May 6, 2003.

Norman Podhoretz, “In Praise of the Bush Doctrine,” Commentary, September 2002, 19.

Wesley K. Clark, Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004), 130.

Linda Diebel “ Bush Doctrinaires,” Toronto Star, April 13, 2003.

Robert Dreyfuss, “Just the Beginning: Is Iraq the Opening Salvo in a War to Remake the World?,” American Prospect, April 1, 2003, 26.

Barbara Slavin, “Iraq a Harsh Climate to Try to Grow Democracy,” USA Today, November 11, 2002.

Robert J. Samuelson, “The Gulf of World Opinion,” Washington Post, March 27, 2003.

Harlan K. Ullman and James Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (NDU Press, 1996), www.au.af.mil/AU/AWC/AWCGATE/ndu/shocknawe .

Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol, The War over Iraq: Saddam’s Tyranny and America’s Mission (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003), vii–viii, 124. “‘Gates of Hell’ Are Open in Iraq, Warns Arab League Chief,” Agence France Presse, Sep. 19, 2004.

Ryan, 187.

In: The George W. Bush Presidency. Volume III Editors: Meena Bose and Paul Fritz

ISBN: 978-1-63485-783-3 © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 4

COMMUNICATING A RATIONALE FOR WAR: GEORGE W. BUSH AND THE RHETORIC OF IMPERIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS Ann E. Burnette and Wayne L. Kraemer Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, US

ABSTRACT After the attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush constructed arguments in his public rhetoric that explained these events and persuaded the American people to support a swift and decisive military response to them. This essay examines Bush’s rhetoric in two speeches in which he reviewed the meaning of the attacks and provided a rationale for the administration’s military actions. Bush used the rhetoric of imperial righteousness to explain and justify the War in Iraq and the War on Terror. This chapter explains the rhetoric of imperial righteousness, which provided a justification for preemptive war as a tool of United States foreign policy while also unifying and motivating Americans to support military action.

Wars are waged through words as well as weapons. The rhetoric that defines a nation’s interests, justifies aggressive actions, and exhorts a people to support their leaders as they commit to military operations is a crucial component in any country’s war effort. No American president could mount a war without public discourse to explain and justify the war. Even in a situation when a country has been attacked on its home soil — as the United States was on September 11, 2001 — rhetoric is necessary to give the attack meaning and frame the appropriate response to it.

This chapter analyzes the rhetoric that President George W. Bush utilized to explain and justify the War on Terror. In doing so, we use the theoretical framework of imperial righteousness to evaluate Bush’s war rhetoric. The framework of imperial righteousness has supplanted previously established rhetorical frameworks to justify waging war. Imperial righteousness is a strong enough argumentative framework to justify preemptive military

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action. We will explain how Bush’s presidential rhetoric expressed righteousness and how that righteousness was imperial.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, dramatically changed the presidency of George W. Bush. The Bush administration had spent its first nine months trying to stay on message to advance a domestic agenda that included education and faith-based initiatives. In the aftermath of the attacks, the president was forced to move off message and construct a rhetorical response to the terrorist threat.

The 9/11 political world and the subsequent War on Terror led Bush to argue that military action in Afghanistan and Iraq was an inevitable and effective action. In previous examinations of Bush’s rhetoric justifying war, we have used Robert V. Friedenberg’s idea of the rhetoric of militant decency to analyze Bush’s arguments.1 Friedenberg describes the public statements made by President Theodore Roosevelt as he positioned the nation to wage both a physical and ideological war. This rhetoric featured three themes: a portrayal of the United States’ power, an extended development of the United States’ character, and a description of social responsibility that the United States should and would assume.2 The first aspect of the rhetoric of militant decency is the emphasis on power. The power can be national or presidential. The idea of forcible diplomacy is not new. Throughout history people have equated a nation’s strength with its ability to defend itself and wield its might against its enemies. Power gives a nation options in handling a situation but these options are also constrained by moral codes of righteousness. Friedenberg argues that the rhetoric of militant decency is militant because it is not hesitant about the use of power. It is decent because the power is to be used for just ends.3 Second, there must be an emphasis on character. Here the president focuses attention not only on the head of state but also on the character of the country. A nation should be honest, it should have the courage to act, and the action should stem from a thoughtful understanding of the situation based on common sense. In addition a nation’s actions should mirror their position within the international community and befit their status. In this case the rhetoric is militant because it takes a firm stance on how a nation should strive to exemplify noble character and it is decent because it involves belief and action that is consistent with that nobility.4 A nation also should be socially responsible in applying militant decency. Each nation must realize that they are only one piece of the complex puzzle that makes up the world.

Responses to situations should not be selfish but should be dedicated to the betterment of the whole. While defense of the homeland is paramount to a nation’s sense of security, that security is tenuous if there is significant unrest around the world. The rhetoric of moral decency also promotes a clear distinction between good and evil, and between right and wrong. Viewed through the lens of social responsibility the rhetoric is militant because it imposes and upholds a moral role, and it is decent because the action is for the common good.

While the idea of militant decency is helpful in evaluating Bush’s rhetoric, we argue that Bush’s arguments illustrate a significant change in contemporary presidential war rhetoric.

Rather than focusing on the concept of decency, U.S. pro-war rhetoric now assumes the premise that the United States has a duty or mission that justifies preemptive war. Thus militant decency as a rationale for war has evolved into imperial righteousness as an argumentative basis. Social responsibility, then, shifts from an evaluation of what would be best for the good of international relations to an explicit argument that military actions can and should be grounded primarily in terms of what benefits the United States. The dimension

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of character also undergoes a change. While character arguments based on militant decency value common sense as a requirement for action, arguments based on imperial righteousness use common sense in the service of a higher mission or charge. As Andrew Bacevich argues, “Those who chart America’s course do so with a clearly defined purpose in mind. That purpose is to preserve and, where feasible and conducive to U.S. interests, to expand an American imperium.”5 Arguments based on imperial righteousness reframe the use of power.

The United States is justified in using its power for national security or to protect the empire and it is righteous in protecting the security of other nation states.

Bush’s rhetoric during his presidency illustrates the progression from militant decency to imperial righteousness. Bush and subsequent American presidents can justify military action based on the righteousness of American goals and actions. We examine four dimensions of this righteousness Bush expressed in his presidential discourse. As Bush described this righteousness, it also took on the force of an imperial action. Bush’s rhetoric communicated the righteousness of the American effort by describing the importance of freedom and democracy, the need for national security, the character of the American people, and the nature of the enemy. We will examine these categories in two of Bush’s presidential speeches: his address to the nation on the five-year anniversary of 9/11, delivered on September 11, 2006, and his farewell address, delivered on January 15, 2009. We have previously traced Bush’s development of the rhetoric of imperial righteousness in his earlier rhetoric.6 In this paper we chose to evaluate the 2006 and 2009 speeches because they marked significant points in his administration when Bush reviewed the War on Terror and reflected on the steps America took to wage that war. In these speeches Bush articulated the precepts of imperial righteousness.

DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM While George W. Bush was not the first U.S. president to advocate for democracy and freedom worldwide, he certainly made it a mainstay of presidential foreign policy rhetoric after 9/11. Using the ideas of democracy and freedom Bush argued that the United States embraced its democratic ideologies and sought to promote a democratic agenda abroad. These discussions centered on two major themes: extolling the democracy and freedoms the United States enjoys and describing what other countries want.

Bush did not need to spend a great deal of time detailing the democratic values and ideologies that the United States supports. On the five-year anniversary of 9/11, he used a military metaphor to describe the value of freedom observing that “One of the strongest weapons in our arsenal is the power of freedom.”7 Calling the struggle between democracy and other forms of government “a clash of civilizations” he said that “we are fighting to maintain the way of life enjoyed by free nations.”8 In his farewell address he again alluded to this clash, noting that: The battles waged by our troops are part of a broader struggle between two dramatically different systems. Under one, a small band of fanatics demands total obedience to an oppressive ideology, condemns women to subservience, and marks unbelievers for murderers. The other system is based on the conviction that freedom is the universal gift of Almighty God, and that liberty and justice light the path to peace.9

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In his farewell address he also detailed the course that America is bound to follow, advocating that “freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right.”10 He pledged that the United States would be ready to safeguard countries seeking democratic reform by affirming, “We must always be willing to act in their defense — and to advance the cause of peace.”11 A separate component of imperial righteousness is the duty of the United States to assist emerging democracies to function in the American model. This is a form of cultural imperialism that benefits the U.S. first and foremost but also benefits the international community. Bush clearly articulated that helping other countries achieve democratic reform “holds the key to peace for America and the world.”12 Indeed, he was setting in motion a “course for this new century” that will “determine the destiny of millions across the world.”13 In the farewell address he said, “And this great republic born alone in liberty is leading the world toward a new age when freedom belongs to all nations.”14 On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, he observed that America’s challenge was to “help the Iraqi people build a democracy that fulfills dreams of the nearly 12 million Iraqis who came out to vote in free elections.”15 He indicated that we were training their troops and we were strengthening the government to serve its people. Bush again avowed the American mission of democracy promotion when he declared, “We will not leave until this work is done.”16 Later in the speech he again posited that “America will stay in the fight, Iraq will be a free nation, and a strong ally in the war on terror.”17 Bush noted that American efforts to promote freedom and democracy were constantly in flux, “so we changed our policies, and committed America’s influence in the world to advancing freedom and democracy as the great alternative to repression and radicalism.”18 He said, “We are enlisting the most powerful force for peace and moderation in the Middle East: the desire of millions to be free”19 and later in the same speech remarked, “We will lead the 21st century into a shining age of human liberty.”20 He also argued that America seeks not just political change, but the betterment of all humans. He said, “We’re standing with dissidents and young democracies, providing AIDS medicine to dying patients — to bring dying patients back to life, and sparing mothers and babies from malaria.”21 He reinforced this idea by painting a picture of what the world would look like with the promise of democracy and freedom: America looks to the day when the people of the Middle East leave the desert of despotism for the fertile gardens of liberty, and resume their rightful place in a world of peace and prosperity. We look to the day when the nations of that region recognize their greatest resource is not the oil in the ground, but the talent and creativity of their people. We look to the day when moms and dads throughout the Middle East see a future of hope and opportunity for their children.22

In his farewell address Bush again described the impact of imperial righteousness on the Middle East arguing that if nations freely chose their leaders they would instinctively not choose leaders who “pursue campaigns of terror.”23 Therefore, Bush concluded that free people do not want to give up their freedom and America should protect that right. He broadened the righteousness of the doctrine by saying, “Freeing people from oppression and

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despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense — and to advance the cause of peace.”24 In his farewell address he listed the accomplishments of American involvement, noting that Afghanistan went from harboring the Taliban and al Qaeda’s oppression to an emerging democracy where young girls are urged to attend school. He also indicated that Iraq evolved from the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to a democracy that was a “friend of the United States.”25 The theme of democracy and freedom argumentatively serves the rhetoric of imperial righteousness in two ways. It is imperial in the promotion and cultivation of democracies outside the United States to promote U.S. interests. Additionally, it is righteous in that it upholds the belief that the promotion of democracy and freedom also promotes “human rights, human liberty, and human dignity.”26

NATIONAL SECURITY National security is the second theme of imperial righteousness. One of the most important rhetorical justifications for war is that the safety of the nation is at stake. As Ann Burnette and Wayne Kraemer note, the theme of national security includes “the nature of the threat and the scope of activities necessary to defend against the threat.”27 In George W. Bush’s rhetoric, two dimensions of national security emerged: the immediate wellbeing of the United States, and the global — and even ideological — threats to the United States.

First, President Bush needed to convey that defending the United States was critical. He stressed the importance of national security in the aftermath of 9/11, recalling that after the attacks, “I vowed to do everything in my power to keep us safe.”28 In his 2006 speech he also underscored the magnitude of post-9/11 national security by placing it in historical context.

Bush argued, “Our nation is being tested in a way that we have not been since the start of the Cold War. We saw what a handful of our enemies can do with box-cutters and plane tickets.”29 He reaffirmed the importance of guarding national security by outlining the steps his administration had taken to protect America. In both speeches he recalled the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the increased communication and cooperation within the intelligence community, enhanced security at airports and borders, and the increased ability to monitor financial records. He hailed these as programs that would help guarantee national security. In both speeches he also gave credit to law enforcement and intelligence officials for their work “day and night to keep our homeland safe.”30 Bush equated American national security with international stability. He used national security as the rationale for invading Iraq, saying, “I’m often asked why we’re in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat.”31 Bush concluded that argument by declaring, “The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.”32 Iraq was one example of the interconnection between American national security and world politics, and Bush argued that Americans needed to see the connection between their own safety and all world affairs. In his farewell address, Bush exhorted Americans to “reject isolationism and its companion, protectionism.”33 He advised, “Retreating behind our borders would only invite danger. In the 21st century, security and prosperity at home depend on the expansion of liberty abroad.”34

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Because of the controversial nature of some of these efforts to enhance national security, it was important that the president also document the success of these initiatives. He argued that because of these new programs, laws, and personnel, America was in fact safer. During his farewell address, he acknowledged, “There is legitimate debate about many of these decisions. But there can be little debate about the results. America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil.”35 While Bush maintained that protecting national security during his administration had been successful, though, he still needed to persuade Americans not to become complacent. He observed that, “While our nation is safer than it was seven years ago, the gravest threat to our people remains another terrorist attack.”36 Therefore, he warned, “We must keep our resolve. And we must never let down our guard.”37 In putting forward the need to protect national security, Bush made explicit arguments for the necessity to take preemptive action. As he observed on the five-year anniversary of 9/11, “On September the 11th, we learned that America must confront threats before they reach our shores, whether those threats come from terrorist networks or terrorist states.”38 This argument — that the United States must prevent terrorism from reaching its shores — is one of the most compelling foundations for the righteousness of preemptive military action.

The rhetoric of imperial righteousness argues that when America protects its national security it also protects the ideological empire. Furthermore, America expands its ideological empire when it protects other countries. The rhetoric is righteous because the United States is justified in protecting itself and its allies and this righteousness is a justification for preemptively acting against perceived enemies.

AMERICAN CHARACTER AND MORALITY American character and morality in the rhetoric of imperial righteousness is the moral obligation to protect others in the cause of right. Burnette and Kraemer argue that, “the rhetoric suggests that we look to what is good and socially responsible as an obligation of empire.”39 One of the more common precepts of American morality is that Americans are ready and willing to rise to whatever task is put before them. Indeed, Bush consistently posited since 9/11 that America was composed of “ordinary citizens rising to the occasion, and responding with extraordinary acts of courage.”40 Additionally, he said that the United States not only responded but “Since that day [September 11, 2001], America and her allies have taken the offensive in a war unlike any we have fought before.”41 The effects of 9/11 were felt in every aspect of American life and Bush reflected that America met these challenges. He revealed, “When challenges to our prosperity emerged, we rose to meet them.”42 When the United States was faced with an impending financial collapse, Bush noted, “we took decisive measures to safeguard our economy.”43 He observed that although the economic situation was dire for many families it would have been “far worse if we had not acted.”44 Remarking that “all Americans are in this together,” he concluded that, “together, with determination and hard work, we will restore our economy to the path of growth.”45 The United States would also rise to the occasion with conviction and resolve.

Bush noted, “Throughout our history, America has seen liberty challenged, and every time,

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we have seen liberty triumph with sacrifice and determination.”46 With that conviction, we would also take action against those who stood in our way. Bush said, “we resolved that we would go on the offense against our enemies, and we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor or support them.”47 Additionally, Bush confirmed that the American quest for justice would be relentless when he remarked that, “Our message to them is clear: No matter how long it takes, America will find you, and we will bring you to justice.”48 He also supported the military in the quest for justice when he added, “And we will never back down from the work they [the Armed Forces] have begun.”49 A key component of American morality is patriotism and the ability of Americans to work together for a common goal. Bush argued that winning the War on Terror would “require the determined efforts of a unified country, and we must put aside our differences and work together to meet the test that history has given us.”50 Not only did Americans rise to the occasion with conviction and resolve, but they did so with courage, which is deeply imbedded in the concept of righteousness. In his farewell address Bush recognized this courage by saying: We saw courage in office workers who were trapped on the high floors of burning skyscrapers — and called home so that their last words to their families would be of comfort and love. We saw courage in the passengers aboard Flight 93, who recited the 23rd Psalm — and then charged the cockpit. And we saw courage in the Pentagon staff who made it out of the flames and smoke — and ran back to answer the cries for help.51

The courage that Bush invoked in imperial righteousness is also a very humble form of courage that is human and represents the soul of American character. On several occasions Bush stated that “America did not ask for this war, and every American wishes it were over.”52 He also maintained, “America did nothing to seek or deserve this conflict. But we have been given solemn responsibilities, and we must meet them. We must resist complacency.”53 Bush also detailed the emotional scars of the attacks of 9/11. On the fifth year anniversary he noted how the memories of the event were still haunting the survivors. He described first responders and family members of 9/11 who still grieved for their fallen comrades and loved ones. Bush commended these individuals for their refusal to be victims and for giving “America our first victory in the war on terror.”54 The rhetoric of imperial righteousness is clearly moral in tone. Bush conveyed a moral viewpoint in describing the compassion of the American people, in elucidating the duty and sacrifice they made, and in celebrating their religious faith.

Bush emphasized the graciousness of the American people and demonstrated his gratitude for their character. In expressing his thanks to the American people he said: I thank the American people for the trust you have given me. I thank you for the prayers that have lifted my spirits. And I thank you for the countless acts of courage, generosity, and grace that I have witnessed these past eight years.55

Bush also acknowledged that America was blessed to have selfless patriots who volunteered to defend the United States and he gratefully said to U.S. servicemen and women,

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“There has been no higher honor than serving as your Commander-in-Chief.”56 Indeed, Bush signaled the sacrifices of the military to keep the world safe when he stated, “the men and women of our military are making great sacrifices to keep us safe. Some have suffered terrible injuries — and nearly 3,000 have given their lives. America cherishes their memory.”57 He also highlighted the dedication of American troops when he explained, “we can be confident in victory because of the skill and the resolve of America’s Armed Forces.”58 Bush also described the moral character of Americans as grounded in religious faith.

Specifically, he recounted, “Americans united in prayer, came to the aid of neighbors in need and resolved that our enemies would not have the last word.”59 He explained that, “The spirit of our people is the source of America’s strength. And we go forward with trust in that spirit, confidence in our purpose, and faith in a loving God who made us to be free.”60 Another rhetorical device that Bush utilized was sharing personal narratives of individuals who demonstrated the attributes of American morality such as RoseEllen Dowdell whose husband was a firefighter killed in the Towers on 9/11. Her son Patrick was commissioned in the army and her son James graduated from the fire academy in New York City. In the fifth-year anniversary speech Bush quoted Dowdell as saying, “As a mother, I cross my fingers and pray all the time for their safety — but as worried as I am, I’m also proud, and I know their dad would be, too.”61 He also paid tribute to Arlene Howard, who gave Bush her fallen son’s shield as a reminder of all that was lost. Bush still carried his badge. Bush referred to Bill Krisoff, a surgeon from California, who at age 60 received a waiver to join the Navy Medical Corps in honor of his fallen son.

The final component of American morality is the hopeful optimism of the American character. Bush said, “America is a young country, full of vitality, constantly growing and renewing itself. And even in the toughest times, we lift our eyes to the broad horizon ahead.”62 Bush demonstrated how this optimism is righteous when he said that: …we see the best of our country — resilient and hopeful, caring and strong. These virtues give me an unshakable faith in America. We have faced danger and trial, but there is more ahead. But with the courage of our people and confidence in our ideals, this great nation will never tire, never falter, and never fail.63

Lastly, he professed, “I have been inspired by the greatness of our country, and uplifted by the goodness of our people.”64 In Bush’s discourse American morality provides the rhetoric of imperial righteousness with compassion and ethics. Grounded in faith and predicated on the inherent goodness of Americans, the rhetoric characterizes the empire as being ethical and socially responsible.

Once this premise is established, it is easier to expand the ideological empire.

THE NATURE OF THE ENEMY While the American character is an important component of imperial righteousness, there is a corresponding, complementary portrayal of the nature of the enemy that lends additional strength to the arguments regarding American righteousness. Scholars of presidential rhetoric and social movements have documented the importance of creating an enemy that can help

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provide a rationale and an impetus for war. According to Murray Edelman, the rhetorical construction of political enemies gives power to the political spectacle that motivates audiences.65 Political rhetors frequently construct this spectacle as a story that includes protagonists and antagonists.66 In addition, Edelman notes that in constructing enemies through their discourse, political leaders also define their own nation and people.67 In his speeches, Bush defined the nature of the enemies the United States sought to vanquish.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Bush faced unique challenges in his initial characterizations of the enemy. At first the enemy who planned and executed the 9/11 attacks was not known; the enemy that emerged first consisted of a group in hiding whose existence and motives were unfamiliar to most Americans. Typically, presidents at war can depict the enemy as a nation state or leader that has declared war or has provoked the United States into military action. Bush ultimately targeted “terrorists”, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden as the enemies that the United States must fight. While these were useful personifications of the enemy, they were still problematic rhetorically. Because terrorists function largely in secrecy, they are difficult to identify. Even the concrete identification of Osama bin Laden as an enemy posed challenges because so much about bin Laden, including his location, was unknown to most citizens during Bush’s administration. Bush faced a second challenge in identifying the enemy. Although the 9/11 terrorists were Muslim, Bush could not define all Muslims as the enemy. Rather, he “had to distinguish between the religious extremism of the terrorists and the legitimate practice of Islam.”68 The president balanced both of these challenges while rhetorically constructing an enemy that would bind and motivate the American people. The first challenge was to personify an enemy who was not a traditional head of state and Bush did this in several ways. First, he named people or groups when possible. Second, he imbued the enemy with personal, evil qualities. Finally, he provided an explanation for the enemy’s hatred of the United States.

In his speech on the five-year anniversary of 9/11, Bush was clear to name the people and groups who were still American enemies. He reminded Americans, “Nineteen men attacked us with a barbarity unequaled in our history.”69 Bush explicitly listed Osama bin Laden as a terrorist who must be brought to justice and noted that other terrorists had joined “the remnants of Saddam’s [Hussein] regime.”70 The President also named one of the terrorists captured by U.S. forces, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and described him as “the man believed to be the mastermind” of the 9/11 attacks.71 He expanded the symbolic threat of individual enemies by noting that the United States “helped drive the Taliban from power in Afghanistan,” and “put al Qaeda on the run.”72 Ultimately, these enemies formed a “global network of extremists” that threatened the United States.73 This personification of the enemy helped provide the motivation Edelman described74 that could persuade and move Americans.

Bush’s second strategy of personification was to attach personal, evil qualities to the terrorists. In 2006 he said simply, “On 9/11, our nation saw the face of evil.”75 He also said the enemy would “kill without mercy.”76 Furthermore, the enemy was “determined to bring death and suffering into our homes.”77 Bush variously described the enemies as “patient, and determined to strike again”78, as “committed” and “dangerous,”79 and as “tough” and “hateful.”80 The President summed up the enemy’s nature by saying, “Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere.”81 Because of these qualities, he warned that Americans needed to take the enemy seriously. Bush cautioned, “If we yield Iraq to men like bin Laden, our enemies will be emboldened; they will gain a new safe haven; they will use Iraq’s resources to fuel their extremist movement.”82 By personifying the enemy,

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Bush made the enemy justifiably frightening and also made the case that the enemy’s evil nature called for a decisive American response.

A final strategy of personifying the enemy was to provide an explanation for the enemy’s hatred of the United States. As Bush argued in 2006, “Dangerous enemies have declared their intention to destroy our way of life.”83 He observed, “Osama bin Laden calls this fight ‘the Third World War’ — and he says that victory for the terrorists in Iraq will mean America’s ‘defeat and disgrace forever.’”84 The reason for this was that these enemies subscribed to a “totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance, and despises all dissent.”85 In accordance with this worldview, the enemy “rag[ed] against the forces of freedom and moderation” and “condemn[ed] women to subservience and mark[ed] unbelievers for murder.”86 Ultimately this enemy “made war upon the entire free world.”87 While personifying the enemy was one of the rhetorical challenges President Bush faced, he also faced a second rhetorical challenge. He could not indict an entire major religion; therefore, he could not demonize Islam by contending that all Muslims were enemies. The President was consistent in his characterization of the enemy as “extremists” who were “driven by a perverted vision of Islam.”88 In his farewell address, Bush was clear to differentiate the “small band of fanatics” from the vast majority of Muslims.89 The rhetorical construction of the enemy personified threats, compelled action, provided a target for response, and communicated increasing danger. Bush’s definition of the enemy also complemented and enhanced the American character that was marked by love of freedom, humanity, courage, and skill. Both of these rhetorical constructions removed ambiguity from the actions taken by the United States. The rhetorical construction of the enemy conveyed righteousness because the United States was justified in defending itself against this enemy. This rhetorical construction also served the aims of imperialism because the enemy not only threatened American security, but also threatened the American commitment to freedom and democracy worldwide.

CONCLUSION President Bush’s discourse in response to the events of 9/11 exemplifies how the rhetoric of imperial righteousness serves as a justification for preemptive war. While the United States sustained an attack upon civilians on its home soil, Bush still needed to justify swift and decisive military action to domestic and international audiences. The four themes of the rhetoric of imperial righteousness establish the criteria that must be met to justify military action. This evolution of the rhetoric of imperial righteousness presents some compelling implications.

First, the four themes of imperial righteousness work in concert with each other to reinforce each other, providing a stronger rationale for action. A president cannot promote democracy and freedom domestically or worldwide if the country is not secure. In addition, the moral character of the American people is thrown into relief by the contrasting characterization of the enemy. Furthermore, the character of the American people is intimately tied to the values of democracy and freedom that all Americans revere and that the enemy despises. Americans must protect democracy and freedom because the morality of Americans is predicated on human dignity and liberty.

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The second implication of this rhetoric is that it enables a U.S. president to justify preemptive military action as a duty of the United States. Of course, the United States was physically attacked on 9/11 and needed to bring its attackers to justice and strengthen its own defense. Yet the Bush administration responded by targeting other actors, for example Saddam Hussein, whom the administration identified as a threat. The existence of a threat was enough to justify extinguishing other threats preemptively. The rhetoric of imperial righteousness provided the justification for this preemptive action. This rhetoric creates a bridge between the logical, pragmatic reasons to engage in military conflict and the emotional imperative to protect national security, democracy and freedom, and the American people and their allies in the face of evil. This emotional urgency fuels the decision to act quickly and preemptively outside our border.

Finally, the rhetoric of imperial righteousness functions as discursive closure. Because the themes of imperial righteousness establish the argument that military action is morally right, opposing viewpoints by definition are not righteous or patriotic. This puts the loyal opposition in a rhetorical bind by creating a false dichotomy. Opponents of military action cannot mount a righteous argument for their position and supporters of military action gain momentum in the public debate. The rhetoric of imperial righteousness thus amplifies the drumbeat for war while suppressing democratic deliberation.

ENDNOTES See Ann E. Burnette and Wayne L. Kraemer, “Making the Case for War: Bush’s Validation of America’s Action,” in Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation, edited by Frans H. Van Eemeren, J. Anthony Blair, Charles A. Willard and A. Francisca Snoeck Henkemans (Amsterdam: SicSat, 2003).

2 See Robert V. Friedenberg, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rhetoric of Militant Decency (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990).

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Andrew J. Bacevich. American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 3.

6 See Burnette and Kraemer, “Making the Case for War,” and Burnette and Kraemer, “The Argumentative Framework for Imperial Righteousness: The War Discourse of George W. Bush,” in Proceedings of the Sixth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation, edited by Frans H. Van Eemeren, J. Anthony Blair, Charles A. Willard, and Bart Garssen (Amsterdam: SicSat, 2007).

7 George W. Bush, “Address to the Nation on the Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11,” September 11, 2006 (http://presidentialrhetoric.com/speeches/09.11.06.html ).

8 Ibid.

9 George W. Bush, “Farewell Address,” January 15, 2009 (http://presidentialrhetoric.com/speeches/01.15.09.html ).

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Bush, “Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11.”

13 Ibid.

14 Bush, “Farewell Address.”

15 Bush, “Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11.”

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Bush, “Farewell Address.”

1

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Bush, “Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11.”

Bush, “Farewell Address.”

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Burnette and Kraemer, “Argumentative Framework,” 195.

28 Bush, “Farewell Address.”

29 Bush, “Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11.”

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Bush, “Farewell Address.”

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid.

38 Bush, “Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11.”

39 Burnette and Kraemer, “Argumentative Framework,” 197.

40 Bush, “Five-Year Anniversary.”

41 Ibid.

42 Bush, “Farewell Address.”

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.

46 Bush, “Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11.”

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

51 Bush, “Farewell Address.”

52 Bush, “Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11.”

53 Bush, “Farewell Address.”

54 Bush, “Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11.”

55 Bush, “Farewell Address.”

56 Ibid.

57 Bush, “Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11.”

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid.

62 Bush, “Farewell Address.”

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

65 See Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988).

66 See Walter R. Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1987).

67 See Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle.

68 Burnette and Kraemer, “Making the Case for War,” 154.

69 Bush, “Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11.”

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

74 See Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle.

75 Bush, “Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11.”

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid.

78 Bush, “Farewell Address.”

79 Bush, “Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11.”

80 Bush, “Farewell Address.”

81 Ibid.

22 23

Communicating a Rationale for War Bush, “Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11.”

Ibid.

84 Ibid.

85 Ibid.

86 Bush, “Farewell Address.”

87 Bush, “Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11.”

88 Ibid.

89 Bush, “Farewell Address.”

82 83

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In: The George W. Bush Presidency. Volume III Editors: Meena Bose and Paul Fritz

ISBN: 978-1-63485-783-3 © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 5

COMMENTARY: NATIONAL SECURITY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW1 General Michael V. Hayden Director, Central Intelligence Agency, 2006-2009 Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, 2004-2005 Director, National Security Agency, 1999-2005 General (Ret.), United States Air Force

The 9/11 attacks eroded, if not destroyed, the tradition of distinction we had made in American security, American law, and American political culture between foreign and domestic, between intelligence and law enforcement. The enemy was successful, because the enemy worked in the space between what had been polar opposites in the American approach, and that worked for us for over two centuries. But now, terror had been implemented in the homeland. And it would have been irresponsible for any administration in power not to be reimagining how we were going to deal with that distinction between foreign and domestic, between law enforcement and intelligence. ...

What I want to relate to you is a talk I gave in the spring of 2007 at the German Embassy.

The Germans were in the chair of the European Union at the time, and the German Ambassador, Ambassador [Klaus] Scharioth, would have, and I have to say this carefully to be precise, would have the ambassadors to the United States from the states of the European Union, over to the German residence for lunch. And he would do that about every two weeks and for several of these meetings, as part of the lunchtime entertainment, he would have an American official come in to talk about some aspect of American policy. ...

I began by saying, “We’re among friends.” But let me tell you what I believe, what my agency believes, what my government believes, and frankly, what my countrymen believe.

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Number one: We are a nation at war. We are at war with Al-Qaeda and its affiliates. This war is global in scope, and I can only fulfill my legal and moral responsibilities to the citizens of the republic. I can only fulfill those responsibilities by taking this war to that enemy wherever they may be.

Four sentences: Nation at war. Al-Qaeda and affiliates. Global. Take the fight. There was not another country in that room that agreed with any of those four sentences. Not only did they believe they did not apply to them, they thought it was illegitimate for us to think that way, for us to think that applied to us. But that was fundamentally the American approach to this conflict. It was a fascinating conversation. And after I got done with the remarks, Ambassador Scharioth kind of had an organized, guided discussion. And as we’re getting near the end, he looked up at me and said, “Well, General, you must admit, we are all . . .”

And he kind of did the European wave of the table, “We are all children of the enlightenment.” To which I responded, “Yes, sir, yes, sir, Mr. Ambassador, we really are, but you all seem to be focused on Locke and we seem to be hung up on Hobbes.” ...

The fundamental distinction between us and our best friends is we’ve defined this in a dramatically different way, and our way may be right or may be wrong, but it does represent a unified American consensus.

So, we probably could have done without the “You’re either with us or against us.” We probably could have skipped over old Europe and new Europe. We actually allowed our European friends some top cover to not step up by the style with which we may have done or said some things. But I do think there’s been a fundamental break in the view of the efficacy of force in international affairs between ourselves and Western Europe. It evolves out of different 20th century historical experiences which should be obvious, and are, I think, easily understood. But we simply view it as more efficacious than they do. We were, after all, the ones who were attacked. We responded in a typically American manner, but it’s typically American, not typically Texan, and not typically Bush. It was typically American, and that’s why the great continuity.

Peter Feaver, PhD Special Advisor for Strategic Planning and Institutional Reform, National Security Council, 2005-2007 I believe the conventional critique of the Bush administration in the area of national security law is upside down. The conventional critique is the Bush Administration played fast and loose with law – international law, national security law – and was reckless in its use of the law. In my experience, the problem with the administration was a hyper-legalistic

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approach to the international law. Let me just give you one example. This is in contrast with the Clinton administration, which found ways to finesse international legal obligations that they had signed up for, but didn’t like. Take the Rome Treaty [for the International Criminal Court] as a good example. And the politically expedient way of dealing with the Rome Treaty would have been to continue the Clinton way, which is to say we signed it, but we don’t intend to honor it. And what the Bush administration did was to un-sign it. And this provoked a storm of political protest that was driven by a legalistic, I think, reading of the force of a presidential signing. I thought the Clinton administration had it a little bit better. . . . They had a more flexible approach. For that matter, President Obama had a remarkably flexible approach. His way around the War Powers Act is remarkably innovative and flexible and creative. . . . That doesn’t mean that the [Bush] administration got it right, but it means that when they got it wrong, it might have been for the opposite reason of what you’re thinking.

I think President Bush’s overall political, military, legal approach to the Global War on Terror and to national security more broadly, was sound, and especially by 43.2 – by the second term – it was quite sound. And I think the most eloquent defense of the Bush administration’s approach that I have ever heard has been President Obama’s actions because he is largely continued the legal edifice that he inherited. The changes between what he’s done and what the administration before him, 43.2 did, are less than either of those administrations want to admit. ...

And things that looked obscene maybe to Senator Obama running for President have turned out to be pretty sound to President Obama and boy, do they look a lot like what President Bush thought was needful. And so, I think that’s a pretty resounding defense of the Bush administration’s approach the War on Terror and national security more generally. And as General [Michael V.] Hayden pointed out, it’s one that is a strong U.S. consensus. It may not be a strong international consensus, but it’s a remarkable U.S. consensus.

There’s no question that the Europeans were frustrated with the United States, and with the administration, and you have the French Foreign Minister talking about the “hyperpower,” the overweening power, and criticizing the American Secretary of State for describing the United States as an indispensable nation.

The problem is that that was the Clinton administration that I was just describing. This friction that we experience was endemic to transatlantic relations under the other administration in which I served, the Clinton administration. So, there’s a structural power dimension to this as unrelated to the state in which the President came from or his party. . . .

By the way they had a problem with the extraordinary renditions as you know, back in the Clinton administration. . . . I think there are some structural elements that transcend the Bush administration, there are probably some tonal missteps that the Bush administration followed, and then there is an opportunity for traveling together as we’ve seen with the French response that the administration, a deft administration, could take advantage of.

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John Bellinger Legal Adviser to the U.S. Department of State, 2005-2009 Senior Associate Counsel to the President and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council, 2001-2005 You probably think, as many people do, that the Bush administration didn’t believe in international law, didn’t take it seriously. This is a reaction to two sets of actions from the first term – the Iraq war, and then certain decisions with respect to detainees in the first term.

And so that has come to color the Bush administration but really doesn’t take into account the full eight years, including the administration’s approach on a lot of other international law issues, particularly in the second term. Peter Baker’s already spoken – if you all have read Peter’s book, I think you see a lot of the course corrections on a lot of issues that took place in the second term, when Secretary [Condoleezza] Rice was Secretary of State. I want to just very briefly cover a couple of things. One, treaties. Two, the approach to international courts and tribunals, particularly the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. And leave you with a couple facts that may surprise you.

One, treaties. In the eight years of the Bush administration, we got 163 treaties through the Senate. That’s more new international law than at any point in American history. During the last two years of the administration when I was legal adviser, we got 90 treaties through the Senate. That’s more new treaties through the Senate than in any two-year term in history.

Now, these are multilateral treaties, bilateral treaties, human rights treaties, law of war treaties, environmental treaties, covering a whole variety of things. So that is a lot of new international law. Now, the Senate was not doing this on its own. . . . The treaties have to be sent by the President to the Senate, so President Bush had to sign every single treaty transmittal package to the Senate, and then we worked very hard to get these treaties through the Senate. I personally testified in favor of a number of them.

So for people who say, “Well, this is an administration that didn’t believe in international law,” I would respond that this administration agreed to more new international law than previous administrations. You cannot dispute that, this is more new international law in treaty form than in any eight-year presidency. The Obama administration, in contrast, in six years has had 13 treaties approved by the Senate. Now, admittedly, they have been facing a very difficult Senate in the last couple of years but remember, the first the two years of their term, they had a Democratic majority. They actually could’ve gotten a number of treaties through had they focused on it and my point here simply is, the Bush administration’s record is perhaps more mixed than people would be aware.

Let me turn quickly now to international tribunals and the International Court of Justice.

Now this is something that probably a general audience may know less about, but President Bush made what may be the most difficult decision ever made by a President to comply with a ruling of the International Court of Justice early in our second term when I became legal adviser and Condoleezza Rice was Secretary of State. The International Court of Justice had ruled that the United States had to review the death sentences of 51 Mexican nationals on death row in different states because they had not been given their consular notice, the right to access to a Mexican consular official. The problem was they had all exhausted their state law remedies so President Bush was confronted with a difficult decision. Did he comply with a ruling of a court in The Hague telling him to review the death sentences of 51 Mexican

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nationals, all of whom had exhausted their appeals, the majority of which were in his home state of Texas? Did he follow the UN charter and international law over the strong objections of his home state?

I can tell you, the citizens of Texas were not writing to the President to say, “Please, listen to this court in The Hague.” Quite the reverse. So I don’t know who was more surprised when the President, in February 2005, issued an order telling the states, including his home state of Texas, that they had to review all of these death sentences. Now, for those of you who actually know this story, Rick Perry, the governor of Texas and a man who’s now familiar to many of you, and Ted Cruz, who was the Solicitor General of Texas, promptly challenged the President’s order. They said to the former governor, the President of the United States, “You can’t do this to us. We are Texas and you can’t tell us what to do. Even if you are trying to comply with international law.” We then defended the President’s decision all the way up to the Supreme Court and, unfortunately and surprisingly and in my view, wrongly, we lost.

The Supreme Court said, unanimously, that “There is an international law obligation to comply with the International Court of Justice’s rulings and we respect the President for trying to comply but under the Constitution, he lacks the power to tell the states what to do.

To supersede their rights.” So the lesson here is in a difficult decision to comply when incredibly politically unpopular, the President made a decision to comply with the ruling of the often much-disliked International Court of Justice.

Then let me talk briefly about the International Criminal Court, the other big tribunal in The Hague. In the first term, the Bush administration’s approach to the International Criminal Court by many is viewed through the lens of, again, what happened in the first term, when the United States famously told the UN Secretary General that the U.S. was not going to become party to the International Criminal Court. This became known as the “unsigning” of the Rome Statute and it got Europeans and much of the rest of the world very mad at us. They thought the Bush administration was out to try to kill the International Criminal Court. Now interestingly, they’d forgotten a little bit of their history, because for those of you who know this, the Clinton administration, which had negotiated the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court, had actually voted against the Rome Statute. The United States and the Clinton administration was one of only seven countries in the world to vote against the Rome Statute.

At the end of the day, President Clinton finally made the decision, even though he voted against the treaty creating the International Criminal Court, to sign the treaty. But then he in his signing statement said that the treaty was so flawed that he would not send it to the Senate unless it was fixed. So President Bush really just formalized that by saying we don’t intend to become party. But we realized after the first term there was so much misunderstanding of what the U.S. had done, that somehow the Bush administration was out to try to kill the International Criminal Court, which was really not true, that we course corrected in the second term. This is consistent with Peter Baker’s book, that a lot of course correction took place in the second term.

In the second term, we took a much more pragmatic approach to the International Criminal Court, working with it when it was appropriate. Ten years ago on March 31, 2005, one of Secretary Rice’s first decisions, approved by the President, the United States agreed to refer Sudan and the genocide in Sudan to the International Criminal Court by agreeing to UN Security Council Resolution 1593. And again, much of the world was surprised, because they thought the Bush administration hated the International Criminal Court. It turned out that

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President Bush was more concerned about the genocide in Darfur than he was about the International Criminal Court.

And so we agreed to do that, and for the next four years took a pragmatic, constructive approach to the International Criminal Court that the Obama administration has largely built on. And I can tell you why I hear pretty regularly from friends in the Obama administration when they are criticized by conservatives for continuing to support the International Criminal Court on certain issues. Their defense is basically to say, “Well, we’re just continuing the approach that was taken in the second term of the Bush administration.” Which again, I think, is probably a theme that many of you all have been hearing over the last couple of days, which is, that because of course corrections taken on so many issues in the second term of the Bush administration, that they resulted in pretty much continuity between the second term of the Bush administration and the first term of the Obama administration on a number of foreign policy issues.

Finally, on some of the detention issues – after the first term, we decided that we needed to have a course correction on a whole variety of different detainee issues. Secretary Rice felt very strongly about this, she writes about this in her memoirs. Matt Waxman, who was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Detainee Affairs at the Defense Department, and I worked very closely together to try to empty out Guantanamo as best we could, we got 550 people out of Guantanamo. We worked together, Secretary Rice worked to close down the CIA facilities in 2006. Reforms were made to detainee policies and to military commissions.

I began a very extensive dialogue with our European and other allies all around the world, regularly meeting with them to discuss the law that was applicable to a conflict with Al-Qaeda, and frankly most of those laws and policies have then continued on. If you look at the speeches on detention law and the armed conflict that we are in with Al-Qaeda that I gave between 2005 and 2009, you will see very little difference between the things that Eric Holder and others have been saying about the law applicable to the conflict between the United States and Al-Qaeda during the Obama administration. So again, we worked very hard to try to course correct on these detainee issues.

Matthew C. Waxman Principal Deputy Director, Policy Planning Staff, Department of State, 2005-2007 Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, 2004-2005 Director for Contingency Planning and International Justice, National Security Council, 2003-2004 Executive Assistant to the National Security Advisor, 2001-2003 [The 1997] Kyoto [Protocol on Climate Change] and the ICC [International Criminal Court] are often cited for the proposition that [President George W.] Bush and the Bush administration were hostile to international law, including, especially, big global treaties. That view is exaggerated for a couple of reasons: First, on both of those issues I think the Bush administration made some tactical errors in its diplomacy with regard to Kyoto and the ICC. The way especially that the United States engaged or failed to engage with its closest allies and partners on both of those issues was a mistake that was difficult to recover from. It’s also, though, important, to recognize where domestic politics were generally on climate and on the

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International Criminal Court. Congress at that time was more hostile than the Bush administration to the International Criminal Court and passed something called the American Service Members Protection Act that basically, through statute, adopted a position hostile to cooperation with the ICC. And with regard to Kyoto, we’ve seen and the Obama administration has seen that Congress is not willing to support the binding numerical targets that were contemplated under a Kyoto regime. ...

In my view, the story on the preemption doctrine is not finished. The preemption doctrine was articulated in the 2002 White House National Security Strategy document, and in brief what it said is that the traditional doctrine of anticipatory self-defense, whereby a state can respond with military force not just against an attack that has taken place, but also the threat of imminent attack, needs to adapt. That in a world of proliferating weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons among rogue states, and perhaps among terrorist organizations, it may be necessary to have a more expansive or flexible understanding of what imminent threat means.

Now, it’s ironic that the preemption doctrine . . . is associated with the Iraq War, and negatively associated with the Iraq War, because that was not actually the legal argument.

That was not actually the legal justification that the Bush administration and its allies relied on for the 2003 Iraq War. It was premised legally on existing UN [United Nations] Security Council resolutions – a controversial interpretation, but that was the argument, and it was the one that the United States, Britain and other allies relied on. With regard to the preemption doctrine, though, I do think the Bush administration again made an important tactical error in the way that it spoke about preemption. I think this was poorly rolled out. I think it was talked about and presented diplomatically poorly, and as a much more radical shift in U.S. interpretation of international law than was really merited.

And like I said, in that regard this debate is not over. We see very similar types of arguments to the preemption doctrine articulation in the way the Obama administration for example talks about drone strikes, and the way the Obama administration, like the Bush administration, thought about what it means for a terrorist suspect to be engaged in imminent threats against the United States, taking a more flexible, expansive approach to this idea of the imminence of threats that would justify armed force. Some of our allies in Europe and elsewhere have also taken note of this need to think more flexibly in a world of terrorist threats, weapons of mass destruction threats, to think more flexibly about how we think about imminence and just how immediate a threat must be before a state is entitled to take action in self-defense.

In my mind, no U.S. president in the post-9/11 environment would reject the preemption doctrine, and I think it’s actually unfortunately just a matter of time before we see future presidents having to rely very explicitly on it.

ENDNOTE 1

All commentary excerpted from “National Security and International Law” plenary forum, Conference on the George W. Bush Presidency, Hofstra University, March 25, 2015, except for first paragraph of Hayden commentary, which is from “The Constitution, Executive Power and National Security Post-9/11” panel, Conference on the George W. Bush Presidency, Hofstra University, March 25, 2015.

PART II: THE WAR ON TERROR AND IRAQ

In: The George W. Bush Presidency. Volume III Editors: Meena Bose and Paul Fritz

ISBN: 978-1-63485-783-3 © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 6

GEORGE W. BUSH AND THE UNITED NATIONS: IDEALISM’S DEPARTURE FROM COLLECTIVE SECURITY Jerry Pubantz University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC, US

ABSTRACT President George W. Bush’s foreign policy reflected the intersection of two twentieth century traditions in America’s relationship with the world - the idealist impulse to remake the world in harmony with deeply held American values and the historically recurring American desire to act unilaterally in the corrupt environment of world affairs. No president prior to George W. Bush had merged these two strands so tightly into a cohesive foreign policy approach. This convergence of unilateralism and moralism fundamentally challenged the global order and collective security principles and institutions crafted by the United States and its allies in the closing years of World War II. In particular, the decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 with only a “coalition of the willing” mounted a serious challenge to the architecture of global politics best institutionalized for more than a half century in the UN Security Council. Nonetheless, the US administration could have taken the crisis of 2003-2004 as an occasion to initiate a reconsideration of collective security and what such a principle means in a new century.

It failed to do so.

While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of selfdefense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country.

National Security Strategy of the United States, September 2002 So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

U.S. President George W. Bush, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 2005

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INTRODUCTION The Bush Administration’s foreign policy after the horrific 9/11 attacks, particularly the president’s espoused war on terrorism and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, reflected the intersection of two grand twentieth century traditions in America’s relationship with the world - the idealist impulse to remake the world in harmony with deeply held American values and the historically recurring American desire to act unilaterally in the corrupt environment of world affairs. No president prior to George W. Bush had merged these two strands so tightly into a cohesive foreign policy approach. This convergence of unilateralism and moralism in the president’s first term fundamentally challenged the collective security principles and institutions of post-World War II global order crafted by the United States and its allies in the closing years of World War II. In particular, the decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 with only a “coalition of the willing” mounted a serious challenge to the architecture of global politics probably best institutionalized for more than a half century in the United Nations and its Security Council.

President Bush’s decision in that case reflected his stated purpose not only to promote regime change in Iraq but also to bring democratic principles to Middle East governments. In Bush’s view, a policy of stability had been “a mirage.”1 As he put it in his speech to the American Enterprise Institute in 2003, “There are hopeful signs of a desire for freedom in the Middle East.” Bringing democracy to Iraq could also begin a “new stage” in the pursuit of peace and a “dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region.”2 Democracy promotion in this guise amounted to an expression of idealism carried out by the imposition of unilateral American power.

Certainly modern history is replete with unilateral presidential decisions to use force.

Furthermore, the echoes of idealism in American foreign policy are as old as the Republic.

That the United States represents good in the world and, as a democratic nation, cannot truly be safe until its foundational values are universally honored have been tenets of American exceptionalism since the founding. In the twentieth century unilateralist internationalism was first grandly endorsed and pursued by Theodore Roosevelt. The idealist tradition was wedded to American internationalism by President Woodrow Wilson who, unlike Roosevelt, sought to remake the world through multilateral engagement and a global rule of law. One of the products of the Wilsonian formulation was an American commitment to collective security first through the vessel of the League of Nations and later in the mechanisms provided by the United Nations’ Charter, especially lodged in the authority of the UN Security Council. PostWorld War II presidents from Harry Truman through Bill Clinton publicly supported this collective security architecture, whether it was embodied in the United Nations or alliance structures such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as the best guarantee of long-term American national interests, its internationalist engagement with the rest of the world, and the concomitant promotion of democratic ideals. Because of this presidential history we often refer to most of the 20th century as the Wilsonian era in American foreign policy.

There is another US foreign policy tradition that should be referenced here. It was initially distilled in John Quincy Adams’s admonition that America should not go abroad “to slay monsters.” According to realists from Adams to Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, the United States, like any nation, whether it acts unilaterally or in concert with others, and

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whether it seeks universal values or not, must act on behalf of its own national interests first, must not squander its power nor find itself in counterproductive entangling alliances, and must realize that every nation seeks to maximize its interests, often at the expense of the United States. Therefore, the United States must maintain its independence of action by some level of separation from world affairs. It must avoid using its power, and surely its force, unilaterally or collectively, to attempt the transformation of the world in its image. This is a fool’s errand that can only expend the nation’s crucial resources and bring little safety to its people.

THE FOREIGN POLICIES OF GEORGE BUSH: EVOLVING FROM QUIET REALISM TO UNILATERAL EVANGELISM On the campaign trail in 2000 Governor Bush talked about America being overextended abroad and needing to act “humbly” in world affairs. In his first months in office he tended to eschew multilateral initiatives, especially global treaty commitments made by the Clinton administration, to reassert a traditional view of who our friends and adversaries were, and to pursue a realist course.3 The president generally focused on domestic affairs, but when he did act on the international stage, it tended to be with more unilateral muscularity than his predecessor did.4 The terrorists’ attacks on September 11, 2001, altered Bush’s assessment of the central purpose of his presidency. He wrote in his diary, “The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today.”5 He was now a war president and, as he told a national prayer service at the National Cathedral three days later, “our responsibility to history is clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.” The administration’s new foreign policy was premised on the “Bush Doctrine,” which the president outlined to the nation in an address on the evening of September 11. He launched what came to be known as the War on Terrorism. He said, “we will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them,” and continued, “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make.

Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”6 The first task after 9/11 was to deal with Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and its Afghan supporters, the Taliban. Initially, President Bush’s inclination was to involve other countries in the invasion of Afghanistan and then engage NATO and the UN in the postinvasion management of the country, including administration of the capital, Kabul, so that US forces could withdraw.7 He had criticized his predecessor for inappropriately using the American military for nation-building purposes. Among his neo-conservative advisers there was no equivalent desire to involve any multilateral component. The quickness of the autumn offensive by America’s northern Afghan allies and the fear of civil disruption in Kabul settled the matter. This would be essentially an American operation. Afghanistan became the first victory built on US unilateral action under the Bush Doctrine. By November the NSC was considering the expansion of the US footprint to include 50,000 US troops.

As a straightforward realist exercise of unilateral power, the implementation of the Bush Doctrine in Afghanistan was by most measures a success by December 2001. Moreover,

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American action was within the constraints of the United Nations collective security system.

The United States sought UN support for any actions it might take in reprisal. On September 12, 2001, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1368, condemning the assault, finding it a threat to international peace and security, and “expressing its desire to take all necessary steps to respond” to the attacks. Council members invoked the Charter’s Chapter VII, making the resolution’s provisions mandatory on all member states. The General Assembly, once it convened on September 13, followed with a condemnation of the attack.8 In support of its demands, the Bush administration organized a large coalition, including Afghanistan’s neighbors Pakistan and Uzbekistan. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization declared the attack on the United States an act requiring collective self-defense. On October 7, 2001, the United States and Great Britain launched intensive air attacks on major cities, military targets, and training areas inside Afghanistan. Washington received extensive support ― in the United Nations, from NATO, and elsewhere ― to remove the Taliban from power, curtail Al Qaeda activities, and seek the reconstruction of the country. By early 2002, Afghanistan was liberated from Taliban rule, and at that time the Administration began to welcome a cooperative effort. Soon there was a visible UN presence in the country. In August 2003, NATO took command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which consisted of some 10,000 forces from 37 countries.9 The Afghan operation to this point was similar to President Clinton’s actions in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo, and the elder Bush’s intervention in Somalia.

But the Bush Doctrine implied a broader visionary foreign policy than simply defeating al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Over the next three years the implications of the policy and the president’s own predilections to be a force for good and a transformational president produced increasingly expansive iterations of the doctrine, each of them more idealist and increasingly threatening to the collective security tradition of the previous 70 years.

By the time of the 2002 State of the Union Address the president was ready to spell out that larger vision. He cautioned the nation “our war against terror is only beginning.”10 The next task after securing Afghanistan11 was to “prevent the terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological or nuclear weapons from threatening the United States and the world.”12 He said that if other nations shrank from acting against these states, we would do so on our own. He singled out three states as the “Axis of Evil”: Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. He warned these nations that he would not “wait on events while dangers gather (nor) stand by as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.”13 Charles Krauthammer presciently concluded that the Axis of Evil formulation not only contained within it a commitment to unilateralism but a deep moralism undergirding Bush’s foreign policy and a predilection toward preemptive action.14 Having identified the leading regimes that threatened the American homeland, the president used the next 13 months to elucidate that “deep moralism” and his rationale for preemptive – actually preventive – war.15 At the West Point commencement in June 2002 he told the graduates “We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign nonproliferation treaties, and then systemically break them. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. Our security will require …a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world. (It) will require all Americans … to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.”16 He argued the old strategies of deterrence and containment could not

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work in a world where weapons of mass destruction could fall into terrorists’ hands. He said, “New threats also require new thinking. Deterrence — the promise of massive retaliation against nations — means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies.”17 For the Administration the tremors of 9/11 challenged the merits of longstanding US foreign policy principles and strategies. Directly confronting the principle of collective security the president’s National Security Strategy issued in September 2002, asserted a US right to preemptive (preventive) war unilaterally or at best with “coalitions of the willing.”

As was demonstrated by the losses on September 11, 2001, mass civilian casualties is (sic) the specific objective of terrorists and these losses would be exponentially more severe if terrorists acquired and used weapons of mass destruction. The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action (italics added) to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.18

The Administration acknowledged the definition of preemption under traditional international law, but asserted the necessity to “adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today’s adversaries.”19 The United States could not “remain idle while dangers gather,” but must be “prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten (italics added) or use weapons of mass destruction.”20 While an advocate of preemption might attempt to rationalize the principle on realist grounds,21 President Bush closely linked it to his public commitment to democratizing the Middle East and even to extending it to vanquishing tyranny worldwide. He told Bob Woodward in 2003, “I believe we have a responsibility to promote freedom that is as solemn as the responsibility to protecting the American people, because the two go hand-in-hand.

Now it is very important for you to understand that about my presidency…I believe we have a duty to free people. I would hope we wouldn’t have to do it militarily, but we have a duty.”22 In the nation-building operation the United States undertook unilaterally in Iraq, the goal was a functioning stable democracy that could serve as a trusted ally and a model for democratic forces throughout the region.

By the time of the president’s second inaugural in January 2005, George Bush would enunciate the most sweeping idealist mission for US foreign policy ever put forward by an occupant of the White House.23 He announced, “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”24 This went far beyond John Kennedy’s call to America to defend every friend and oppose every foe in the defense of liberty or Wilson’s vision of America writ large in a global order based on the rule of law.

Unfortunately, the descent from the heights of the Second Inaugural was precipitous. Within a year the democracy project in Iraq was in shambles, democratic reform in Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt had only enhanced the power of anti-American Islamist parties: Hezbollah, Hamas,

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and the Islamic Brotherhood respectively. By the summer of 2006 Israel was at war, Hamas had seized Gaza, and the democracy initiative foundered on the rocks of realpolitik.

PREEMPTION’S CHALLENGE TO THE UN COLLECTIVE SECURITY SYSTEM Collective security is not incompatible with America’s desire to promote universal values such as democracy, freedom, and the rule of law. In fact, Woodrow Wilson saw collective security structures as the only reasonable strategy to achieve these values internationally, while at the same time avoiding great power aggression and the wars such aggression engenders. It was not President Bush’s call to the nation to promote democracy and end tyranny that challenged the international order of the previous half-century. It was the president’s doctrine of preemption that threatened to undermine the post-World War II global order and its institutional architecture.

The postwar allies, led by the United States, created the UN in part to restrain, even end, such unilateral preemptive strategies. Within the UN Charter system unilateral preventive war against a non-immediate and obvious threat was not the exercise of the Charter’s Article 51 right of a state to self-defense, but the very definition of aggression, the condition Wilson and his successors hoped to declare illegal.25 Furthermore, actions taken under Article 51 by a single state or a “coalition of the willing” may occur only “until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” Once the Council is “seized of the matter,” only collective military responses are permissible.

It would be the American decision in March 2003, to employ preventive war against Iraq without Security Council authorization that created a crisis for the world organization.

Despite the challenge of Afghanistan, attention in Washington shifted to Iraq during 2002 and into early 2003. The president defined US goals in Iraq and in the wider Middle East in terms of bringing about democratic regimes. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan recognized sooner than many the danger the president’s approach represented for the United Nations and the principle of collective security. In the wake of a spring 2003 acrimonious debate pitting the United States against France, Germany, and Russia over the necessity, or lack thereof, for a second Iraq resolution formally authorizing enforcement action before the United States moved to topple militarily Saddam Hussein. Annan opined, “We seem no longer to agree on what the main threats are, or how to deal with them.” He had the “uneasy feeling that the system (was) not working as it should.”26 Annan believed the Bush policy was an existential challenge to UN bedrock principles and required the institution to find a viable formula to preserve collective security while accommodating a great power’s desire to defend itself from what it perceived to be an overwhelming threat. At the opening session of the General Assembly in September 2003, Annan expressed his fear to the gathered national representatives that the United Nations had reached “a fork in the road.”27 It had to make reforms to sustain its purpose in a world in which states might now act with impunity. The principle of preventive war coupled with unilateral action by great powers could lead to a world of rationalized aggression, the disease the UN was created to cure.

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In November 2003, Secretary-General Annan appointed the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. The Panel included 15 prominent national leaders, including Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush and Yevgeny Primakov, former Russian prime minister. In his charge to the committee, Annan asserted that the US invasion of Iraq without Security Council approval had “shaken the foundations of collective security, and undermined confidence in the possibility of collective responses to our common problems.” The High-level Panel did not disagree with Annan’s assessment. The group issued its final report in December 2004. Entitled A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, the report called for “a new security consensus” that would allow for a broader definition of collective security than currently understood in the UN Charter.28 It set out essentially a “Just War Theory” of collective security, allowing the Security Council to authorize the use of force based on five criteria: the seriousness of the threat, the proportionality of the response, the use of force only as a last resort, a proper purpose having been established, and a reasonable chance for success.29 We should keep in mind as we think about the confrontation over Iraq between the US administration and the majority on the Security Council that President Bush’s challenge to the UN and its founding principle was not built on an open or overriding hostility toward the institution, nor was it a conscious attempt to dismantle the collective security principle. The president’s hostility to the United Nations was more apparent than real, less based on unchallengeable ideology than on a general sentiment supportive of the conservative critique of the world organization. In his memoir Decision Points he says, “I considered the UN to be cumbersome, bureaucratic and ineffective.” But, during his time in office he would in fact support UN efforts in many contexts. His initiative to address HIV/AIDS in Africa in cooperation with the UN is a case in point. In 2004 France and the United States worked together to pass a UN resolution opposing Syrian involvement in Lebanon. During the summer 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war Bush sent Condoleezza Rice to New York to negotiate a ceasefire and the placement of a UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon.30 Even in the debate over attacking Iraq, he made his argument based on defending the institution itself.

Former US Senator Jesse Helms once wrote in the pages of the New York Times that the United Nations “must change or die.” President Bush carried no such animus.

Regardless of President Bush’s general attitude toward the United Nations, with the war in Iraq, unsanctioned by the UN Security Council, American foreign policy broke with past precedent on a scale that raised issues of international legality and prompted global perceptions of the United States as a rogue actor in the existing international order. This, of course, was not President Bush’s sense of what he was doing in Iraq. The Administration argued the American policy was an endorsement of the collective security principle itself, since military action would enforce mandatory Security Council resolutions approved at the conclusion of the first Gulf War and ignored by Saddam Hussein ever since. He told the American Enterprise Institute, “In confronting Iraq, the United States is also showing our commitment to effective international institutions. We believe in the Security Council -- so much that we want its words to have meaning.”31 He would make the same argument at the United Nations in September 2002. In his General Debate speech, he would scold and challenge the UN on the matter of Iraq. “All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?”32

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The debate at the White House following the president’s address to the UN General Assembly centered on the wisdom of seeking another Security Council resolution. Many of Bush’s advisers counseled against it, but the president was swayed by the urgent political need of British Prime Minister Tony Blair for a Security Council authorization.33 The negotiations at the UN lasted into November and produced Resolution 1441, a classic example of diplomatic obfuscation that would be interpreted by Washington as an authorization for war, delayed only by additional time given to Saddam to abide by past resolutions, and understood by the opponents of war, particularly Germany, France, and Russia, as requiring further Council action after another round of arms inspections. France in particular believed a report of clear violations of earlier resolutions would be needed before enforcement measures should be employed.34 In January 2003, France took over the monthly presidency of the UN Security Council. The French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin made clear that any effort by the United States to act unilaterally in Iraq without Security Council approval would be illegitimate under the UN Charter.35 In resolution 1441 the Council decided Iraq had been “and remains in material breach of its obligations under relevant resolutions,” but decided, “to afford Iraq a final opportunity to comply” or face “serious consequences” for non-compliance.36 This was not the usual language of the Council when taking collective security action against an offending state.

Both before and after the passage of resolution 1441 the Security Council would authorize force in the exercise of collective security, using a formulaic pronouncement, finding a “threat to international peace and security,” and authorizing states “to use” or “to take all necessary measures (or means)” to rectify the transgression.37 In the negotiations on 1441 the United States drafted language that created a very clear trigger between “a material breach” and “all necessary means” being taken, but Secretary of State Colin Powell reported to Bush that with that language the resolution would fail by a vote of 1 to 14.38 In this case, the Bush administration latched onto the phrase “material breach” for its legal justification of military action, while the opponents argued an authorization to actually use force would have to come after the latest UN arms inspection team reported on Iraqi compliance or non-compliance.

Most international legal scholars sided with the opponents of intervention, seeing unilateral US action as a violation of collective security. Secretary-General Annan would call the American invasion “illegal.”39 International jurists would point specifically to the Security Council practice of mandating “all necessary means” to make military action legitimate.40 President Bush, however, decided to go ahead with military operations, telling the American people on the eve of war, “the United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities, so we will rise to ours.”41

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE UNITED NATIONS AND WORLD ORDER Scholars of international relations call attention to certain essential conditions that seem indispensable for the maintenance of a tenable international system. Among these are: 1) a general consensus among nation-states and international actors on overarching shared goals, 2) an agreed-upon structure for interaction among states and international actors, 3) a set of acceptable norms, that is, values, procedures, aims (like “human rights” and “democracy”) to which all nations and international actors at least outwardly assent, and 4) a system capable of

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adjusting and evolving to meet new, even unexpected, challenges. Historians sometimes explain that these features characterized European civilization from the end of the Napoleonic wars to the outbreak of the First World War. At the end of the twentieth century’s “30 years war,” from 1914 to 1944, a new global order emerged built around the UN collective security system that was sorely tried by the Cold War. During the last decade of the twentieth century, the United Nations had both the opportunity and the challenge of meeting threats to collective security through the original provisions laid down in the Charter for this purpose. The collective action taken against Iraq in 1991 marked the first use of Chapter VII’s enforcement measures since the “police action” in the Korean War, and went much further than any previous peacekeeping effort. The rapid success of the war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi control encouraged Council members to make more frequent use of their enforcement powers. In 1992, the Security Council authorized intervention in Somalia, and in East Timor in 1999 it called upon a coalition of states led by Australia to intervene and restore order.

As a useful evolution of the international system, “subcontracting”— authorizing a state or group of states to act on behalf of the world community in the restoration of peace and stability — became a regular feature of Security Council action following the Rwanda massacre in 1994. The United States subsequently evolved the practice into a mechanism by which it would move toward unilateral intervention followed by a request to the Security Council for the equivalent of a post-dated authorization. President Clinton employed the stratagem in Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. The Afghanistan intervention was also within this new tradition. More worrisome is that unilateral military action has continued into the Obama administration, largely in the form of drone attacks coupled with a declining interest in UN involvement of any type.

In the case of Iraq President Bush went further than the Clinton precedents, undertaking a unilateral preventive war and publicly asserting on several occasions that he intended to do so whether the Security Council endorsed the intervention or not. The failure of the Iraq venture probably put on the shelf the legal theory of a right to preventive war and it certainly ended the Administration’s interest in using the theory in the immediate future. It would not be applied to the two other axis of evil powers, Iran and North Korea. However, that the Administration did not use a declared policy of preemption again during its time in office does not mean the challenge to UN collective security was short-lived.

In the immediate aftermath of the ground war in Iraq, the United States made no serious effort to engage collective action until 2004, but set about nation-building on a unilateral basis. Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, America’s viceroy in occupied Iraq, was no fan of a UN role in Iraqi democracy-building. Even after the Security Council passed Resolution 1483 legitimizing the occupation, Bremer gave only the slightest regard to the resolution’s requirement that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) work “intensively” with the secretary-general’s special representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello.42 However, by spring 2004, more than 800 Americans had been killed in the country, and over 80 percent of those deaths had occurred after President Bush announced the end of combat on May 1, 2003. Moreover, among the sects in Iraqi politics, there was no interest in working with the CPA. The leadership of the most important segment of Iraqi life, the Shia community, insisted on working only with the United Nations. The usefulness of unilateral “preemption” and American-dominated democratization efforts outside the sanction of the UN was at an end.

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In March, American policy shifted abruptly, as officials announced the US intention to transfer sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government — a government selected by SecretaryGeneral Annan’s special representative Lahkdar Brahimi. Ambassador Brahimi conducted delicate negotiations among the various Iraqi political groupings, the CPA, the leaders of the interim transitional government and produced an agreement on an interim government made up of a president, two vice presidents, a prime minister, and a council of ministers. The United Nations then set up the process that led to January 2005 elections and a subsequent constitutional referendum.

The great fear at UN headquarters was that the Bush Doctrine of preemption, as used in Iraq, could be cited as precedent by other great powers, undercutting any remaining value of a collective security principle. While the administration’s 2002 National Security Strategy warned against any power using preemption as an excuse for aggression, Russia’s military intervention in Georgia in 2008 and its recent threats against former Soviet republics that are considering NATO membership could be defended in this light.

Just as importantly for the future of US foreign policy and global order, the president’s policy constituted a divorce of idealism from the strictures of Wilsonian collective security that constrained US policy over the previous 55 years. It allowed for an unbridled commitment to change the world according to American exceptionalist values. That was the thrust of President Bush’s 2005 Inaugural Address, and his call to Americans to end tyranny in the world. The implications of this policy shift were felt throughout the remainder of President Bush’s term in office. While it is true that the Bush administration would return to the Security Council to support a peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, allow referral to the International Criminal Court of war crimes charges against Sudanese leaders for their actions in Darfur, and encourage the Council to take action against the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, there was little sentiment in the White House to pursue collective security responses to major international crises during the president’s second term. On the most pressing issue of the day, the creation of a peaceful and democratic Iraq, the administration only turned to the UN for political assistance when the Coalition Provisional Authority was unable to produce any meaningful results on its own. The appointment of John Bolton, a vocal critic of the United Nations, as our ambassador to the institution in the second term was taken as a public signal of the Administration’s distaste for using the UN and its collective security mechanisms. This sentiment would also echo into the Obama years, reflected even so recently as the Arab Spring and NATO intervention in Libya.

American idealism has often been expressed unilaterally to the consternation of many people and states in the world. President Bush’s unilateral policy only heightened fear by others of the United States acting as an imperial power. To the extent the United States used the United Nations for the collective legitimation of its intended policies from Truman to Clinton, it lessened opposition from favorably-inclined governments and created the expectation that the current international order requires Security Council endorsement of the use of force to resolve international disputes. The world’s response to and support of US action during the first Gulf War compared to the lack of allies in the 2003 invasion is instructive in this regard.

UN Secretary-General Annan provided a number of opportunities for the administration to embrace United Nations engagement and at least tacit endorsement. While at the time of the invasion he bemoaned the fact that the Council could not muster the collective will to find a common way forward, exclaiming, “we seem to be at the end of the road here,”43 he

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continued to urge a UN role in post-invasion Iraq. At headquarters, his most serious effort to salvage collective security was the appointment of the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.

The US administration could have taken the crisis of 2003-2004 as an occasion to initiate a reconsideration of collective security and what such a principle means in a new century plagued by the stew of radicalism, access to weapons of mass destruction, and the availability of a state’s right to preemptive self-defense when it believes a grave danger threatens but cannot find support among other great powers. As John Davis has put it, “The Bush Administration missed a golden opportunity to offer leadership to a fractured world during a pivotal moment in international relations to act as a leading voice calling for an adjustment of international law to meet the realities of burgeoning and ever-lethal transnational terrorism.”44 He could have sought a formal amendment to Article 51 of the Charter that would recognize the new threat of non-state actors and rogue states to a country’s security. It would have been possible to even consider developing legal and enforceable connections between the old doctrine of collective security and the new UN principle of the “Responsibility to Protect.”

2003 was a crystallizing moment that the administration did not seize to make the most important reforms in the United Nations since its founding. If he had seized it, President Bush may well have given substance to his father’s new world order, joining Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in enhancing the efficacy of collective security, not threatening its survival.

ENDNOTES 1 2

3

4

5 6

7 8

9

10

11

George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown Publishers, 2010), 398.

George W. Bush, “The Future of Iraq,” American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC, February 26, 2003. For an analysis see Robert Swansborough, Test By Fire (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 9-19.

See George H. Quester, “The Bush Foreign Policy and the Good Society,” The Good Society, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2005, 16.

As an example, on February 16, 2001, the president ordered a massive air attack on Iraqi command centers and radar stations in a qualitative escalation of the Clinton’s no-fly zone policy over Iraq. See Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), p. 14. On the president’s general orientation prior to 9/11 see James M. Lindsay, “George W. Bush, Barack Obama and the Future of US Global Leadership,” International Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 4, 2011, 766-767.

Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), 37.

Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation, September 11, 2001, Office of the White House Press Secretary. In the National Security Council meeting the following day it was Defense Secretary Rumsfeld who first raised the matter of Iraq as one of those countries harboring and supporting terrorism requiring US action.

The president had raised Iraq and how to eliminate Saddam as early as February 2001, but, at that time rejected any immediate policy to remove the Iraqi leader.

Woodward, Bush at War, 219.

This was followed later in the month by Security Council resolution 1373 (9/28/01) declaring any act of terrorism “a threat to international peace and security,” triggering Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

Moore, John Allphin, Jr., and Jerry Pubantz, (eds.), Encyclopedia of the United Nations, Second Edition (New York: Facts on File, 2008), 6-7. ISAF was authorized under Chapter VII by the Security Council in resolution 1386 (12/20/01).

Text of President Bush's 2002 State of the Union Address, Jan. 29, 2002, The Washington Post, January 30, 2002.

Henry Kissinger argues the transformation of Bush foreign policy to idealist ends began in Afghanistan with a US commitment to build a stable democratic government in that country, a place with no history or political culture to sustain such an outcome. See Henry Kissinger, World Order (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 319.

80 12 13 14

15

16 17 18 19

20 21

22 23 24 25

26

27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37

Jerry Pubantz 2002 State of the Union Address.

Ibid.

See John Ehrenburg, J. Patrice McSherry, José Ramón Sánchez, and Caroleen Marjii Sayej (eds.) The Iraq Papers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 61.

The US Department of Defense dictionary of military terms defines preemptive war as “an attack initiated on the basis of incontrovertible evidence that an enemy attack is imminent.” Preventive war is defined as a “war initiated in the belief that military conflict, while not imminent, is inevitable, and that delay would involve greater risk.” The president’s public statements about Iraq can only be understood to be referring to the latter type of military action.

George W. Bush, “Graduation Speech at West Point,” United States Military Academy, June 01, 2002.

Ibid.

The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September, 2002, 15.

Ibid. Daniel Webster first defined the traditional understanding of preemption in 1841. He argued a state would have to show “a necessity of self-defense, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.”

Ibid.

See, for example, Henry R. Nau, Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).

Woodward, Plan of Attack, 88.

For a discussion see Swansborough, Test by Fire, 19.

George W. Bush, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 2005.

Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was rationalized to the world as an effort to gain economic “freedom” for herself and political “freedom” for the peoples of Asia. Germans also saw their country’s invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland as defensive preemptive measures against the threat of the Soviet Union.

Transcript of Press Conference by Secretary-General Kofi Annan at United Nations Headquarters, 8 September, 2003. SG/SM/8855, 9 September, 2003.

Moore and Pubantz, Encyclopedia, 15.

Ibid., 189-190.

For a good discussion of the Panel’s role and findings see Ved P. Nanda, “Preemptive and Preventive Use of Force, Collective Security, and Human Security,” Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, Vol. 33, No. 1, 2004, 7-15. The US response to the Report’s recommendation for an expansion of the Security Council’s membership was non-committal. The State Department said “any Security Council reform must ensure the effectiveness of the Council and be supported by a broad consensus.” It opposed any dilution of the veto power.

The Bush administration lauded the Panel for recommending reforms of several UN administrative offices. See US Department of State, Report on United States Participation in the United Nations, 2004. Found at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/54458.pdf.

Bush, Decision Points, 411-417.

Bush, “Future of Iraq.”

President’s Remarks at the United Nations General Assembly, September 12, 2002.

Bush, Decision Points, 232-239.

Woodward, Plan of Attack, 280-285.

Quoted in David L. Bosco. Five to Rule Them All: The UN Security Council and the Making of the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, 229-230. Bosco reports (229) that the French ambassador to the United States, prior to de Villepin’s statement, in meetings with US officials privately floated the idea of the United States not going to the Security Council for a second resolution, but rather using the “Kosovo model” of acting unilaterally “on the basis of existing resolutions” and then going to the Council after the fact for affirmation. Bosco suggests this was not “part of a coordinated or sustained French policy” and was quickly shot down in public by President Jacques Chirac on January 15. The US ambassador to the United Nations at the time, John Negroponte, reported in 2015 that he was approached by the French UN ambassador with the same idea.

S/Res/1441, 8 November 2002.

See, for example, Security Council resolutions 678 (Kuwait, 11/29/1990), 816 (Bosnia and Herzegovina, 3/31/1993, also res. 836, June 4, 1993), 1244 (Kosovo, June 10, 1999), 1264 (East Timor, September 15, 1999), 1386 (Afghanistan, December 20, 2001), 1497 (Liberia, August 1, 2003), 1511 (Iraq, October 16, 2003 – the Security Council’s first collective security action on Iraq, authorizing a multinational force under unified

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41 42

43 44

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command), 1546 (Iraq, June 8, 2004, continuation of the multinational force), 1529 (Haiti, February 29, 2004), and 1851 (Somalia, December 16, 2008).

Woodward, Plan of Attack, 221.

Interview on BBC News, September 16, 2004. Found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3661134.stm.

The most detailed legal study was commissioned by the Dutch Government. See Report of the Dutch Committee of Inquiry on the War in Iraq. Netherlands International Law Review, 2010, 81-137. Also see, Steven J. Barela, “Preemptive or Preventive War: A Discussion of Legal and Moral Standards,” Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, Vol. 33, No. 1, 32-41.

Bush, Decision Points, 253.

Larry Diamond, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq. (New York: Times Books, 2005), 46-60, 84.

John Ehrenburg et al., The Iraq Papers, 145.

John Davis, “Implications of Preventive Wars for Collective Security,” Mediterranean Quarterly, Winter 2004, 116-117.

In: The George W. Bush Presidency. Volume III Editors: Meena Bose and Paul Fritz

ISBN: 978-1-63485-783-3 © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 7

PRESIDENTIAL DECISION MAKING IN IRAQ: BUSH VS. BUSH/PHRONESIS VS. FAITH1 Michael A. Genovese Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, US

ABSTRACT This essay compares the leadership, management, and decision making styles of President George H. W. Bush and President George W. Bush on their handling of wars in the Gulf region. We examine how advice was used, the flow of ideas and information, and the rigor of analysis in both administrations as they related to wars in the Gulf. The essay concludes that Bush 41 employed a better process of decision making than did his son, George W. Bush.

It is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong end, to act first, and wait for disaster to discuss the matter.

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War F—Saddam. We’re taking him out.

George W. Bush, March 20122

INTRODUCTION George H.W., and George W. Bush, 41 and 43, father and son; two presidents, each of whom went to war in the Persian Gulf, both of whom left significant legacies, yet each of whom conducted the business of governing in dramatically different ways. Both mattered, but for vastly different reasons.

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In foreign policy terms, the two Bushs could not have been more different, with the father taking his cues from the tradition of pragmatic realism, and the son guided by his understanding of Reaganism mixed with a bit of messianic idealism. The results of these two dramatically opposed foreign policy views on policy and politics could not have been starker.

The two, of course, had much in common beyond the strong family tie. Both staffed their presidencies with many of the same people, both came to office or presided over major transitions in international affairs (41 at the end of the Cold War; 43 at the beginning of the war against terrorism), both had the opportunity (due to rapid change) to shape and recast American foreign policy.

Similarities, yes, but there were stark contrasts as well. 41 had vast government experience, 43 had very limited experience; 41 downplayed grand visions, 43 embraced them; 41 was pragmatic and cautious, 43 idealistic and ambitious; 41 had quiet self-confidence, 43 had the swagger of someone trying to prove oneself; 41 was a war hero, 43 may or may not have fully completed his national guard duty; 41 played in the College baseball World Series for Yale, 43 was a cheerleader; 41 developed and grew his own oil business, 43 failed in the same business. Child was a pale comparison to the father.

With his election in 2000, much was made of the fact that Bush II brought many familiar Bush I foreign policy experts into his White House, leading many to believe that we would see Act II of the Bush I presidency: like father, like son. Nothing could have been further from that “truth.” Familiar face, yes; familiar policies, no.

Yet, the two Bush presidencies faced a rapidly changing Post Cold War era that was open to change and also susceptible to presidential leadership. As political scientist Michael F. Cairo notes in his excellent book The Gulf that “both presidents held office at a time when the power to define the international scene was facilitated by rapid changes and crises, which gave their administrations exceptional ability to shape circumstances and guide American foreign policy.”3

BUSH V. BUSH This essay will compare and evaluate the decision making and performance of two presidents who faced a similar problem. We will examine the George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush presidencies on how they decided on and executed wars in the Persian Gulf. More specifically, wars against Iraq in 1990-91 and 2003-2011.

The wars in Iraq serve as an excellent opportunity to examine foreign policy decision making by presidents. The irony of having two Bush presidents is not lost nor is it incidental to our inquiry, for the father/son dimension may add an important twist to this tale.

This essay attempts to explain two parallel decisions on wars in one country, prosecuted about a dozen years apart. We will look at models of decision making, apply them to the decisions of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, focus on both people and process, and suggest ways the decision process may have been functional or dysfunctional.

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PRESIDENTIAL DECISION MAKING Who rules, the president, or the presidency? In the White House, just how important is the president in determining policy, and how important are the organizational/bureaucratic structures lodged in the Executive Branch? Is it the individual or the institution? The man or the machine that determines policy? There is a debate in the study of international politics/foreign policy over this question. Some argue that the individual/leader matters little, where others see individual agency as central in decision making.

We know that at times the individual can affect an institution, while at other times, the institution affects the individual. Thus, the relationship between agency and structure. At times individuals act according to role expectations, accepted conventions, balance of power concerns, and political as well as partisan pressures. Old orders are hard to shake, new ones hard to shape.

At other times – especially a new, volatile or crisis situation – the individual – their personalities, ideology, and character – determines policy. In the case of both Bush presidencies, the individual decision maker mattered, and individual choices were of great consequence.

DECISION MAKING LEVELS OF ANALYSIS A useful framework for us to examine presidential decision making is a three-stage level of analysis that posits influence of the Individual, the Institution, and the System (domestic and international) on the decision making process. These three levels of abstraction or generalization are lenses through which we can see and understand the complex political world.4

The Individual Level This, our “smallest” unit of analysis, focuses on the impact of the individual – in this case the president – on outcomes. How does a president’s cognitive style, behavioral and psychological traits, emotions, world view, ideology, personal experience, belief system, style of leadership, decision style, impact decision making? Do individual characteristics determine policy decisions? Given that the president’s job description is both expansive and only loosely defined (constitutionally) presidents often have wide room to choose.

What are the primary forces that shape presidential judgment and decision making? What matters most, the individual (style, personality, experience, belief, values, ideology), the Institution (staffing, process, information, advisory roles), or the system (rivals for power such as Congress, the Constitution, the structure of power)?

Graham Allison, in his influential examination of decision making during the Cuban Missile Crisis suggests three conceptual models to help us understand decision making: The Rational Actor Model, the Organizational Behavior Model, and the Governmental Politics Model.5 Each model focuses on a different source of influence or lens through which one might better understand the forces that shape decision making.

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While Allison’s Rational Actor Model was, for a time, presumed true, challenges to the notion that we humans are rational have in recent years come from neuroscience research that sees us as more complex, less rational, and more prone to decision biases.6 Of course, this is not a wholly new insight. Nearly sixty years ago political scientist Herbert Simon wrote of our “bounded rationality.” The real world, noted Simon, was messy and often quite irrational.7 And more recently, psychologist Daniel Kahneman wrote that “Research indicates that people are myopic in their decisions, may lack skill in predicting their best future tasks, and can be led to erroneous choices by fallible memory and incorrect evaluation of past experiences.”8 If leaders are not highly rational, how do factors such as personality, style, core beliefs, ideology, experiences, and values impact decision making? Clearly there are wide variations in presidential decisions such as were evident with Buchanan and Lincoln facing Southern secession. Buchanan was paralyzed and Lincoln was animated by the challenge. Why did one president freeze and the other act? Both faced a similar problem, yet responded in dramatically different ways. It does matter who is president - or at least under certain conditions it clearly matters - and there are individual factors such as beliefs, values, and ideology that impact these decisions.

In foreign policy decision making, the literature on the importance of individual variations9 suggests that while there are institutional, structural, and political forces that influence the president, in the end- at least in big decisions-it is the president who decides.

THE INSTITUTIONAL LEVEL While individual factors loom large, there are also institutional forces that contribute to decision making. Here process, the advisors and type of advisory system are of particular interest. The president is an individual, but the presidency is a large, complex institution. And presidents organize and manage the institution of the presidency in different ways. Some develop a collegial advisory system, while others choose a competitive, or delegating or formal style. How a president organizes his staff can matter greatly regarding the flow of information, the type of advice received, the options presented to the president. Most scholars call for some type of multiple advocacy system as such an approach increases the chances that a president will receive wide ranging advise.10 The institutional growth of the Presidency occurred largely after World War II. The presidency was increasingly seen as “responsible” for economic prosperity and growth, national security, and a host of other political and symbolic activities. The emergence of the Cold War led to the rise of the National Security State, and the post 9/11 era led to the rise of the anti-terrorism state. It was big government and a big presidency. The big presidency can help or hurt the president. So large is the presidency that the institution is hardly manageable, the administrative layering and thinking of the presidency often makes governing difficult.

While there is no “one size fits all” method for a president to get optimum advice and information, perhaps Dwight D. Eisenhower was onto something when he said: I know of only one way in which you can be sure you’ve done your best to make a wise decision. That is to get all of the people who have partial and definable responsibility in this particular field, whatever it may be. Get them with their different

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viewpoints in front of you, and listen to the debate. I do not believe in bringing them in one at a time, and therefore being more impressed by the most recent one you hear than the earlier ones. You must get courageous men, men of strong views, and let them debate and argue with each other. You listen, and you see if there’s anything been brought up, an idea that changes your own view or enriches your view or adds to it… Sometimes the case becomes so simple that you can make a decision right then. Or you may go back and with two or three days, if time isn’t of the essence. But you make it.11

The Systemic Level Our third level of analysis is the systematic. Here, both the domestic and the international systems come into play. Not only do the president’s personal qualities and their advisory systems matter, but domestic and international factors matter as well.

The domestic and political environment and structures can matter. A separation of power system calls for some shared power with Congress. This can - though on war and crises issues may not - limit a president’s maneuverability. The public may be “war weary” and limit a president's options. The president may face divided government and feel constrained.12 One’s popularity may be of concern. Public opinion may constrain or liberate a president.

On the international level, a loose set of rules in global politics means that power, position, resources, alliances, and adversaries all come into play. Also, historical context (e.g., Cold War versus Post-Cold War eras) and the anarchistic nature of international politics all shape how fixed or malleable is a president’s maneuverability or level of opportunity.13

COMPARING PRESIDENTIAL PERFORMANCE Comparing presidential performance can be a tricky business. After all, presidents are not “born equal.” Some come to power in what can be called “high opportunity” conditions (e.g., Franklin D. Roosevelt), while others came to power in “low opportunity” times (e.g., Gerald Ford).14 It would be unreasonable to expect Gerald Ford to accomplish what FDR did - the circumstances, opportunities to exert leadership, the political arithmetic was not in Ford’s favor, while FDR could hit the ground running because of a high demand for presidential action.

Thus, when we compare presidential behavior, success, or, activities, we should be cognizant of the fact that all presidents are not created equal, and we must therefore be sensitive to the conditions under which the presidents operate. Better, for example, to compare one high opportunity president to another; or compare low opportunity presidents (e.g., Carter to Ford). Also, we might wish to compare presidents whose actions are more comparable (e.g., as managers of the Executive branch, or as public speakers or as leaders in war).

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The Interventionists’ Dilemma In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, U.S. policymakers began a process of reexamination of the logic and role of U.S. intervention in hot spots across the globe. PostVietnam logic meant that the onus shifted and those advocating intervention had to make the case to a skeptical and war weary public. Surely, there was a reasonable place between the reluctant world policeman and the anxious interventionist.

The need to articulate a clear interventionist logic became pressing after the ill-fated and ill-thought out Reagan administration troop intervention into Beirut that resulted in a terrorist truck bomb killing 241 American servicemen, after which President Reagan ordered a hasty retreat and abandonment of the mission. The Clinton debacle in Somalia further complicated the case for intervention.

In a 1984 speech at the National Press Club, then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, articulated a new formula designed to better distinguish significant threats to U.S. security (threats that could justify a unilateral response by the U.S.), and less direct, more ambiguous threats (to which a higher standard of scrutiny should apply). In what became known as the “Weinberger Doctrine,” the Secretary listed six conditions that needed to be met before the U.S. introduced combat troops abroad: 1) Use force only if vital national interests or those of our key allies are endangered; 2) when the U.S. decided to use force, it should be done fully forcefully, and with the goal of winning; 3) when forces are introduced into combat, they must be given clear and unambiguous political objectives to achieve; 4) military action must be proportional to the objectives sought; 5) any introduction of U.S. troops into combat must have the support of Congress and the American people; and 6) the U.S. should commit combat troops only as a last resort.15 General Colin Powell reiterated support for the Weinberger Doctrine in a 1992-93 article in Foreign Affairs,16 arguing that few conflicts will be unambiguous. Most will be judgment calls in more ambiguous circumstances where vital U.S. interests may not be involved. Those close calls demand a high level of scrutiny. The burden of proof is on those who call for U.S. intervention. In general, the administration of George H.W. Bush followed these guidelines in the run up to the Gulf War. The administration of George W. Bush less faithfully followed the Weinberger Doctrine.

One Gulf, Two Wars In the space of about a dozen years the United States and other nations launched two wars in the Persian Gulf against Iraq. Ironically, the presidents in these two wars were father and son: George H. W. and George W. Bush.

The first Gulf War in 1991 was relatively short and was conducted with a massive coalition of nations, quickly achieved its stated goals, and U.S. and coalition forces left the region. The primary note of criticism came from some who argued that the U.S. should have continued the war, gone into Baghdad, and “taken out” Saddam Hussein.

The second Gulf War in 2003 was launched by George W. Bush and while militarily the initial phase of the war went well for the U.S. and a small coalition of nations, the war dragged on and became a civil war with sectarian violence. It dragged on and on, with the

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U.S. mired in a war it seemingly could not win. When George W. Bush left office in January of 2009, the U.S. was still fighting in Iraq, and while Saddam Hussein had been deposed, peace did not come to Iraq.

41’S ROAD TO THE GULF WAR “Mr. President, it looks very bad, Iraq may be about to invade Kuwait,” Brent Scowcroft, George H.W. Bush’s national security advisor told the President on August 1, 1990.17 And indeed, that is precisely what happened.

Bush, categorized as an “enlightened realist, by political scientist Michael F. Cairo faced a turning point. To Cairo, an enlightened realist is characterized by 1) pragmatism and experience; 2) flexibility and compromise; 3) negotiation; and 4) multilateral internationalism.18 One key asset President Bush brought to the table was his vast governmental experience.

As Cairo wrote: Few presidents have been as prepared and experienced as George H. W. Bush when they were elected into office. George H. W.’s experiences proved significant to his decision making, as he relied considerably on his own ideas and was essentially his own chief foreign policy advisor. In addition, he had knowledge about, interest in, and understanding of foreign policy and the foreign policy process. In contrast, George W. had a lack of knowledge about the interest in the field of foreign policy. In responding to questions about his competence in foreign policy, George W. openly “admitted that he had much to learn about world affairs.” The contrast could not have been starker.19

Additionally, unlike Ronald Reagan or his own son, Bush Sr. was non-ideological, pragmatic, and open to alternate views. He was a problem-solver, not a true-believer.

Due to the extensive experience Bush I brought to the job, he was a man fully formed from the moment he stepped into the Oval Office. U.S. representative to China, head of the Republican National Committee, member of Congress, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Vice President, it was an impressive resume. And yet, critics charged that he left few “footprints” in any of his jobs.

When Bush was informed that Iraq had invaded Kuwait, he had a sense of what to do, how to proceed, with whom to speak. However, initially not everything went smoothly.

Confronted with the challenge/crisis, what would Bush do? How would he respond? British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher feared Bush would “go wobbly”20 but Thatcher grossly misjudged the President.

Bush did not, as Thatcher hoped, leap into action; he took things step-by-step, calculating and calibrating his moves. The first act was to convene a meeting with his National Security Council (NSC). On August 2 the NSC met. The President chaired the meeting. The NSC met again the following day. While the first meeting seemed unproductive and unfocused, the second meeting became focused and more direct.21 Anything and everything a president says makes news and can be interpreted as a statement of policy. President Bush in an August 5, 1990 exchange with reporters announced regarding Iraq’s incursion into Kuwait, “This will not stand.” It was a bold commitment to

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action, but did Bush make policy on the fly? Did he intend to set policy before full deliberation and discussion? Was this premeditated and intentional, or an “oops” moment?

Whatever it was, the U.S. had just committed itself to removing Iraq from Kuwait.

To gain international credibility, President Bush was also determined to go to the UN. As the president later wrote: While I was prepared to deal with this crisis unilaterally if necessary, I wanted the United Nations involved as part of our first response, starting with a strong condemnation of Iraq’s attack on a fellow member. Decisive UN action would be important in rallying international opposition to the invasion and reversing it.22

Going to the UN early was an attempt to generate broad-based support for the U.S. position. It would also buy some time as the administration decided on an overall strategy for ousting Hussein from Kuwait. As Bush’s advisor Richard Haass has written: We decided to go to the United Nations right off the bat to get on the books a Security Council resolution calling for the withdrawal of all Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

Resolution 660, which demanded that Iraq “withdraw immediately and unconditionally” from Kuwait, was passed 14-0-1 on August 2 with no real opposition (only Yemen, then occupying the rotating “Arab seat” on the Security Council, abstained) and little delay.

The fact that the Soviets and Chinese lined up with us was a good sign.23

Haass added, Many Americans might not respect the United Nations, but for most people around the world and their governments the U.N. is an important and at times essential source of authority and legitimacy. Its endorsement can constitute a prerequisite for the participation of others, be it to make sanctions effective or to lend support to US military efforts or to introduce forces of their own. The U.N. does not hold a monopoly on legitimacy but it is a significant force in the world of diplomacy.24

The problem remained: how to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. It became clear fairly early that a military option might be necessary to drive Hussein back across the Iraq border.

U.S. forces were dispatched to the region both as a warning to Hussein and to deter further Iraqi expansion into Saudi Arabia or elsewhere. This early strategy, Desert Shield, left more aggressive options on the table.

As warnings and a UN resolution failed to persuade Hussein to pull back, the military option came to the forefront. In early October, the President was briefed by the military as to the scope of a U.S. and coalition invasion. After some back and forth, a military plan - Desert Storm - emerged. The administration worked tirelessly to cobble together a coalition of nations in support of the military option and Bush got the backing of a large number of countries. From Baghdad it must have looked like “us against the world.”

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The War Council As military plans were put in place, members of the White House staff were also working on plans for a post-war stabilization.

The President’s “war council” consisted of a few close advisors on whom Bush relied heavily. Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, Colin Powell, and Dick Cheney were part of the inner circle, with Robert Gates, John Sununu and at times vice president Dan Quayle making up the next ring of influence. Bush’s reliance on a “small circle of friends” was a common response of most presidents facing crisis.25 Of course, depending on just a few people has its dangers. “Group think” often creeps in and there may be less “multiple advocacy” and “devil’s advocates” may be shunned. The Bush team seemed for the most part to avoid these pitfalls.

How did Bush make decisions? He sought the council of a close knit team of advisers. He rarely made decisions in meetings, preferring to think through issues and decide on his own time table. As Colin Powell noted, commenting on President’s Bush’s decision style: That’s George Bush, when he starts with a problem, his first reaction, I’ve learned, is never take it to the bank. He takes a little time to look at the problem, thinks about it. He gets counsel from people. He makes his famous phone calls. He reflects on it. He gets more counsel. He makes a judgment as to whose counsel he should have confidence in.

It’s not just matters of war and peace. It’s matters of friendship as well, which is a strength and a weakness.26

Bush delivered an August Oval Office address to the nation in which he announced the four principles that would guide U.S. action: 1) immediate, unconditional and complete Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait; 2) a restoration of Kuwait’s government; 3) a U.S. commitment to security in the region; and 4) a U.S. commitment to protect the lives of Americans abroad.

The administration worked long and hard to put together a broad international coalition of nations, to gain support of the American people, to get UN backing for military action, and get Congress to back the President.

On January 9, the House voted 250-183 and then the Senate voted 52-47 to authorize military action if the President exhausted all other means of getting Iraqi compliance. In his memoirs My American Journey, Colin Powell clearly implies that the president was willing to go to war even if Congress did not approve of this step. As he wrote, “I also knew that whatever congress decided, Bush was not going to back down.”27 It did not come to that.

President Bush himself believed - or said he believed - that he could act absent Congressional authority. “I don’t think I need it,”28 he said. But it was clearly wise to get Congress on board, and Bush eventually did so. While he did receive authorization from Congress to engage in military action in the Gulf, President Bush claimed that he could have done so on his own authority. He said: “I didn’t have to get permission from some old goat in the United States Congress to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.”29 On January 7, 1991, the U.S. military began what would be a short and relatively easy military victory over Iraq, driving them out of Kuwait. Fewer than 300 Americans were killed, the Iraqi military was neutralized, and the U.S. allies shared operations and the cost of the war.

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On to Baghdad? To do so would have exceeded UN approved action and might have a significantly negative, or perhaps positive consequences. As Haass wrote: The truth is there was no interest in going to Baghdad. I do not recall any dissent on this point. The consensus was that we would lose more troops in such an operation than we had lost up to that point. We had also just had the frustrating experience of going after Manuel Noriega in Panama; searching modern cities for individuals is dangerous and difficult work. We would have become an occupying force in a hostile land with no exit strategy. Such operations did not play to the advantage of American forces.30

The President reiterated this case in his quasi-memoir A World Transformed: Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in “mission creep,” and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs.

Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable “exit strategy” we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nation’s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different-and perhaps barren-outcome.31

At war’s end, the President addressed the American people in a February 27, 1991 Oval Office speech: Kuwait is liberated. Iraq’s army is defeated. Our military objectives are met. Kuwait is once more in the hands of the Kuwaitis, in control of their own destiny. We share their joy, a joy tempered only by our compassion for their ordeal. Tonight the Kuwaiti flag once again flies above the capital of a free and sovereign nation. And the American flag flies above our embassy. Seven months ago, America and the world drew a line in the sand. We declared that aggression against Kuwait would not stand. And tonight, America and the world have kept their word. This is not a time of euphoria, certainly not time to gloat. But it is a time of pride: pride in our troops; pride in our friends who stood with us in the crisis; pride in our nation and the people whose strength and resolve made victory quick, decisive, and just. And soon we will open wide our arms to welcome back home to America our magnificent fighting forces. No one country can claim this victory as its own. It was not only a victory for Kuwait but a victory for all the coalition partners. This is a victory for the United Nations, for the rule of law, and for what is right… We must now begin to look beyond victory and war. We must meet the challenge of securing the peace.

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43’S ROAD TO THE GULF WAR “Mr. President,” said General Tommy Franks to George W. Bush, “this force is ready.”

To which, according to Bush, “I turned to Don Rumsfeld, ‘Mr. Secretary.’ I said, “For the peace of the world and the benefit and freedom of the Iraqi people, I hearby give the order to execute Operation Iraqi Freedom. May God bless the troops.”32 With that, on March 19, 2003, the second U.S. military action in the gulf region in a little more than a decade had begun. While the first war ended with several questions hanging (why did the US not go into Baghdad? Why did they leave Saddam Hussein in power?), the second war would end in tragedy.33 Of course there was dissent and disagreement within the Bush White House, but it is striking how many internal dissenters – from Colin Powell to the Joint Chiefs – felt marginalized and irrelevant. Key decisions seemed to have been made before discussion and review; assumptions were reinforced before they were examined; and information was presumed true before evidence even arrived to the White House.

Just days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack against the United States, President Bush made clear his intended goal: get rid of Saddam Hussein. While Saddam had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack, Bush was determined to use the attack as a pretext for taking Hussein out.

In the administration’s first National Security Council meeting on January 30, 2001, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill was astounded when both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney, openly endorsed invading Iraq. It was clearly on the wish list from the very beginning.34 And on November 21, 2001, just ten weeks after 9/11, the president took Rumsfeld aside and told him he had “decided it was time to turn to Iraq.35 After two days of Camp David meetings with top advisors, the President, on September 16, 2001 spoke with JCS Chairman General Shelton. Bush had been expressing interest in invading Iraq, and with the support of Security Defense Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, pushed for a military option in Iraq. But Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly disagreed. The focus, he argued, should be on the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack: al Qaeda.

In a private moment with General Shelton, the President asked the general if he felt that he, Bush, had made the right choice in going after al Qaeda instead of Hussein. Shelton said he thought going after al Qaeda was the right call. “That’s what I think,” said Bush. “We will get this guy [Hussein] but at a time and place of our own choosing.”36 Less than one week after the 9/11 attack, President Bush seemed to have made up his mind to take out Saddam Hussein, but it wouldn’t be just now.

Run Up to the Invasion Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)! The administration forcefully made the case that Saddam Hussein had’em, would use ‘em, and he had to be stopped with a preemptive war.

On July 23, 2002 Prime Minister Tony Blair met with the head of British intelligence to report on his visit to Washington. A report was leaked to the press and became known as the “Downing Street Memo,” in which Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain’s MI6, told the

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prime minister that “military action was now seen as inevitable – Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action.” To justify this, “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” On top of this, “there was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.”37 On August 26, 2002 Vice President Dick Cheney told an audience of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”38 In October in a speech in Cincinnati, the President made the case that there was a Saddam-al Qaeda connection to 9/11, and he repeated this on November 2 in a Tampa speech: “We know he’s had connections with Al Qaeda.”39 The administration was not using the intelligence, the president received to help him make decisions.40 He often seemed to make decisions working backwards that fit the intelligence into his preconceived framework.41 It is not the case that there was no discussion or disagreement in the Bush White House over Iraq. There was. But the White House was deeply and bitterly divided between two camps: The Powell—semi-hawks and the Cheney/Rumsfeld—led super-hawks. From this, the president could have had various options before deciding on policy. However, this was not to be, as the Powell faction was intentionally marginalized by Cheney, Rumsfeld and the president. The form seemed like a competitive decision model. The reality was a narrow, closed, rigid advisory system.42 And as Powell was eased out, Cheney and Rumsfeld moved in.43 In spite of arguing — as his father did over a decade earlier — that he did not need congressional authorization to invade Iraq, President Bush nonetheless did go to Congress. In the House the vote wasn’t close, 296-113 in favor of empowering the president to invade. In the Senate the vote was just as lopsided, 77-23, with a majority of Democrats voting yea. As for UN backing, the administration realized that rather than face a humiliating defeat, they might not seek UN approval.44 In the end, there were no WMDs45, no connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, and as these reasons collapsed under the weight of the evidence, the President reached for yet another reason for invading Iraq: to bring democracy to the Middle East.46 The president later argued that he was really trying to avoid war in Iraq but that he was left with no choice but to invade: For more than a year, I had tried to address the threat from Saddam Hussein without war. We had rallied an international coalition to pressure him to come clean about his weapons of mass destruction programs. We had obtained a unanimous United Nations Security Council resolution making clear there would be serious consequences for continued defiance. We had reached out to Arab nations about taking Saddam into exile. I had given Saddam and his sons a final forty-eight hours to avoid war. The dictator rejected every opportunity. The only logical conclusion was that he had something to hide, something so important that he was willing to go to war for it… I did not want to send Americans into combat again. But after the nightmare of 9/11, I had vowed to do what was necessary to protect the country. Letting a sworn enemy of America refuse to account for his weapons of mass destruction was a risk I could not afford to take.47

Richard N. Haass, who served on the foreign policy teams of both president Bushs asked how George W. Bush reached his decision to go to war:

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How did George W. Bush reach this point? I will go to my grave not fully understanding why, although I believe I have a good if not complete understanding of how this second Iraq war came about. There is no certainty, as there was no meeting or set of meetings at which the pros and cons were debated and a formal decision taken. No, this decision happened. It was cumulative. The issue was on the table from the outset of the administration.

Then, in comparing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Haass wrote: Iraq was fundamentally different. The president wanted to destroy an established nemesis of the United States. And he wanted to change the course of history, transforming not just a country but the region of the world that had produced the lion’s share of the world’s terrorists and had resisted much of modernity. He may have sought to accomplish what his father did not. The arguments put forward for going to warnoncompliance with U.N. resolutions, possession of weapons of mass destruction-turned out to be essentially window dressing, trotted out to build domestic and international support for a policy that had been forged mostly for other reasons. The fact that Iraq was not involved in 9/11 or tied to Al-Qaeda (despite repeated intimations and claims by the president and others to the contrary) mattered not. Indeed, the president’s instruction to counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke to look for a connection between Iraq and 9/11 when there was no reason to suspect one seemed more than anything to reflect a desire to justify a course of action Bush was already inclined to take. The fact that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld instructed Central Command in November 2001 to begin planning for a war with Iraq reinforces this point.48

The administration had “decided” to invade Iraq before the option was fully discussed or properly vetted. As Haass wrote, “The fundamental decision to go to war against Saddam’s Iraq had effectively been made by a president and an administration with virtually no systematic, rigorous, in-house debate.49 The president and his vice president were so enamored of the idea that they, in the end, believed what they wanted to believe rather than follow the evidence. Cheney, in a conversation with Senator Dick Armey (a war skeptic who warned the vice president that “you’re going to get mired down there”) the vice president reassured the Senator: “They’re going to welcome us. It’ll be like the American army going through the streets of Paris. They’re sitting there ready to form a new government. The people will be so happy with their freedoms that we’ll probably back ourselves out of there within a month or two.”50

From Short and Quick to Long and Painful The invasion seemed to go well.51 The U.S. and a “coalition of the willing” (a greatly reduced coalition when compared to the first Gulf War) made quick work of Iraq’s military and the government fell swiftly. Then came decision time: to go into Baghdad, or not?52 George H.W. Bush stopped short of Baghdad. His son was determined to finish the job he believed his father had left undone.53 How was the decision to go to Baghdad made?

In 1999, Mickey Herskowitz, a writer working on a Bush campaign biography, interviewed the president: “One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a

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Commander-in-Chief,”… “My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I ever get the chance to invade, I’m not going to waste it.” Shortly thereafter, Bush said of Saddam Hussein, “I’m going to take him.”54 Bush, it seems, had made up his mind just what he wanted to do. It only took the right opportunity for the president to spring into action.

The father had made the case for not going to Baghdad in the first Gulf War. He did not “want any part of occupying” Iraq. Occupiers in a hostile land opened the door to deep troubles. The son, however, was convinced the U.S. would be greeted as liberators and it would all unfold easily, quickly, and to our great advantage.

The irony here is that on April 15, 1994 in an interview with the American Enterprise Institute, Dick Cheney was asked why Bush 41 did not go into Baghdad. Cheney gave a litany of sound reasons to hold back, including that if we had done so, the U.S. would be “all alone,” with no other nations to support us, that we would become an occupying force. None of the Arab states would approve of invading another Arab state. Once we took out Saddam Hussein, we would be forced to rebuild the nation, that Iraq would break apart, concluding with, “It’s a quagmire.”

Not so fast, warned what some believed was the father’s surrogate, Brent Scowcroft. In a Meet the Press interview and an op-ed in the August 15 Wall Street Journal, Scowcroft warned that going to Baghdad and getting Saddam Hussein would be a distraction that could cost dearly. It might, he wrote, result “in a serious degradation in international cooperation with us against terrorism . . . attack . . . would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken.” Was this the elder Bush speaking through his close friend to his son?

Bush 43 attacked Iraq and went to Baghdad to get Hussein. It all seemed to be going splendidly. On December 13, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld called Bush with the news that the U.S. had captured Saddam Hussein. In his memoirs Bush wrote: “I was elated.

Getting Saddam would be a big lift for our troops and for the American people. It would also make a psychological difference for the Iraqis, many of whom feared he would return. Now it was clear: The era of the dictator was over forever.”55 On May 1, 2003, President Bush landed in a jet onto the runway of the aircraft carrier, USS Lincoln emerging for the cockpit wearing a flight suit. It was a dramatic entrance for a dramatic announcement. With a huge MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner in the background Bush announced that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” Oops.

Things Fall Apart After the victory lap on the USS Lincoln, Iraq fell apart.56 And while there was post-war planning done prior to the invasion, it soon became clear that the U.S. was not adequately prepared. Chaos, violence, widespread looting, sectarian violence, civil war ensued. Plus, the United States had become an occupying force responsible for nation building.57 The Bush 43 overconfidence regarding Iraq and the U.S. ability to initiate events contradicts sharply with the presidential view that urges caution and knows that in the “fog of war” the best laid plans can easily go awry. Decisions in war are surrounded by uncertainty.

This uncertainty should foster modesty, not overconfidence.

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Of the post invasion collapse, David Owen, who served as British Foreign Security from 1972-1979 wrote: The scale of the incompetence after the invasion of Iraq will be something over which historians will long puzzle. How could Washington, particularly the Pentagon, be so incompetent on both the political and military organizational levels? One answer lies in the aloofness and indifference to detail of the Commander in Chief, to which many witnesses of Bush’s behavior testify.58

Journalist Thomas Ricks concluded, “the U.S.—led invasion was launched recklessly, with a flawed plan for war and a worse approach to occupation.”59 How could America’s first MBA president make so many managerial mistakes? According to political scientists Mitchell and Massoud: Prior to entering office, George W. Bush held strong view about how decisions should be made and how the decision-making process should be managed. Bush explicitly wanted to approach the job of policy making like that of a chief executive officer. With an MBA from Harvard Business School, experience as CEO of two companies, witness to inner workings of his father’s presidency, and as governor of Texas, George Bush believed that the best way to formulate policy was to be surrounded by knowledgeable experts who perform the grunt work of constructing policy. The president, of course, would be responsible for making the final decision. In short, he believed in effective management meant delegating to a group of capable and loyal advisers. Bush also believed that this delegation had to take place within an environment modeled on a corporation, where there was a clear and ordered hierarchy and the roles among actors were clearly delineated and defined. Bush’s choice of management style was influenced by his inexperience. Bush’s lack of expertise meant he had to rely on others to inform him about the day-to-day issues and to assist him in developing a base of knowledge on foreign affairs.60

If Bush had a corporate delegating style of management, his individual decision making style was highly personalized and idiosyncratic. As Mitch and Mossoud write: At the same time that Bush desired an orderly and hierarchically structured process, his personal decision-making process has been described as ad hoc, and haphazard. Bush also is defined as someone who was moved more by instinct or gut inclination than logic.

Woodward, during an interview with president at his ranch at Crawford, notes that the president spoke a dozen times about his “instincts” or his “instinctive” reactions, including his statement, “I’m not a textbook player, I’m a gut player.” Once President Bush decided on the war option, he did not like to go back and reexamine a decision that had already been made. Woodward notes that “Bush’s leadership style bordered on the hurried. He wanted actions, solutions. Once on a course, he directed his energy at forging on, rarely looking back, scoffing at—even ridiculing—doubt and anything less than 100 percent commitment. He seemed to harbor few, if any, regrets.61

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WAS IT W? Were there elements in the George W. Bush personality that poorly served him as a decision maker? Several characteristics seemed to have inhibited sound decision making in Bush.62 1. Excessive Certainty -- President Bush had an almost religious certainty that allowed him to ignore or dismiss “inconvenient facts” or deep inquiry.63 As Condoleezza Rice noted, “He knows what he wants to do and what he wants to hear is how to get it done.”64 2. Dyadic Thinking -- Bush saw the world in good vs. bad, us vs. them terms. He was not a nuanced thinker capable of embracing the paradoxes of life but a dyadic thinker who believed you were with us or against us. Life was about binary choices, not complexity.

3. Faith Based versus Evidence Based -- Faith is belief absent empirical evidence.

Bush, a strongly religious person, seemed to translate religious faith into the realm of politics, with tragic consequences.

4. Inconvenient Facts -- “How”, Bush was asked, “can you be so sure when you know you don’t have the facts?” to which the President responded, “My instincts.”65 The president’s manifest faith and personal instincts trumped reality.66 5. Listening to the Echo Chamber -- The Bush advisory system, which at times brought to the president debates, arguments and alternatives, was drowned out by the president himself and his lack of curiosity and his personal certitude. This allowed Cheney and Rumsfeld to at times hijack the advisory system. Together, Cheney and Rumsfeld were force multipliers as they skewed the process to serve their ends. The president, for a time, served as a willing enabler.

6. Bush’s Decision Style -- Put all this together and one arrives at Bush’s preferred decision style: “. . . a disdain for contemplation and deliberation, an embrace of decisiveness, a retreat from empiricism, a sometimes bullying impatience with doubters and even friendly questioners.”67 Or, as Haass writes, His fault was that he was quick to reach conclusions (be it about policy or people) and often viewed changing courses as a sign of weaknesses, something a strong leader (to his way of thinking) would resist. My reading of him is that he was attracted to do what was bold. Such big actions appealed to his competitive side - what better way to confound one’s critics? - and served the desire to distance himself from his father, who favored prudence and tended to eschew the dramatic.68

Commenting on her husband’s decision making style, First Lady Laura Bush said, “George is not an overly introspective person. He has good instincts, and he goes with with them. He doesn’t need to evaluate and reevaluate a decision. He doesn’t try to overthink. He likes action.”69 7. Messianism -- Bring democracy to the Middle East. Wow! Ambitious, to say the least. Perhaps, a bit too ambitious?

8. Patronizing -- Bush’s determination to bring democracy to the Middle East had a patronizing quality – here, let us show you the way. The view that the U.S. had a

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right or obligation to bring democracy to lagging nations is at best patronizing. It also ignored the distinction between “liberal democracy,” and “illiberal democracy.”

9. Ambitious Overreach -- Did we really think we had the power to remake the Middle East in our image? Did we know nothing of the lessons of history?

In the end, the second war in the Gulf proved costly: over forty-four hundred Americans died, many more came home injured, physically and psychologically and the war’s financial cost exceeded $800 billion.

CONCLUSION Two wars, two presidents, two very different decision processes and two very different outcomes. As Haass notes, That the two conflicts were undertaken by a father and his son for such different reasons, in such different ways, and with such different results, constitutes one of the great curiosities of this or any era, as those who write about American history are sure to conclude.70

Michael Cairo reinforces Haass’ point: Both Bushes left a significant foreign policy legacy; both led the country into wars that could come to define the post-cold war era. And yet, these presidencies were very different, particularly in their conduct of foreign policy; the idea that George W. Bush’s presidency was a continuation of George H.W. Bush’s presidency was quickly dispelled.

What, then, are we to make of these two presidents, particularly in foreign policy, the area in which, arguable, each left an indelible mark?71

The Causes of Presidential Failure: Historian Barbara Tuchman, in her penetrating analysis of “folly” argues that government is a particularly fertile area for failure and mismanagement. She writes: A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity. In this sphere, wisdom, which may be defined as the exercise of judgment acting on experience, common sense and available information, is less operative and more frustrated that it should be. Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function?72

Misgovernment is especially visible in four areas: tyranny or oppression; excessive ambition; incompetence or decadence; and folly, or perversity. In the focus on folly, Tuchman looks at governments that pursue policies that are counter-productive. To qualify as folly, a policy must meet three criteria: “it must have been perceived as counter-productive in its own

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time, not merely by hindsight”; next, “a feasible alternative…must have been available;” and finally, “the policy…should be that of a group, not an individual ruler.” Tuchman sees governments pursuing what she refers to as “Wooden-headedness,” which “consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.” Wooden-headedness, she adds, “is also the refusal to benefit from experience.”73 This sounds painfully close to our description of the decision making style of George W. Bush.

Political scientist Richard Pious, in his study of why presidents fail, argues that presidents do not “fail because of particular style of decision making.” But that presidents “fail when they centralize command and control” or “when they distance themselves” or “propose global solutions,” among other reasons. He adds, “Presidents fail either because they micromanage or they delegate excessively, go global or go incremental.”74 Pious cautions us to be aware that “Presidents get to decide on risky business. What is easy does not reach the White House for decision.” Wise council when we evaluate presidents.

Arguing directly with Tuchman, Pious writes, “The distinguishing feature of presidential failure is not the march of folly but the limits of rational choice; not corrupt and base motivation or lack of character…but risk management gone awry.”75 Even in disagreeing with Tuchman, Pious points to flaws in the Bush II grand agenda of bringing democracy to the Middle East as too “global” a goal. Bush’s political eyes were bigger than his stomach. His was truly a bridge too far.

Political scientists Walker and Malici identify these types of common foreign policy mistakes: morality, intelligence, and policy. To avoid mistakes, decision makers should: Avoiding political mistakes ideally requires from the decision maker certain qualities and skills or, in the words of philosopher Isaiah Berlin, ‘a capacity for integrating a vast amalgam of constantly changing, multicolored, evanescent, perpetually overlapping data.” By “integrating” Berlin means ‘to see the data as elements in a single pattern, with their implications, to see them as symptoms of past and future possibilities, to see them pragmatically, that is in terms of what you or others can or will do to them, and what they can or will do to others or to you.76

They go on to quote Winston Churchill who cautioned decision makers: Let us learn our lessons. Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The Statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Antiquated War Offices, weak, incompetent or arrogant Commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant Fortune, ugly surprises, awful miscalculations all take their seats at the Council Board on the morrow of a declaration of war.77

Bush vs. Bush Revisited: It does matter who is president. Bush I waged a limited war, Bush II was much more ambitious; Bush I reacted to aggression instigated by Iraq, Bush II initialed a preventive war; Bush I organized a massive multilateral effort in the Gulf, Bush II,

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while not going it alone, amassed a rather small, limited “coalition of the willing;” Bush I benefited from his vast experience, Bush II refused to learn from his father’s experience; Bush I explored options, Bush II was “the decider” who sometimes leapt before looking.

Returning to our three “levels of analysis,” on the Individual level, Bush I exhibited cognitive, emotional, experiential, and interpersonal strengths while Bush II seemed deficient in all of these categories. Bush I exhibited what Aristotle referred to as phronesis, achieving a good result that recognized the limits of context yet moved in the right direction. Bush I called this “prudence.” Bush II was ambitious to the point of excess, wanting nothing less than to transform the entire Middle East into stable democracies.

Table 1. Central Tendencies of Bush I and II Bush I Phronesis Pragmatic Head Flexible Cautious Complex Multilateral Prudent Degrees Realism Highly Experienced Cautious Deliberative Collaborative

Bush II Faith Ideological Gut Rigid Certain Dyadic (Quasi) Unilateral Overly Ambitious Absolutes Idealism Limited Experience Risky Rash Narrow

Table 2. Bush I/II and Iraq

Time Dec to War Process Group Think Advisors Tuchman Allison Uni/Multilateral Information Test Assumptions Stakes National Interest

Bush I Short Back and Forth Leaned towards openness Some Offered multiple ideas and options Sound decision process Employed all three levels Multi Robust Some 1st test of post-Cold War world Somewhat

Bush II Long Made Immediately and prematurely Somewhat closed A great deal Narrow ideas and options Wooden-headedness Individual level primarily Uni Narrow Little or none Shaping post 9/11 world Somewhat

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On the Institutional level (see Table II) although both Bushs used many of the same advisors, and while neither fully vetted or thought-through all information and options, it is clear that Bush I more fully used “process” than Bush II. Bush I relied on his advisors, Bush II on faith and certainty.78 On a Systemic level, Bush I gained domestic support at home and international support abroad in the form of his coalition of nations that were engaged in the first Gulf War; Bush II did get popular and congressional support at home, but his coalition of the willing paled in comparison to his father’s comprehensive coalition.

From this study one can conclude that it does matter who is president. Presidents can, on all three levels of analysis, shape – to an extent– the future course of actions. And their decisions matter.

APPENDIX: TIMELINE OF THE TWO GULF WARS A – The First Gulf War 2 August 1990—Iraq invades Kuwait. Saddam Hussein proclaims Kuwait a province of Iraq.

7 August 1990—Operation Desert Shield begins. US forces arrive in Saudi Arabia.

29 November 1990—UN authorizes any force necessary to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Iraqis are given 15 January deadline to leave Kuwait.

21 January 1991—Congress gives President George H.W. Bush authority to use military force.

15 January 1991— Iraqi withdrawal deadline passes.

16 January 1991—Air campaign begins against military targets in Kuwait and Iraq.

24 February 1991—Desert Storm begins, coalition ground forces attack Iraqi forces in Kuwait.

28 February 1991—Iraq agrees to a ceasefire. Iraqi forces retreat from Kuwait. The United States limits war effect to U.N. objectives and does not push on to Baghdad. Within Iraq, Saddam brutally crushes Shi'ite and Kurdish opposition.

3 March 1991—Iraq accepts conditions for permanent cease fire.

B – End of the First Gulf War to Beginning of Second April 3, 1991—UN Security Council passes Resolution 687, allowing Saddam to stay in power but demanding he destroy all weapons of mass destruction. Until he does, economic sanctions are to remain in place.

April 14, 1993—Former President Bush visits Kuwait, police arrest 14 people in a plot to assassinate the ex-President. President Clinton orders a retaliatory air strike against Iraqi intelligence headquarters.

January. 26, 1998—Iraq continues to obstruct the disarmament process. Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and others send an open letter to President Clinton calling on him to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

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August 5, 1998—Iraq suspends cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors. Clinton orders four days of air strikes beginning December 16. Weapons inspectors do not return to Iraq, and the US shifts to a strategy of containing Saddam.

October 31, 1998—President Clinton signs Iraq Liberation Act. December 2, 1999—In a New Hampshire primary debate, candidate George W. Bush is asked about Saddam Hussein. Bush responds, "If I found out he was developing weapons of mass destruction, I'd take him out." Upon taking office, Secretary of State Powell tries to develop “smart” U.N. sanctions.

September 15, 2001—President Bush instructs the Pentagon to develop plans for a possible war in Iraq.

January 29, 2002—In his State of the Union speech, Bush calls Iraq, North Korea and Iran an “axis of evil” and says, “I will not wait on events, while dangers gather.” Bush tells Condoleezza Rice to begin planning a strategy for Iraq, and General Tommy Franks begins giving monthly briefings to Bush on plans to topple Saddam Hussein.

June 1, 2002—Addressing graduates at West Point, Bush declares that America will use pre-emptive action against possible threats.

September 12, 2002—President Bush addresses the U.N. General Assembly challenging it to hold Iraq to its promise to disarm. The following week the Administration stresses that Iraq will have “days and weeks, not months,” to comply.

October 10, 2002—Congress gives President Bush authority to use force against Iraq.

November 8, 2002—After two months of diplomacy and three proposals, the Security Council passes Resolution 1441 by a 15-to-0 vote. The first UNMOVIC teams arrive in Baghdad 17 days later, but Iraq does not give inspectors full cooperation.

January 1, 2003—25,000 US troops start deploying to the Persian Gulf.

January 19, 2003—Hans Blix, U.N. chief weapons inspector warns Saddam Hussein of the “seriousness of the situation.” Blix states, “Inspection is not a prelude, it is an alternative to war, and that is what we want to achieve.” Blix, adds, “There has not been sufficient cooperation. They need to have a sincere and genuine co-operation.”

January 20, 2003—One week before Hans Blix's first report to the council, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin announces at a U.N. press conference, that France will oppose any move toward war.

February 5, 2003—In an address to the Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell presents the case for the use of force against Saddam Hussein. America's former allies remain hesitant.

March 5, 2003—More than 200,000 US troops, five carrier groups and 1,000 aircraft go to the Middle East. France and Russia pledge to veto any U.N. resolution authorizing force.

March 16, 2003—Bush, British Prime Minister Blair and Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar convene a summit in the Azores. They warn the Security Council's that next week will be its last chance to act. The Council refuses to act.

March 17, 2003—President Bush issues an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein, giving him 48 hours to leave Iraq or face war.

March 19, 2003—Cruise-missile hit Baghdad an hour after the Bush deadline passes.

Operation Iraqi Freedom begins.

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ENDNOTES 1

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6 7 8

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11 12

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16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29

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I want to give a very special “academic shout out” to the work of three people who greatly influenced this paper: Michael F. Cairo, The Gulf: The Bush Presidencies and the Middle East (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012); Richard N. Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009); and numerous books and articles by James P. Pfiffner, of George Mason University.

Michael Elliot and Jay Carney, “First Stop, Iraq,” TIME, March 31, 2003 Michael F. Cairo, The Gulf: The Bush Presidencies and the Middle East (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), p. 2.

Alexander George, Presidential Decision Making in Foreign Policy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1980), Chapter 8.

Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1999).

Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide (Boston: Mariner Books, 2009).

Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behavior, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillion, 1957).

Daniel Kahneman, “New Challenges to the Rationality Assumptions,” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 150, no. 1 (1994): 18-36.

Stephen G. Walker and Akan Malici, U.S. Presidents and Foreign Policy Mistakes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011); and Elizabeth N. Saunders, Leaders of War: How Presidents Shape Military Interventions (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011).

Alexander L. George, Presidential Decision Making a Foreign Policy: The Effective Use of Information and Advice (Boulder: Westview, 1980).

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Columbia University Oral History Interview, July 20, 1967.

Douglas L. Kriner, After the Rubicon Congress, Presidents, Are the Politics of Waging War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); and Neil James Mitchell, Democracy’s Blameless Leaders: From Dresden to Abu Ghraib How Leaders Evade Accountability (New York: New York University Press, 2012).

John P. Burke and Fred I. Greenstein, How Presidents Test Reality: Decisions on Vietnam, 1954 and 1965 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1989).

William W. Lammers, Michael A. Genovese, and Todd Belt. The Presidency and the Domestic Policy (Boulder: Paradigm Publisher, 2014).

Walter LaFeber, “The Race and Fall of Colin Powell and the Powell Doctrine” Political Science Quarterly (March 2009).

Colin L. Powell, “U.S. Forces: Challenges Ahead,” Foreign Affairs (Winter 1992-1993).

George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), p. 302 Michael F. Cairo, The Gulf: The Bush Presidencies and the Middle East (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), p. 4.

Cairo, The Gulf, p. 28.

Cairo, The Gulf, p. 61.

Richard N. Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), pp 61-62.

Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, p. 303.

Haass, p. 60-61 Haass, p. 71-72.

James P. Pfiffner, “Presidential Policy-Making and the Gulf War,” in Marcia Lynn Whicker, James P. Pfiffner, and Raymond A. Moon, eds., The Presidency and the Gulf War (Westport: Praeger, 1993), p. 7-8.

Herbert S. Parmet, George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee (New York: Scribner, 1997), p. 455.

Colin Powell, My American Journey.

Glennon, Michael J., The Gulf War and the Constitution,” Foreign Affairs 70, no. 2 (Spring 1991): p. 88 “Remarks of President George Bush before the Texas State Republican Convention,” Federal News Service (June 20, 1992), cited by William Michael Treanor, “Fame, the Founding, and the Power to Declare War,” Cornell Law Review 82:695 (1996): 703.

Haass, p. 131.

Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, p. 489. See also Peter W. Galbraith, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006).

George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown Publishers, 2010), p. 223.

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37 38 39 40 41

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Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in The Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone (New York: Vintage, 2007); George Packer, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2006); and Peter W. Galbraith, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006).

See Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), pp. 70-75.

Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack: The Definitive Account of the Decision to Invade Iraq (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), p. 30. See also Christian Alfonsi. Circle in the Sand: Why We Went Back to Iraq (New York: Doubleday, 2006); Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon, 2006); Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin Press, 2006).

Michael R. Gordon and Gerald Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006), p.17. See also Peter W. Galbraith, The End of Iraq: How America Incompetence Created a War Without End (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006).

Iraq: Prime Minsters’ Meeting, 23 July, David Manning Memo, S195/02. Sunday Times (London) May 1, 2005.

Robert Draper, Dead Certain (New York: Free Press, 2007), p.184.

Draper, p. 185.

George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: Harper Collins, 2007).

James Bamford, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies (New York: Doubleday, 2004); Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004); Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf, eds., Iraq War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003).

John Prados, Hoodwinked: The Documents that Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War (New York: New Press, 2004).

Barton Gellman, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency (New York: Penguin, 2008); Douglas J. Feith, War and Decisions: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism (New York: Harper Collins, 2008).

See Lincoln Chafee, Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President (New York: Thomas Dunne, 2008).

In the past few years, remnants of mustard gas which some Bush defenders claim is “proof” that Saddam Hussein had an active WMD program and that the Bush administration had been vindicated surfaced. Critics argue that 1) If we really did have proof of Saddam Hussein was actively engaged in a program of WMD development, the Bush defenders would have shouted such a finding from the rooftops, and 2) the mustard gas canisters almost certainly were from the 1980s, not 2000s.

A report from the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism concluded that the president and his top aides issued “false statements over 900 times in the lead up to invasion.”

Bush, Decision Points, pp. 223-224.

Richard N. Haass, War and Necessity, War and Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), pp. 234-235.

Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice, p. 6. See also Andrew J. Polsky, Elusive Victories: The American Presidency at War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp.279-280.

Draper, Dead Certain, p. 178.

A “barren triumph” -- see Polsky, p. 27.

Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon, 2006).

George W. Bush’s answers and counter to his critics who suggest that a “daddy issue” contributed to the Iraq War can been in: George W. Bush, A Portrait of My Father (Crown, 2014).

Quoted in Geoffrey Perret, Commander in Chief (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), p. 324 Bush, Decision Points, p. 267 Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).

Paul L. Bremer III, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006); Larry Diamond, “What Went wrong in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs 83, no. 5 (2004): 34-56.; Larry Diamond, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2005); Robert Draper, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush (New York: Free Press, 2007); James Fallows, Blind into Baghdad: America’s War in Iraq (New York: Vintage Books, 2006).

David Owen, The Hubris Syndrome (London: Politico’s Publishing, 2007), p. 83.

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Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), p. 3.

David Mitchell and Tansa George Massoud, “Anatomy of Failure: Bush’s Decision-making Process and the Iraq War,” Foreign Policy Analysis 5 (2009): pp. 265-286, quote from p. 272.

Mitchell and Massoud, “Anatomy of Failure,” p. 273; See also Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002); Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004); Bob Woodward, State of Denial (New York Simon and Schuster, 2006).

For an analysis that defends George W. Bush’s claims to and uses of presidential power, see Stephen F. Knott, Rush to Judgment: George W. Bush The War on Terror, and His Critics (Lawrence, Ks.: University Press of Kansas), 2012.

See Polsky, Elusive Victories, ch. 5, “The Perils of Optimism,” pp. 272-285.

Quoted in Parret, Commander in Chief, p. 333 Ron Suskind, “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush,” The New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004.

Andrew Bacevich, “He Told Us to Go Shopping. Now the Bill is Due,” Washington Post, October 5, 2008.

Suskind, New York Times Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice, p. 236 Quoted in: Jackson Katz, Leading Men: Presidential Campaigns and the Politics of Manhood (Interlink Books, 2013), p. 40.

Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice, p. 267.

Cairo, The Gulf, p.1.

Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly, From Troy to Vietnam (New York: Ballantine, 1984), pp. 4-5.

Tuchman, p.7.

Richard Pious, Why Presidents Fail: White House Decision Making From Eisenhower to Bush II (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), pp.245-246.

Pious, p. 279.

Stephen G. Walker and Alan Malici, U.S. Presidents and Foreign Policy Mistakes (Stanford University Press, 2011), p. 13.

Walker and Malici, p 200.

Given the Bush team’s vast experience, one wonders how they could have been so wrong about so many things for so long.

In: The George W. Bush Presidency. Volume III Editors: Meena Bose and Paul Fritz

ISBN: 978-1-63485-783-3 © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 8

OCCUPYING IRAQ: A TRAGEDY FORETOLD Carolyn Eisenberg Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, US

ABSTRACT The tragic consequences of invading and occupying Iraq had been anticipated by the President's father and a host of national and foreign experts on the Middle East. This paper attempts to explain why President George W. Bush and members of his administration were so determined to overthrow Saddam Hussein and why they ignored relevant information and the concerns of knowledgeable people. It argues that the Cold War legacy of militarized institutions and ideology shaped the response of high level officials to the attack on 9-11. An immediate result was a desire to assert US power in the region, superimposed on longstanding economic and strategic concerns. To amplify the multiple failures of the occupation, the paper focuses on Abu Ghraib, the fighting in Fallujah and the Haditha massacre.

Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending a ground war into an occupation of Iraq … would have incurred incalculable human and political costs …. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.1 George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, 1998

This insight was available in 1991. It required no additional research to find it. The President had only to open his father’s memoir, published five years before 9/11 and read the warning. Should he doubt its contemporary relevance, he could pick up the August 15, 2002 copy of the Wall Street Journal and read the article by his father’s national security advisor and co-author, Brent Scowcroft. “We need to think through this issue very carefully,” the latter had counseled. “Perhaps the most dire consequences would be in the region,” where

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there would be “an explosion of outrage against us.”2 If the United States invaded Iraq, this could destabilize the Arab regimes and likely “swell the ranks of the terrorists.” If the goal was to defeat terrorism, this fork in the road would point the United States in the opposite direction.

Twelve years after President George W. Bush ignored Scowcroft’s advice, the results have been more catastrophic than was predicted: hundreds of thousands of dead or wounded Iraqis, most of them civilians, five million Iraqis forced to flee their homes, forty-five hundred dead Americans soldiers, tens of thousands of young men and women mentally and physically impaired for the rest of their lives.3 The mission would cost the United States upward of $1.7 trillion dollars, excluding the future costs of veterans care. It would open the door to al Qaeda in Iraq and subsequently the Islamic State (ISIS) -- two organizations that had not existed prior to the U.S. invasion. By winter 2015, ISIS controlled one-third of Iraq territory in the north and western sections of the country, with reported civilian casualties numbering 17,049 during the previous year.4 By any calculus, the Bush Administration’s decision to invade and occupy Iraq ranks among the most disastrous in modern American history. Yet even now, there is a disposition to write it off as a simple mistake, resulting from poor intelligence reporting. This bland formulation can soothe the American conscience and diminish official culpability. However, it also the obscures the vast human tragedy, inflicted on millions of people for reasons that are deeply rooted in our institutions and ideology. In the absence of that remembrance, it is no surprise that U.S. policy in the present period continues on that familiar trajectory.

Why did the Bush Administration invade Iraq – a country that had no connection to the attacks on September 11? For many people around the world it was puzzling at the time and has remained a mystery ever since. In his memoir Decision Points, the President offers a simple answer: Intelligence analysts had unanimously concluded that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, which after ten years he was still refusing to surrender.5 And in light of the Iraqi leader’s known predilection for “terrorists,” there was a serious danger that he could make such weapons available to America’s enemies. Therefore, as a matter of “national security,” and despite his own aversion to war, the President had no choice but to invade the country.

Once U.S. troops were on the ground, it became evident that the alleged stockpile of WMDs did not exist, as Bush acknowledges. This was a direct blow to his “credibility.” After all he “had sent American troops into combat based in large part in intelligence that proved false.”6 However, he still resents the accusation which appeared on protestors’ placards “Bush lied! People died!” – a claim he vigorously rejects.

For historians, a final verdict on whether or not Bush had purposefully exaggerated the facts, was mislead by his subordinates or was simply telling the truth as he saw it must await the declassification of government records. Although even then the documents might not be conclusive. Nor will it ever be entirely clear, how much of his bellicosity was an effort to outdo his father, to cover up a massive failure of leadership in the lead-up to 9-11 or to his own misplaced conviction that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent danger to the United States. From his numerous speeches and public appearances at the time, one thing seems certain: President Bush was no reluctant warrior. His demeanor throughout was of a man on a mission – itching to confront “the evil-doer” in Baghdad.

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Yet the effort to explain the Administration’s policy decision does not rest exclusively on the President’s personal psychology and motivation. No matter how powerful, every Chief Executive is dependent on Cabinet members, his National Security Advisor and others to provide him with reliable and clearly articulated policy choices. With regard to Iraq, we now know that the analysts did not agree on whether Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction” or on his alleged connection to terrorists.7 We know as well that the Vice President and members of his staff exerted significant pressure on intelligence personnel to conclude that Saddam Hussein was not only hiding WMDs but had reconstituted his nuclear program. In light of these circumstances, one could plausibly surmise that the President was taken in by subordinates.

Yet this still leaves unexplained the President’s failure to address the findings of the teams of international weapons inspectors, who were operating in Iraq during the two months prior to the invasion. Though now forgotten, in response to UN Security Council Resolution 1441 Saddam Hussein had permitted weapons inspectors to roam freely across the country in quest of chemical and biological weapons, as well as facilities for building nuclear weapons.

To aid in their search, the United States was supplying relevant intelligence.

Significantly, the group from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headed by the Egyptian diplomat El Baradei reported, “No prohibited nuclear activities have been identified.”8 A second team led by Hans Blix, charged with seeking chemical and biological weapons, was more equivocal.9 These inspectors had managed to uncover a few short-range missiles and some gas warheads for rockets. But without further investigation they were unable to say for sure whether or not Iraq still possessed weapons of mass destruction. In order to reach a definitive conclusion, Blix pleaded for time. A more curious President, eager avoid a war, might have acceded to this request or at least asked why, after two months of intrusive inspections, so little weaponry had been found.

This question wasn’t asked, because the overriding disposition at the highest levels of the Bush administration was to march on Baghdad and get rid of Saddam Hussein as quickly as possible. This grew increasingly urgent, as with each passing day, international doubts about their case appeared to be growing. The eagerness to attack Iraq had been present since the planes first struck the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The fires were scarcely doused, when top Administration officials - Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Deputy-Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz - were raising that possibility. The President himself had urged his Counter-Terrorism Chief Richard Clarke to find a link with Saddam Hussein.10 It was no secret that many in his inner circle had been advocating military action against Iraq since the late 1990s. During the Clinton years, they had been affiliated with the Project for a New American Century - a non-profit educational organization, which had urged a more assertive US foreign and defense policy across a wide range of issues.11 In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, the organization maintained that the United States was in a position to set the rules for international relations, and by virtue of its military superiority eliminate threats before they became serious. “The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge and military threats before they become dire.”12 High on the list of “not-yet-emerged” crises was the prospect that Saddam Hussein could at some time in the future endanger American interests, once the UN-imposed sanctions were

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removed. Yet these interests had less to do with “national security,” as conventionally understood (since few expected Saddam Hussein to attack the United States) than with worries about his future influence in the Persian Gulf. Under that rubric, were a set of rarely articulated specific goals for the region. The short-hand version, tailored for public consumption, was that once liberated from the sanctions regime, Saddam Hussein would become a menace to the world.

The political problem this group faced, even after George W. Bush assumed the Presidency, was the difficulty of arguing for Saddam’s removal so long as the sanctions were in force and the dictator appeared to be contained. Since the immediate aftermath of the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein had embarked on no foreign adventures and had given no signs of such aspiration. The American public was unlikely to risk blood and treasure to forestall contingencies which might never materialize and which, even in the worst case, posed no direct threat to their safety. And then there was the matter of Bush himself.13 As a candidate for the Presidency, George W. Bush had signaled a less ambitious international agenda than his predecessor - a rejection of “nation-building” and gratuitous military interventions. Was he now prepared to harness the resources of his Administration, to conduct a war of choice in Iraq?

Prior to 9-11, policy seemed to be moving in the opposite direction. Secretary of State Powell, no enthusiast for armed confrontation, had successfully negotiated a new “smart sanctions” policy for Iraq, which reduced the number of restrictions, while preserving those most related to war-making capacity. But then quite suddenly, the attack by al Qaeda dramatically altered the political landscape and re-directed the President’s thinking. In elite circles, it deepened fears that the United States and its leaders would now look weak in the eyes of the world. If nineteen men, armed with box-cutters and knives could hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, what message did this convey about the power of the United States? And why after all, should the United States tolerate an enemy, who could potentially inflict significant damage down the road? Hadn’t the attack by Osama bin Laden demonstrated the unpredictability of malevolent foes? Such concerns now had wider resonance.

The ascendancy of this new mood found its most significant expression in the September 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America: Traditional concepts of deterrence will not work against a terrorist enemy whose avowed tactics are wanton discussion and the targeting of the innocents…The overlap between states that sponsor terrorism and those that pursue WMD compels us to action…The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction-and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary act preemptively. (Italics added)14

At the time this document was issued, there was little doubt that Iraq was the first target, although other countries identified in the “axis of evil” – Iran and North Korea – might subsequently find themselves in the cross-hairs.

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The Administration’s use of the phrase “pre-emptive war” went beyond ordinary usage.

In popular understanding and international law, this referred to a particular situation in which a country was facing an imminent attack by another. Under such conditions, there was a recognized right to strike first, a right which American leaders had asserted throughout the Cold War, most dramatically in the nuclear field. Yet the Bush Administration was making a different claim, maintaining that the mere possibility that another nation might at some undefined point in time commit some undefined act of aggression was in itself justification for war. By issuing this “National Security Strategy” with considerable fanfare and through constant reiteration of its themes, the Administration was conditioning the American people to the idea of a full-scale invasion, against a country that did not pose an immediate threat. As time elapsed, they were also preparing the public for the possibility that the United States might go to war without the support of major allies or the international community, acting through the United Nations Security Council.

While there were new incentives for attacking Iraq in the wake of 9-11, the question remains: why did top officials so thoroughly discount the possible danger and the cost of taking this step? What did they think would happen when 130,000 American soldiers marched into a country of 24 million people and decapitated its government? How could they bring order to a society, whose traditions, language, religion and culture were so vastly different from their own? And if the United States was relying on “shock and awe” to pave the way for a relatively small occupying army – meaning thousands of bombs dropped on Baghdad and elsewhere – how would this calm a Muslim world, already antagonized by the Guantanamo prison, air strikes in Afghanistan, U.S. support for a right-wing Israeli government and a range of other behaviors? And finally, what would happen to the regional balance, if you eliminated an Iraqi government opposed to Iran and empowered a Shiite majority to take control of the country?

Among Middle East and foreign policy experts outside the government, such questions were being widely discussed, but there is no indication that the leaders of the Bush Administration gave them significant attention. Most remarkable was the absence of a plan for what would happen “the day after” the invasion began. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was a proponent of the idea that once in Iraq, the United States might duplicate the experience of “democracy building” in post World War II Germany and Japan.

Yet there were few similarities. Unlike Iraq, the military of both nations had been soundly defeated and disarmed, while the American arrival had been preceded by years of careful study and planning by the State Department, including the recruitment of trained personnel, by the Department of War. How had it happened that people, so eager to start a war and so blind or indifferent to its negative consequences, were found in positions of such high authority? This is a more difficult, albeit fundamental, question than why the Bush team had tunnel vision in its thinking about an invasion of Iraq. It is closely connected to the larger issue of why the end of the Cold War did not produce a paradigm shift in which the pursuit of peaceful solutions eclipsed military competition.

It remains relevant, that these officials were “holdovers” from that earlier contest. But it is difficult to imagine, who might have taken their place. The American triumph in that competition provided little impetus for re-evaluation. Indeed the decades of rivalry with the Soviet Union and China, the associated wars in Vietnam and Korea, the military interventions in Third World countries had left a powerful mark on American institutions and ideology. For fifty years, American leaders had either deployed or threatened the use of their

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“preponderant” military power in the service of ambitious international goals. And while a high price was sometimes paid by others – in Southeast Asia, Latin America and elsewhere – the overall result was a world political and economic order, which was largely amenable to their wishes.

Furthermore, this militarized foreign policy had produced certain domestic results: an unprecedented centralization of power within the Executive branch, the growth of vast “national security” bureaucracies operating in secret and with scant accountability, a sprawling “military-industrial complex”, which fused old-fashioned profiteering with the art of war-making, and an apolitical, parochial mass culture that glorified American supremacy.

There were as well, certain persisting international consequences. The emphasis on violence during the Cold War had left in its wake arsenals of nuclear and conventional weapons scattered around the globe and a host of local actors still anxious to accumulate them.

By examining this Cold War legacy, it becomes easier to understand why the collapse of the Soviet Union had so little effect on the “national security” policy of the United States.

Over the years, the Superpower contest had nurtured an ideology, a set of leaders, a network of bureaucratic and economic interests, a cluster of habits and an array of international foes (whether real or imagined) that maintained the momentum for military strength.

It was a paradox: the ending of the Cold War enhanced the reputation and credibility of “born-again hawks,” such as Cheney and Rumsfeld, who were now more willing than ever to resort to war as the solution to problems. For a variety of reasons, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was an appealing prospect: insuring the permanent military weakness of his country, guaranteeing Israeli security, providing more reliable access to Gulf oil, and transforming Arab states into secular, free market democracies. Yet in themselves, none of these aspirations were a sufficient motivation to drag the United States into full-scale war. It required the panic induced by 9-11 to make their preference a reality.

The calamitous invasion of Iraq had multiple causes, but a crucial one is this: as of September 10, 2001 the United States was a country wired for war. This had been the state of affairs for fifty years, but since Pearl Harbor there had not been an attack upon our shores.

Given the longstanding American propensity to threaten or use military power in difficult situations and the careless assumption that its military advantage could prevent dangerous retaliation, it was a foregone conclusion that the response to Osama’s audacity would be war.

That the actual perpetrators were stateless conspirators, nineteen of whom had died in the planes, was incidental to the excitement of vanquishing foes and “liberating” nations.

Liberated Iraq is today a “bitterly hostile land,” the very outcome which Bush Senior and Brent Scowcroft had predicted, while the effect of US intervention has been “to swell the ranks of terrorists” inside the country and throughout the region. Partisan excuses abound. In varying permutations, it is argued that the invasion and occupation had been successful and it was the untimely removal of American troops by President Obama that has produced the present cascade of woes. This convenient fiction overlooks the simple fact, that it was President Bush who signed the Status of Forces agreement with the al-Maliki government, mandating the removal of all US forces in Iraq by December 31, 2011.15 Yet the source of the present day troubles is not contained in a single document, nor can it be explained by the departure of U.S. troops. Its identifiable roots are to be found on March 19, 2003, when President Bush boldly announced to the world, “At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people

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and defend the world from grave danger.”16 To American soldiers now in the Middle East, “the peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now depend on you.”

If those Iraqi hopes for a U.S. military invasion had ever existed, they were shattered in subsequent years, along with the lives of thousands of American soldiers, who returned to the United States profoundly damaged by their experiences. But no matter how many tragic stories surfaced periodically, they never displaced the official narrative: that the United States had freed the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein and had assisted in building a viable democracy, enshrining human rights and self-determination. And if things went wrong, this could be blamed on the sabotage by “terrorists” or the unpredicted backwardness of people, whose political development had been stunted by the years of tyranny and oppression.

Yet in considering this official narrative, it is worth remembering a few of those now forgotten stories, because they help to illuminate the perplexing present: Abu Ghraib: It was Saddam Hussein’s famous jail, a dreaded place where prisoners were murdered en masse or tortured to death in cruel and unusual ways.17 Though a symbol of his dictatorship, in the summer of 2003 the American military re-opened the facility, in order to house the thousands of Iraqi insurgents they were rounding up. To provide “expert” advice on the interrogation of prisoner, Major General Geoffrey Miller was sent from Guantanamo.18 Following his survey, new guidelines were issued to the interrogators in Abu Ghraib. What followed were months of prisoner abuse and at least one case of murder. In November, the Associated Press ran a story about the brutal treatment of Iraqi detainees both there and at other American-run facilities in Iraq.

Although the Associated Press account told of detainees forced to lie in the sun for hours, attacked by dogs, deprived of water and food, prevented from sleeping and kept hooded for days, these disclosures had little impact in Washington. Nor did it seem to matter when the International Red Cross reported that its inspectors had found “widespread abuse” in the places that they toured.19 It was not until April 2004, that Sixty Minutes shattered the silence because the producers had in their possession videos and digital photos, which had been taken by soldiers in the prison.

These pictures revealed episodes of sexual sadism and physical assault. One unforgettable photo, showed a naked, hooded man on a box, with electrodes attached to his body, another featured a detainee, down on all fours, attached to a leash being proudly display by a female interrogator. The list of horrors seemed endless. In Washington, the realization was beginning to dawn that harsh interrogation tactics had been authorized by higher authority.20 While nobody had specifically recommended putting people on leashes or threatening them with electrocution, there were policies in place, which had enabled these actions to occur.21 In the United States various inquiries ensued that would take years to complete: what were the higher-ups in the Bush administration declaring permissible when it came to interrogation and torture?22 However, in Iraq and across the Muslim world the pictures conveyed a simple story: this is how Americans act, when they come to liberate you.

Fallujah: Not far from Abu Ghraib, was the largely Sunni city of Fallujah. It emerged as an early trouble-spot in April 2003, when soldiers from the 82nd Airborne division fired into a crowd of protestors, killing seventeen people and wounding seventy. Discontent over this and other grievances continued to boil. In March 2004, a local militia stopped a car with four American contractors from Blackwater USA, dragged them into the street and, after brutally murdering them, hung their charred bodies from a bridge over the Euphrates River.

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Against the advice of General Abizaid and General Sanchez, Secretary Rumsfeld demanded an immediate response.23 People in other cities needed to learn they could not treat Americans in this way. So began Operation Vigilant Resolve in which 2500 Marines attempted to drive insurgents from the city. From the outset, they encountered fierce resistance, as across Anbar province, tribal leaders were rallying to the city’s cause.

Meanwhile the U.S. military was facing a double challenge, resulting from a simultaneous uprising by Shiite members of the Mahdi Army in Baghdad, Najaf, Basra and elsewhere.24 And despite their historic enmity, their leader Muqtada al-Sadr was proposing support to their countrymen in Fallujah. The President’s first instinct was to continue both battles. But with his own re-election in jeopardy and Iraq in flames, he was impelled to reconsider. Although Fallujah remained un-pacified, the U.S. Marines were ordered to withdraw.

This was merely a tactical retreat, guided by political exigencies. Four days after his reelection in November 2004, Bush ordered the Marines to re-take the city. In the intervening months, foreign fighters, including the newly formed Al Qaeda in Iraq, had joined the fray.

But this time around the American military was taking no chances, as it launched Operation Phantom Fury. Assembling a force of 10,000 soldiers, they urged the 380,000 residents of the city to evacuate their homes. While most of the populace fled into the surrounding desert, there were still thousands of civilians, trapped inside. Those unable to leave had to contend with the shut-down of water and electricity, the hail of American bombs and finally the intense street-fighting that occurred, as the American-led troops moved through the city.25 It took ten days of ferocious combat, perhaps the worst of the entire war, before they prevailed.

Over 1000 insurgents had been killed, while nobody knew for sure how many civilians had also died. In the aftermath of the operation, much of Fallujah lay in ruins. According to the Washington Post, more than 39,000 Iraqi homes were damaged, of which 10,000 had been rendered uninhabitable.26 For the Bush Administration, the hard-earned capture of Fallujah was a welcome victory – a happy sequel to the President’s success at the polls. But in its wake, the alienation of the Sunnis seemed complete. And for its inhabitants, another ordeal lay ahead. In the ensuing years, its hospitals were reporting a dramatic rise in child mortality, cancer, leukemia and other birth defects. Some speculated that these medical problems may have exceeded the rates found among the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As reported in the British press, physicians at the Fallujah General hospital claimed to be seeing an average of two cases of birth defects a day as compared with a pre-2003 rate of one case every two months.27 Some children were exhibiting grotesque malformations – missing arms and legs, cleft palates, elongated heads, malformed ears, noses and spines. The source of this misery was never reliably identified. But among residents of Fallujah, it was widely assumed that the American use of depleted uranium and phosphorus,28 when they retook the city in November 2004 had produced this result.

Haditha: The capture of Fallujah had sent ripples of protest across Anbar province, where resistance to the Americans continued to rise. On the morning of November 19, 2005 on a road into the town of Haditha, a bomb struck an American Humvee, killing Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas age 20. The subsequent report of the incident, forwarded to headquarters in Ramadi, indicated that fifteen Iraqi civilians had also died in the blast, while eight others had died during a nearby exchange of gun-fire. This account was untrue.

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When reporters from Time magazine investigated the story shortly thereafter, eyewitnesses told them that the Marines had gone on the rampage, killing 15 unarmed people in their homes, including seven women and three children.29 Confronted with the magazine’s findings, the American military authorities opened their own investigation. They quickly confirmed that at least fifteen of the slain civilians had been killed by the Marines, inside their homes. The men insisted that there were gunshots fired from the houses. Yet the pattern of bullet-holes seemed to contradict this. An Iraqi journalist came forward with a videotape, shot in the morgue, which revealed people still in their night-clothes, including the bodies of several children between the ages of three and fifteen.

The Time magazine story included disturbing photos, along with heart-breaking testimony from surviving youngsters.30 Nine year-old Eman Waleed recalled how her grandfather had assembled the family in the living room, after hearing the disturbance. Angry, shouting soldiers came bursting into the room – shooting her grandfather and grandmother.

She and her 8-year old brother Abdul Rahman hid in the corner shielded by their mother, who was also killed. Eman was hit in the leg, her brother shot in the shoulder. “We were lying their bleeding and it hurt so much. Afterward some Iraqi soldiers came. They carried us in their arms. I was crying, shouting, ‘Why did you do this to our family?’ And one Iraqi soldier tells me, ‘We didn’t do it. The Americans did.’”

Faced with another embarrassment – this time an apparent massacre – Washington officials once more assured the public that the investigation would continue and that soldiers who had broken the law would be court-martialed. Senior commanders in Iraq also ordered mandatory refresher training for their troops on the “legal, moral and ethical standards on the battlefield.”31 Irritated by the fuss, Secretary Rumsfeld saw no need for this measure. In his view, the American forces already possessed a sound grounding on the laws of war and the discriminate use of force against “an enemy that hides among civilians.”32 At the time of the revelations, it was assumed that the military would act to punish the soldiers who had committed the killing. This never occurred. Of the eight men who were accused, six had their charges dropped and one was acquitted. In January 2012, the eighth man Staff Sergeant Wuterich, pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of dereliction of duty instead of manslaughter, resulting in a demotion to private and three months of prison time.33 In advancing their case, it was unclear whether the military prosecutors had access to 400 pages of Haditha-related material, generated by participants and eyewitnesses at the time.

Strangely enough, in December 2011, as the American military prepared to depart from Iraq, these records were discovered by a New York Times reporter at a junkyard outside Baghdad.

An attendant was burning them as fuel to cook a dinner.34 In this collection, there were also handwritten notes from soldiers, waivers by marines of their right against self-incrimination, diagrams of where the dead women and children were found and pictures of the site, where the Marine Humvee had been attacked.

Why were the Haditha records being incinerated? On the news program Democracy Now, Tim McGirk, the Time reporter who had first broken the story of the Haditha massacre, was asked for his reaction. “I think in some ways it’s very symbolic, that…this is the legacy we’ve been leaving in Iraq. It isn’t a democracy.”35 Here was the United States coming to Iraq to rid the people of an evil dictator, promising to establish full human rights and yet “here is a case where so many Iraqis were killed, women and children, old men and yet what’s happened?”

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The unpunished American crimes in Haditha and elsewhere illuminate the difficulty encountered by President Obama in his attempt to retain some U.S. troops in Iraq. Though sometimes forgotten, the departure of all U.S. soldiers from the country was mandated by a Status of Forces Agreement negotiated by President Bush. During the latter months of 2011, President Obama attempted to renegotiate this document with the Iraqi government. These discussions fell apart over a single item: would American soldiers enjoy immunity from prosecution in Iraq courts? The Iraqi Parliament refused to yield, reflecting the widely held belief that during nine years of an American troop presence, their crimes against its people had been committed with impunity. For President Obama, this refusal proved decisive. With so much hostility in that country, directed against the US military, he could not take a chance on leaving the soldiers there.

Abu Ghaib, Fallujah, Haditha – each of these was a dramatic story, which dominated the news coverage for a short time, before disappearing from sight. Young Americans, who have grown up during those years, are already unfamiliar with these events. It was after all a long war and it remains a fair question, whether these ugly episodes are representative of the whole? From their memoirs and conversations with journalists, members of the Bush Administration would surely disagree.36 While their accounts acknowledge mistakes and obvious “bumps on the road,” they have preferred to emphasize the positive: the establishment of a young democracy, the liberation of people from Saddam’s tyranny, the enhanced international security that we now ostensibly enjoy.

In putting this optimistic gloss on the Iraq experience, they have been ably assisted by President Obama, who possessed his own reasons for labeling Iraq a success. A typical pronouncement was his speech at Fort Bragg in December 2011. American troops were finally leaving Iraq, or so it then seemed. And he wanted the men and women in uniform to feel pride: “Never forget that you are part of an unbroken line of heroes spanning two centuries –from the colonists, who overthrew an empire, to your grandparents and parents, who faced down fascism and communism to you — men and women who fought for the same principles in Fallujah and Kandahar and delivered justice to those who attacked us on 9/11.”37 These were happy thoughts, with little basis in reality, including the still absurd suggestion that Iraq had something to do with the attack on 9-11. Independent of these egregious stories was the daily experience of millions of Iraqis, for whom the US invasion has meant years of misery: a decimated economy, an exploding sectarianism, a repressive Shiite regime linked to Iran, whole neighborhoods ethnically cleansed, years of bombs exploding in markets, schools and government buildings.

For most Americans, this underside of our invasion and occupation of Iraq has simply disappeared, and it has been easy enough to turn the page. This does not include the families of returning veterans, some of whom did three or four rotations in Iraq. While their experiences were obviously varied, across the United States reside thousands of men and women, who have returned home with bodily injuries and mental traumas that may last a lifetime.

Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power. George H. W. Bush and his National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft could not have imagined the particulars, but their premonition was apt: a US invasion and

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occupation of Iraq would overstretch our soldiers, alienate allies and be an embittering experience for the inhabitants.

So it has happened that out of the ashes of this failed experiment has emerged the Islamic State (ISIS) — stunning the White House and the national security agencies with their rapid progress, as they initially surged almost to Baghdad.38 The official success story had illprepared the Administration for the failure of the Iraqi Security Forces to stand and fight, or for the willingness of so many Sunnis in Fallujah, Mosul and elsewhere in Anbar province to join or accommodate this new enemy.39 This American invasion and occupation of Iraq was a tragedy foretold, but its end has not been written.

ENDNOTES 1 2 3

4 5 6 7

8 9

10 11

12

13 14

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16 17

18

19

Bush, George H.W. and Scowcroft, Brent, A World Transformed, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1998), 489.

Brent Scowcroft, “Don’t Attack Saddam,” Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2002.

Stinging critiques of the Bush War in Iraq are too numerous to list here. Among those which have formed the background for this paper: Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq (New Haven, Yale University Press); Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in Emerald City, (New York, Vintage); Larry Diamond, Squandered Victory (New York: Henry Holt and Co.); George Packer, The Assassin’s Gate (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005);David Phillips, Losing Iraq (New York: Westview Press); Thomas Ricks, Fiasco (New York: The Penguin Press); Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near (New York: Picador, 2006); Peter Van Buren, We Meant Well (New York: Henry Holt and Company 2011). https://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2014/ George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown Publishing Company, 2010), 222-248.

Bush, Decision Points, 261-262.

Melvin A. Goodman, Failure of Intelligence (Maryland, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 253-284; Mark Danner, The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq Wars Buried History (New York: New York Review of Books, 2006).

See, Terry Anderson, Bush’s Wars (New York, Oxford, 2011), 120-121.

“Hans Blix Speaks His Mind on How US Doubted Him,” New York Times, 6/16/2003; Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq: Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction (London; Bloomsbury,2004).

Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies (New York: Free Press, 2004) 30-31.

Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservative and the Global Order (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans, 234-247; Project for a New American Century, An Open Letter to President Bush, “Lead the World to Victory,” in Micah Sifry and Christopher Cerf, The Iraq War Reader (IWR), 222-224; Robert Kagan and William Kristol, “What to Do About Iraq,” IWR, 243-250; Nicholas Lemann, “The Next World Order,” IWR. 253-265.

Project for a New American Century, Founding Principles, 6/3/1997. https://web.archive.org/web/ 20130112235337/http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples .

James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans (New York, Penguin, 2004), 248-260.

White House, National Security of the United States 2002, September 17, 2002. http://www. whitehouse.gov/nsc/nssall.html .

“Iraq’s Government Not Obama Called Time on the US Troop Presence,” Time, 10/21/2011, http://world.time.com/2011/10/21/iraq-not-obama-called-time-on-the-u-s-troop-presence/10/232011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BwxI_l84dc For extensive discussion of the Abu Ghraib scandal, see Errol Morris, The Ballad of Abu Ghraib (New York: Penguin, 2009); Seymour Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9-11 to Abu Ghraib (New York: Harper Collins,2004).

“Army General is Said to Urge Use of Dogs to Scare Prisoners,” Washington Post, 05/26/2004; “Harsh Questioning Methods were OK’d for Cuba Prison,” Washington Post, 05/09/2004; “Guantanamo Detainees Medical Files Shared,” Washington Post, 06/10/2004.

“Finding US Abuse in Iraq Left Red Cross in A Quandary,” Wall Street Journal, 01/21/2004; http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB108508787939617267; Alexander Higgins, Red Cross Describes Abuse in Iraq,” 05/10/2004 http://search.aol.com/aol/search?s_it=topsearchbox.search&v_t=keyword_rollover&q=

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Red+cross+report+describes+abuse+in+Iraq+alexander+higgins; 05/10/2004; “Prison Interrogations in Iraq Seen as Yielding Little Data on Rebels,” New York Times, 05/27/2004.

“Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn’t Bind Bush,” New York Times, 06/08/2004; “Memo: Torture May Be Justified,” Washington Post, 6/08/2004; “Forced Nudity of Iraqi Prisoners is Seen as A Pervasive Pattern, Not Isolated Incidents,” New York Times, 06/08/2004.

Alfred McCoy, “Torture at Abu Ghraib Followed CIA’s Manual,” Boston Review, 05/12/2004. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/05/14/torture_at_abu_ghraib_followed _cias_manual/ “Abuse Scandal Focuses on Bush Foundation,” Associated Press, 05/16/2004.

Important books on this topic include Jane Mayer, On the Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals (New York Doubleday, 2009) Joseph Margulies, Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007); John Yoo. War by Other Means: An Insider’s View of the War on Terror: (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006).

Anderson, Bush’s Wars, 173.

Anderson, 174-176.

Ross Caputi, “Seeing the Truth,” Justice for Fallujah Project, 08/19/2014. http://thefallujahproject.org/ home/node/57; Caputi. “I helped Destroy Fallujah in 2004 I won’t be Complicit Again,” The Guardian, 01/10/2014.

“Increased Security in Fallujah Slow Efforts to build,” Washington Post, April 19, 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64292-2005Apr18.html .

Patrick Cockburn, “Toxic Legacy of US Assault on Fallujah ‘Worse Than Hiroshima,’” The Independent,7/24/2010; “Research Links Rise in Fallujah Birth Defects and Cancers to US Assault,” The Guardian, 12/30.2010; BBC. “Disturbing Story of Fallujah’s Birth Defects,” 3/4/2010; “Huge Rise in Birth Defects in Fallujah, The Guardian, 11/13/2009.

“Pentagon Used White Phosphorus in Iraq,” New York Times, November 16, 2005; Dahr Jamail, Democracy Now, US Broadcast Exclusive. “Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre –on the US Use of Napalm-like White Phosphorus Bombs,” 11/16/2005.

Tim McGirk, “Collateral Damage or Civilian Massacre in Haditha?” Time, March 19, 2006; CNN, “Haditha Killings Fast Facts,” 11/7/2014.

“Cited in “Collateral Damage or Civilian Massacre in Haditha,” op cit; “Iraqis Voice Outrage as Haditha Massacre Trial Ends in No Jail Time, Democracv Now” 01/26/2012. http://www.democracynow.org/ 2012/1/26/iraqis_voice_outrage_as_us_massacre.

“Troops Respect Iraqis Rights Rumsfeld says,” New York Times, 6/2/2006.

“Rumsfeld Defends Training of US Troops As Haditha Probe Continues,” Associated Press, http://www. foxnews.com/story/2006/06/02/rumsfeld-defends-training-us-troops-as-haditha-probe-continues/; “Troops Respect Iraqis’ Right, Rumsfeld Says,” New York Times, 6/02/2006.

“An Iraqi Massacre, a Light Sentence and A Question of Military Justice,” New York Times, 1/27/2012.

‘Junkyard Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre in Iraq,” New York Times, December 14, 1971.

“Iraqis Voice Outrage as Haditha Massacre Trial Ends in No Jail Time for Accused U.S. Marines, transcript Democracy Now, January 26, 2012. http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/26/iraqis_voice_outrage_as_us_massacre.

Among the major accounts written by Administration officials, see Paul M. Bremer with Malcolm McConnell, My Year in Iraq (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006); George W. Bush, Decision Points; Richard Cheney with Liz Cheney In My Time (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011) Douglas Feith, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism (New York: Harper, 2008); Condoleezaa Rice, No Higher Honor (New York: Random House, 2011).

President Barack Obama, Fort Bragg, December 12, 2011.

“Al-Qaeda Force Captures Fallujah Amid Rise in Violence in Iraq,” Washington Post, 1/3/2014.

“Why the U.S. is Sitting Out Iraq’s Most Important Assault on ISIL,” Washington Post, 3/6/2015.

In: The George W. Bush Presidency. Volume III Editors: Meena Bose and Paul Fritz

ISBN: 978-1-63485-783-3 © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 9

COMMENTARY: THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND THE DECISION TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ1 John D. Negroponte Deputy Secretary of State, 2007-2009 Director of National Intelligence, 2005-2007 United States Ambassador to Iraq, 2004-2005 United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations, 2001-2004

This [preemption doctrine] is the issue that got the Bush administration into the most trouble, and the one with which trouble [will be] experienced, I suspect, in the long term. I guess you might argue that carrying the doctrine of preemption went a bit too far, as many would say, more than a bit too far during [President Bush’s] time in office. But I think that with the advent of Secretary [Condoleezza] Rice, there was a real shift in the administration in terms of the declining influence of Vice President [Dick] Cheney, the desire of Dr. Rice to take our foreign policy on a more diplomatic course, and I think quite frankly the concern on the part of President Bush himself with regard to the situation that we’ve gotten ourselves into with these two concurrent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. *** That was a major effort that Secretary [of State Colin] Powell persuaded the President that if we’re going forward with an invasion of Iraq, we should try the United Nations route, and hence we negotiated over a period of time in the Fall of 2002, Resolution 1441, which was kind of a milestone resolution, I would say. It re-invigorated and established an invigorated inspection system for Iraq, and I would certainly agree with Hans Blix and others, having spent several months trying to achieve this resolution, it’s a pity that we didn’t give it more of a chance to work.

But in retrospect, and I learned more about this after I left my role at the UN [United Nations] and even left my role in Iraq, and as time has gone on, it’s become clearer to me from the reading I've done that the decision on the part of the administration to go into Iraq

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was made terribly early in the administration. I think it was in December. Even in President Bush’s own biography, he says December of 2001 he started having regular meetings with [the Commander of U.S. Central Command, General] Tommy Franks. That’s a year before we put this issue to the United Nations. And by the time the summer of 2002 rolls around and then the autumn, preparations are well, well underway. So I think there was a sort of an imperative, if you will, a dynamic inside our government that was forcing us towards some kind of . . . impelling us, may be the right word, toward some kind of military action, really in disregard for the UN process. But I think that probably for the others besides Secretary Powell and myself, they were going through it for the motions and sort of for the record, whereas I, at least, having put so much sweat into that resolution, we really hoped it would be given a chance.

I was told, quite often by the French delegate, “Don't put forward a second resolution, you have enough authority with the first.” In other words, it was a difference of view between the French and the Brits. And the Brits came to us and said, “Our Attorney General tells us if we don't have a second resolution, the action we take in Iraq will be illegal.” President Bush, as he probably did more often than not, listens to the British, rather than the French, and we went through a second resolution. And of course we were not successful because, it was suggested, and [French President Jacques] Chirac in particular said if it was to come to a vote, he would veto it. So there’s a certain irony here because afterwards the British came into Iraq with us anyway. And I didn't hear anything from the British Attorney General about the action being illegal.

So I sometimes wonder whether we missed an opportunity there. But it’s a minor, I would say, in the context of those events, probably a minor tactical issue. . . . Going into Iraq with a coalition of the willing was probably better than going in completely alone. I think most of the presidents who used the coalition of the willing approach felt that they were actually mobilizing some sort of international support at least. LBJ? Remember the “More Flags for Vietnam” approach? We nominally had 50 countries with us in Vietnam. A lot of them had just one officer with a flag over there at some headquarters. So, yeah, there was some value we placed on having company as you went into these things. *** Even though we didn’t have agreement on a second resolution, once we went into Iraq and we submitted to the Security Council a request for a legitimation of the multinational force in Iraq together with a whole series of criteria and objectives for the domestic political development of Iraq, and the governance of our occupation, all that got memorialized in UN Security Council resolutions about a year after the invasion. In fact, it happened just before I went out to Iraq to be an Ambassador. And in a way it was very convenient because a lot of these resolutions laid out sort of a political timetable and a work plan, if you will, for our behavior and our operations in Iraq. So I think notwithstanding real disagreement, I wouldn’t question that at all, the fundamental disagreement with what we did in Iraq on the part of Security Council members in, I think, 2003, we were able to get back to business as usual in a reasonably short period.

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NEGROPONTE COMMENTARY II Now, this is 2001 and in retrospect, even though I was involved in negotiating the Resolution 1441 in the fall of 2002 that led to the reinstatement of an inspection regime in Iraq, in retrospect it was clear that we sort of had … the administration had Iraq on its mind right from the beginning after 9/11. And if you read George Bush's book Decision Points, he explains that he met about military operations against Iraq as early as December of 2001, and he had 12 subsequent meetings or telephone conversations with General Franks between December of 2001 and the summer of 2002.

And I wasn't nearly as conscious of this at the time in 2002 when I was working on negotiating this inspection resolution. I thought we had more time to allow for an inspection regime to work. Well, as it turned out that was more a matter of form and it would appear that the decision had been made exactly when … I heard [former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Porter J. Goss] say in the earlier panel that, “We don't know exactly when, we’re not entirely certain,” but it seems pretty clear to me that the administration’s mind was made up at some point even as we were going to the United Nations, that we were in fact going to invade Iraq. And I think that is really the issue around which turns this whole question of the judgment of the Bush doctrine, the doctrine of preemption and of unilateral action.

Ironically, it’s something of an exception to the rest of George W. Bush's foreign policy and he certainly evolved towards a more moderate stance. But it was such an important exception and it became such a major issue, and so much blood and treasure was expended in Iraq that I think it’s going to, for a long time at least, going to remain the major foreign policy issue on which the George W. Bush administration is going to be judged.

I think, beginning in the second term, Mr. Bush and his advisors fell back into a more traditional American foreign policy approach trying more to avoid unilateral action if at all possible. I can recall, because I was Deputy Secretary of State at the time, and also when I was Director of National Intelligence, rumors during the second administration, and almost constant, particularly on Wall Street, for some reason, that we were going to attack Iran. But I know from the internal discussion in the White House and elsewhere at the time that nothing was further from our minds.

Porter J. Goss Director, Central Intelligence Agency, 2005-2006 Director, Central Intelligence, 2004-2005 Congressman, U.S. House of Representatives, (R-FL), 1989-2004 The question of when exactly the Administration decided to go into Iraq and on what basis, I think today remains cloudy. I know that there was “Look at Iraq” for a very serious reason. And that was, we understood very clearly after 2001 that we were in an asymmetric, unconventional warfare condition, and that we were not dealing with state-to-state negotiations and actors, which is really how the United Nations is set up. So we needed to figure out how in the world you get good information to deal with the new situation, the new threats, that are there. And as it turned out we got a lot wrong about our information in Iraq.

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We got a lot wrong about a lot of things, but these were new days and new problems. And I think that the Bush Administration coped with those as best they could and gradually emerged and came out in about the right place that they had to come out, but not until after a few problems getting started.

Tom Basile Senior Press Advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, U.S. Department of Defense, 2003-2004 Consultant to Republican National Committee, 2004 Presidential Campaign Director of Communications, Environmental Protection Agency, 2001-2003 Bush-Cheney 2000, 2000 What we witnessed in the rise of Al-Qaeda and the decision-making of the United States in the aftermath of 9/11 was a sharp departure from the usual war-making paradigm. In fact, I believe that we are still in many respects in a transitional phase, as it relates to the way that this country handles both its military and its diplomatic strategy to account for this shift. The administration of George W. Bush was the first such administration to have to deal with this paradigm shift.

During the Bush presidency, the White House was faced with the challenge of handling both the traditional, territorial and institutional impacts of war in the form of external forces such as terror groups embedding and influencing the governments of state actors, the viral nature of the radical Islamic terrorist movement, and the exploitation by governments of state actors of the new global paradigm that had emerged after the end of the Cold War. It was a historically complicated confluence of forces and circumstances that led to both the Afghanistan and Iraq missions. The Bush administration had to cope with the concept of trying to fight mobile terrorist groups in dozens of countries while fighting traditional territorial battles, rebuilding infrastructure and institutions in Afghanistan that perhaps may not have existed, and, in the case of Iraq, projecting out the impact that state actors might have who may exploit and support the efforts of the terrorist enemy.

And we’ve spent a great deal of time over the last decade and a half on whether we should have gone into Afghanistan or whether we should have gone into Iraq, and I personally view the decision-making process through what my old boss Paul Bremer calls the “reasonable man test.” It comes from the old Chancery Courts. Would a reasonable principal, in this case the President of the United States, faced with the confluence of circumstances that I just described in a general sense, buttressed by specific intelligence, act in a certain way?

Keeping in mind, of course, that Saddam Hussein had been declared a state sponsor of terrorism, and regime change had been the policy of the U.S. government since the Clinton administration.

And when it comes to both Iraq and Afghanistan, I believe that President Bush made the correct choice for military intervention in both of those circumstances. However, I believe the more relevant conversation for all of us and for our country, moving forward, remains: Once you make the decision to go to war, what is the principal purpose or desired outcome? Now you have several choices.

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One, you can remove Saddam Hussein or the Taliban and leave, which I believe is a false choice. Two, you can remove the leadership, then grab some general or expatriate and impose them with absolute authority, basically trading one dictator for another. And I think that, particularly for Bush, the moral and political argument fails there as well. Or, three, you could attempt to secure the country and build institutions that could support, not what some people have suggested, some things, so called “American-style democracy,” but a participatory, pluralistic, and tolerant governing structure.

The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq was developed to execute option three. This historic gathering of now often maligned members of our military and civilian corps and our diplomats had the responsibility to get the economy growing and establish security and a political framework that would accomplish goal number three, working together with an Iraqi population that was more supportive of the effort than is generally known or accepted. They tackled this extraordinary task with great passion and commitment, and they sacrificed much, with their efforts going largely unnoticed as the security situation worsened due to the rise of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and sectarian violence, and, unfortunately, a White House that, as the mission went on, often failed to aggressively defend its own policy in Iraq.

President Bush understood several key points very well. One, he believed that, left unchecked, it was likely that Hussein would develop a nuclear weapons program. Two, Hussein had funded external terror groups and he believed that it was likely that he would fund, if not Al-Qaeda, he would be supporting other terror groups. Three, the war on terrorism was a long-term global threat that involved dozens of groups, some closely aligned, some loosely aligned, not only with each other but also state actors and also nation-states as well. And we’re seeing this today, as you see ISIS and Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram and Ansar al-Sharia and the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. All these folks are converging as a network, and a very powerful one at that.

Fourth, he believed that this was generational, a generations-long fight, and it would require long-term and aggressive engagement. And, five, that addressing the freedom deficit in the Middle East and in countries that serve as incubators for these groups, however longterm and complex that strategy might be, was essential and an avenue toward ensuring a more peaceful world and further international cooperation to interdict terrorist networks.

Where the strategy fell short, of course, was how to fight and manage all of these various components simultaneously. After all, we weren’t just ejecting somebody from a country or protecting the territorial boundaries of a nation. We were trying to fight an insurgency while attempting to build a new government and social and political institutions.

Robert James (Jim) Nicholson Secretary of Veterans Affairs, 2005-2007 U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, 2001-2005 George W. Bush’s presidency must be defined by the events of September 11, 2001, when the United States of America was viciously attacked by an enemy whose leader, Osama bin Laden, stated as far back as 1983 that the United States was the mortal enemy of Islam and must be destroyed. On 9/11, President Bush declared to the people of America and to the world that he would do whatever was necessary to protect our country, to keep it safe, and to

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keep it free. This became the mantra of the G.W. Bush presidency. President Reagan had his mantra. It was to bring down the Soviet Union and end the Cold War. President Lincoln had his, slavery. So did President Bush. His global war on terror kept us safe and kept us free. So let’s start with that.

I think we can stipulate that war defined President Bush’s presidency. Presidential historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., said, of all national crises that confront presidents, war is the most fateful. And in his opinion, all of our best presidents were involved in war either before or during their presidency, save Thomas Jefferson. Schlesinger further opined that crisis helps those who can rise to it in the association of war with presidential greatness and its ominous aspects. Let’s start with Afghanistan. Even the Pope supported our going into Afghanistan. I presented my credentials to the Holy Father, the leader of the Catholic church, and the leader of the sovereign state, the Holy See, on September 13, 2001, at his summer palace in Castel Gandolfo. And I had prepared remarks, the State Department had helped me prepare, and he had his, but we just put those aside. The first thing we did was say a little prayer for the victims and then talked.

And I by then was able to give him a brief of what we thought, the derivatives of what had happened were. And he said to me, “Ambassador Nicholson, we must stop those people who are killing in the name of God.” And that was not a privileged communication, so I was able to report that and put that out there, and it really helped us in putting a coalition together to go into Afghanistan. But the Pope did see Iraq differently. He expressed his opposition emphatically during his annual address to the Vatican Diplomatic Corps in January of 2003, and he looked directly at me and said, “No to war. War should only be the last resort.”

That was a disappointment to us after his affirmation of our efforts in Afghanistan, but it was not a surprise. But it did set off my biggest diplomatic challenge as the ambassador, and our most robust endeavor to convince the Holy Father of a need for us to invade Iraq, if Hussein would not bow to the demands of the UN under our lead. I enlisted the support of two distinguished Vaticanistas as they call them to come to Rome and assist me in an educative effort both at the Holy See and throughout Italy. Professors Michael Novak and George Weigel both possessing cherished, as they say over there, “apartment welcome,” which means they have wonderful bona fides with the Pope.

But they felt the same way that we did, and came immediately. We held several fora around the country, and talked about the need as we saw it to go into Iraq. But the Pope continued to view this as preemptive, and in spite of these personal interventions, including those of the President himself, and a session with the Pope's personal emissary to the President, Cardinal Pio Laghi, who went to see the President in the West Wing of the White House for a long encounter which I attended. The Pope dispatched a French Cardinal to Baghdad, Cardinal Etchegaray, to talk to the people there to see if they could get Hussein to come into line as was being requested through the UN primarily.

And, of course, neither were successful. But the President understood and often said that the Pope is a man of peace, and he had a different responsibility. Importantly though, the Pope never said that it was immoral for us to go into Iraq, and he really couldn’t because it would be violative of the doctrine of the Church, which has been there for centuries, which recognizes that there are evil forces in the world, and there are innocent people who are entitled to be protected from those evil forces. And that does, on occasion, require the institution of war, of violence. In fact, today on the train coming up to New York, I read a

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report from a distinguished writer for the Catholic news service suggesting that Pope Francis may indeed end up advocating the use of force against ISIS. So, there are precedents for this, and we of course were unsuccessful, as I've stated with Pope John Paul II in trying to underwrite or affirm our endeavor to go into Iraq. But as we all know on March 19 of 2003, we entered Iraq for the purpose of protecting our country and eradicating the threat to us and others possessed by Iraq's brutal dictator Saddam Hussein.

The case had been made to our citizens, to the UN, to our friends, to the Pope, and to the world, really. And the facts as we saw them were that Hussein was a threat.

He had invaded two of his neighboring countries, Kuwait and Iran. He used weapons of mass destruction on his own people, and on the Iranians. He shot at our planes and allies’ planes. He was working to evade international sanctions. He failed to comply with numerous UN resolutions that required him to disarm and prove that he had. He paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. He gave every indication that he maintained stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. He remained belligerent and violent and refused to adhere to international demands, and showed every sign of being willing and interested in supporting attacks on the United States. Therefore, after 9/11, the United States could not afford to take the chance that he would join with international terrorists in a raid against us and provide them with weapons of mass destruction and other material support needed to attack American targets.

Of course, after the fact, no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were found. But nonetheless, Saddam Hussein was a threat to peace, and due to his recalcitrance and continued hostility to the world, we chose war. Hussein was toppled, and Iraq did catch a glimpse of freedom and democracy. Their courageous participation in their elections demonstrated their hunger and their appreciation for freedom. In fact, I will never forget, just weeks after we went into Iraq, the Chaldean Catholic patriarch, whose name was Emmanuel Delly II, came to Rome and asked if he could visit me, and I received him at my residence in Rome. And he was the leader of about 850,000 Chaldean Catholics who’ve been there for centuries, and for whom Hussein sort of kept in a protected status in the dispute between the Sunni and the Shia. They were kind of off to the side. But in spite of the fact that he knew that this would probably be disassembled, he didn’t walk, he ran up the steps to my residence where I was standing and thrust his hand and said, “Thank you for coming to my country and freeing us,” exhibiting that innate desire that man has for freedom. And the euphoria that he exhibited was exhilarating, of course, knowing even as he did the added risks that they were now in as a result of this.

But one can debate the conduct of this war as many have and one can argue that we should not have dismissed the Sunni Ba’ath party dominated army and the police forces. I think that would be a very legitimate thing. One can argue that we shifted emphasis too soon and too intensely on nation building and democracy building in lieu of law and order building and infrastructure, particularly law and order infrastructure. There were mistakes made certainly. Abu Ghraib comes to mind. Those are fair discussions as far as I’m concerned, but I will end the way I started, which is to say again that President Bush after we were invaded on 9/11 said he would do whatever was necessary to protect our country. He did. He kept Americans safe for the next seven years as our President. Was war necessary? Was it worth it? Did it matter?

The final report of the chief weapons inspector for the UN, Charles Duelfer, concluded, “Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capability after sanctions

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were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized.” I agree with those who say that had Saddam done that, we would have seen an arms race develop between Iraq and Iran, a Sunni-Shia terrorist arms race with the possibilities of biological, chemical or even nuclear weapons being in the hands of terrorists. It too would have increased greatly the possibilities of a dirty bomb being exploded in our country. The pressure on our friends like Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE would be even greater today, and as a result, the American people would be less safe as well. Only time will tell about President Bush. All I can say is that he is looking better and better as the world becomes more and more dangerous and we become more vulnerable to those who want to destroy us. What is a President’s most important job?

It’s to keep us safe, and he did it.

Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson (Ret.) Chief of Staff for U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, 2002-2005 Associate Director, State Department Policy Planning Staff, 2001-2002 United States Army, 1966-1997 It was a moment of incredible solidarity [after the 9/11 terrorist attacks], and my boss and his boss decided that one of the things we should try to do -- remember, we’re the diplomats, former soldiers, but we’re diplomats now -- was to capitalize on that moment of global solidarity not just for what we knew the President wanted to do with regard to Afghanistan, but in so many other realms that we had problems. It was a huge task sheet that basically capitalized on this moment of global solidarity. Iraq completely shattered that. The invasion of Iraq, and the run-up to that, shattered that global solidarity. Shattered the diplomacy that was associated with it, shattered our hopes of solving lots of other problems on the wings of that, if you will.

[Retired General Colin] Powell was Secretary of State, but he was also former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even though Dick Cheney reminded him of that, and told him not to talk military matters, he felt that it was his responsibility to say, “Mr. President, we can’t do two wars at the same time. We destroyed that capability with that 28 percent cut in the armed forces [at the end of the Cold War]. So, you better finish Afghanistan, nobody is arguing with you about Afghanistan. You better finish that before you do Iraq, otherwise you’re going to neglect Afghanistan.” Which is exactly what we proceeded to do. So, we shattered the global solidarity and we went to Iraq with too few forces in the first place because [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld decided that that would be the amount we would send.

Now, some of that amount was based on give and take with the Military Commander [of U.S. Central Command, General] Tommy Franks, whom Powell had told on two different occasions, “You have too few troops.” And from when [Army Chief of Staff] General [Eric] Shinseki had told the Congress we had too few troops, for which of course he was released.

So, you had too few troops to do Iraq, and that would lead to some 100,000 plus contractors being brought on to do the ultimate public function, war. We’re still living with that detritus, ladies and gentlemen. Still living with it. We haven’t really put it to rest yet.

The other item that Powell brought to the President’s attention other than timing and force size was legitimacy. Legitimacy in the shape of the United Nations, other allies than

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Britain, and so forth. Well, we went to the UN in November of 2002, and we got a 15 to 0 vote, unanimous vote, approving UN Security Council Resolution 1441. Again, we had sort of resurrected a little bit of that global solidarity. But what that did was, say, to Hans Blix and others, [Mohamed] ElBaradei at the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] and so forth, that they could go and do their jobs. They could go and continue the inspections. But you can’t continue the inspections if you’ve already marshaled 164,000-plus American forces and started them on their way. You’ve already started them and the summer is coming, the excessive heat in Iraq. So, if you’re doing this, you’re probably going to have to cut the inspections short, and if you’re really intent on going to war, you’re going to probably have to do it even without the preparation you should have made.

My boss got put out to the United Nations Security Council to give the most specious presentation that probably anyone has ever been called on in the American government to render, on Iraqi WMD [Weapons of Mass Destruction]. And it was not just to the Security Council, they were a tertiary audience, but also to the American public and to the international community. And polls showed afterwards, it was very effective. And why was it very effective? Because it was Colin Powell who at that time had Mother Teresa poll ratings.

He was about 77 to 78 percent in the polls and she was about 80 percent. And you’re looking at the individual – me – who went out to the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], and prepared Colin Powell for that presentation in terms of orchestrating all the analysis from 16 different intelligence agencies, working daily and nightly with [CIA Director] George Tenet and John McLaughlin, his deputy.

And frankly, there were three pillars of that presentation – mobile biological laboratories, existing stocks of chemical and biological weapons, a nuclear program, and then a fourth one, which was tantamount to the biggest lie of all, formidable contacts between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. On one occasion, Powell grabbed me, put me down in a chair in the National Intelligence Council spaces where no one else was, closed the door, and he said, “Take all that terrorist crap out, none of it is believable, none of it is accurate, take it out.” I said, "Boss, don’t shout at me. I’m with you. Let’s take it out.” And we took it out. Within 30 minutes, George Tenet was in his conference room where we resumed rehearsal, telling the Secretary of State all about an Al-Qaeda high level operative who’d been interrogated and revealed substantial contacts between the Mukhabarat of Iraq, the secret police, and Al-Qaeda to include training them in the use of chemical and biological weapons. We put everything back in, only to learn later that that was a total, utter fabrication.

The Secretary of State went to New York and gave a presentation that he believed in, that had been orchestrated by – a carefully orchestrated plot, if you will – by the Vice President’s office, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in the Defense Department, and the CIA, certain analysts in the CIA who were given to me by George Tenet as bearers of the gospel.

And he presented that to the Security Council, the American people, and the international community to bring about the war that he had already seen destroy his strategy for exploiting the global solidarity 9/11 had produced for good, for diplomatic purposes, and destroyed any hope of legitimacy for the United States and was based on false intelligence. It was not just an intelligence failure, it was that too, but it was orchestration of that intelligence to make it present a picture that simply was not true. And there were people in the administration who knew that.

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ENDNOTE 1

The commentary in this selection is excerpted from three sessions at Hofstra University’s March 2015 Conference on the George W. Bush Presidency. The first selected commentary from John D. Negroponte and the selected commentary from Porter Goss are from the “International Perspectives on the Bush Presidency” panel, Conference on the George W. Bush Presidency, Hofstra University, March 24, 2016. The second excerpt from Ambassador Negroponte is from “The Bush Doctrine and Combating Terrorism” plenary forum, Conference on the George W. Bush Presidency, Hofstra University, March 24, 2016. The selected commentary from Thomas J. Basile, R. James Nicholson, and Lawrence B. Wilkerson is from the “Waging War in Afghanistan and Iraq” plenary forum, Conference on the George W. Bush Presidency, March 24, 2016.

PART III: FOREIGN POLICY BEYOND THE WAR ON TERROR

In: The George W. Bush Presidency. Volume III Editors: Meena Bose and Paul Fritz

ISBN: 978-1-63485-783-3 © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 10

BEYOND THE STANDARD INTERPRETATION OF GEORGE W. BUSH’S NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY: DECISION MAKING ON NORTH KOREA William Newmann Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, US

ABSTRACT A standard interpretation based mostly on policy making during the response to September 11 and the Iraq War has dominated analyses of GW Bush national security policy making. It focuses on an ideological battle between different factions within the administration, a factional battle ultimately won by a neoconservative/hegemonic realist alliance headed by VP Dick Cheney. This paper examines whether this narrative holds true for national security policy making toward North Korea. While this research suggests that the standard interpretation formed the framework of the battle over North Korean policy as well, the role of Condoleezza Rice made a large difference on policy toward North Korea. When Rice moved from National Security Adviser to Secretary of State, her power over implementation and Bush’s trust in Rice, allowed her to win the factional battle and convince Bush that a negotiated denuclearization of North Korea was possible.

A standard interpretation has dominated analyses of George W. Bush’s national security policy making. It has four key elements: first, three ideological factions (balance of power realists, neoconservatives, and hegemonic realists) fought for influence over foreign policy; second, Vice President Cheney became the most powerful voice during the ideological debate; third, these rivalries could not be managed by the president or the national security adviser, and ultimately the hegemonic realists allied with the neoconservatives to push the balance of power realists aside; and fourth, decision making became centralized into a war council of senior officials. This standard interpretation is based mostly on policy making during the response to September 11 and the Iraq War. This paper examines whether this narrative holds true for national security policy making toward North Korea.

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This research suggests that the factional battles of Iraq and counterterrorism policy formed the framework of the battle over North Korean policy as well. While the balance of power realists worked to engage North Korea in negotiations, the neoconservative/hegemonic realist faction worked to toughen up U.S. negotiating stances, based on their belief that North Korea could never be trusted to honor any deal. The disagreements over North Korea policy, however, were never resolved as they had been on Iraq and counterterrorism. The policy battles in the spring of 2001 were the same as those in the fall of 2008. What did differ in the policy process were the roles of the president and Condoleezza Rice. When Rice moved from National Security Adviser to Secretary of State, she moved from honest broker to advocate, and most importantly to the job of policy implementation. As bureaucratic competition over policy heightened, Rice’s power over implementation became the key to winning the battle.

That fact, combined with Bush’s trust in Rice, allowed Rice to overcome opponents to her policy preferences and convince Bush that a negotiated denuclearization of North Korea was possible.

THE STANDARD INTERPRETATION The standard interpretation of Bush decision making for counterterrorism and the Iraq War is well known. It has four key themes: ideological disagreements, bureaucratic rivalry, the power of VP Cheney, and centralization of decision making. First, similar to the Carter administration, a president new to foreign affairs, but confident in his managerial skills, found himself in the middle of a debate between advisers with differing approaches to the world.1 Balance of power realists (Secretary of State Colin Powell and the State Department) saw the post-cold war challenge as one of maintaining a stable balance of power globally and regionally. This meant working with allies and managing up-and-coming powers. Hegemonic realists (VP Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and the Department of Defense) saw post-cold war stability in the continuing dominance of the U.S. Managing upand-coming powers was not as important as deterring them from ever challenging the U.S. Neoconservatives (Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, foreign policy advisers in the Office of the Vice President, and mid-level staffers throughout the administration), as well as influential conservative pundits, saw the post-cold war world as an opportunity for the U.S. to use its dominance to remake the world – spreading U.S. values by force if necessary.2 Second, traditionally, scholars focus on the battles between the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and National Security Adviser for control of foreign policy. Since the Clinton administration, the Office of the Vice President (OVP) has been a new institutional entrant in the competition. This was especially true during the Bush administration. Cheney was seen as the wise counselor who guided Bush, a novice in foreign policy. While Cheney was not in control of foreign policy, he had the dominant voice in the administration.3 Third, in the absence of strong management by the president or Rice and a clear set of foreign policy beliefs in mind of the president, a heated factional battle developed over the control of foreign policy.4 The administration designed a formal decision making structure based on the standard post-Iran-Contra National Security Council (NSC) system.5 The NSC was backed up by a Principals Committee (PC) of NSC members who met without the president to develop consensus among the senior decision makers and resolve or specify

Beyond the Standard Interpretation of George W. Bush’s National Security Policy 133 disagreements among them. Below this was a Deputies Committee (DC), composed of NSC members’ principal deputies; its role was the day-to-day management of the interagency decision making process. Supporting these committees were Policy Coordinating Committees (PCCs), the working level committees of the interagency process, chaired by undersecretary or assistant secretaries of specifically-designated departments. Rice served as “honest broker” manager of the process, “confidante” of the president, his sounding board, and “eyes-andears” on foreign policy.6 Instead of resolving conflicts, the system evolved into a never ending series of battles between the factions. This may have been due to Bush’s managerial style; the first president with an MBA, Bush believed in delegating the less critical decisions to his senior advisers. The factions gained significant power over interagency debates.7 A natural alliance formed between the hegemonic realists and neoconservatives, an alliance that won the battle within the administration. It ultimately merged counter-proliferation goals, maintenance of U.S. hegemony, and the spread of democracy; it linked weapons of mass destruction to terrorism, and U.S. preemption in what became known as the Bush Doctrine.8 The invasion of Iraq flowed directly out of this intra-administration alliance.

Fourth, the attacks of September 11 led to a centralization of decision making within a “war council,” a small group of senior aides who worked with Bush to develop policy on a more informal basis, outside of the standard NSC process. It consisted of President Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Chief of Staff Andrew Card, CIA Director George Tenet, and Rice. Decisions on Iraq were made in a similar manner.9

NORTH KOREA POLICY MAKING The full tale of U.S. policy on North Korea is beyond the scope of this paper.

Understanding decision making and how it evolved requires examining several episodes in decision making to see if the standard interpretation holds true for North Korea policy making. The initial order of battle for North Korea policy decisions reflects the struggle over counterterrorism and Iraq: while both factions rejected the Clinton-era Agreed Framework, the balance of power realists of the State Department and members of the NSC staff hoped to use negotiations with North Korea as the path to denuclearization; the neoconservatives and hegemonic realists of the Department of Defense (DoD), the OVP, and NSC staff felt that negotiations only rewarded North Korea for bad behavior. The President was the ultimate arbiter. In the first term, he seemed unwilling or unable to side with any faction; he chose a strategy that gave everyone a bit of what they wanted, resulting in some large inconsistencies.

Negotiations began even in the face of evidence that North Korea was making progress on enriching fuel, but the more hardline factions were always able to scuttle any agreements that they felt rewarded North Korea. In the second term, Rice’s ascendance as secretary of state allowed her to take charge of the negotiations. Once she had invested in them, decision making on North Korea became an adjunct to the negotiation process; the power of implementation gave Rice huge advantages over her policy opponents. She was able to use the president’s faith in her to move the policy in the direction she favored. Importantly, this was a deliberate decision by the president, not a result of drift or bureaucratic momentum. If policy changes were needed to move the negotiations along, those policy changes were decided on the fly without interagency vetting, without the neoconservatives’/hegemonic

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realists’ participation. To illustrate this pattern, this essay looks at the early interagency process from 2001and 2003, which established the basic pattern of decision making, and Rice’s ability to shift US policy in 2005 through 2007.

THE INTERAGENCY PROCESS 2001-2003 The early interagency process on North Korea decisions supports the standard interpretation. The administration came into office with a clear consensus: the Agreed Framework (AF) negotiated by the Clinton administration in 1994 was fatally flawed.10 The challenge was finding a way to change a U.S. policy that had lasted for six years and was supported by South Korea, Japan, and China. The infighting between the factions was brutal.

The State Department faced off against the DoD and OVP. John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for International Security and Arms Control, sided with the DoD/OVP faction, while members of the NSC staff were divided. Rice felt that the “schisms” were never resolved.11 The initial interagency review was spurred only a few days after the inauguration by a South Korean request for a summit. The summit was set for March 7, 2001, before the interagency review could be finished and before many of the key players (such as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (EAP) James Kelly) could even be confirmed. This gave NSC staffers, WH staffers, and staff of the OVP a bit of an edge. None of them had to be confirmed, and they could begin their work without worrying about upcoming confirmation hearings or even whether they had statutory authority to make policy yet. This fact and the initial lack of consensus on what to do after the AF was jettisoned led to an unusual structure for the policy review. The East Asia PCC, chaired by State’s EAP Assistant Secretary, would be the primary working level forum for interagency policy making on the region. North Korea policy, however, was pulled out of that PCC and placed in a North Korea PCC co-chaired by the EAP Assistant Secretary and Robert Joseph, the NSC Staff Senior Director for Counter-proliferation. The co-chairing of the PCC built deadlock into the structure of the process. Kelly and the State Department supported a restarting of the negotiations, an attempt to replace the AF with something that might be verifiable. Joseph was in effect a representative of the DoD/OVP faction. To this faction, negotiations were useless: North Korea would never honor any commitments it made; the U.S. should avoid any direct talks with North Korea; complete dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear capability should come before any discussions of what North Korea might receive in exchange, rather than as a reward for bad behavior.12 Before the review was finished, the administration was forced to set at least an overall direction by the March 7 summit with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. At a March 6 meeting a clear consensus emerged based on President Bush’s ideas. The administration would not publicly criticize President Kim’s “Sunshine” policy of improving relations with North Korea, but it would not continue with the AF. Bush explained that the policy had not ended the North Korean nuclear program. Worse, the U.S. had allowed North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to get away with acting like a spoiled child, throwing his food on the floor to get attention, and “the United States is through picking up his food.”13 The review was finished on June 6, 2001 and surprisingly seemed to reveal a victory by the State Department. The U.S. would be willing to restart talks with North Korea, but North

Beyond the Standard Interpretation of George W. Bush’s National Security Policy 135 Korea would have to move decisively toward denuclearization before it could receive anything from the U.S. The U.S. would also include the North’s conventional military posture as well as ballistic missile developments and proliferation in the talks. The review considered the possibilities of a longer term path to North-South reconciliation, but made it clear that the U.S. would not respond positively to threats.14 The battle over the policy, however, did not end. The consensus was clearly for a tough policy of pressure that might lead to denuclearization or better yet regime change in North Korea. The U.S. would grant no concessions in exchange for promises. The problem with this approach was that the Kim regime was not going to be overthrown in the short term; none of the major players in East Asia wanted to increase the pressure on North Korea or isolate it.

Rice summed it up: “We were without a workable policy.”15 The result of this dilemma was more than a bit of confusion. On January 29, 2002 Bush’s State of the Union Address described North Korea as part of the “axis of evil.” Less than a month later, while in South Korea for a summit with President Kim, Bush stated that the U.S. supported the “Sunshine” policy, had no intention of invading North Korea, and would even agree to direct talks with North Korea. The seeming contradictory nature of the policy illustrated that the president had not yet made up his mind. Upon his return from Seoul, Bush initiated a new policy review of North Korea, run by Rice and the NSC staff. His guidelines called for a “bold approach.” In March, he refused to certify that North Korea was in compliance with the AF, a legislative requirement for continued economic assistance to North Korea, but asked Congress for a waiver to keep the money flowing. A PC meeting in April and an NSC meeting in May produced an agreement to reach out to North Korea, with a comprehensive approach: North Korea would denuclearize and begin domestic reform of its economy in exchange for gradual lifting of economic sanctions and an opportunity for North Korea to integrate into the world economy. Kelly was designated as the official who would present the bargain during a July trip to Pyongyang, giving the State Department clear implementation authority.16 The July trip was cancelled after North and South Korea had a naval incident on June 29.

Even more significant was the intelligence community’s growing certainty over the summer of 2002 that North Korea was developing the capability to enrich uranium in defiance of the AF. By September, CIA had concluded that North Korea was nearing “production scale.”

Powell was initially alone in arguing that the U.S. should still send a special envoy. Rice eventually sided with Powell. U.S. isolation of North Korea could not work if U.S. allies in the region, South Korea and Japan, were both making bold steps to improve their relations with North Korea. After lobbying from Rice, Bush agreed, and at a September NSC meeting Kelly was given the green light to go to Pyongyang in October.17 Arguments over the details began immediately. The State Department drafted talking points for Kelly to use on the trip. These were immediately rejected by the DoD, the OVP, and Bolton of the State Department. New talking points were then drafted by Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Michael Green of the NSC staff. In a sign of the distrust between the factions, the rewritten talking points gave Kelly no leeway whatsoever.

Rice described them as “literally stage directions for Kelly”; he was told to “read them verbatim.” Powell was not happy about the micromanagement and NSC-imposed instructions to Kelly not to engage in informal conversations with any North Korean officials.18 In Pyongyang, when Kelly confronted the North Koreans with U.S. evidence that it had been enriching uranium on October 4, North Korea, surprisingly, admitted it had been doing

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exactly that; North Korea now wanted a non-aggression pact in exchange for an end to its enrichment program.19 During an NSC meeting on October 15, the administration officially declared the AF dead and decided it would inform South Korea, Japan, and China and then go public with the policy change.20 Following the NSC meeting, Hadley asked for three option papers from the NSC staff and the OVP. Importantly, the State Department was not asked to assess options as part of this process. Green of the NSC staff assessed the option of internationalizing the approach to North Korea by developing a unified policy with regional allies. Samantha Ravich of the OVP examined an explicit policy of regime change. Joseph of the NSC staff examined an option for “tailored containment,” sustained pressure on North Korea designed to force it to behave. At an NSC meeting on November 13, Bush chose an option based on the Joseph paper.21 At the upper levels of the administration, Bush and Rice seemed to have concluded that nothing could be accomplished until China got serious about pressuring North Korea. In conversations with Chinese President Jiang Zemin in January and February, Bush sent some not very subtle messages about the implications of North Korean nuclear capability. Bush explained to Jiang that once North Korea had an arsenal, the U.S. would not be able to stop Japan from developing its own nuclear weapons. If the U.S. and China wanted to stop an arms race in East Asia, North Korea was the place to begin. He also explained that he would have to consider the use of force if North Korea gained an arsenal.22 This seemed like the final end of the policy of negotiating with North Korea. With the AF effectively renounced, the U.S. delivered its last shipment of fuel oil on November 18, 2002.

IAEA inspectors left North Korea in December 2002, and North Korea officially withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty on January 9, 2003.

Allies in the region, however, continued to push the U.S. to talk to North Korea. PM Koizumi Junichiro of Japan had traveled to North Korea in the fall, and his policy of reconciliation and the return of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea was widely popular in Japan. In South Korea, Roh Moo-hyun had defeated Lee Hoi-chang in the December 2002 elections and would continue with President Kim’s “Sunshine” policy. On a trip to Beijing in February 2003, Powell floated the idea that the U.S. and North Korea could return to talks if a third party were present. China would play the role of chaperone. Rice liked the idea, and Powell lobbied for it within the administration and to allies in the region.

The talks would be explicitly trilateral; the U.S. and North Korea would never speak directly, and Powell made it clear to China that it should never suggest bilateral talks. The OVP and DoD opposed the idea strongly, arguing that once again North Korea when behaves badly the U.S. comes back to the negotiating table. They lost the argument.23 The most obvious explanation is that the U.S. was preparing to invade Iraq. That would occupy the time of the Department of Defense and WH. Other regions, particularly East Asia, had to become a lesser priority for those most engaged in fighting the war and managing the aftermath. That left the State Department, often explicitly excluded from Iraq decisions, to expand its role in other regions of the world.

The trilateral negotiations began on April 23, 2003 in Beijing. Russia, Japan, and South Korea were added to the negotiations in August, beginning the Six Party Talks. Though the neoconservative/hegemonic realist camp had lost the larger battle over whether to talk to North Korea at all, they stayed engaged and again won the skirmish over the details. Once again, State Department talking points were overruled in favor of WH-written talking points

Beyond the Standard Interpretation of George W. Bush’s National Security Policy 137 that called for North Korea to move toward complete, verifiable inspections and disarmament (CVID) before North Korea would see any benefits from the U.S.24 Until 2005, the decision making for the talks and U.S. policy followed a defined pattern that was only broken after Rice became Secretary of State. No matter how provocative the action, the U.S. would ultimately maintain indirect negotiations with North Korea; at each stage of talks, however, the NSC staff and the OVP would be able to rewrite the State Department negotiation instructions to essentially require unilateral concessions by the North before any real bargaining could begin. Ultimately, this meant that negotiations would continue, but never make progress.

RICE AND THE SHIFT IN POLICY MAKING When Condoleezza Rice moved to the State Department, the balance of power in the administration shifted.25 Rice had never been seen as a member of either side in the factional battle; she prided herself on following the Brent Scowcroft model of the “honest broker.”26 At State, she was the head of an institution culturally geared for diplomacy and negotiation.

The success of that diplomacy would elevate her usefulness to the president, her power in the pecking order of the administration, and the status of her department in the interagency battle.

These incentives and a new ability to be an advocate, rather than an honest broker, may have pushed her to lean in the direction of resolving the North Korea crisis through the Six Party Talks. Her new perspective as secretary of state may have also led her to the conclusion that no matter how much the U.S. wished to isolate North Korea and place pressure on it, it would have no allies in the endeavor. Only the U.S. would be isolated. Her relationship with President Bush ultimately led her to success. At key points, she was able to steer the administration back into negotiations over the objections of VP Cheney. Even more interesting, at crucial moments when negotiations reached critical phases, she was able to bypass the interagency process and make immediate policy shifts, policy shifts that in the first administration were contemplated but quashed by a lack of consensus. President Bush’s faith in Rice allowed her to make those changes; arguably no other official would have been allowed to act so independently. This pattern held until the summer and fall of 2008 when opponents to Rice’s policies were able to delay their implementation. North Korea then balked at what it felt were new verification requirements, and no comprehensive agreement was reached.

Rice’s handling of North Korea did not begin well. During her confirmation hearings she referred to North Korea as an “outpost of tyranny.” Soon after Pyongyang announced it was withdrawing from the Six Party Talks in protest.27 At an NSC meeting in early 2005, Rice suggested using the Six Party Talks as a bridge to a peace treaty for Korea and a larger East Asian security regime. In small meetings with only the president and Hadley, now elevated to National Security Adviser, Rice made her case: the U.S. will likely have to give up the goal of regime change and negotiate directly with North Korea. Rice explicitly asked for less micromanagement from Washington during the negotiations. The State Department needed more freedom to act. While she understood that during the first term the president did not fully trust the State Department, Rice explained that the situation was different in the second term: the president could trust her. Bush was convinced by Rice’s arguments over policy and

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process. State was given some of the leeway Rice asked for. Bush put regime change on the backburner and suggested to Rice that the U.S. might “call his bluff” and offer Kim a “peace treaty if he gives up his weapons and opens up to the world.” She was not ready to go that far, but instructed Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick and State Department Counselor Philip Zelikow to study the idea of using the Six Party Talks as the basis for a “security mechanism for Northeast Asia.”28 The fact that these decisions were made outside the interagency process, without participation of the DoD and OVP, was significant. When it came to actual negotiations, however, the pattern from the first term initially held true. The Six Party Talks began again in July of 2005. By September enough movement had been made that a deal seemed imminent.

Assistant Secretary for State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill was the chief negotiator, and though he reported to Rice, she consulted with the president, Hadley, and often VP Cheney.29 Versions of the final draft agreement were vetted through an NSC staffled committee, headed by Deputy National Security Adviser J.D. Crouch and including neoconservative and hegemonic realist officials such as Libby of the OVP, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and Joseph, now Undersecretary of State for International Security and Arms Control. At the final stages of the talks, however, Rice negotiated directly with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing and committed the US to allowing North Korea to keep some “non-threatening elements of its current infrastructure.” Rice also left open the possibility that North Korea could be allowed a light water reactor after it dismantled its program. These changes in U.S. policy were made by Rice alone. Rice had phoned Hadley to brief him on the changes. When Hadley said he would clear them with the president, Rice explained that the U.S. was already “committed.”30 The deal was done: North Korea had agreed to abandon its nuclear program and submit to inspections in exchange for U.S. assurances that it would not attack North Korea and vague promises of economic assistance.31 The DoD and OVP faction, however, wanted to press North Korea further rather than close a deal. On September 19 Hill was required to read a Crouch committee-drafted statement at the public announcement, a statement designed to send a blunt message to North Korea that even if the nuclear issue were resolved, the US still had major concerns over North Korea’s “human rights abuses, biological and chemical weapons programs, ballistic missile programs and proliferation, terrorism, and illicit activities” and would take “concrete actions necessary to protect ourselves and our allies against any illicit and proliferation activities.”32 North Korea was offended and saw these last statements in particular as implying that the U.S. might still use sanctions or force. It responded by scuttling the deal and demanding a light water reactor as a prerequisite to any dismantlement of the North Korean nuclear program.33 The situation was also complicated by U.S. Treasury financial sanctions on North Korea related to money laundering, announced on September 15.34 Another round of talks in November 2005 centered around North Korean anger at the financial sanctions, and soon after North Korea announced it was withdrawing from the Six Party Talks.35 In spite of all this, the Bush administration was floating plans for a more comprehensive peace settlement. During an April 2006 summit with China in Washington D.C., Bush suggested to President Hu Jintao the possibility that the U.S. would trade an elimination of the North Korean nuclear program for a Korean peace treaty. The idea was not vetted through the interagency process. According to staff of the OVP, the Vice President himself was

Beyond the Standard Interpretation of George W. Bush’s National Security Policy 139 “stunned.” Bush, however, viewed the idea as a change in means rather than ends. During a meeting with Rice and Hadley in 2005, Bush explained that he was not giving up on regime change. A policy of finding ways to get North Korea more transparent and more integrated into the world economy was “regime change by other means. He’ll never survive if that place is opened up.”36 Bush’s message to Hu made no difference. On July 4, 2006 North Korea tested several ballistic missiles, including a long range missile that apparently failed.37 On October 8, 2006, North Korea detonated its first atomic bomb.

In a sign of just how institutionalized the negotiation process had become, neither of these actions ended the Six Party Talks. Though each provocation brought condemnation from the Bush administration, UNSC resolutions that condemned the action, and tensions within the five parties working to denuclearize North Korea, the administration ultimately decided that negotiations were still the best avenue toward denuclearization.

North Korea’s nuclear test in October would seem to represent the complete failure of the administration’s approach. The central goal of U.S. policy was to prevent North Korea from explicitly going nuclear and ideally to convince it to eliminate its nuclear arsenal. Among the many repercussions of the tests, two are most notable. First, they brought the policies of the US, Japan, South Korea, China, and Russia closer than they had been since the beginning of the Six Party Talks. In particular, China seems to have become exasperated enough with North Korea to agree to place real diplomatic pressure on it. UNSC Resolution 1718 of October 14, 2006 called for North Korea to eliminate its nuclear program and suspend its ballistic missile program, and it called for UN Members to freeze North Korean assets, end the transit of military-related goods across its territories, and end trade in military equipment with North Korea.38 The fact that China agreed to these provisions was significant.39 Second, as Rice explains in her memoirs, the tests “ironically” gave the U.S. the opportunity to push toward a more comprehensive settlement of all the issues related to North Korea.40 The two points are closely related. With assurances that China was truly ready to pressure North Korea, the U.S. was free to push its preferred strategy, and by 2006 that preference was for a negotiated settlement. This reflects Rice’s dominance of the process and policy. She had moved Bush to her point of view and she also was allowed the freedom to pursue the policy.

This represents a partial eclipse of the harder line viewpoint. An NSC meeting following the test affirmed that that the U.S. would continue to use the Six Party Talks and push for a more comprehensive settlement. The Six Party Talks began again in mid-December 2006.

Negotiations from that point on show the pattern of the second term. At various points in the negotiations, Rice would ask the president for permission to make a specific change in the U.S. stance, and the president would grant that permission, often without placing the idea into the interagency process.

Direct U.S.-North Korean negotiations began in mid-January 2007 in Berlin.41 North Korean officials offered to shut the Yongbyon reactor and open it to IAEA inspections in exchange for a lifting of some of the financial sanctions. Hill brought the idea to Rice, in Berlin to meet with German leaders, who wanted to bring the idea directly to the president. In a call to Hadley, Hadley argued for a meeting of the principals, but Rice argued that there was no time. Rice soon reached the president; he considered the idea for a few hours, consulting with both Cheney and new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and then approved the deal.42

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During an administration’s final year in office, thoughts turn to legacies. Rice contemplated a trip to North Korea or taking North Korea off the list of state sponsors of terrorism to smooth the way for a comprehensive deal. In a principals meeting with the president, VP Cheney, Gates, JCS Chair Admiral Mike Mullen, and Hadley, she made her case. Cheney and Mullen were against both ideas. No decision was made at the time on either issue, but the idea of removing North Korea from the terrorist sponsor list remained alive. As part of the ongoing negotiations, on June 26, 2008 North Korea gave its required declaration of its nuclear program. Over the opposition of VP Cheney, the president immediately announced that he would ask Congress to take North Korea off the list of nations sponsoring terrorism.43 Though the announcement was made on June 26, the law required a 45-day waiting period before the action could be implemented. Led by Cheney, opponents of Rice’s policies used the waiting period to try to reverse the decision. The US submitted a verification protocol to the Six Party Talks, but deadlock within the administration continued into October. Finally on October 9 and 10, meetings between the president, VP Cheney, Rice, and Hadley resolved the issue. North Korea would be taken off the list. Importantly, VP Cheney was not in attendance at the October 10 meeting.44 Ultimately, North Korea balked at the idea of more intrusive verification and the talks broke down in December 2008. Denuclearization of North Korea was left to the Obama administration.

CONCLUSION The standard interpretation of the Bush administration decision making process holds true for North Korea decision making during the first term, but deviates during the second term. In the three areas of comparison -- factional battles, their resolution, and the role of the president -- the difference between Iraq/counterterrorism policy making and North Korean policy making was in the resolution of those factional differences. The tale of ideological factional battles that go unresolved, the essence of the literature on Iraq and counterterrorism is evident, in the North Korea issue area as well. The case study above, however, suggests that the battles were not as intense as in the Iraq and counterterrorism case and are reflections of the real policy differences over the costs and benefits of arms control that have been fought within the Republican party and Republican administrations since the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks began in 1969.

In the case of North Korea, the disagreements were not resolved as completely as they had been for Iraq and counterterrorism policy; no faction was able to dominate policy making as the neoconservative/hegemonic realist faction did over Iraq and counterterrorism. While the neoconservative/hegemonic realist factions could not prevent negotiations from occurring (their favored option), from 2002 to 2008 they still had the power to shape U.S. negotiating strategy. Bush seemed to be of two minds. He allowed one faction to keep the negotiations going, but seemed to allow the other faction to guarantee that they would not succeed.

The nearly completed deals of 2005 and 2006 owe their progress to Bush’s interest in a comprehensive settlement of the larger issue of peace on the Korean peninsula. In Iraq and counterterrorism policy, the standard interpretation suggests that Bush allowed the

Beyond the Standard Interpretation of George W. Bush’s National Security Policy 141 neoconservative/hegemonic realist faction to dominate. In North Korea decision making, Bush did not delegate decision and implementation authority to any official until 2005-2006.

When Bush essentially handed Rice the keys to the policy machine, she was given the freedom to pursue a deal with North Korea. These were deliberate decisions by the president to shape the outcome by shaping policy making.

Two brief conclusions can be drawn. First, the president matters. When factional battles go unresolved, it is because the president is unwilling or unable to settle them or because he believes that these battles serve the administration well. In this case, Bush wanted the debate to continue. Second, implementation authority matters. Bush had sided with Rice’s view of the situation, and he had rewarded her with freedom to act. Her role as secretary of state and her strong relationship with the president gave her advantages no other adviser could match.

The policy was in her hands and negotiations continued. Opponents of the policy could only fight over the details. If the Department of Defense was able to push the State Department out of Iraq policy once the decision was made to go to war, it was partly because implementation authority grants an organization more control over policy. In the same light, once the administration had committed itself to negotiations, even North Korea’s nuclear test could not derail the State Department’s hold over the direction of policy.

ENDNOTES 1 2

3

4

5

6

7

8 9

10

Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay. America Unbound (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2005).

These battles were the next round in the continuing the intra-republican battle between Nixonian realists and Reagan conservatives that had been going on since détente. See James Mann. The Rise of the Vulcans (NY: Penguin Books, 2004); Brian Schmidt and Michael Williams. “The Bush Doctrine and the Iraq War.” Security Studies vol. 17 (2008), pp. 191-220; and Jesus Velasco. Neoconservatives in US Foreign Policy under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010).

For example, see Joel Goldstein. “Cheney, Vice Presidential Power, and the War on Terror.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 40, number 1 (March 2010), 102-139); Barton Gellman. Angler (NY: Penguin Books, 2008); Bob Woodward. Bush at War (NY: Simon and Shuster, 2003); and Bob Woodward. Plan of Attack (NY: Simon and Shuster, 2004).

Peter Rodman. Presidential Command (NY: Knopf, 2009), pp. 233, 248-254; and John Burke. Honest Broker (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009), pp. 238-277.

GW Bush Administration. “National Security Presidential Directive 1, Organization of the National Security Council System.”

February 13, 2001, (NSPD-1).

Federation of American Scientists. http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-1.htm.

John Burke. “Condoleezza Rice as Honest Broker.” Presidential Studies Quarterly vol. 35, (September 2005), p.

570; Glenn Kessler. The Confidante (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007); and Scott McClellan. What Happened (NY: Public Affairs, 2008), pp. 145-6 and 243.

George W. Bush. Decision Points (New York: Crown, 2010), pp. 87-88; Condoleezza Rice. No Higher Honor (NY: Crown, 2011), pp. 16-22; NSPD-1; Gellman. Angler, 54; Charles Pritchard. Failed Diplomacy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2007), p. 49; and Dick Cheney. In My Time (NY: Threshold, 2011).

Daalder and Lindsay. America Unbound.

Bob Woodward. Bush at War (New York: Simon and Shuster, 2002); James Fallows. “Blind into Baghdad.” The Atlantic vol. 293 (January-February 2004), pp. 52-74; David Phillips. Losing Iraq (NY: Basic Books, 2009); James Pfiffner. “Decision Making in the Bush White House. Presidential Studies Quarterly 39, number 2 (June 2009), pp. 374-381.

The AF essentially asked North Korea to give up its nuclear program in exchange for nuclear energy assistance.

For the text of the Agreed Framework, see “US/DPRK Agreed Framework,” October 21, 1994. Nuclear Threat Initiative, http://www.nti.org/treaties-and-regimes/us-dprk-agreed-framework/ .

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Rice, No Higher Honor, pp. 158-159; Karen DeYoung, Soldier (NY: Vintage, 2006), p. 473; John Bolton.

Surrender is Not an Option (NY: Simon and Shuster, 2007), p. 105; and Pritchard. Failed Diplomacy, p. 46.

Rice. No Higher Honor, pp. 33 and 158; Pritchard. Failed Diplomacy, pp. 48-49 and 53-55; Michael Mazarr.

“The Long Road to Pyongyang,” Foreign Affairs vol. 86 (September-October 2007), pp. 77-79; Bolton, Surrender is Not an Option, pp. 102-3; Gellman. Angler, p. 374; Donald Rumsfeld. Known and Unknown (NY: Sentinel/Penguin, 2011), pp. 641-642.

Rice identifies the meeting as a PC meeting without the president’s attendance, but Bush claims it was an NSC meeting that he led. Bush. Decision Points, pp. 90 and 423; Rice, No Higher Honor, p. 35.

Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy, pp. 4-6; Mazarr, “The Long Road to Pyongyang,” p. 81.

Rice. No Higher Honor, p. 159.

George W. Bush. Address before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union, January 29, 2002, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PPP-2002-book1/pdf/PPP-2002-book1-doc-pg129-3.pdf; Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy, p. 9; Mazarr, “The Long Road to Pyongyang,” pp. 82-84; and Rice. No Higher Honor, pp. 159-60.

Conceptually the deal is interesting in that it asks North Korea to do things the US wants it to do in exchange for the opportunity to do other things the US wants it to do.

Rice. No Higher Honor, pp. 160-61.

Bolton. Surrender is Not an Option, p. 113; Rice. No Higher Honor, pp. 161-2.

See Gary Samore. “The North Korea Nuclear Crisis.” Survival vol. 45 (Spring 2003), pp. 7-24; and James Laney and Joseph Shaplen. “How to Deal with North Korea.” Foreign Affairs vol. 82 (March/April 2003), pp. 17-18. A useful debate over whether this amounted to a violation of the AF is found in the following: Selig Harrison. “Did North Korea Cheat?” Foreign Affairs vol. 84 (January/February 2005), pp. 99-110; and Mitchell B. Reiss and Robert Gallucci. “Red Handed: The Truth about North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program.” Foreign Affairs vol 84 (March/April 2005), pp. 142-145.

Bolton. Surrender is Not an Option, p. 115; David Sanger. “North Korea says it has a Program on Nuclear Arms.” New York Times, October 17, 2002. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/17/world/north-korea-says-it-hasa-program-on-nuclear-arms.html .

Rice. No Higher Honor, pp. 162-3 and Bush. Decision Points, pp. 423-4.

Rice. No Higher Honor, p. 163; and Bush. Decision Points, p. 424.

Mazarr. “The Long Road to Pyongyang,” p. 86; DeYoung. Soldier, pp. 474-5. Pritchard felt that Powell had been given control of North Korea policy in January 2003. Pritchard. Failed Diplomacy, pp. 55-56. On Japanese and South Korean policy see Yoichi Funabashi. The Peninsular Question (Brookings, 2007), pp. 1-91 and 197261.

DeYoung. Soldier, p. 475.

Christopher Hill. Outpost (NY: Simon and Shuster, 2014), pp.197-199.

Rice. No Higher Honor, p. 14; Robert Draper. Dead Certain (NY: Free Press, 2007), p. 284; Burke.

“Condoleezza Rice as Honest Broker.”

Kessler. The Confidante, pp. 71-2.

Rice. No Higher Honor, pp. 347-9 and 524; Gellman. Angler, p. 373. In his memoirs, Bush confirmed that he was not always certain that State was “on board” with his basic ideas about the world. Bush. Decision Points, p.

90.

On these negotiations see Hill. Outpost, pp. 206-262.

Kessler. The Confidante, pp. 76 and 80-81; and Rice. No Higher Honor, pp. 400-1.

“Full Text: N Korea nuclear agreement.” BBC News, September 19, 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asiapacific/4259176.stm.

“Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill’s Statement at the Closing Plenary of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party Talks September 19, 2005.” US State Department Archive. http://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ prs/ps/2005/53499.htm; and Hill. Outpost, pp. 239-240.

Kessler. The Confidante, p. 84.

“Treasury Designates Banco Delta Asia as Primary Money Laundering Concern under USA PATRIOT Act,” September 15, 2005, US Department of the Treasury. http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/pressreleases/Pages/js2720.aspx. See also Funabashi. The Peninsular Question, pp. 410-419; Kessler. The Confidante, pp. 78-85; and Hill. Outpost, pp. 241-261.

Victor Cha. The Impossible State (New York: Harper Collins, 2013), pp. 264-265.

Gellman. Angler, p. 373; Woodward. Bush at War, pp. 339-340; and Rice. No Higher Honor, pp. 524-6.

Funabashi. The Peninsular Question, pp. 418-9.

Beyond the Standard Interpretation of George W. Bush’s National Security Policy 143 38

39

40 41 42

43 44

UN Security Council. “Resolution 1718 (2006),” http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp? symbol=S/RES/1718(2006).

On China’s reaction to the test see Scott Snyder, “Response to North Korea’s Nuclear Test,” The Washington Quarterly vol. 30 (Autumn 2007), pp. 33-43; Cha. The Impossible State, pp. 328-334.

Rice. No Higher Honor, p. 527.

Mazarr. “The Long Road to Pyongygang,” pp. 90-91.

Once the US Treasury began the legal process of unfreezing the assets, Hill went directly to Pyongyang. The negotiations continued through 2007. They were supervised by an interagency committee run by Hadley and included participation of Paul Haenke of the NSC staff. Rice. No Higher Honor, pp. 570-71 and 706.

Cheney. In My Time, pp. 484-6; and Rice. No Higher Honor, p. 707.

Cheney. In My Time, pp. 486-7; and Rice. No Higher Honor, p. 711. Why Cheney did not attend the meeting is unclear. He was, however, exasperated with the policy at this point, arguing that the State Department had forgotten the real goal of policy – denuclearization of North Korea – and instead seemed to be acting on a belief that the goal of the policy was to secure some type of agreement. He saw Reykjavik as the proper model for arms control: no deal is better than a bad deal. See Cheney. In My Time, p. 491.

In: The George W. Bush Presidency. Volume III Editors: Meena Bose and Paul Fritz

ISBN: 978-1-63485-783-3 © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 11

TRACING RHETORICAL SHIFTS IN US-SINO RELATIONS: GEORGE W. BUSH’S DISCOURSE REGARDING TAIWAN AND THE PRC Michelle Murray Yang University of Maryland, College Park, MD, US

ABSTRACT This chapter examines how George W. Bush’s foreign policy evolved during his presidency and illustrates the rhetorical complexities endemic to the United States’ relations with the PRC and Taiwan. It does so by rhetorically analyzing Bush’s presidential campaign rhetoric and discourse from his first term. Bush’s campaign rhetoric follows a familiar trajectory in US political discourse as it relies on negative portrayals of the PRC to criticize political challengers for being “soft” on China.

However, his discourse also alters this trajectory by balancing tough talk with calls for closer economic ties with the PRC. Bush achieves this balance through his synecdochical representations of the PRC and Taiwan, which simultaneously legitimize his altering of strategic ambiguity while upholding the one - China policy. However, the realities of governing in a post 9/11 world required Bush to seek closer ties with the PRC and his vocal pledge to defend Taiwan dissipated.

INTRODUCTION When asked during a 2000 GOP debate if he would pledge US military forces to defend Taiwan, George W. Bush elicited criticism when he asserted, “The United States must help Taiwan defend itself.”1 Two months into his presidency, Bush made headlines once again for his stance on US - Sino relations during an interview with Good Morning America. Asked whether the United States would use “the full force” of the American military in the event of an attack by the People’s Republic of China against Taiwan, President Bush resolutely agreed, vowing he would do “whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself.”2 However, later that day during an interview with CNN, the president gave a more measured answer,

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stating, “nothing has really changed” in the United States’ policy regarding Taiwan.3 In response, critics described the president’s seemingly contradictory statements as evidence of the administration’s “foreign policy missteps.”4 President Bush’s statements reflect the controversial and volatile nature of the United States’ relations with both the PRC and Taiwan. Since announcing full diplomatic relations with the PRC on December 15, 1978, US leaders have struggled to strike a delicate balance between maintaining diplomatic relations with the PRC and upholding US commitments to Taiwan. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, hereafter referred to as the TRA, helps guide this balance as it outlines the legal framework for the United States’ political, cultural, commercial, and military relations with Taiwan. As part of the TRA, the United States is obligated to help Taiwan protect itself against potential aggression from the PRC by providing “arms of a defensive character.”5 The act also outlines US leaders’ commitment “to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”6 Thus, the document stipulates that the United States’ defense of Taiwan is an available option but not an obligation. Three joint communiqués between the United States and the PRC also shape US relations with Taiwan: 1) the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, 2) the 1979 Normalization Communiqué, and 3) the August 17, 1982 US-China Joint Communiqué.

Within the communiqués, the United States acknowledges that there is one China, Taiwan is part of China, and the PRC is the legitimate government of China. In these documents, the United States also renounces any support for a “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan solution,” and urges that the conflict be peacefully resolved. While these agreements do not stipulate that the United States will protect Taiwan in the event of an attack by the PRC, previous presidential administrations, including President George H.W. Bush’s administration, have proceeded with a policy of “strategic ambiguity”—neither confirming nor denying that the United States would interfere in such a scenario. This well established precedent made George W. Bush’s comments during the 2000 US presidential campaign and in the early months of his presidency even more striking as he pledged to grant greater support for Taiwan’s military defense.

Examining President George W. Bush’s discourse regarding strategic ambiguity lends insight into the complicated nature of the United States’ relationships with the PRC and Taiwan, and it helps illustrate how Bush’s foreign policy evolved during his presidency.

Upon entering office, President Bush aimed to counter China’s rising military and economic power. Believing President Clinton had jeopardized US security interests in Asia by privileging engagement with China over US allies such as Japan, Bush sought to re-align US foreign policy.7 In order to contain a rising China, the Bush administration bolstered ties with Japan and emphasized Taiwan’s importance to US foreign policy.8 Wary of China’s military and economic ambitions and frustrated by its leaders’ refusal to adopt Western democratic values, President Bush labeled China a “strategic competitor” during the 2000 US presidential campaign.9 However, this designation did not last long. After the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Bush administration radically altered its foreign policy to address the threat of terrorism. Building a global coalition to combat terrorism necessitated closer ties with the PRC. As a result, President Bush’s foreign policy evolved to privilege the United States’ relationship with the PRC over its ties to Taiwan.

This project undertakes a rhetorical analysis of President Bush’s discourse concerning US foreign policy involving Taiwan and the PRC. A rhetorical approach provides a useful avenue

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of analysis as all international relations are demarcated, shaped, and imbued with meaning by the rhetorical discourse that define these relationships, and the United States’ relationship with Taiwan is no exception. I argue Bush’s presidential campaign rhetoric follows a trajectory typical of previous presidential candidates as it relies on negative portrayals of the PRC to charge the political opposition with being too “soft” on China. However, Bush’s campaign discourse is unique in the way it balances the need to issue tough talk on China with justifying closer economic ties with the PRC. I assert that Bush rhetorically accomplishes this difficult balance through his synecdochical representations of the PRC and Taiwan, which simultaneously legitimize Bush’s altering of strategic ambiguity while upholding the United States’ commitment to the one - China policy. However, the complex realities of governing in a post 9/11 world necessitated a shift in Bush’s rhetorical treatment of strategic ambiguity in his presidency. As a result, his vocal pledge to defend Taiwan dissipated. By examining Bush’s rhetorical characterizations of Taiwan and the PRC in his campaign discourse as well as in his presidential rhetoric during his first term, this study illustrates the rhetorical intricacies endemic to establishing a careful balance in the United States’ relations with both powers.

This study will begin by examining the historical precedent of anti - PRC appeals in US presidential campaign discourse. It will then proceed with an analysis of Bush’s 2000 campaign rhetoric. This will be followed by an examination of how Bush’s treatment of strategic ambiguity evolved during his first presidential term. Finally, this study will conclude by assessing the implications of synecdochical representations of US - Sino relations.

GETTING “TOUGH” ON CHINA: ANTI - PRC APPEALS IN US PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN DISCOURSE In US presidential campaign discourse, anti - PRC appeals and critiques of incumbents for not being “tougher” on China have become commonplace. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all espoused heated rhetoric on China during their respective campaigns.10 Criticizing the incumbent’s China policy enables presidential candidates to accomplish two things. First, it differentiates them from the current presidential administration. Second, it allows presidential candidates to align themselves with democratic values while associating their challengers with the PRC. By critiquing the president for not taking a more aggressive approach in US - Sino relations, presidential candidates align the current presidential administration with the worst aspects of the PRC and what they deem to be the moral failings of communism. For example, during the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton promised not to “coddle tyrants, from Baghdad to Beijing” as he claimed President George H.W. Bush had done.11 In statements regarding President Bush’s China policy, the Clinton campaign described Chinese officials as the “butchers of Beijing.”12 Through such criticism, the president and his political party are portrayed as failing to uphold democratic values and, as a result, as undeserving of another term in office.

This association of the political challenger with safeguarding US values and the incumbent with the PRC relies on synecdochical representations of both nations. According to Kenneth Burke, synecdoche is defined as “part for the whole, whole for the part, container

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for the contained, sign for the thing signified.”13 Burke notes how the word “representation” can serve as a substitution for synecdoche. He illustrates this substitution by explaining how representative government functions as a “synecdochic form” in which “some part of the social body (either traditionally established, or elected, or coming into authority by revolution) is held to be ‘representative’ of the society as a whole.”14 Burke concedes that challenges attend in determining what part of society is made representative of the whole.

Despite such limitations, Burke asserts that synecdochic representation is virtually unavoidable as “any act of representation automatically implies a synecdochic relationship (insofar as the act is, or is held to be, ‘truly representative’).”15 Within US presidential campaign rhetoric, the PRC is typically characterized as a synecdoche for communism and the converse of Western democratic values. Such representations encompass a binary construction of US - Sino relations in which the United States symbolizes Western democratic ideals while the PRC represents their antithesis. Such designations draw from and evoke Cold War rhetorical iterations of the ideological contest between democratic “free” nations and communist “foes.”16 Criticizing incumbents for not taking a more aggressive approach to US - Sino relations allows presidential hopefuls to distance themselves from the PRC and, as a result, communist ideology as they characterize themselves as upholding Western democratic ideals. The degree to which a specific democratic ideal such as freedom, free markets, and/or human rights is emphasized in the synecdochical representation of the PRC is determined, in part, by the demands of the historical and political contexts of the time period. In the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Clinton lambasted President George H.W. Bush’s continued ties with the “butchers of Beijing” and advocated for linking China’s most - favored nation trade status with its human rights record. In the midst of mounting US foreign owned debt, Republican challenger Mitt Romney characterized the PRC as a duplicitous foe guided by a flawed ideology, and he emphasized the need to protect the US economy from unfair Chinese trade practices such as “predatory pricing,” which was “killing American jobs.”17 Within American presidential campaign rhetoric, Taiwan has periodically played a significant role in synecdochical representations of the United States and the PRC. During the 1980 presidential campaign, Republicans cast Taiwan as an extension of the United States and its values in their synecdochical representations of US - Sino relations. In the Republican primary, both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush criticized President Carter’s decision to sever formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan in order to normalize diplomatic relations with the PRC.18 Reagan continued lambasting Carter for “abandoning” Taiwan during the presidential campaign. Pledging, “There will be no more abandonment of friends and allies by the United States of America,” Reagan made a series of remarks in which he seemed to support re-establishing official relations with Taiwan.19 However, after a number of conflicting statements regarding Taiwan’s status issued by himself and his running mate George H.W. Bush, Reagan ultimately backed down from these claims by August 1980.20 During a speech in Los Angeles on August 25, 1980, he highlighted the importance of the United States’ relationship with the PRC while clarifying that US “relations with Taiwan will develop in accordance with the law of our land, the Taiwan Relations Act.”21 As president, Reagan actually established closer ties with the PRC by granting China eligibility for the Foreign Military Sales program, which allowed China to purchase torpedoes and helicopters from US defense contractors. He also fostered collaboration between both nations’ military officials on issues of mutual concern such as the war in Afghanistan.22 Despite their withering

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criticism of Carter during the presidential campaign, neither Reagan nor Bush pursued reestablishing official diplomatic relations with Taiwan once in office.

Pledging to undertake a more aggressive approach to US - Sino relations on the campaign trail only to reverse course once assuming the presidency is a re-occurring pattern in US presidential politics. Election victors quickly learn that synecdochical representations are better suited to the vagaries of hypothetical governing during the campaign rather than the realities of maintaining the United States’ relations with the PRC and Taiwan. While Clinton excoriated Bush’s renewal of China’s most favored nation’s trade status during the 1992 campaign, he ultimately abandoned efforts to link China’s trading status to its human rights record as president. During Clinton’s second term, he cultivated a “strategic partnership” between the United States and China, including hosting Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s 1997 visit to Washington, D.C., which marked the first time in twelve years a Chinese head of state made an official visit to the United States.23 This cyclical rhetorical pattern can be traced to the present day. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama urged tougher action against China regarding its violations of intellectual property rights, describing President George W. Bush as a “patsy” for his handling of unfair Chinese trade practices.24 Obama also supported declaring China a currency manipulator.25 During the 2012 presidential campaign, President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney competed over who would be “tougher” on China.26 While Romney advocated for designating China a currency manipulator and criticized Obama for being too “soft” in US - Sino relations, President Obama repeatedly cited the number of trade cases his administration brought against the PRC as evidence of his firm handling of US - Sino relations.27 However, as president, Obama has never officially labeled China a currency manipulator.

Representations of Taiwan and the PRC in US presidential campaign discourse highlight the benefits and limitations of synecdochical representations as well as the unique challenges facing presidential challengers on the campaign trail and once they assume office. This study examines the following questions: How does President Bush’s campaign discourse both adhere to and diverge from the rhetorical precedent set by previous presidential candidates?

How do synecdochical representations of the PRC and Taiwan function in Bush’s campaign rhetoric, and how does his rhetorical treatment of strategic ambiguity evolve in his presidential discourse? What can Bush’s discourse tell us about the advantages and limitations of synecdochical representations of US - Sino relations in American political discourse?

SYNECDOCHICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF TAIWAN AND THE PRC IN GEORGE W. BUSH’S 2000 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN DISCOURSE Throughout the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush adhered to the historical precedent of critiquing the incumbent’s policies regarding US - Sino relations and constructing the PRC as a synecdoche for the perils of communism. Bush harangued the Clinton administration and his political challenger Al Gore for being “inconsistent” in their dealings with the PRC and Taiwan.28 Criticizing President Clinton for labeling Chinese leaders as “the butchers of Beijing” only to later declare China a “strategic partner,” Bush stated, “China is a competitor, not a strategic partner. We must deal with China without ill-will – but without illusions.”29

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While supporting permanent trading rights for China and China’s admittance to the WTO, Bush distinguished himself from Democrats by pledging that the United States’ relationship with the PRC was “going to change from one of strategic partner to one of competitor.”30 Bush repeated this claim throughout the campaign.31 Casting the PRC as a “competitor” rather than a “partner” enabled Bush to critique the Clinton administration’s handling of US Sino relations as ineffective and differentiate himself from such policies. Simultaneously, such criticism also allowed Bush to charge his political challenger with being too “soft” on the PRC. Bush supported this rhetorical shift from partner to competitor by portraying communism as a morally bankrupt ideology. Like presidential challengers before him, Bush constructed the PRC as a synecdochical representation of the ruthlessness of communism. During a November 19, 1999 speech on foreign affairs given at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Bush described China’s policies as “alarming abroad and appalling at home.”32 He excoriated the Chinese government as “an enemy of religious freedom and a sponsor of forced abortion – policies without reason and without mercy.”33 On the campaign trail, Bush reiterated that China “is not a free society,” describing its government as being “ruthless towards its own people.”34 Bush asserted that if he were elected president, “China will know that America’s values are always part of America’s agenda. Our advocacy of human freedom is not a formality of diplomacy,” he warned, rather, “it is a fundamental commitment of our country.”35 Haranguing the Chinese government for its human rights violations and describing communism as assaulting personal freedoms enabled Bush to construct US democracy and Chinese communism as polar opposites. While the United States is committed to safeguarding and spreading Western democratic ideals through its advocacy for human freedom, PRC leaders deny their peoples these very freedoms. Bush’s depiction of the PRC reaffirms the binary construction of the United States as a synecdoche for democracy and the PRC as a synecdoche for the moral failings of communism, which has historically characterized US presidential campaign discourse.

In Bush’s campaign rhetoric, Taiwan became a powerful symbol in this ideological struggle between US democracy and Chinese communism as he depicted the island as a synecdoche for US democratic ideals. While he portrayed the PRC as a symbol of the abhorrent nature of communism, Bush described Taiwan as representing a “free people” whom the United States would defend from possible aggression by the PRC. Although Bush reaffirmed his support for the TRA by stating that the United States does “not deny there is one China,” he also warned, “we deny the right of Beijing to impose their rule on a free people.”36 When asked during the GOP debate in Los Angeles whether he would commit US forces to Taiwan’s defense in order to honor this commitment, Bush answered “no,” elaborating that if the PRC violated the one - China policy and used force, “the United States must help Taiwan defend itself.”37 Trying to maintain a level of ambiguity, Bush declared, “The Chinese can figure out what that means, but that’s going to mean a resolute stand on my part.”38 Throughout the 2000 campaign, Bush repeated that the United States would help defend Taiwan against PRC aggression.39 In making this pledge, Bush altered the United States’ long - standing policy of strategic ambiguity. By proclaiming that the United States would aid in Taiwan’s defense, Bush reduced the ambiguity of the policy by making what is only one possibility, that the United States will help protect Taiwan beyond the provision of arms, a certainty. Depicting Taiwan as a synecdoche for democracy helped Bush justify this shift in strategic ambiguity. The

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defense of Taiwan in the event of provocation from the PRC represented the defense of a “free people” and the safeguarding of Western democratic principles. In being a vocal proponent of Taiwan’s defense, Bush affirmed his commitment to democratic ideals.

While Bush adhered to the trajectory typical of presidential campaign discourse by relying on negative conceptualizations of the PRC, charging political challengers with being too lenient on China, and casting himself as upholding democratic values, he also deviated from this form. In addition to evoking and reaffirming binary conceptualizations of US democracy and PRC communism, Bush’s synecdochical representations of Taiwan and the PRC simultaneously provided support for bolstering US economic ties with the PRC. One way in which Bush accomplished this was through portraying Taiwan as an example of successfully spreading democracy through trade relations. He credited the one - China policy for Taiwan’s economic gains and burgeoning democracy. Arguing that the one - China policy enabled “Taiwan to develop into a market - oriented economy and to a flourishing democracy,” Bush stated that the United States’ role in the conflict between the PRC and Taiwan was “to use our prestige in the world to make sure the one - China policy remains intact.”40 By crediting Taiwan’s economic and democratic success to the one - China policy, Bush espoused support for the continuation of the policy and the status quo in the United States’ relations with the PRC and with Taiwan. Despite Bush’s vocal support for Taiwan’s defense, he continuously voiced his support for the TRA during the campaign as well as during both of his presidential terms.41 When asked what he would do as president if Taiwan declared independence and whether or not he would discourage it from doing so, Bush reaffirmed the importance of upholding the one - China policy in order to ensure a “peaceful resolution of the dispute between China and Taiwan.”42 In so doing, he illustrated his continued commitment to safeguarding US democratic ideals and deflected criticism from opponents who claimed he was dramatically altering long - standing US policy regarding Taiwan.

Citing Taiwan as an exemplar of how trade relations can help foster democratic development, Bush argued that increased economic engagement with the PRC would promote the nation’s eventual democratization. It was important that Bush reassure voters he would not sacrifice US ideals because he was a vocal proponent of increasing trade relations between the United States and China, and he supported President Clinton’s efforts to grant China normal trading rights. However, while Bush promised to treat the PRC as a “competitor” rather than a “partner” if elected, he was careful to clarify that the PRC was not an “enemy.” In the Phoenix GOP debate, he cautioned, “If we make China an enemy, they’ll end up being an enemy.”43 Although he positioned the United States and China as competitors, he was quick to acknowledge, “Competitors can find areas of agreement such as in trade.”44 Arguing that increased trade relations would result in more freedom for the Chinese people, he explained, “If we trade with China and trade with the entrepreneurial class and give people a breath of freedom, give them a taste of freedom, I think you’ll be amazed … at how soon democracy will come.”45 Throughout the campaign Bush repeatedly asserted that the United States’ “greatest export is freedom” and that trade with China would lead to increased freedoms there.46 In his memoir Decision Points, Bush explained how he viewed “trade as a tool to promote the freedom agenda” in the PRC.47 The president repeated his belief that “over time, the freedom inherent in the market would lead people to demand liberty in the public square.48 By connecting the PRC’s democratization with closer economic

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relations with the United States, Bush aligned increased trade relations with advocating for human freedoms, thereby countering potential criticism of this plan as sacrificing US ideals.

Bush’s synecdochical representation of the PRC as representing the outdated ideology of communism helped strengthen his argument that increased trade relations would lead to the PRC’s eventual democratization. In articulating the oppressive nature of communist rule in the PRC, Bush depicted communism as an inherently inferior and harmful ideology that would ultimately be relegated to the dustbin of history. According to Bush, the American belief in the importance of advancing human freedom “is the source of our confidence that communism, in every form, has seen its day.”49 Portraying communism’s ultimate demise as a foregone conclusion enabled Bush to bolster his claims that closer economic ties between the nations would hasten the PRC’s democratic transformation. Connecting Taiwan’s burgeoning democracy to its flourishing economy allowed Bush to cite the island as a model for what the PRC’s future might hold.

Constructing Taiwan as a model of democratic development while simultaneously pledging that the United States would defend Taiwan helped Bush legitimize his plan to increase trade relations with the PRC to American voters. Stating that US intervention was a certainty in the event of the PRC’s use of force against Taiwan demonstrated that Bush would be tough on China. Even though he advocated for closer economic engagement between the United States and the PRC, he would not sacrifice US allies such as Taiwan to bring such aims to fruition. Claiming that increased trade relations with the PRC would help spread democracy to the nation helped justify Bush’s economic plans while simultaneously enabling him to assert that he was not sacrificing US democratic ideals but was instead strengthening them. By repeatedly stating that he supported the one - China policy, urging both the PRC and Taiwan to come to a peaceful resolution, and not endorsing Taiwanese independence, Bush demonstrated his commitment to and support of the fundamental principles and policies that have guided the United States’ relations with both the PRC and Taiwan. In short, while he altered the US policy of strategic ambiguity, Bush simultaneously pledged to maintain the status quo in US policy regarding Taiwan relations.

SHIFTS IN STRATEGIC AMBIGUITY: GEORGE W. BUSH’S PRESIDENTIAL DISCOURSE A little over two months into his presidency, President Bush appeared to completely jettison the United States’ policy of strategic ambiguity during an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America. When asked whether the United States was obligated to defend Taiwan “with the full force of American military” if the PRC attacked the island, the president responded in the affirmative, promising to do “whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself.”50 By publicly committing the full US military to Taiwan’s defense, President Bush left no doubt that the United States would intervene in response to the PRC’s use of force against Taiwan, thereby negating the ambiguous nature of strategic ambiguity entirely.

However, the president took a more moderate stance during an interview with CNN later that day. Although Bush reiterated his belief that he would “do what it takes to help Taiwan defend itself,” he affirmed the United States’ support for the one - China policy and the nation’s expectation that any disputes between Taiwan and the PRC would “be resolved

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peacefully.”51 Characterizing his statements as representing a continuation of rather than a deviation from US policy, Bush explained, “Nothing has really changed in policy, as far as I’m concerned. This is what other presidents have said, and I will continue to say so.”52 After the interviews aired, China experts voiced their concerns, believing the president’s statements marked a dramatic change in US foreign policy regarding Taiwan. Jerome Cohen, a Chinese law expert, called the president’s remarks “startling,” warning that if Bush’s statements were taken literally, they “went beyond the Taiwan Relations Act.”53 Political opponents were also critical of the president’s remarks. Senator John Kerry accused President Bush of abandoning the policy of strategic ambiguity with “absolutely no consultation with members of Congress or with our allies in the region.”54 However, Bush was not the first US politician to alter the US policy of strategic ambiguity. During the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, President Clinton ordered “the largest naval deployment to East Asia since the Vietnam War” when he sent “two carrier battle groups to patrol the waters around Taiwan.”55 The Clinton administration continued to provide military equipment to Taiwan despite the 1982 communiqué in which the United States resolved to limit arms sales. President Clinton also allowed Taiwanese leaders to make transit stopovers in the United States, enabled senior US officials to visit Taiwan, and asserted that any solution to the Taiwan controversy must have the support of the Taiwanese people.

Scholar Bruce Dickson surmises, “The policy of strategic ambiguity became less ambiguous under the Clinton and Bush presidential administrations.”56 In the midst of George W. Bush’s interview controversy, administration officials claimed that the president’s statements reflected a continuation of US foreign policy. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer stated, “The president is pleased to have said what he said and to have taken the stand that he took” before later adding “nothing in the act precludes the president from saying that the US would do whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself.”57 National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice echoed this sentiment, explaining, “The Taiwan Relations Act makes very clear that the US has an obligation that Taiwan’s peaceful way of life is not upset by force. What he said clearly is how seriously and resolutely he takes this obligation.”58 Spokesman Scott McClellan emphasized the continuity of Bush’s policy by referring to the March 2000 GOP presidential debate and asserting, “It’s the same policy, the same thing he said in the debate.”59 In his memoir, Bush characterized his approach to relations with Taiwan and the PRC as one marked by consistency. “Every time I met with a Chinese leader,” Bush explained, “I confirmed that America’s longstanding ‘one China’ policy would not change. I also made clear that I opposed any unilateral change to the status quo, including a declaration of independence by Taiwan or military action by China.”60 While Sinologists and administration officials disagreed over whether President Bush’s remarks signaled the end of strategic ambiguity, there could be no doubt that the president strengthened the United States’ relationship with Taiwan during the early months of his first term. In April 2001, President Bush approved increased arms sales to Taiwan, which marked the second most expensive arms sale to the island. The arms agreement was second only to President George H.W. Bush’s 1992 deal, which was worth $5.9 billion.61 While China opposes any arms sales to Taiwan by the United States, in 2001 PRC leaders specifically cited the Patriot 3 missiles and submarines as weapons that violated the 1982 Shanghai II communiqué’s provision that the quality and quantity of US arms sales to Taiwan would decrease.62 President George W. Bush increased military cooperation between the United States and Taiwan through exchanges of Taiwanese and US military officials and by signing

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the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2003, which authorized the treatment of Taiwan as a non - NATO ally in circumstances concerning the transfer of defense services.

The Bush administration also jettisoned President Clinton’s “Three No’s Policy,” which stipulated that the United States would not espouse support for Taiwanese independence, a one China/one Taiwan policy, a two Chinas policy, or the admittance of Taiwan in any association that required statehood.63 These developments severely strained the United States’ relationship with the PRC. As President Bush pursued closer ties with Taiwan, the United States’ relationship with the PRC became increasingly tense. By mid 2001, US - Sino relations had severely declined.

In early April 2001, a US Navy EP-3E reconnaissance plane and a Chinese Air Force F-8 jet fighter collided near Hainan Island. As a result of the collision, the Chinese pilot died and American crewmembers were detained and interrogated by PRC officials. To convey the Bush administration’s frustration over PRC leaders’ handling of the crash, US military contacts with the PRC were reduced in June 2001.

However, international crises soon required the re-establishment of productive relations between the United States and the PRC. In the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks, relations between the United States and the PRC improved as President Bush worked to establish an international coalition to combat the war on terror. After US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s visit to Beijing in July 2001, the Bush administration ceased describing the PRC as a “strategic competitor.”64 Instead, administration officials, including President Bush, spoke of the importance of pursuing a relationship based on “constructive cooperation” with the PRC.65 In 2002, high level contacts between the nations resumed. By 2003, efforts to denuclearize North Korea also necessitated closer ties between the United States and the PRC. In turn, the United States’ relationship with Taiwan became increasingly complicated due to the vehemently anti - PRC rhetoric of Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian. In the period leading up to Taiwan’s 2004 presidential election, Chen espoused increasingly aggressive rhetoric and supported antagonistic measures including a public referendum to denounce the PRC’s missile system as well as its refusal to repudiate military threats against Taiwan.

Further inflaming tensions, Chen also supported the creation of a new national constitution, which Beijing leaders viewed as an ominous sign that a permanent severing of ties between Taiwan and the PRC was imminent.

At home and abroad, Bush emphasized that there should be no provocation between Taiwan and the PRC, and he re-affirmed the United States’ commitment to the TRA.66 During President Bush’s February 2002 meetings with PRC President Jiang Zemin, he declared that the United States’ policy regarding Taiwan had “not changed over the years,” stating that “the United States will continue to support the Taiwan Relations Act.”67 Reasserting that the United States was dedicated to a “peaceful settlement of this issue,” Bush urged that “there be no provocation.”68 However, in remarks to the press during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to the White House in 2003, President Bush hinted at frustration over Chen’s escalating rhetoric as he backtracked from his earlier support of Taiwan’s military defense and pointedly chided Taiwan’s president for his bombastic rhetoric and antagonistic policies. Bush characterized the United States’ relationship with Taiwan as consistent as it continued to be based upon the premise of the one - China policy and guided by the three communiqués and the TRA.69 The president voiced his opposition to “any unilateral decision by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo” and cautioned, “the comments and actions made by the

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leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo, which we oppose.”70 What is most noteworthy about these remarks is what President Bush did not say. In both sets of remarks, gone is the vocal pledge to provide for Taiwan’s defense that permeated Bush’s campaign rhetoric and discourse from the first months of his presidency. This is demonstrated in Bush’s 2003 remarks when he not only refrained from reiterating his earlier pledge to provide for Taiwan’s defense, he also did not refer to Taiwanese President Chen by name. These omissions are significant as they signaled a rhetorical shift in which Taiwan transformed from being a lauded synecdoche of democracy during the presidential campaign to a background actor in US foreign policy. The United States’ need for PRC support on the denuclearization of North Korea and for the war on terror took precedence over Taiwan’s defense. President Chen’s provocative demands further augmented the complexity of the United States’ position, necessitating that Bush dilute the vocal defense pledges as Taiwan’s president sought bold reforms that could spark armed conflict with the PRC. To be sure, President Bush did not completely negate the possibility of providing for Taiwan’s defense as he continued to assert that the United States abided by the TRA. However, his blatant pledge to “do whatever was necessary,” including commit the full force of the US military, was noticeably absent from his discourse.

CONCLUSION: LIMITATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF SYNECDOCHICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF US - SINO RELATIONS This study has illustrated how President Bush’s discourse both adhered to and diverged from the typical trajectory of presidential campaign rhetoric regarding China. Bush followed the historical pattern of criticizing incumbents and political challengers for not taking a more aggressive approach to US - Sino relations through his synecdochical representations of the PRC and Taiwan. Casting the PRC as representing the morally bankrupt nature of communism, portraying Taiwan as a synecdoche for democratic values, and altering the policy of strategic ambiguity, Bush depicted himself as a candidate who would be “tough” on the PRC and safeguard democratic ideals. However, Bush’s use of these synecdochical representations also diverged from the standard pattern of US presidential campaign discourse. By casting Taiwan as a model for how economic engagement can lead to the spread of democracy, he simultaneously used these synecdochical representations to justify his plan to increase US trade relations with the PRC. Bush’s divergence from the standard pattern of US presidential campaign discourse is rhetorically significant as it illustrates how anti - PRC appeals can be used to simultaneously affirm a candidate’s credentials to be “tough” on the PRC while also supporting closer US Sino relations. Of course, George W. Bush was not the first US political leader to link economic engagement with the PRC to its potential democratization.71 Rather, the significance of Bush’s rhetoric lies in how he effectively balanced the campaign demands of needing to take a firm approach to US - Sino relations with legitimizing his objective of fostering increased economic ties with the PRC. Bush’s presidential campaign discourse demonstrates how Taiwan and the policy of strategic ambiguity are powerful symbols that can be used to both critique the PRC and legitimize relations with it.

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Although Bush’s discourse exhibits important deviations from the discursive patterns of presidential contenders before him, it ultimately reifies the over-arching trajectory of anti PRC appeals. While presidential candidates critique incumbents for not taking a more aggressive approach to US - Sino relations and characterize the PRC as the antithesis of democratic ideals, such heated rhetoric typically cools after the election. Once the victor assumes office, synecdochical representations of the PRC as the antithesis of democratic ideals usually fade to the background as political realities necessitate continued, and more often than not, closer engagement between the United States and the PRC. The shift in Bush’s rhetorical treatment of strategic ambiguity from the campaign trail to the Oval Office is an exemplar of this phenomenon. Contextual factors and changing demands help explain this cycle. While negatively portraying the PRC and criticizing political opponents’ approaches to dealing with US - Sino relations have historically proved profitable for presidential candidates, presidents face very different demands and situational constraints. The deeply intertwined nature of the United States’ economic ties with the PRC, coupled with, in the case of President George W. Bush, the need to secure PRC leaders’ cooperation with complex international ventures such as the denuclearization of North Korea and the war on terror, require increased collaboration between the nations.

The evolution of President Bush’s discourse regarding the United States’ relationships with the PRC and Taiwan had significant implications for his presidency. By designating the PRC as a “strategic competitor,” rhetorically altering strategic ambiguity, and bolstering ties with Taiwan, President Bush initially signaled a markedly different approach to US - Sino relations that radically diverged from the Clinton administration’s policy of engagement.

However, this approach could not be sustained after the September 11th terrorist attacks. No longer able to focus military attention on the PRC and Taiwan, the United States needed the PRC’s support to create a global coalition to counter the terrorist threat.72 The rhetorical evolution of President Bush’s description of the PRC as a “strategic competitor” to describing US - Sino relations as being based upon “constructive cooperation” illustrates the significance of stable US - Sino relations. The aim of maintaining positive relations between the United States and the PRC would come to dominate the Bush administration’s foreign policy.

Additionally, President Bush’s free - trade policies with the PRC, countering of President Chen’s anti - PRC discourse, placement of a Uighur separatist organization on the terror watch list, and attendance at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics cultivated a favorable view of his presidential legacy within the PRC and further illustrate the importance placed upon maintaining positive US - Sino relations in his foreign policy.73 Additionally, this study demonstrates both the power and limitations of synecdochical representations of US - Sino relations in American political discourse. Synecdochical representations can be beneficial to political candidates as they simplify complex relationships and make complicated foreign relations more palatable for American voters.

Such representations can also powerfully fuse specific issues with ideological values.

However, synecdochic representations of the United States’ relationships with the PRC and Taiwan often result in portrayals that reduce the complexity and challenges of foreign relations to one - dimensional, static, polemical symbols. Although anti - China rhetoric resonates among a subset of US voters as candidates try to portray themselves as strong leaders who will not bend to the desires of foreign powers, it also compels voters to view the United States and the PRC as adversaries rather than partners. While forceful rhetoric may help in securing votes during campaign season, it can also legitimize Sinophobia and

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engender a distorted view of US - Sino relations. During the 2012 presidential campaign when President Obama and Mitt Romney repeatedly traded barbs over who would be “tougher” on the PRC, a Pew poll found that while fifty-three percent of voters believed the United States should work towards crafting a stronger relationship with China in March 2011, that percentage dropped to forty-two by October 2012.74 As economic and political relations between the United States and the PRC become increasingly important, it remains to be seen whether the cycle of anti - PRC appeals in US presidential campaign discourse will remain viable or if there will be a permanent shift in synecdochical representations of US - Sino relations.

ENDNOTES 1

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“CNN/Los Angeles Times Republican Presidential Debate Transcript,” CNN.com, March 2, 2000, (http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0003/02/se.06.html).

“Bush Vows Taiwan Support,” April 25, 2001, ABC News, (http://abcnews.go.com/US/ story?id=93471).

See “Bush: Taiwan Defense Pledge No Change in Policy,” April 25, 2001, CNN, (http: //edition.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/04/25/bush.taiwan.04/); and John Tkacik, Jr., “Stating America’s Case to China’s Hu Jintao: A Primer on US-China-Taiwan Policy,” April 26, 2002, The Heritage Foundation, (www.heritage.org/research/reports/2002/04/ a-primer-on-us-china-taiwan-policy#pgfId=1019155).

“Foreign Policy Missteps,” The Washington Post, May 4, 2001, p. A24.

“Taiwan Relations Act,” April 10, 1972, Council of Foreign Relations, (http://www.cfr. org/taiwan/taiwanrelations-act/p8454).

“Taiwan Relations Act,” April 10, 1972.

Qingguo Jia, “Partners or Competitors: A Choice to be Made,” In: George W. Bush and East Asia: A First Term Assessment, edited by Robert M. Hathaway and Wilson Lee (Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2005), p. 118.

Jiemian Yang, “The Bush Administration’s Taiwan Policy: Evolution and Trends,” American Foreign Policy Interests 24, no. 2 (2002), p. 148.

Jia, “Partners or Competitors,” p. 118.

Paul Haenle, “The China Factor in the US Presidential Election: Separating Rhetoric from Action,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 17, 2012, (http:// carnegieendowment.org/2012/10/17/china-s-rolein-US-presidential-election-separating -rhetoric-from-action/e1vz#8).

William J. Clinton, “Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National Convention in New York,” July 16, 1992. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, (www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid= 25958).

Robert Suettinger, Beyond Tiananmen: The Politics of US-China Relations, 1989-2000 (Brookings Institution Press, 2003), p. 471.

Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (University of California, 1969), pp. 507-8.

Burke, A Grammar of Motives, p. 508.

Burke, A Grammar of Motives, p. 508.

Martin J. Medhurst and others, eds., Cold War Rhetoric: Strategy, Metaphor, and Ideology (Michigan State University Press, 2012).

CNBC, “Transcript of ‘Your Money, Your Vote’ Republican Presidential Debate,” cnbc.com, November 9, 2011, (www.cnbc.com/id/45232734/page/3).

Haenle, “The China Factor in the US Presidential Election.”

Michele Kelemen, “Candidates Criticize China; Presidents Show Caution,” National Public Radio, September 10, 2012, (www.npr.org/2012/09/10/160880265/candidates-criticize-china-presidents-show-caution).

Steven Mosher, ed., The United States and the Republic of China: Democratic Friends, Strategic Allies, and Economic Partners (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1992), p. 134.

“Ronald Reagan on US Policy Toward Asia and the Pacific,” Press Release Los Angeles, August 25 1980, cited in Steven Mosher, ed., The United States and the Republic of China, p. 134.

Haenle, “The China Factor in the US Presidential Election.”

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Haenle, “The China Factor in the US Presidential Election.”

Kate Andersen Brower and Lisa Lerer, “China-Bashing as Campaign Rhetoric Binds Obama to Romney,” Bloomberg, June 13, 2012, (www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-04/china-bashing-binds-obama-to-romneywith-trade-imbalance-as-foil.html).

“Presidential Debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York,” October 15, 2008. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, (www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws /index.php?pid=84526).

For examples of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama competing over who would be tougher on China, see: Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on Fair Trade,” March 13, 2012, (www.whitehouse.gov/photos-andvideo/video/2012/03/13/president-obama-speaks-enforcing-traderights-china); Barack Obama, “Remarks at a Campaign Rally in Cincinnati, Ohio,” The American Presidency Project, September 17, 2012, (www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=102267); “Transcript And Audio: Second Presidential Debate,” National Public Radio, October 16, 2012, (www.npr.org/2012/ 10/16/163050988/transcript-obama-romney-2ndpresidential-debate); Federal News Service, “Transcript of the Third Presidential Debate,” National Public Radio, October 22, 2012, (www.npr.org/2012/10/22/163436694/transcript-3rd-obama-romney-presidentialdebate); and CBS News, “CBS News/National Journal’s GOP Debate,” cbsnews.com, November 13, 2011, (www.cbsnews.com/8301-505103_162-57323734/ cbs-news-nj-debate-transcript-part-1/?pageNum=11).

See Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address, January 24, 2012, (www. whitehouse.gov/the-pressoffice/2012/01/24/remarks-president-state-union-address); and Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on Fair Trade,” March 13, 2012, (www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2012/03/13/president-obamaspeaks-enforcing -trade-rights-china).

“Excerpts of George W. Bush’s Speech in Washington State,” The New York Times on the web, May 18, 2000, (http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/051800bush-text.html).

Governor George W. Bush, “A Distinctly American Internationalism,” Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, California, November 19, 1999, (www.mtholyoke. edu/acad/intrel/bush/wspeech.htm).

“CNN/Los Angeles Times Republican Presidential Debate Transcript,” CNN.com, March 2, 2000, (http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0003/02/se.06.html).

See Bush, “A Distinctly American Internationalism;” Presidential Candidates Debates: “Republican Presidential Candidates Debate in Phoenix, Arizona,” December 6, 1999. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, (www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=75089); Presidential Candidates Debates: “Republican Presidential Candidates Debate in Columbia, South Carolina,” February 15, 2000. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, (www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=105441); “CNN/Los Angeles Times Republican Presidential Debate Transcript,” CNN.com, March 2, 2000; and “Excerpts of George W. Bush’s Speech in Washington State.”

Bush, “A Distinctly American Internationalism.”

Bush, “A Distinctly American Internationalism.”

“Excerpts of George W. Bush’s Speech in Washington State.”

“Excerpts of George W. Bush’s Speech in Washington State.”

Bush, “A Distinctly American Internationalism.”

“CNN/Los Angeles Times Republican Presidential Debate Transcript,” CNN.com, March 2, 2000.

“CNN/Los Angeles Times Republican Presidential Debate Transcript,” CNN.com, March 2, 2000.

See Bush, “A Distinctly American Internationalism”; Presidential Candidates Debates: “Republican Presidential Candidates Debate in Phoenix, Arizona,” December 6, 1999; and “CNN/Los Angeles Times Republican Presidential Debate Transcript,” CNN.com, March 2, 2000.

“CNN/Los Angeles Times Republican Presidential Debate Transcript,” CNN.com, March 2, 2000.

For statements made by George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign in which he espoused his support for retaining the status quo in the United States’ relationship with Taiwan, see Bush, “A Distinctly American Internationalism”; Presidential Candidates Debates: “Republican Presidential Candidates Debate in Phoenix, Arizona,” December 6, 1999; and “CNN/Los Angeles Times Republican Presidential Debate Transcript,” CNN.com, March 2, 2000. During his presidency, President Bush also expressed his support for maintaining the Taiwan Relations Act and the status quo in US-Taiwan relations. See “President Bush Meets with Chinese President Jiang Zemin,” Beijing. usembassy, February 21, 2002, (http://beijing.usembassychina.org.cn/uploads/images/ FWKLNHMf6rMt48Irj4XMg/President_Bush_Meets_with_Chinese_President_Jiang_ Zemin_pdf); “President Bush Speaks at Tsinghua University,” whitehouse.gov, February 22, 2002, (http://georgewbush-

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whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/ 02/20020222.html); “President Bush and Premier Wen Jiabao Remarks to the Press,” whitehouse.gov, December 9, 2003, (http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/ news/releases/2003/12/20031209-2.html); George Bush, “The President’s News Conference with President Jiang Zemin of China in Crawford Texas,” October 25, 2002. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Wooley, The American Presidency Project, (www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=18); George W. Bush, “Remarks at a Welcoming Ceremony for President Hu Jintao of China,” April 20, 2006. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, (www. presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=72428); “President Bush Meets with President Hu of the People’s Republic of China,” whitehouse.gov, April 20, 2006, (http://georgewbushwhitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/04/20060420-1.html); and “Statement by the President on Taiwan Election,” whitehouse.gov, March 22, 2008 (http://georgew bush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases /2008/03/20080322-4.html).

“CNN/Los Angeles Times Republican Presidential Debate Transcript,” CNN.com, March 2, 2000.

Presidential Candidates Debates: “Republican Presidential Candidates Debate in Phoenix, Arizona,” December 6, 1999.

“CNN/Los Angeles Times Republican Presidential Debate Transcript,” CNN.com, March 2, 2000.

Presidential Candidates Debates: “Republican Presidential Candidates Debate in Phoenix, Arizona,” December 6, 1999.

See Presidential Candidates Debates: “Republican Presidential Candidates Debate in Phoenix, Arizona,” December 6, 1999; Presidential Candidates Debates: “Republican Presidential Candidates Debate at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan,” January 10, 2000. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, (www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=105438); and “Excerpts of George W. Bush’s Speech in Washington State.” This theme also permeated George W. Bush’s presidential discourse.

See “President Bush Speaks at Tsinghua University;” “President’s Remarks to the Travel Pool in China,” beijing.usembassy, November 20, 2005, (http://beijing.usembassy-china.org.cn/uploads/images/1sTfaHFRw55PbrtlqkI1g /Presidents_Remarks_to_the_Travel_Pool_in_China.pdf); and Bush, “Remarks at a Welcoming Ceremony for President Hu Jintao of China,” April 20, 2006.

George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown Publishers, 2010), p. 427.

Bush, Decision Points, p. 427.

See Bush, “A Distinctly American Internationalism.” Bush also expressed similar sentiments in a campaign speech in Washington State. See “Excerpts of George W. Bush’s Speech in Washington State.”

“Bush Vows Taiwan Support,” April 25, 2001, ABC News, (http://abcnews.go.com/US/ story?id=93471).

See “Bush: Taiwan Defense Pledge No Change in Policy,” April 25, 2001, CNN, (http: //edition.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/04/25/bush.taiwan.04/); and Tkacik, Jr., “Stating America’s Case to China’s Hu Jintao,” April 26, 2002.

Steven Mufson, “President Pledges Defense of Taiwan; Policy Unchanged, White House says,” Washington Post, April 26, 2001, p. A01.

Mufson, “President Pledges Defense of Taiwan.”

Mufson, “President Pledges Defense of Taiwan.”

Dennis Van Vranken Hickey, “Continuity and Change: The administration of George W. Bush and US policy toward Taiwan,” Journal of Contemporary China 13, no. 40 (2004), p. 469.

Bruce Dickson, “New Presidents Adjust Old Policies: US-Taiwan Relations under Chen and Bush,” Journal of Contemporary China 11, no. 33 (2002), p. 651.

Mufson, “President Pledges Defense of Taiwan.”

Mufson, “President Pledges Defense of Taiwan.”

Mufson, “President Pledges Defense of Taiwan.”

Bush, Decision Points, p. 427.

Hickey, “Continuity and Change,” p. 467.

Dickson, “New Presidents Adjust Old Policies,” p. 650.

Hickey, “Continuity and Change,” p. 472.

Yang, “The Bush Administration’s Taiwan Policy,” p. 148.

Yang, “The Bush Administration’s Taiwan Policy,” p. 150.

“President Bush Speaks at Tsinghua University,” whitehouse.gov, February 22, 2002.

“President Bush Meets with Chinese President Jiang Zemin,” Beijing.usembassy, February 21, 2002.

“President Bush Meets with Chinese President Jiang Zemin,” Beijing.usembassy, February 21, 2002.

“President Bush and Premier Wen Jiabao Remarks to the Press,” whitehouse.gov, December 9, 2003.

“President Bush and Premier Wen Jiabao Remarks to the Press,” whitehouse.gov, December 9, 2003.

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For a discussion of the precedent of linking trade policies to the spread of democratic ideals in US - Sino relations, see Stephen Hartnett, “Google and the ‘Twisted Cyber Spy’ Affair: US-Chinese Communication in an Age of Globalization,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 97, no. 4, (2011), pp. 411-34.

Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, “Balancing Act: Bush, Beijing and Taipei,” In: George W. Bush and East Asia: A First Term Assessment, edited by Robert M. Hathaway and Wilson Lee (Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2005), p. 149.

Barbara Demick, “In China, Bush Remains a Popular President,” Los Angeles Times, January 15, 2009, (http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/15/world/fg-uschina15).

“On Eve of Foreign Debate, Growing Pessimism about Arab Spring Aftermath,” Pew Research Center, October 18, 2012, (www.people-press.org/2012/10/18/on-eve-of-foreign-debate-growing-pessimism-about-arab-springaftermath/).

In: The George W. Bush Presidency. Volume III Editors: Meena Bose and Paul Fritz

ISBN: 978-1-63485-783-3 © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 12

PRESIDENT BUSH’S RHETORIC AND POLICY AGAINST GENOCIDE Ben Voth Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, US

ABSTRACT President Bush rhetorically engaged the important global question of genocide throughout his two terms. The genocide case studies of Iraq, Sudan, and Liberia reveal a consistent policy doctrine aimed at reducing global genocide activities a these locations and more broadly around the globe as a concerted form of Presidential argumentation within a globally Gettysburg against the political pre-conditions of terrorism. A rhetorical dialectic between “fear” and “freedom” animates more than ten presidential addresses aimed at broad problems of global violence and genocide – especially in the three areas noted in this study.

INTRODUCTION Genocide represents one of the most morally vexing questions of human societies. Its ugly chapters written most recently in its ‘death as text’1 tomes for the 20th century include at least: the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide, and the Rwandan genocide. These are but a few of the cases wherein more than 150 million people died as a result of genocide in the 20th century2. Conventional studies of genocide tend to evoke a mysterious awe as to how humans can be so diabolical — perhaps instilling some resignation and revulsion to its ongoing practice. Those numbers and interpretation are sharply contrasted with the accurate and important observations documented in the work of professor Steven Pinker. Pinker’s recent work on human violence tells a remarkable narrative heavy with empirical data that humanity is in fact overcoming its violent ways. The incredible progress made in these political venues and our own potential skepticism to this good news creates a rhetorical vulnerability. We may fail to fully capitalize on these trends in the 21st century.

Pinker explained the problem in a 2011 Wall Street Journal editorial:

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Ben Voth Whatever its causes, the implications of the historical decline of violence are profound. So much depends on whether we see our era as a nightmare of crime, terrorism, genocide and war or as a period that, in the light of the historical and statistical facts, is blessed by unprecedented levels of peaceful coexistence.

Bearers of good news are often advised to keep their mouths shut, lest they lull people into complacency. But this prescription may be backward. The discovery that fewer people are victims of violence can thwart cynicism among compassion-fatigued news readers who might otherwise think that the dangerous parts of the world are irredeemable hell holes. And a better understanding of what drove the numbers down can steer us toward doing things that make people better off rather than congratulating ourselves on how moral we are.3

This rhetorical and argumentation analysis explains how this trend against genocidal violence was enhanced by the rhetoric, argument and policies of President George W. Bush in the 21st century. During the presidency of George W. Bush, at least three major genocide questions confronted the administration: Iraq, Sudan, and Liberia. A communication analysis of the rhetoric offered in his presidential communication reveals how the theme of “human freedom” galvanized policies to remove or limit the power of genocidaires: Saddam Hussein, Omar Bashir, and Charles Taylor. President Bush’s rhetoric and policy elevated genocide both as a topic and policy action for the global community and the ongoing vision of American Presidents such as President Obama and his UN ambassador Samantha Power.

THE RHETORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF BUSH’S GLOBAL GETTYSBURG IN THE WAR ON TERROR President Bush was iconic for his rhetorical connection maintaining that the advance of human freedom improves the human condition and reduces human rights abuses. American Presidents are defined by their times. In the study of public address and great American rhetoric, scholars speak of an exigence - the necessities of a moment4. For President Bush, there may not be a clearer indication of the defining moments of his time and the basis for understanding his potential significance as an American President. Even President Bush’s detractors can agree that September 11, 2001 was a defining moment of Bush’s two terms as President. That fateful day witnessed an attack on U.S. soil killing nearly 3,000 Americans in a brazen act of terrorism that leveled the nation’s two largest buildings and set fire to the nation’s military cornerstone. Out of that incomprehensible tragedy, President Bush began the building of his legacy. In a number of major policy addresses, the president explained this axiom of his foreign policy. The essence of the argument began in the immediate aftermath of 911 when the president spoke to Congress on September 20, 2001: Great harm has been done to us. We have suffered great loss. And in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment. Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom -- the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time -- now depends on us. Our nation, this generation will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.5

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This signature thought became an axiom of American foreign policy for both terms. A dialectic centers the argument: “freedom and fear are at war.” Bush argued that the advance of human freedom would reduce the global prevalence of fear.

In a speech given in 2003 for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), President Bush further amplified this signature argument that came to define much of his foreign policy and tended to transcend the moral logics of cultural relativism: Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even to have a choice in the matter?6

President Bush’s rhetorical questions argued that all human beings are aspirants to conditions of freedom. Through a series of rhetorical questions, he raised the argument that the United States has a responsibility to encourage the civic progress of democracy and freedom in the Middle East and North Africa. Arab spring events in the Middle East and North Africa suggest the important role that the public sphere and public argument play in the emergence of proper governance. From Tunisia to Egypt and Libya to Yemen, nations in the Middle East did move toward greater freedom and democracy in the efforts often termed “The Arab Spring.” The rhetoric and public arguments of President George W. Bush bear greater significance in the current international scene combatting incredible violence on the streets of Paris and the northern regions of Nigeria.7 Bush’s arguments for freedom in the Middle East were central concerns of his two presidential terms. Two significant speeches contributing to the enduring sense of these arguments are a 2003 NED speech and his 2005 second inaugural speech.

These arguments of President Bush have received considerable review from communication perspectives.8 President George W. Bush’s foreign policy is essentially understood in the much debated ‘Bush doctrine’ which by various means, sought to promote democracy globally as both a bulwark and social solution to the renewed prominence of terrorism as a global argument by various Arab supremacists such as Osama Bin Laden.

These supremacist ideological doctrines created the conditions of genocide in many parts of the world where they maintained sovereignty. In the rhetorical construct of freedom and democracy offered by President Bush individuals would resist and overcome the narrow doctrines of al Qaeda and similar misinterpretations of Islam in favor of a more open public sphere condition.

President Bush’ arguments are consistent with a long standing principal regarding American exceptionalism as stated by past American Presidents. Considered among the most important and memorable of American Presidential statements, the Gettysburg address concludes with Lincoln’s rationalization as to why something as dreadful as a civil war killing hundreds of thousands of Americans might be rhetorically dignified: The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full

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Ben Voth measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.9

Though he was quite wrong about the world’s memory of his address, Lincoln’s distillation of American civic virtue to a notion of ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people’ took on a global urgency -- a vision extending beyond the smaller provinces of Civil War America. These words were read in the aftermath of the 911 tragedy to underscore that sentiment.10 In Lincoln’s view of America, there exists a metaphysical proposition: “that all men are created equal.” That proposition is enshrined in a political process dedicated to a practical yet metaphysical assertion of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” The powerful political and military effort of democracy is dedicated to protecting the proposition of human equality.

BUSH’S KEY PUBLIC ARGUMENTS ON GLOBAL DEMOCRACY President Bush continued to elaborate and emphasize the principals of this argument in his 2005 second inaugural where American Presidents have generically tended to take a more decisive foreign policy position.11 The second inaugural added considerable rhetorical nuance to the primal emotional reactions of 911: There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment and expose the pretensions of tyrants and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant.

And that is the force of human freedom.

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this Earth has rights, and dignity and matchless value because they bear the image of the maker of heaven and Earth.

Across the generations, we have proclaimed the imperative of self - government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation’s security and the calling of our time.12

Second inaugural speeches tend to be more politically disposed to international questions of foreign policy because of two term limits that cause the President to examine the world beyond domestic politics. Domestic politics is typically a primary rhetorical resource for deriving a rationale for re - election. Absolved of that need, Presidents tend to foreground their foreign policy vision in the second inaugural. President Bush furthered that observable trend in presidential rhetoric. The 2005 speech was a significant rhetorical keystone since the 2004 election was substantially a referendum on the controversial and ongoing war in Iraq.

Winning re - election in a close contest led President Bush to elaborate the rationales for the

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war in Iraq and its connection to his larger vision of global affairs. Public reception of his second inaugural was largely positive.13 The 2001, 2003 and 2005 speeches by President Bush represent three strong rhetorical markers for the argument the President sought to make against the politics of fear indicated by groups like al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. There are at least 10 major speeches over the two terms of his presidency that amplify the principal of freedom advancing to reduce human rights abuse and encourage global growth of democracy.14 In the three case studies of genocide — Iraq, Sudan, and Liberia — President Bush applies his principal rhetorical doctrine of freedom as a means for reducing and ending this dramatic human rights problem in those nations.

IRAQ In Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s well understood history as a genocidaire using chemical weapons to attack and kill ethnic populations such as the the Kurds factored prominently into arguments justifying a U.S. led war. Saddam’s secretary of defense referred to chemical weapons as “human insecticides.”15 President Bush argued that the new circumstances of global terrorism did not allow the continuation of global sanctions policies designed to contain the aggression of Saddam Hussein. Ultimately, an American led military action removed Saddam Hussein and Iraqis would convict him of genocide crimes against his own people.

One year after 911, President Bush outlined a public call and argument against the ongoing sovereignty of Saddam Hussein: Some citizens wonder, after 11 years of living with this problem, why do we need to confront it now? And there’s a reason. We’ve experienced the horror of September the 11th. We have seen that those who hate America are willing to crash airplanes into buildings full of innocent people. Our enemies would be no less willing, in fact, they would be eager, to use biological or chemical, or a nuclear weapon.

Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us.

Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. As President Kennedy said in October of 1962, “Neither the United States of America, nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world,” he said, “where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nations security to constitute maximum peril.”

Understanding the threats of our time, knowing the designs and deceptions of the Iraqi regime, we have every reason to assume the worst, and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring.

Some believe we can address this danger by simply resuming the old approach to inspections, and applying diplomatic and economic pressure. Yet this is precisely what the world has tried to do since 1991. The U.N. inspections program was met with systematic deception. . . .

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Ben Voth The world has also tried economic sanctions -- and watched Iraq use billions of dollars in illegal oil revenues to fund more weapons purchases, rather than providing for the needs of the Iraqi people.

The world has tried limited military strikes to destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities -- only to see them openly rebuilt, while the regime again denies they even exist.

The world has tried no - fly zones to keep Saddam from terrorizing his own people -and in the last year alone, the Iraqi military has fired upon American and British pilots more than 750 times.

After eleven years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon.16

By March of 2003, the diplomatic means of containing Saddam Hussein through the United Nations reached the limits of presidential patience. President Bush explained the deployment of military force to the American public by referencing the atrocities of Saddam Hussein: The enemies you confront will come to know your skill and bravery. The people you liberate will witness the honorable and decent spirit of the American military. In this conflict, America faces an enemy who has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality. Saddam Hussein has placed Iraqi troops and equipment in civilian areas, attempting to use innocent men, women and children as shields for his own military -- a final atrocity against his people.

I want Americans and all the world to know that coalition forces will make every effort to spare innocent civilians from harm. A campaign on the harsh terrain of a nation as large as California could be longer and more difficult than some predict. And helping Iraqis achieve a united, stable and free country will require our sustained commitment.

We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people. ...

Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly -- yet, our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. We will meet that threat now, with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.17

By May 1 of 2003, major combat operations in Iraq were over and Saddam Hussein was no longer in power. President Bush utilized the dramatic backdrop of the USS Lincoln to characterize American success in removing Saddam from power: In the images of falling statues, we have witnessed the arrival of a new era. For a hundred of years of war, culminating in the nuclear age, military technology was designed and deployed to inflict casualties on an ever-growing scale. In defeating Nazi

President Bush’s Rhetoric and Policy Against Genocide Germany and Imperial Japan, Allied forces destroyed entire cities, while enemy leaders who started the conflict were safe until the final days. Military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation.

Today, we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war; yet it is a great moral advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent.

In the images of celebrating Iraqis, we have also seen the ageless appeal of human freedom. Decades of lies and intimidation could not make the Iraqi people love their oppressors or desire their own enslavement. Men and women in every culture need liberty like they need food and water and air. Everywhere that freedom arrives, humanity rejoices; and everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.

We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We’re bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We’re pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We’ve begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated.

We’re helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people.

The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. Then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq.

The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men -- the shock troops of a hateful ideology -- gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions.

They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the “beginning of the end of America.” By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation’s resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed. ...

Our war against terror is proceeding according to principles that I have made clear to all: Any person involved in committing or planning terrorist attacks against the American people becomes an enemy of this country, and a target of American justice.

Any person, organization, or government that supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent, and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.

Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction is a grave danger to the civilized world -- and will be confronted.

And anyone in the world, including the Arab world, who works and sacrifices for freedom has a loyal friend in the United States of America.

Our commitment to liberty is America’s tradition -- declared at our founding; affirmed in Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms; asserted in the Truman Doctrine and in Ronald Reagan’s challenge to an evil empire. We are committed to freedom in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in a peaceful Palestine. The advance of freedom is the surest strategy to undermine the appeal of terror in the world. Where freedom takes hold, hatred gives way to hope. When freedom takes hold, men and women turn to the peaceful pursuit of a better life. American values and American interests lead in the same direction: We stand for human liberty.18

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This dramatic speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln represents a bolder assertion of freedom as the intrinsic civil value in human affairs. The visual imagery of President Bush landing his own fighter jet on the deck of the carrier with service members posting massive banners saying, “Mission Accomplished,” constituted a stirring affirmation of the successful end of combat operations in Iraq and the initiation of nation building efforts within the nation.

That visual image was highly effective as a rhetorical strategy for the President.19 The ship’s name amplified the global reach of Lincoln’s words that were now celebrated on the deck of a powerful combat vessel. President Bush emphasized the history of the moment by connecting his freedom doctrine to previous presidents such as Truman and FDR. Ultimately, Iraqis would bring Saddam Hussein to trial for domestic crimes of genocide.

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein distinguished himself in the 1980s by being the only world leader to ever use chemical weapons to attack his own citizens.20 Thousands were killed at places such as Halabja in Iraq. Over the objections of the Bush administration, Hussein was put to death by an Iraqi justice system. Tens of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of American troops died in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s removal. Most of those deaths were attributable to al Qaeda and other insurgents against Iraqi democratic sovereignty.21 The military operation was known as Operation Iraqi Freedom [OIF] throughout its duration and highlights the rhetorical prominence of the freedom term. Bush’s usage of the term “freedom” elevated the term to a functional ideograph for his presidency. Ideographs are powerful loaded rhetorical terms that allow even a single word to suggest a larger set of ideals.22 Those killings reached a high rhetorical pitch in 2005 and 2006 as the government of Iraq and its security forces attempted to stabilize the nation enough to allow three elections to take place.

Despite considerable international skepticism, the elections did take place and a constitution was adopted along with other legislative and participatory elements of democracy.

The war story of Iraq will compile hundreds of books on the deliberative significance and meaning of the war. In this particular study, it is important to recognize the central role of genocide played in the decision to attack Saddam Hussein and to marginalize the heirs to that state led violence against civilians. This importance is recently heightened by the extreme genocidal visions now threatening Iraq in the absence of American ground troops via the radical supremacist ideology of ISIS that has recently killed at least 2,000 people in extraordinary displays of violence designed to intimidate the world.

SUDAN Sudan is a sharp contrast to Iraq. Though both nations grappled with a history of genocide, Sudan was pursued with diplomatic rather than military ends. Those diplomatic ends included appeals to international military forces in Sudan without American counterparts. In Sudan, the United States struggled to overcome historical policy programs growing out of failed action on the Rwandan genocide of 1994.23 When the United States refused to name the violence in Rwanda as a genocide, this created constraints on international action. Public pressure built to recognize the mass killings in Sudan as a genocide. The secretary of State Colin Powell was pressed publicly on whether these atrocities could be called a “genocide.” The rhetorical template of Rwanda was clearly in play. Would the new Secretary of State refuse to name a genocide to the killing of 2 million

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people in Sudan? The naming of these atrocities as a genocide during congressional hearings was a marked departure from the Rwandan era.24 The naming of Omar Bashir’s actions as an ongoing genocide during the Bush administration laid the groundwork for anti-genocide actions by the African Union, the United Nations and the United States. A peace treaty in Sudan in 2005, ultimately lead to elections and the division of the state. This created the new state of South Sudan in 2011. President Bush gave a speech on Sudan articulating the principles and actions surrounding these questions: Good morning. For too long, the people of Darfur have suffered at the hands of a government that is complicit in the bombing, murder, and rape of innocent civilians. My administration has called these actions by their rightful name: genocide. The world has a responsibility to help put an end to it.25

President Bush concluded the speech with a direct comment to genocidaire, Omar Bashir— the leader of Sudan: I call on President Bashir to stop his obstruction and to allow the peacekeepers in and to end the campaign of violence that continues to target innocent men, women, and children. And I promise this to the people of Darfur: The United States will not avert our eyes from a crisis that challenges the conscience of the world.26

On July 9, 2011, the independent democratic nation of South Sudan broke away from its radical Arab supremacists leadership of convicted genocidaire Omar Bashir in Northern Sudan. The culmination of a policy begun by acknowledging the genocide taking place their, a slow process of diplomacy initiated by the Bush administration and further management by the Obama administration led to the break away of the southern half of Sudan. The democratic election of government was the culmination of negotiations for separation begun in 2005.

In many respects, the social movement against the genocide in Darfur led by advocates such as John Prendergrast were rooted in the rhetoric and arguments of President Bush. The common refrain of “not on my watch” was taken from a phrase written by President Bush in response to a briefing about violence in Africa. The phrase would find its way onto thousands of popular green bracelets and the advocacy against genocide in Sudan during 2003 to the end of his administration.27

LIBERIA Liberia was dominated for many years by Charles Taylor. His human rights abuses extended into Sierra Leone. Taylor’s military leaders such as General “Butt Naked” engaged in bizarre but inhumane rituals that lead to more than 250,000 deaths in the small nation of Liberia populated with 3 million people— nearly 10% of the domestic population.28 In 2008, General Butt Naked confessed to killing more than 20,000 of his fellow citizens. His outrageous battlefield alias was drawn from his common habit of marching into civilian annihilations wearing nothing but a pair of boots. According to the general and other observers, these slaughters began with the ritualistic killing of a young child, cutting out the

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heart, and feeding it to his loyal troops.29 While not in combat, his soldiers would kick around human skulls in soccer matches. The regular demands for Taylor’s removal reached a crescendo in the spring of 2003. President Bush’s speech at Senegal about global slavery was an important era of time for administrative decision - making about Liberia. The speech in Senegal was significant and was the first of an American president to be broadcast live globally.30 In the speech, President Bush echoed the themes expounded in his second inaugural: For 250 years the captives endured an assault on their culture and their dignity. The spirit of Africans in America did not break. Yet the spirit of their captors was corrupted.

Small men took on the powers and airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished brutality and bullying and rape produced a dullness and hardness of conscience. Christian men and women became blind to the clearest commands of their faith and added hypocrisy to injustice. A republic founded on equality for all became a prison for millions. And yet in the words of the African proverb, “no fist is big enough to hide the sky.” All the generations of oppression under the laws of man could not crush the hope of freedom and defeat the purposes of God.31

President Bush connected the injustice of American slavery to the identity of the African continent. The rhetoric tended to reverse the conventional notions of a “white man’s burden” and suggested that Africa held the original repository for the cause of justice. Bush’s fire metaphor offered on a cold inaugural in January came through on Goree Island in his conclusion to the speech: We know that these challenges can be overcome, because history moves in the direction of justice. The evils of slavery were accepted and unchanged for centuries. Yet, eventually, the human heart would not abide them. There is a voice of conscience and hope in every man and woman that will not be silenced -- what Martin Luther King called a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. That flame could not be extinguished at the Birmingham jail. It could not be stamped out at Robben Island Prison. It was seen in the darkness here at Goree Island, where no chain could bind the soul. This untamed fire of justice continues to burn in the affairs of man, and it lights the way before us.32

Ultimately, the Bush administration made an important decision to allow US troops to support African Union troops in Monrovia in the removal of Charles Taylor. The transition compared favorably with the results in the neighboring French colonial holding of the Ivory Coast. Elections in Liberia would later install the first female president on the continent of Africa: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. She was educated at Harvard.

In the main exhibit of the Presidential Library exhibit for George W. Bush in Dallas on the SMU campus, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s ascendancy to the presidency of Liberia is noted as an important change in Africa during the Bush presidencies, but little explanation of how she came to power is provided. Her ascendancy was a fitting democratic end to a social movement against the violence of Charles Taylor that was often led by the women of Liberia.33 Charles Taylor’s persistence in Liberia was well established by human rights proponents who sought his departure. The American Presidential effort broke the common but misguided maxim offered by pundits of President Bush that he acted unilaterally and

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without a plan for local success. In the spring of 2003, with massive troop deployments moving in Iraq and rising apprehensions at home and abroad, President Bush sent hundreds of American troops into the capital of Liberia to ease the transition of Taylor out of power and to usher in an African Union peace coalition led by Nigeria. The effort was masterful in the secondary role US troops played while providing a powerful diplomatic and military backstop for African troops that did not want to experience the same backlash and disruptions seen in the neighboring French colony of the Ivory Coast. The abrupt American military mission also violated another principal of Bush critics: the US only invades nations where it has resources such as oil at stake.34 Liberia was historically connected to the United States as a unique state founded by former American slaves, but there was no great treasure trove to be colonially exported to America after the invasion. The fact that American military planners were wary of the shadows cast from the 1992 Somalia mission points to the axioms noted by genocide expert and the now UN Ambassador Samantha Power in her important tome on the question.35 By breaking the taboo of sending American soldiers into Africa, President Bush was bolstering the broader continental logic for combatting genocide. Bush’s successes in Africa likely contributed to his hero like status across that continent where his approval regular scored above 60 percent.36

CONCLUSION President Bush’s foreign policy throughout the two administrations wove together arguments for global freedom that counteracted genocide and established important human rights progress across the Middle East and Africa. This analysis of three key case studies — Iraq, Sudan, and Liberia — provides rhetorical and argumentation study of Bush’s statements and policies to clarify a historical record of human rights policymaking against genocide.

Democracy and freedom appear to not be limited to the European and American spheres of power. They are clearly present and emerging across the Middle East and North Africa. This analysis establishes the principal connection of these results to arguments made in public speeches by President Bush and supporting policies of his administration. The polarizing effects of President Bush’s definitive policies and statements created an initial cloud of objections among global opinion leaders. These three examples noted in his chapter suffice to break the mysterious notion that genocide is inevitable and intractable. If Iraq, Sudan, and Liberia had continued with the death rates they were experiencing during their genocide eras without outside interference, approximately four million additional people would have died in the nations of Liberia, Sudan and Iraq. The consolidation and removal of genocidaires with aggressive diplomacy and smart military invasions brought to an end eras of “death as a text” written in sovereign locales controlled by the genocidaires of Bashir, Hussein and Taylor.37 Understanding American presidential rhetoric as it pertains to the question of genocide is vitally important. After a 20th century witnessing more than 150 million victims of genocidal slaughters — roughly four times the lives lost in war — the 21st century remains an ongoing opportunity for genocide prevention. The axiom of noted Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel is applicable here: “What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander.”38 The urgent problem of bystander is well addressed to what many view as the world’s most powerful bully pulpit: the American presidency. President Bush filled the

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potential rhetorical vacuum of silence on genocide with important statements and actions regarding genocidal matters touching Liberia, Sudan, and Iraq. President Bush utilized a mixture of diplomacy and military actions to augment political rhetoric dedicated to the premise of human freedom for individuals in a variety of genocide driven political circumstances. Understanding how President Bush addressed questions of genocide provides models for ongoing action and a basis for refining advocacy against genocide so that the problem might be further reduced in this century.

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Voth, Ben. 2014. The Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Press.

Goldhagen, Daniel. 2009. Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity.

New York: Public Affairs.; Rummel, Rudolph. 2002. Power Kills: Democracy As a Method of Non-Violent Action. Transaction Publishers: New York.; and Totten, Samuel. and Parsons, William. 2009. Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts. New York and London: Routledge.

Pinker, Steven 2011. The Wall Street Journal. “Why Violence is Vanishing.” Accessed on January 2, 2015. See also a recent summary “26 Charts and Maps that Show the World is Getting Much, Much Better,” by Dylan Matthews on December 29, 2014 in VOX online magazine. Accessed on August 15, 2014 http://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7272929/charts-thankful . More of Pinker’s analysis can be read here: Pinker, Stephen. 2007. “A History of Violence.” Edge: The Third Culture. Accessed August 15, 2013. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html.

Bitzer, Lloyd F. 1968. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries. William A. Covino ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon: 1995.

Bush, George W. September 20, 2001. “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the United States Response to the Terrorist Attacks of September 11,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2001, Book II) pp.1140-1144. Accessed on January 8, 2015 http://www.gpo.gov/ fdsys/pkg/PPP-2001-book2/html/PPP-2001-book2-doc-pg1140.htm.

Bush, George. W. November 6, 2003. “Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2003, Book II) pp. 14681474. Accessed on January 8, 2015 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PPP-2003-book2/html/PPP-2003-book2-docpg1468-2.htm.

Schiavenza, Matt. January 11, 2015. The Atlantic. “Nigeria’s Horror in Paris’s Shadow: Why a 10-year-old Suicide Bomber Isn’t Front-Page News,” Accessed on January 11, 2015. http://www.theatlantic.com/ international/archive/2015/01/boko-harams-quiet-destruction-of-northeast-nigeria/384416/.

Dudash, E. 2009. “International Appeal in the Presidential Inaugural: An Update on Genre and An Expansion of Argument,” Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, 28, pp. 47-64; Medhurst, M. (2010 August). “George W. Bush at Goree Island: American Slavery and the Rhetoric of Redemption,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 96 n.3 pp. 257-277; The George W. Bush Presidency: A Rhetorical Perspective, Robert E. Denton, Jr., Editor: Lexington Studies in Political Communication, Rowman and Littlefield: New York (2012).

Abraham Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address, 1863.

Accessed on March 12, 2013 http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gettysburgaddress.htm.

George Pataki, September 11, 2002. “Former New York Governor George E. Pataki delivers reading at Ground Zero Memorial Service,” PBS Newshour. Accessed on March 12, 2011 http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=9DVQvdX_1LM. Dudash, E. 2009. International appeal in the presidential inaugural: An update on genre and an expansion of argument,” Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, 28, pp. 47-64.

Bush, G. W. 2005. January 20, 2005. “Inaugural Address,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2005, Book I) pp. 66-69. Accessed on January 8, 2015 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PPP2005-book1/html/PPP-2005-book1-doc-pg66.htm.

CNN Politics, 2005. http://articles.cnn.com/2005-01-20/politics/poll_1_inaugural-address-growth-of-democraticmovements-foreign-policy?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS. For further explication of these speeches see Voth, B. “Chapter Two: George W. Bush at a Global Gettysburg,” in The George W. Bush Presidency: A Rhetorical Perspective, Robert E. Denton, Jr., Editor: Lexington Studies

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in Political Communication, Rowman and Littlefield: New York (2012), pp. 21-40. Though space does not allow a full examination of these speeches here, these ten speeches are: 1. Remarks to the nation on the evening of September 11, 2001; 2. Remarks at the National Cathedral on September 14, 2001; 3. Remarks to Congress on September 20, 2001; 4. Remarks to Congress on October 7, 2001 regarding the war on the Taliban; 5. State of the Union Message in January 2002-- “the Axis of Evil” speech; 6. Remarks to Congress on October 7, 2002-justifying military action against Iraq; 7. Address on the start of the war in Iraq on March 19, 2003; 8. Remarks on Democracy at the NED-- 2003; 9. Remarks on the USS Lincoln May 1, 2003-- Mission Accomplished; 10.

Second Inaugural address on January 29, 2005.

Power, Samantha, 2002. A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Perennial.

Bush, George W., October 7, 2002. “Address to the Nation on Iraq From Cincinnati, Ohio,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2002, Book II), pp. 1751-1757. Accessed on January 8, 2015 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PPP-2002-book2/html/PPP-2002-book2-doc-pg1751-2.htm.

Bush, George W., March 19, 2003. “Address to the Nation on Iraq,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2003, Book I), pp. 281-282. Accessed on January 8, 2015 http://www.gpo.gov/ fdsys/pkg/PPP-2003-book1/html/PPP-2003-book1-doc-pg281-3.htm.

Bush, George W., May 1, 2003. “Address to the Nation on Iraq From the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2003, Book I), pp 410-413. Accessed on January 8, 2015 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PPP-2003-book1/html/PPP-2003-book1-doc-pg410-2.htm.

Schill, Dan, Stagecraft and Statecraft: Advance and Media Events in Political Communication. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2009.

Samantha Power, 2002. A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. New York:Perennial.

One of the more conventional and comprehensive organizations dedicated to the question of death rate in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom is the Iraq Body Count project. Their system allows for a comparison of deaths based on understood cause such as Coalition military force or anti-coalition forces. This comprehensive approach establishes that 60-80% of all deaths in Iraq during the war were attributable to pro-Saddam/anticoalition forces.

Iraq Body Count/ Database.

Accessed on January 15, 2015 https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/.

Michael C. McGee, “The ‘Ideograph’: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 66 (1980): 1-16.

Power, Samantha, 2002. A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Perennial.

Weisman, Steven. 2004. The New York Times. September 9. Accessed September 23, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/international/africa/09CND-SUDA.html.

Bush, George W. May 29, 2007. “Remarks on the Situation in Darfur, Sudan,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2007, Book I), pp 630-631. Accessed on January 8, 2015 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PPP-2007-book1/html/PPP-2007-book1-doc-pg630.htm.

Bush, George W. May 29, 2007. “Remarks on the Situation in Darfur, Sudan,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2007, Book I), pp 630-631. Accessed on January 8, 2015 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PPP-2007-book1/html/PPP-2007-book1-doc-pg630.htm.

Nizza, Mike. December 4 2007. New York Times blog. Accessed on January 2, 2015 http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/bushs-refrain-not-on-my-watch/?_r=0.

BBC October 14, 2014. Liberia profile. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13729504.

Fernandes, Edna. 2010. “Face to face with General Butt Naked - ‘the most evil man in the world.’ “ Daily Mail.

27 November. Accessed September 16, 2013. Accessed on March 8, 2014 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ news/article-1333465/Liberias-General-Butt-Naked-The-evil-man-world.html.

Medhurst, M. (2010 August). “George W. Bush at Goree Island: American Slavery and the Rhetoric of Redemption,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, v96 n3 pp. 257-277.

Bush, G. W. July 8, 2003. “Remarks at Goree Island, Senegal,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2003, Book II) pp. 844-847. Accessed on January 8, 2015 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PPP-2003-book2/html/PPP-2003-book2-doc-pg844-3.htm.

Bush, G. W. July 8, 2003. “Remarks at Goree Island, Senegal,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2003, Book II) pp. 844-847. Accessed on January 8, 2015 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PPP-2003-book2/html/PPP-2003-book2-doc-pg844-3.htm.

“Liberian Women Act to End Civil War, 2003” Global Non Violence Database. Accessed on February 20, 2016. https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/liberian-women-act-end-civil-war-2003.

Deen, Thalif. 2004. “Politics: Annan Asks More Funds for Darfur-bound African Force.” IPS-Inter Press Service. September 2.

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Power. Samantha. 2002. A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Perennial.

Julie Ray, “U.S. Leadership Approval Highest in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Gallup, April 8, 2008, http://www.gallup.com/poll/106306/us-leadership-approval-highest-subsaharan-africa.aspx.

Voth, Ben. 2014. The Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text. Lanham: Lexington Books, p. 127.

Wiesel, Elie. 1986. “Foreword.” The Courage to Care. Eds. Carol Rittmer and Sondra Myers. New York: New York University Press.

PART IV: GEORGE W. BUSH IN THE EYES OF THE WORLD

In: The George W. Bush Presidency. Volume III Editors: Meena Bose and Paul Fritz

ISBN: 978-1-63485-783-3 © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 13

CAUSE OR EFFECT? ANTI-AMERICANISM AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY UNDER GEORGE W. BUSH Max Paul Friedman American University, Washington, DC, US

ABSTRACT Analysis of international official and public opinion shows that the United States enjoyed widespread support immediately after the attacks of September 11, 2001, with criticism mounting and opinion polls plummeting as word spread of key Bush administration policy decisions. Thereafter support for first principles such as democracy and free trade remained strong, including in Muslim nations, as did admiration for Americans’ own personal freedom. Measured increases in international anti-U.S. sentiment, which Americans called anti-Americanism, were in fact the world’s reply to the Bush administration’s most controversial policies. Anti-Americanism turns out not to be a useful category of analysis, whether one is trying to understand conditions in Muslim countries, or the behavior of a longtime Western ally, France. Foreign opinion generally reflected a preference for multilateralism and support for international institutions. As the Bush administration moved from defiant unilateralism back in the direction of those guidelines, it encountered commensurately more cooperation abroad.

INTRODUCTION “Why Do They Hate Us?” It was September 2001. Nearly 3000 people had been killed in a terrorist attack that destroyed New York’s tallest buildings, smashed a gaping hole in the Pentagon, and brought down four airliners crowded with travelers. In our shock and pain, Americans, led by the president, asked the question with more urgency than ever before.

President George W. Bush, addressing a joint session of Congress, provided his own answer: 

This essay is adapted from the introduction and epilogue of the author’s Rethinking Anti-Americanism: The History of an Exceptional Concept in American Foreign Relations (Cambridge, 2012), with additional research and new text.

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“They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government….

They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with one another.”1 As the attacks were followed by global demonstrations against U.S. plans for war in Iraq, a wave of official, journalistic, and academic investigations examined the distressing phenomenon of anti-Americanism. More than 6,000 newspaper articles referred to “antiAmericanism,” with headlines such as “Why the World Loves to Hate America,” “An Irrational Hatred,” and “Hating America, Hating Humanity.”2 A consensus emerged in government, buttressed by scholarship, that misinformation and irrational thinking in foreign societies had long produced resentments towards the United States that culminated in terrorism, and the correct response was a combination of stepped-up public diplomacy efforts, extraordinary measures against terrorist suspects, and the unapologetic exercise of military force. America’s reply to global anti-Americanism took the form of the Bush administration’s most controversial policies. Soon, commentators and scholars were depicting a continuum of anti-Americanism in modern history, beginning with the disdainful accounts of nineteenthcentury travel writers, running through twentieth-century political rhetoric from fascist and communist powers and their sympathizers, inexplicably drawing in elites in America’s closest Western allies, and ending with fiery crashes into the premier symbols of American power.

The twenty-first century has brought a new urgency to the need to understand antiAmericanism. Taking the term at face value, many have gone straight to asking why certain groups or individuals have resented or opposed the United States, finding the answer in psychopathology, malevolence, and ignorance, “an irrational dynamic…that springs from the need of human beings to explain and reduce responsibility for the misfortunes in their lives.”3 We learn that anti-Americanism is “entrenched in the world’s psyche” because foreigners resist modernity.4 Jean-François Revel calls anti-Americanism “hatred of democracy.”5 Stephen Haseler says anti-American criticisms are “criticisms of democracy itself.”6 Most scholars agree that any criticism of the United States is not necessarily anti-Americanism, and they specify at least two elements necessary to make it so: particularized hostility toward the United States (more than toward other countries), and generalized hatred of the United States (in most if not all its aspects). Foreigners move from criticism to anti-Americanism when they are unfairly selective in focusing on the deficiencies of the United States instead of other societies, especially their own: they become “obsessive.”7 The question “why do they hate us?” could have led to new insights and effective ways to confront terrorism, had the “they” been understood to refer to a small, focused group of terrorists and their active supporters, not to a hostile, anti-American world. Indeed, the initial response of the wider world was a tremendous outpouring of sympathy. A sympathetic French government decreed three minutes of silence in every school and public office in the country. Drivers in Denmark and Germany stopped their cars and stood in respectful silence at noon. Even in Tehran, a stadium grew hushed as soccer fans observed a moment of silence despite the official hostility of their regime. To be sure, there were pockets of celebration in Arab communities that held America responsible for their own suffering, including in Iraq and the West Bank—although hundreds of Palestinians also gathered to pray for American victims. It was a moment of global goodwill that brought tangible assistance: for the first time in NATO’s history, its members formally invoked Article 5 of the common defense treaty, declaring the attack on America an attack upon them all.8

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The Bush administration quickly moved from a retaliatory attack on al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to preparing an unrelated and unprovoked invasion of Iraq that rapidly dissipated international goodwill. Resistance to the Iraq war was perplexing to much of the American public, a majority of whom mistakenly believed that Saddam Hussein was both actively supporting al-Qaeda and deploying weapons of mass destruction.9 Many could not account for the active opposition of the French and German governments to the U.S. position on Iraq, and they were bewildered when on February 15, 2003, protests against the looming invasion drew more than a million demonstrators each into the streets of Madrid and Barcelona and London and Rome, all part of a coordinated protest that began in Australia and New Zealand that day and then circled the globe to encompass the largest political demonstration in the history of humankind.10 After 2002, the United States experienced what a subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs characterized as a “precipitous decline in favorability” that was “unprecedented and widespread.” Whereas in 2002, 83 percent of countries had a plurality of citizens who judged the United States favorably, within four years that figure declined to 23 percent.11 The Iraq war and its global unpopularity reinforced the traditional nationalist understanding of anti-Americanism. The “they” in “why do they hate us” came to refer to a hostile world in general, or all Arabs or Muslims, or Western Europeans, or foreign opponents of U.S. foreign policy, as analytical inquiry about the causes of international disputes was subsumed into the familiar, scattershot charges of “anti-Americanism” that blurred distinct movements, actors, and conflicts into a single, frightening image of global hatred. “The fact is the world hates us for our wealth, our success, our power,” seethed Charles Krauthammer. “They hate us into incoherence….The search for logic in antiAmericanism is fruitless.”12 The February demonstration was “the most well-orchestrated and choreographed exhibition of anti-Americanism ever,” wrote Robert Patterson.13 There were “millions of Europeans demonstrating against America,” according to the Washington Times.14 In the United States it became axiomatic that growing French, European, and worldwide anti-Americanism was the source of opposition to U.S. policy on Iraq. The National Press Club sponsored a forum on “Why They Hate Us: The Rise of AntiAmericanism around the World.”15 The Government Accountability Office reported that “anti-Americanism is spreading and deepening around the world,” threatening increased terrorism, military conflict, and damage to trade.16 The Council on Foreign Relations warned that anti-Americanism was “endangering our national security.”17 Senator Christopher S. Bond (R-MO) asked: “We all know that anti-Americanism is growing throughout the world.

So how do we respond to this ideology, and to the terrorism that results?” (He recommended “sending troops to defend America.”)18 Russell Berman explained that failure to back the United States on Iraq stemmed from a “desire to avoid the moral order”: For Western Europeans, and perhaps for many others, it has always been more comfortable to ignore the violence of totalitarian states. Because the United States sets a higher moral standard in a way that causes discomfort to the appeasers, it becomes the target of resentment: another source of anti-Americanism.19

The “moral order” established by the Bush administration, of course, drew fire not because of foreign indifference to injustice, but because that order seemed now to include preventive war, indefinite detention without trial, the physical abuse of suspects, and the

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weakening of international institutions. Saddam Hussein had few enthusiasts among those opposed to the Bush administration policy.

Nor were its opponents expressing an endemic anti-Americanism. Instead, they were making differentiated judgments. In 2002, majorities of those surveyed in France, Germany, Italy, and the UK supported two major U.S. policies and opposed two others. They approved of the military campaign in Afghanistan and of President Bush’s decision to increase foreign aid to developing countries. They disapproved of Bush’s calling Iraq, Iran, and North Korea an “Axis of Evil,” and they insisted that the United States should invade Iraq only with United Nations approval. This was a discriminating response to different U.S. policies on their merits. It reflected a preference for multilateralism and support for international institutions—a preference shared by a majority of Americans.20 When U.S. unilateralism was combined with diplomatic slights — Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dismissed Germany and France as irrelevant members of “old Europe” and refused even to speak to his German counterpart — the unhappiness was palpable.21 Fareed Zakaria reported in March 2003, after talking with officials in dozens of countries, that “with the exception of Britain and Israel, every country the administration has dealt with feels humiliated by it.” As Jorge Castañeda, former foreign minister of Mexico, told Zakaria, he and his colleagues “are not anti-American types. We have studied in the United States or worked there. We like and understand America. But we find it extremely irritating to be treated with utter contempt.”22 The worst tension arose with France, French gestures of sympathy notwithstanding.

French President Jacques Chirac was the first foreign head of state to arrive in New York after September 11 and to stand at the side of “my friend George” at the White House.23 But while his pledge of solidarity included a willingness to fight America’s attackers in Afghanistan, it did not extend to the planned invasion of Iraq. “Be careful,” Chirac urged Americans in an interview on CNN. “Think twice before you do something which is not necessary and may be very dangerous.”24 Chirac argued that Iraq did not support al-Qaeda and was too weak to present an imminent danger; the occupation of Iraq would generate bloody resistance; and the Muslim world would view the intervention as illegitimate, thereby increasing, rather than diminishing, the ranks of terrorists endangering U.S. and European security. In a private conversation with Bush in Prague in November 2002, Chirac recalled his own service as a conscript in France’s unsuccessful campaign to suppress Algerian rebels. He warned of the force of Arab nationalism and the endemic violence that would accompany an occupation. The best way to protect U.S. and European cities, in the French view, was to pursue al-Qaeda and related terrorist networks relentlessly using investigative and judicial methods — the same targeted techniques that had enabled Americans to arrest and convict the 1993 bombers of the World Trade Center, and enabled French intelligence to identify and track the “millennium bomber” Ahmed Ressam until he was arrested at the U.S.-Canadian border en route to set off a car bomb in Los Angeles, after the French tipped off the Canadians and the FBI.25 As the Bush administration ignored these warnings and France’s disapproval moved into the public sphere, it was joined by official German opposition to the invasion and Russian disapproval that together threatened to turn the United Nations process from force multiplier for the United States into a constraint on U.S. military action. American fury was directed for the most part against the French. Chirac’s arguments were drowned out by choruses charging him with “anti-Americanism,” and French-bashing came back into vogue. “Punish France,

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ignore Germany, forgive Russia,” was the widely quoted reaction of National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice.26 In part, that reflected a recognition that cooperation with Russia was essential across a range of issues, as well as the fact that France had threatened to use its U.N. veto to thwart a resolution endorsing war, while Germany had no such veto. It also reflected longstanding national stereotypes: an editorial cartoonist could hardly depict a jackbooted German in a spiked helmet saying “no war.” Inveighing against the French, however, resonated strongly with existing prejudices about weakness and effeminization.

Editorialists gleefully skewered the “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.”27 Dinesh D’Souza urged Americans to ignore advice “from men who carry handbags.”28 Bumper stickers exhorted IRAQ FIRST, THEN FRANCE. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) called for sanctions on French goods.29 Congress came up with one innovation, the official renaming of French fries as “Freedom fries,” French dressing as “Freedom dressing,” and French toast as “Freedom toast” on its cafeteria menu. “I took the Grey Poupon out of my cupboard,” boasted Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA), unwittingly naming an American product manufactured by Kraft Foods.30 Jokes that alluded to French cowardice abounded. House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (RMO) chuckled: “Somebody was telling me about the French Army rifle that was being advertised on eBay the other day—the description was ‘Never shot. Dropped once.’”31 This theme was as enduring as its selectivity was curious, because the French air force had joined the United States in flying missions against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and French soldiers were at that very moment risking, and losing, their lives side-by-side with American troops.

An American officer in Kabul praised the courage of the French forces he worked with in the field, and added, “Out here, we’ve still got French fries.”32 Chirac himself tried earnestly to explain his view of America, invoking his student days.

“I’ve known the U.S. for a long time,” he told Time magazine, I’ve studied there, worked as a forklift operator for Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis and as a soda jerk at Howard Johnson’s. I’ve hitchhiked across the whole United States…I know the U.S. perhaps better than most French people, and I really like the United States…I’ve made many excellent friends there, I feel good there…When I hear people say that I’m anti-American, I’m sad — not angry, but really sad.

The source of the dispute with U.S. officials, Chirac concluded, was that “I simply don’t analyze the situation as they do….A war of this kind cannot help giving a big lift to terrorism.

It would create a large number of little bin Ladens.”33 Philippe Roger, a French critic of his compatriots’ unfair stereotyping of America, warned that such prejudice can lead to violence on the scale of September 11. “French antiAmericanism has of course no direct connection with the aggression committed that day,” he writes. But French critics of the United States should ask themselves “to what extent systematic anti-Americanism, French and otherwise, has had a hand in the global process of demonization that facilitates slippage from a war of words to a war of the worlds.”34 When developed in more detail, the notion that 9/11 was the logical outcome of anti-Americanism invokes the intellectual founding father of radical Islam, Sayyid Qutb, leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, who spent two years on a scholarship in the United States in the late 1940s and apparently turned from a cultural anti-American into a radical Islamist warrior. It is true that Qutb came away from his student days in the United States with a

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strong animus against the country for what he viewed as its sexual licentiousness, its “animalistic” jazz, and its violent contact sports. He experienced American racism — denied admission to a movie theater because of his dark skin — even as he himself disparaged the “primitive instincts” of American “Negroes.”35 He was angered, too, by American support for Israel, a position he viewed as a betrayal of the Arabs. Radicalized not by his sojourn in a foreign culture but later, after being tortured in Egyptian prisons, Qutb’s hostility toward the United States blended into an anti-colonial, anti-Western, and anti-modern stance, as he condemned secularism, the mingling of the sexes, the privileging of science over faith, and the Western “master who tramples our honor and enslaves us.”36 When the inheritors of that tradition in al-Qaeda a generation later mouthed some of the same words and called for the installation of theocratic Islamic rule in a new caliphate, it seemed to support the interpretation of terrorism as a civilizational clash that began in the irrational rejection of U.S. culture.

Those most knowledgeable about al-Qaeda and bin Laden argue otherwise. They see political resentments, rather than an anti-Americanism rooted in objections to American modernity or democracy, as central to bin Laden’s violent worldview. Peter Bergen writes that bin Laden’s arguments against the West and the United States in particular were “quite consistent over time,” depicting an America committing violence against Muslims in the Middle East and beyond. “What bin Laden has done is unforgivable,” writes Bergen. “But bin Laden is a man and we need to understand him neither through a fog of our own propaganda — he has never, for instance, expressed an interest in attacking the West because of our ‘freedoms’ — nor through the mythomania of his supporters, who style him as a defender of Islam, despite the fact that the Koran is full of injunctions against the killing of civilians.”37 Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, says that radical Islamist resentment towards the United States is not a cultural response: “they hate the impact of our policies in the Islamic world.”38 The small groups of Islamist radicals Thomas Hegghammer studied say they are motivated by the desire to fight “non-Muslims who kill Muslims and occupy Muslim territory,” as they see it.39 As the House Foreign Affairs Committee noted, Islamists inveighed against governments of all stripes, from democracies to dictatorships, that were seen as “either oppressing Muslims or supporting regimes that were not, in their opinion, sufficiently Islamic,” including not only the United States for its support of Saudi Arabia and Egypt but the Soviet Union over Afghanistan, Serbia over Bosnia, and Russia over Chechnya.40 Those who interviewed bin Laden’s associates report that whatever disdain for American culture bin Laden may have held, it did not prevent him from showing Hollywood movies to trainees in his camps and permitting his sons to play video games. Nor, more to the point, did it prevent him from allying himself with the U.S.-funded insurgency against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.41 “Thank you for bringing the Americans to help us get rid of the secularist, atheist Soviets,” he told Saudi Prince Bandar at the time.42 Something then changed to make bin Laden turn his wrath from one superpower to the next, but the character of American society and the existence of stereotypes about America were consistent variables both during his alliance with and subsequent war on the United States. One factor that had changed between the 1980s and the 1990s, on the other hand, constituted his main concern as expressed in his 1996 “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” which denounced the arrival of Christian troops in his home country of Saudi Arabia.43 Counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen, adviser to American

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generals, argues that “while neo-Salafi ‘jihadists’ — a small, elusive minority in any society — are often implacable fanatics, the local guerrillas they exploit…fight Westerners primarily because we are intruding into their space.”44 Harvard counterterrorism expert Louise Richardson, author of What Terrorists Want, quotes a member of Indonesia’s Jemaah Islamiyah accused of bombing Western targets: “I hate America because it is the real center of international terrorism, which has already repeatedly tyrannized Islam.” Richardson urges Americans neither to concede that the United States “tyrannizes” Islam nor to reassure themselves with the false comfort that terrorists are simply irrational, but to “know your enemy” and “live by your principles.”45 To turn Middle Eastern criticism of the United States into evidence of a “clash of civilizations” pitting Western democracy against a pre-modern culture does not accord with survey research showing that even people who strongly disfavor the United States are objecting not to American society or values but to its actions as perceived abroad.46 The World Values Survey of nine Muslim nations showed that 87 percent of their populations approved of democratic ideals, and 68 percent approved of the way democracy actually functions.47 More broadly, most nationalities around the world “give America high marks for its respect for the personal freedoms of its people,” reports the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

Since 2002, interviewers from the Project have polled over 175,000 people in 54 nations.

They find that “Admiration for U.S. science and technology remains nearly universal” — as opposed to the image of a hostile world united by opposition to modernity — and “the appetite for American movies, music and television shows remained strong.”48 Respondents in 66 out of 67 countries agreed that “democracy may have problems, but it is still better than any other form of government.49 Majorities also supported free enterprise and the free market.50 There are some differences in values, or at least in perceptions. For instance, a 2006 Pew Global Attitudes survey highlighted the extent to which Muslims saw the controversy surrounding cartoons published by a Danish newspaper portraying the prophet Muhammad as an example of Western disrespect for Islam, while Westerners blamed intolerance among Muslims. In a 2006 survey, 51 percent of Americans said the ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein made the world a safer place. In the five Muslim nations surveyed, support for this view ranged from 8 percent to 16 percent. Middle Eastern countries widely see a U.S. policy tilt toward Israel in its dispute with the Palestinians. Of Egyptians surveyed in 2007, 86 percent held this view, against none who thought America favored the Palestinians. Even among Israelis, a 42 percent plurality believed U.S. policy favors their country too much.51 Sometimes, hostility toward the United States arises in defense of democracy, not in antagonism to it. Former U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin has dated the growth of antiU.S. sentiment in Pakistan to 1979, when Washington supported General Zia ul-Haq after he overthrew and executed the popular elected president, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Another wave of anger arose in response to U.S. support for General Pervez Musharraf, who trampled upon democratic processes. The Pakistani media’s dissemination of conspiracy theories about U.S. plotting in the country contributes to the hostility, but so do U.S. actions taken in the real world. “The same media that in 2005 showed U.S. helicopters distributing aid to earthquake victims in remote areas of Pakistan,” reports the Voice of America in 2010, “are now showing drone attacks on al-Qaida and Taliban militants every day — alongside civilian casualties.”52 Not only critics such as the University of Michigan’s Juan Cole concluded “It’s the foreign policy, stupid.”53 After studying U.S. relations with Muslim countries, a Defense Department

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task force commissioned by Secretary Rumsfeld reached the following conclusion: “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedoms,’ but rather, they hate our policies.” The Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication report continues: “American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.”54 Given widespread support around the world for democracy and freedom and many aspects of American culture, and conflict over land, power, sovereignty, or resources at the root of most international disputes, there is not much practical utility in the interpretive conceit of “anti-Americanism.” It conflates large majorities with small minorities, non-threats with real threats, and critics with enemies and traitors. Carefully discriminating among these is more helpful than blending them together.

Attempts to measure “anti-Americanism” in the early twenty-first century thus have been hobbled by a conceptual failure. A favorite shorthand for journalists, academics, and intelligence analysts, the formula “anti-Americanism is on the rise” usually refers to negative responses in polls. When favorable opinions of the U.S. fell by half in many countries between 2000 and 2004, such headlines followed.55 We were told that “European antiAmericanism…goes far beyond specific policies and entails a much larger and generalized disdain for America and Americans.”56 Yet the same populations who could no longer say they looked favorably upon the United States during the Bush administration’s first term still liked Americans: in 2004, 32 percent of the French held a favorable opinion of the United States, but 53 percent were favorable towards Americans. Among the British, it was 58 percent for the United States, 72 percent for Americans; in Germany, 38 percent for the United States, 68 percent for Americans.57 This apparent contradiction is mysterious only if one clings to the interpretive fiction of “anti-Americanism,” which holds that hatred of a country and its people are the same as disapproval of its policies.

Concern over anti-Americanism rises to a fever pitch precisely when there is widespread opposition abroad to U.S. foreign policy — such as during the Vietnam War, the early Reagan era, and the George W. Bush administration. The term is used to refer to and explain the motivation of uncooperative foreign leaders, the falling poll numbers in international surveys, and the protestors in the streets. “Anti-Americanism is on the rise”: If antiAmericanism is simply to be a synonym for opposition to U.S. policy, then the journalistic formulation would be unobjectionable. But “anti-Americanism” has come to be understood as “a well-established ‘ism’ — thus bespeaking its entrenched institutionalization and common usage as a modern ideology.”58 Anti-Americanism is not synonymous with opposition to U.S. policies, it is the cause of opposition to U.S. policies, according to those who are most exercised about it.

On the contrary, recent research shows that anti-American sentiments have neither a necessary nor a sufficient connection to stances against any given U.S. policy. Rather than anti-Americanism causing negative responses to U.S. actions, we see some U.S. actions generating increased negative views of the United States. In 2002, 64 percent of people surveyed in 44 countries held a favorable view of the United States. Over the next three years, in tandem with the Iraq war, favorable ratings declined. In Indonesia, favorable views plummeted from a high of 75 percent in the last year of the Clinton administration to a low of 15 percent during the Iraq war, recovering to 38 percent after the United States deployed its military resources for emergency rescue and relief efforts in response to the devastating tsunami of 2004, then climbing back up to 63 percent after the election of a new American

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president who had spent part of his childhood in Jakarta. Favorable ratings among Pakistanis saw some improvement after the United States provided emergency earthquake assistance in 2005, but declined again with an increase in the number of terrorist bombings and civilian casualties that many blamed on the escalation of the “American war” in Afghanistan, whose goal seemed to them to be to stabilize a pro-Indian government.59 These results demonstrate the surpassing importance of political conflict rather than culture or psychology in foreign views of the United States. Rather than mistaking change for continuity, we should recognize that deep-seated prejudices and irrational thinking do not rise and fall from month to month and year to year.60 A congressional report found that “the decline in our standing does not appear to be caused by a rejection of such values as democracy, human rights, tolerance, and freedom of speech. Nor is it a reaction to such facets of American life as a high standard of living, mass culture, and economic opportunity, or to the American people — or even to U.S. military power, so long as it is exercised within the framework of international norms and institutions. All of these were well-established and well-known prior to 2002 when America’s image was at its highest.”61 Only in sub-Saharan Africa did America under Bush score uniformly favorable marks.

This reflected an engaged and multilateral foreign policy in Africa that was based on large investments in development and public health efforts, rather than unilateral military activity.

PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, brought antiretroviral drugs to five million people,62 and the Bush administration also invested in boosting primary education. Antipoverty activist Bob Geldof, writing in Time Magazine, called Africa “the triumph of American foreign policy.”63 That bright spot pointed to a way out of the plummeting global view of the United States while President Bush was still in office: changes in the style of American leadership and substance of American policy. As a House subcommittee report on the decline in America’s image put it, while “substance matters…style does too…Aggressive rhetoric can have an enormous impact on popular perceptions — particularly if it has been backed up repeatedly by unilateral action.”64 But most of the subcommittee report’s examples of unwelcome rhetoric came from the first term: “If you’re not with us, you’re against us…Bring it on…Axis of evil…Islamofascism…a Crusade…U.S. soldiers are God’s warriors…The only thing [Arabs] understand is force…Shock and awe.”6 Those words and the unilateralist tinge of the policies they reflected helped to produce an unprecedented global backlash. As Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland, testified to Congress, “There has really been no time for which we have data that shows the broad level of dissatisfaction with U.S. foreign policy that we find today…We have never seen numbers this low.”66 In the second term, however, President Bush gradually moved toward a more pragmatic approach of negotiating with rivals through multinational institutions, even with countries on the original list of the members of the “Axis of Evil.” Bush went before the United Nations General Assembly to reinforce his message that the United States was not at war with Islam but respects Muslims and seeks peace, that “we have no objection to Iran’s pursuit of a truly peaceful nuclear power program” and the U.S. seeks “a diplomatic solution to this crisis,” and he acknowledged that “freedom, by its nature, cannot be imposed.”67 After North Korea tested a nuclear weapon, the Bush administration worked closely with China through sixparty talks and the U.N. Security Council to reestablish a system of verification of nuclear controls, and late in his term Bush dropped North Korea from the State Department’s list of

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state sponsors of terrorism.68 Some reengagement with multilateral diplomacy and international organizations, along with Bush’s signing of a Status of Forces Agreement committing the United States to withdraw its forces from Iraq, helped to level out or slightly improve the decline in global favorability ratings in Spring 2008, even before he left office.

There was another important factor in changing world opinion: the candidacy and then inauguration of Bush’s successor, who campaigned with a different style and promised different substance should he be elected. Barack Obama’s extraordinary popularity in Europe and throughout much of the world required some intellectual adjustment on the part of those who had been decrying the pandemic of anti-Americanism sweeping the globe. If the problem was not contingent U.S. policy but an enduring, irrational hatred of all things American rooted in cultural fears and opposition to first principles like democracy and freedom, the pattern of foreign opinion after the end of Bush’s term in office should have remained relatively consistent. But the change was spectacular. In September 2009, the Transatlantic Trends survey showed that Obama’s approval rating in Germany was 92 percent, compared with the 12 percent for Bush when he left office. Support for the American president jumped 77 points in France, 70 in Portugal, and 64 in Italy.69 These Europeans were still discussing the democratically elected president of the same country, but it was a different president with different policies and a very different style. This striking transformation in opinion polls can only mean that the massive disapproval directed across the Atlantic during the Bush administration was largely focused on the presidency rather than an ingrained resentment of an entire people or its democratic system.

Figure 1. Western European opinion of the United States was highly variable in the first decade of the 21st century, from majority positive in the Clinton years, plummeting during Bush’s first term, gradually stabilizing or slightly improving toward the end of his term, then recovering sharply after Obama’s election. This is evidence not of ingrained and constant anti-Americanism abroad but support for the multilateralist policies of two charismatic presidents and opposition to the unilateralist policies of an unabashedly nationalist one. The 2008 data were collected in the spring. Source: Pew Global Attitudes Project, “Global Public Opinion in the Bush Years (2001-2008),” 18 December 2008, and “Confidence in Obama Lifts U.S. Image around the World,” 23 July 2009.

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The Obama effect of producing euphoric-level increases in favorability ratings for the United States did not create a permanent new image of the United States abroad. Foreign opinion of the United States continued to fluctuate as U.S. foreign policy evolved and as bilateral or regional difficulties arose. In Germany, for example, the controversy over U.S. eavesdropping on German officials, combined with disappointment that Obama did not sustain a foreign policy commensurate with his surprise receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, eroded the very high initial numbers to favorability ratings in his second term of just over 50 percent. Tensions with Russia, the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, and the use of drone warfare in Muslim countries also brought down favorability ratings in those areas.70 Scholars have repeatedly and erroneously asserted that the United States is judged “not for what it does, but for what it is,” suggesting that the world’s oldest democracy is, perversely, resented for its most positive attributes.71 The continuing fluctuations in global opinion that occurred during the Bush presidency and well into the Obama presidency confirm that, quite to the contrary, the United States encounters criticism and opposition not for what it is, but for what it does. To be sure, the responsibility of statecraft is not to win popularity contests, but the fact that the reversal of the damage to America’s image began in Spring 2008, before President Bush left office and before the election of his popular successor, further suggests that the personality of the president is less determinative than the extent to which the United States seeks to pursue its interests within the framework of international law and the multilateral institutions it helped to create.

ENDNOTES 1 2

3

4 5 6

7

8

9

10

11

“Text: President Bush Addresses the Nation,” Washington Post, September 20, 2001.

Lexis-Nexis search of English-language newspapers performed on January 1, 2015. See “Why the World Loves to Hate America,” Financial Times, December 7, 2001, 23; 2; Jay Nordlinger, “An Irrational Hatred,” New York Sun, July 19, 2004, 1; Paul Johnson, “Hating America, Hating Humanity,” National Review, 12 September 2005.

Paul Hollander, Anti-Americanism: Critiques at Home and Abroad, 1965-1990 (NY: Oxford University Press, 1992), 410.

Fouad Ajami, “The Falseness of Anti-Americanism,” Foreign Policy (September/October 2003): 52-61.

Jean-François Revel, L’obsession anti-américaine (Paris: Plon, 2002), 16.

Stephen Haseler, The Varieties of Anti-Americanism: Reflex and Response (Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1985), 44.

Hollander, Understanding Anti-Americanism: Its Origins and Impact at Home and Abroad (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004), 8; Josef Joffe, Überpower: The Imperial Temptation of America (NY: W.W. Norton, 2006), 77.

Dan Barry, “The Vigils: Surrounded by Grief, People around the World Pause and Turn to Prayer,” New York Times, 15 September 2001; Carol J. Williams, “World Reaction: World Leaders Condemn ‘New Evil,’” Los Angeles Times, 12 September 2001, A13; Warren Hoge, “Outpouring of Grief and Sympathy for Americans Is Seen throughout Europe and Elsewhere,” New York Times, 14 September 2001.

Sixty percent of Americans believed those statements. For viewers of the Fox news channel, the figure was 80%.

Steven Kull, “Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War,” Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), 2 October 2003, www.worldpublicopinion.org.

Sidney Tarrow and Donatella Della Porta, “‘Globalization,’ Complex Internationalism, and Transnational Contention,” in Transnational Protest and Global Activism (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 22746. Tarrow and Della Porta estimate 16 million total participants.

House Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight, “The Decline in America’s Reputation: Why?” Committee Print, June 11, 2008 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008), 1.

188 12

13

14 15 16

17 18

19

20

21

22 23 24 25 26 27

28

29

30

31 32

33 34

35

36 37

38

39

40 41 42 43

Max Paul Friedman

Charles Krauthammer, “To Hell with Sympathy,” Time, 17 November 2003, 156, quoted in Ole R. Holsti, To See Ourselves as Others See Us: How Publics Abroad View the United States after 9/11 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 182.

Robert Patterson, War Crimes: The Left’s Campaign to Destroy Our Military and Lose the War on Terror (NY: Random House, 2008), 171.

Dennis Prager, “Nature of the Rift,” Washington Times, 22 February 2003.

Washington Daybook, 10 February 2003.

“U.S. Public Diplomacy: Interagency Coordination Efforts Hampered by the Lack of a National Communication Strategy,” GAO-05-323, April 2005.

Jane Perlez, “U.S. Asks Muslims Why It Is Unloved,” New York Times, 27 September 2003, A3.

“State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2010,” Senate Committee on Appropriations, S. Hrg. 111-199, 20 May 2009.

Russell A. Berman, Anti-Americanism in Europe: a Cultural Problem (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2004), 78, xi, xii, xvi.

Pew Global Attitudes Project, “Americans and Europeans Differ Widely on Foreign Policy Issues,” 17 April 2002, and Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and German Marshall Fund of the United States, “Worldviews 2002,” 2 October 2002, www.thechicagocouncil.org.

Steven Erlanger, “German Chancellor Trying to Mend His Rift with the U.S.,” New York Times, 24 September 2002.

Fareed Zakaria, “The Arrogant Empire,” Newsweek, 24 March 2003, 29.

Keith Richburg, “Why Chirac Is Defying his American Friends,” Toronto Star, 16 February 2003, B03.

Paul Starobin, “The French Were Right,” National Journal, 7 November 2003.

Starobin, “The French Were Right.”

Elisabeth Bumiller, “Bush’s Tutor and Disciple,” New York Times, 17 November 2004.

Originally a line from the television cartoon The Simpsons, it was popularized by columnist Jonah Goldberg in regular diatribes such as “Frogs in Our Midst,” National Review Online, 16 July 2002.

Robert Stam and Ella Shohat, Flagging Patriotism: Crises of Narcissism and Anti-Americanism (NY: Routledge, 2007), 126-9.

David B. Caruso, “French Roasted: France’s Reluctance to Back War Sends Bashing to New Heights,” Associated Press, 21 February 2003.

Frank Rich, “The Ides of March 2003,” New York Times, 18 March 2007; Stam and Shohat, Flagging Patriotism, 129.

Sharon Kehnemui, “French Jokes Gain Wide Audiences,” Foxnews.com, 21 February 2003.

Andrew Higgins, “For U.S., Waging Peace Still Requires Support from Contrarian Allies,” Wall Street Journal (Europe), 17 June 2003, quoted in Denis Lacorne, “Anti-Americanism and Americanophobia: A French Perspective,” in Lacorne and Tony Judt, eds., With Us or Against Us: Studies in Global Anti-Americanism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 39.

Bruce Crumley and James Graff, “France Is Not a Pacifist Country,” Time, 24 February 2003.

Philippe Roger, The American Enemy: The History of French Anti-Americanism, tr. Sharon Bowman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), xviii.

Adnan Musallam, From Secularism to Jihad: Sayyid Qutb and the Foundations of Radical Islamism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2005), 111-36; Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (NY: Knopf, 2006), 9-37.

Wright, The Looming Tower, 27.

Peter Bergen, The Osama Bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of Al-Qaeda’s Leader (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2006), xxix, 165.

Michael Scheuer, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America (Dulles, VA: Brassey’s, 2003), 244-5; Subcommittee on International Organizations, “The Decline,” 11.

Thomas Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 64, 69, 135, 137, 147, 193; idem, “Lady Gaga vs. the Occupation,” Foreign Policy Magazine, 31 March 2010. See also Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011 [1997]).

Subcommittee on International Organizations, “The Decline,” 3.

Wright, The Looming Tower, 288, 343; Bergen, The Osama Bin Laden I Know, 170.

Wright, The Looming Tower, 172.

Quoted in Wright, The Looming Tower, 265.

Cause or Effect?

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45

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David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (NY: Oxford University Press, 2009), xiv. See also Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (NY: Columbia University Press, 2004).

Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat (New York: Random House, 2007), 206-8, 222.

“Global Polling Data on Opinion of American Policies, Values, and People,” House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight, Serial No. 110-4 (Washington, DC: USGPO, 2007), 7.

Juan Cole, “Anti-Americanism: It’s the Policies,” American Historical Review 111:4 (October 2006): 1120-29.

See also John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think (NY: Gallup Press, 2008).

“Global Public Opinion in the Bush Years,” Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Project, 18 December 2008.

Steven Kull testimony, “Global Polling Data,” 14.

“Global Polling Data,” 8.

“Global Polling Data,” 8.

Ravi Khanna, “Experts Say Anti-American Sentiment in Pakistan at All-Time High,” VOA News.com, 8 July 2010.

Cole, “Anti-Americanism: It’s the Policies,” 1129.

Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication (Washington, DC: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, 2004), 40, 6.

Pew Global Attitudes Project, “America’s Image Slips,” 13 June 2006, www.pewglobal.org.

Berman, Anti-Americanism in Europe, xiii.

Pew Global Attitudes Project, “Confidence in Obama Lifts U.S. Image around the World,” 23 July 2009.

Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 17.

Pew Global Attitudes Project, “Confidence in Obama Lifts U.S. Image around the World,” 23 July 2009.

For a sophisticated statistical analysis of world opinion concluding that “popular anti-Americanism is mostly benign and shallow,” see Giacomo Chiozza, Anti-Americanism and the American World Order (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 4.

Subcommittee on International Organizations, “The Decline,” 4.

Christian Caryl, “What George W. Bush Did Right,” Foreign Policy, February 14, 2013.

Bob Geldof, “The Healer,” Time Magazine May 3, 2008, 38-39.

Subcommittee on International Organizations, “The Decline,” 5.

Ibid., 5.

Ibid., 8.

Cnn.com, “Transcript of Bush’s U.N. Speech,” September 19, 2006.

Glenn Kessler, “U.S. Drops North Korea from Terrorism List,” Washington Post, October 12, 2008.

“Survey: Support for U.S. Leadership Skyrockets in Europe,” German Marshall Fund of the United States, 9 September 2009, www.gmfus.org.

“Global Opposition to U.S. Surveillance and Drones, but Limited Harm to America’s Image,” Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Project, 11 July 2014.

Slight variations on this phrase appear in Hollander, “Introduction,” 9; Dan Diner, Feindbild Amerika: über die Beständigkeit eines Ressentiments (Munich: Propyläen, 2002), 8; Pascal Bruckner, “La France, victime universelle,” Le Monde, 2 April 1998; Fareed Zakaria, “The War on Terror Goes Global,” Newsweek 13 Sept 2001.

In: The George W. Bush Presidency. Volume III Editors: Meena Bose and Paul Fritz

ISBN: 978-1-63485-783-3 © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 14

EUROPEANS’ VIEWS OF THE BUSH PRESIDENCY: REACTION TO U.S. INTERVENTIONISM Francesca Vassallo University of Southern Maine, ME, US

ABSTRACT Europeans’ view of President George W. Bush’s presidency changed for the worse in his second year in office. The reaction in Europe to the US interventionist policy preference after the September 11 attacks confirms a decline in support for the international policies of the President. A long term study over the course of his two terms in office suggests that Europeans did not reassess their view of the President and their position towards U.S. policies, even years after President Bush opted for a military intervention abroad. Although European public opinion showed some variance with regards to issues such as U.S. global leadership and President Bush’s approval ratings, citizens in Europe recorded overall significantly lower approval levels at the end of President Bush’s Presidency, prompting discussions on a possible critical change in U.S.Europe relations. Consistency more than volatility characterized European views of the Bush Presidency.

INTRODUCTION Transatlantic relations between the United States (U.S.) and Europe have often concerned American presidents. As the European continent becomes more unified under the European Union (EU) framework, European countries seem to have developed a stronger appetite for independence from their American ally. Although political and economic relations are bound to experience some turbulence, the two term presidency of George W. Bush represented a real earthquake in U.S.-EU relations. This chapter investigates the evolution of public opinion in Europe during the 2001 - 2008 years, in particular with a focus on European reactions to President Bush’s foreign policy decisions and America’s military presence abroad. The research studies public opinion on purpose, as official analyses of foreign relations too often

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concentrate on the political elites rather than the views of citizens. Some scholars have highlighted the limited influence of American public opinion on the development of U.S. foreign policy, yet more recent studies have looked at how foreign public opinion impacts U.S. foreign policy choices.1 Specifically, evidence has been presented that when international issues are very controversial and relevant in other countries, public perception of the U.S. and the American president does shape the foreign policy of other nations and indirectly affects U.S. foreign policy decisions.2

EUROPEAN DISLIKE By all accounts, Europeans identified President Bush’s terms in office with a consistent selection of key words: unilateralism, global hegemony, international terrorism, military power and disengagement from international obligations. The publication in September 2002 of The National Security Strategy of the United States, the so called Bush doctrine, contributed to the escalation of the negative positions towards American decisions. The president’s choice for pre-emptive strikes, unilateral decisions and military engagement abroad, Afghanistan and Iraq, is strictly correlated to the strongly negative reaction of citizens in Europe.3 This study employs survey data from the Transatlantic Trends project to highlight the evolution of public opinion’s views towards President Bush and U.S. policies in 7 European countries (6 Western European nations and 1 Eastern European country) from 2002 to 2008.4 The goal of the research is to assess the impact level of U.S. foreign policy and the corresponding reactions from Europeans in the short and long term, over the course of President George W. Bush’s presidency. While some scholars have presented a thorough empirical analysis of Europe’s opposition during the first four years of President Bush’s term, this project looks at the longer term comparison, from the beginning to the end.5 The analysis of the entire presidency allows the research to verify whether critical junctures in U.S.-Europe relations have developed. To be fair, the chapter talks about Europe or Europeans, however a disclaimer is in order. As a political entity, Europe still represents more variety than homogeneity. One of the specific tasks of the data analysis is in fact to confirm whether Europe was indeed more unanimous on its assessment of President Bush at the beginning of his office rather than at the end.

With this understanding, the chapter presents first an overview of the historical positions Europeans had towards the U.S., from the past through the recent time right before the September 11 attacks in America and the consequent changes to U.S. foreign policy. The next section of the paper introduces data on the empirical assessment of President Bush’s decisions and subsequent reactions in Europe in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, with a variety of measures. The final section presents a discussion of the European legacy of the Bush Presidency, with the assessment of the long term consequences of the presidency for Europeans as well as the debate on domestic factors vs. external decisions as determinants of U.S. supportive public opinion abroad.

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BACKGROUND: EUROPEAN POSITIONS TOWARDS THE U.S. European dislike for America and/or its decisions is nothing new. Often labeled as AntiAmericanism, European public opinion’s negative views seem to fluctuate, presenting a cyclical pattern rather than a more long term increase or decline, at least until 2001.6 As Isernia explains, the overall level of public opinion support for the U.S. is instead the sum of positive feelings on one side and negative positions on the other7. Whether or not Europeans are supportive of U.S. decisions, it is in the end a balance of individual assessment about what they like and dislike about any specific American position.

As Anti-Americanism has multiple sources, different types of public opinion’s views contribute to the same measure. Isernia presents for instance three dimensions of AntiAmericanism: cognitive, effective and action-oriented. The effective aspect of antiAmericanism is associated to feelings towards American values and institutions. It is therefore unlikely to change over time after an individual has developed a certain type of effective position towards a country, unless that country shows entirely new values. The cognitive position is generally present in people who assess specific U.S. policies and decisions, and make up their mind based upon the particular context. The action-oriented dimension is instead typical of individuals who look at the U.S. only when affected by certain individual actions that are very salient to the public.

In this study the focus on European public opinion towards the U.S. is mostly actionoriented as analyzed within a possible effective context. Embracing a more long term view of Europe’s perception of U.S. policies, it becomes clear that a different emphasis emerges depending on the time period considered. Effective and action-oriented reactions often interact with one another.

THE HISTORICAL VIEW Demonstrations against U.S. foreign policy may not have been common a century ago, yet disagreement among Europeans with regards to American positions was present starting from the time of the American revolution.8 Public relations problems remained limited until World War I. It is the interwar period that registered a strong increase in opposition to the U.S. among Europeans. The source of such negative views on the European continent was often caused by cultural differences rather than political conflict. At the same time, the balance between positives and negatives was still in favor of the American government.

Europeans who disliked the U.S. and its actions still enjoyed American cultural and artistic accomplishments.

World War II and its aftermath encouraged very positive views among Europeans. Older generations in Europe remembered the last global conflict and felt overall supportive of America and its positions.9 Yet, that generation of Europeans is slowly disappearing and the positive attractiveness America earned fighting Nazi Germany has almost been forgotten.

Nevertheless, the Cold War era sparked a new wave of public support for the U.S. in Europe, as America became the beacon of democracy and protection against the Soviet Union and Communism on a divided continent. From the 1950s to the official end of the Cold War in 1989, European public opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of the U.S. Anti-Americanism

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over those five decades represented a minority of Europeans, yet the negative publics in Europe were more politically motivated than before.10 Anti-Americanism during the Cold War era was cultural, political and economic in nature.11 Views of America and its policies during the Cold War were often created by political elites and the media.12 As European governments needed the U.S. support on the continent to resist the Soviet Communist threat, they participated in generating a very positive image of the U.S. to the European public. The U.S. view Europeans knew over a few decades was a benign image, as presented and interpreted by European elites.13 There were some differences among elites, based primarily on the corresponding political ideology they were embracing.

Some scholars contend that the left as much as the right in Europe was equally involved in negatively affecting the portrayal of the U.S. image to Europeans.14 Yet, some countries registered a stronger opposition to the U.S. on the left of the political spectrum.15 Overall the indicators used to assess the U.S. image in Europe were capitalism and anti-Communism. As long as most Europeans supported a capitalist economic system and an anti-Soviet position, the U.S. could do no wrong for most of Europe. Although leftist parties across the continent organized protests against U.S. militarism during the 1980s when the deployment of cruise missiles started, by the early 1990s the detente between the U.S. and the Soviet Union had pacified most Europeans.

Still a variance of U.S. support levels existed throughout the Cold War period.16 Some Europeans were closer friends to Washington than others. The French generally recorded lower support levels for the U.S. and American foreign policy decisions based upon their interpretation of increasing U.S. global domination and influence that negatively affected the French sphere of political reach. Similarly, the British could not easily accept the successful expansion of the American political and economic influence as the British empire came to an end. The West Germans were strongly pacifist, following the rejection of their past17 and the Italians were split on the American version of democracy, as many voted for the national Communist party.

Once the Cold War ended in 1989, Europe overall was still pro-American primarily, yet certain critical junctures along the way (the US intervention in the Suez Canal affair in the 1950s, the Vietnam War in the 1970s and the deployment of the missile system across Europe during the Reagan administration) sustained the presence of the anti-American minority.

Although U.S. presidents changed, newer generations of Europeans progressively adapted new anti-American issues from the old, usual problems,18 feeding the longevity of minor European dislike for U.S. decisions, regardless of the changes in U.S. policies. There were always examples of unilateralism, militarism or political domination European anti-American groups could grab on to.

THE RECENT MEMORY A decline in U.S. support among Europeans started before President Bush moved into the White House. It was indeed during the second term of President Bill Clinton when American foreign policy started to take a more unilateral turn, away from European consultation and joint positions. The beginning of a unipolar international system when the Soviet Union collapsed gave the U.S. the opportunity to remain the only superpower left. As a dominant

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military and economic force, unilateral decisions came easily for the U.S. government.19 The Post-Cold War era emboldened American foreign policy, causing a more critical stance on the part of European countries that saw the U.S. interference world-wide as well as domestically as a confirmation of previous concerns of global hegemony.20 Actions in the 1990s, such as the U.S. intervention in the Bosnian crisis and the rejection of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, made Europeans pause.21 At the same time, the general trend showed that when international tensions became more serious, anti-Americanism in Europe declines, as the European continent in the 1990s was still in flux and the future of the former Soviet Union was not completely understood.22 At the end of the millennium, Europeans viewed Bill Clinton’s international policy favorably. His approval ratings ranged from a minimum of 66 percent in Great Britain to a maximum of 86 percent in Germany.23 President Clinton’s terms in office had some moments of disappointment for Europeans, yet European concerns related to U.S. foreign policy remained temporary.

THE BUSH PRESIDENCY PRE-SEPTEMBER 11 President Bush’s approval in Europe during the few months before the September 11 attacks on U.S. soil was already weak. Europeans thought the President lacked international experience, needed by anyone in his position. U.S. actions in early 2001 generated negative responses from its European allies. The final rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, the opposition to the creation of the future International Criminal Court, and the end of nuclear negotiations with North Korea represented a clear choice for international disengagement. Instead, the divisive proposal for a national missile defense shield in Europe without much consultation in advance symbolized a unilateral decision. Most Europeans viewed the series of decisions by the Bush presidency as a repudiation of international commitments.24 Kuisel reveals that 9 out of 10 Europeans in 2000 considered the U.S. domineering, a characterization confirmed by more empirical data as well.25 The reinforced version of unilateralism came at a time when the first Bush term already showed a clear division within its own ranks.26 The administration demonstrated an internal split between some officials supportive of a more multilateral policy (such as Colin Powell) versus others favorable to a strongly unilateral strategy (such as Dick Cheney).

The Global Attitudes Project from summer 2001 confirmed the suspected European dislike towards President George W. Bush and American foreign policy during the initial months of his presidency. When it came to the disapproval levels of President Bush’s international policy over the first eight months of his presidency, the responses ranged from 46 percent in Italy to 65 percent in Germany, three to four times higher than his predecessor.

Europeans perceived the American president to have a lower understanding of Europe than other U.S. presidents: from 53 percent in Italy to 75 percent in Germany and Great Britain. At least three out of four Europeans thought that President Bush made decisions based only on U.S. interests, disregarding European positions. Yet, despite this unfavorable public opinion, more than half of Europeans were still supportive of the President for his encouraging position on free trade and the decision to keep U.S. troops in Bosnia and Kosovo.27 President Bush’s stand in Europe pre-September 11 was unpopular, yet the terrorist attacks made him quite popular very quickly, although for a short period of time.

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GEORGE W. BUSH AND EUROPE: REACTIONS Once September 11 took place, views of the U.S. from Europe changed quickly. First, for the better, as European public opinion, following official positions among political leaders across Europe, showed a strong sense of sympathy for the U.S. and Americans. As President Bush’s approval ratings domestically climbed, approval levels for his international policies doubled among Europeans over the first six months after the terrorist attacks. The new range of approval was still quite low, from 32 percent in France to 44 percent in Italy, yet those values represented a significant improvement.28 On average, at least six Europeans out of ten supported the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, but in the same numbers disapproved the Axis of Evil interpretation. True to their own long term perception as dismissed allies, in April 2002 Europeans were more likely to see the U.S. act mainly in its own interest in the war on terror: from 68 percent in Italy to 85 percent in Germany.

Decisions following the first few months after September 11, 2001 led to a momentary increase in European support for the U.S. President. However, the second wave of public opinion change in Europe was for the worse: in the minds of many Europeans, U.S. foreign policy, including the decisions to deploy troops in Afghanistan and later on in Iraq, confirmed the persistent interpretation on the European continent that America was becoming hegemonic and not likely to engage in discussions with its own allies.

Source: Transatlantic Trends 2007. Topline Data. (trends.gmfus.org/archives/transatlantictrends/transatlantic-trends-2007/).

Q. Do you approve or disapprove of the way the President of the United States George Bush is handling international policies?

Figure 1. Disapproval of President George W. Bush’s Handling of International Policies.

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Source: Transatlantic Trends 2007. Topline Data. (trends.gmfus.org/archives/transatlantictrends/transatlantic-trends-2007/).

Q. How desirable is it that the United States exert strong leadership in world affairs? Answers for 20022005 are sum of Very Desirable and Somewhat Desirable, answers for 2006-2008 are percentages for Desirable.

Figure 2. Desirable Strong U.S. Leadership in World Affairs.

President Bush’s approval rating for handling international policies is the first empirical measure available to assess the Europeans’ reaction to U.S. decision in foreign policy after 2001. Scholars have highlighted how public opinion seemed to be able to distinguish between the President in charge of executive decisions and the country at large.29 Yet, in Europe the President was considered to be the real problem, not the country. In a stark transatlantic contrast, as President Bush’s popularity (2001-2002) at home was reaching unprecedented levels, Europe’s view was going in the opposite direction.30 Figure 1 above depicts the evolution of Europeans who disapproved “very much” of President Bush’s international policies. Over the first two years, levels doubled across the countries. Strong disapproval for the President’s handling of international policy remained strong until the end of his presidency. In 2002 European countries recorded levels of strong disapproval from a minimum of 4 percent in Poland to a maximum of 22 percent in the United Kingdom. Six years later, that range varied mostly from 38 percent in Italy to 51 percent in Portugal, with the exception of the Polish case, which remained the lowest at 11 percent - the anomaly in the European group. Six of the seven European countries considered in this research display high levels of strong disapproval in 2002 and remain very close to this in 2008. Many protest marches and street demonstrations took place across Europe repeatedly, as the level of disapproval increased.31 Poland appears to be the anomaly in 2002 with the lowest level of very high disapproval for the international policy of the President and consistently records the lowest disapproval level until 2008. The division between old Europe and new Europe mentioned by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld may be correct after all, especially in the post-cold

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war context where Eastern European post-communist countries still viewed the U.S. as their best protector from a newly aggressive Russia.

Data from Figure 2 above depicts the level of desirability of strong U.S. leadership in world affairs. In this case, Europeans were not as tight in their interpretation of this measure from the beginning. In 2002, support for a U.S. leadership internationally varied from 48 percent in France to 75 percent in the Netherlands: Europe disagreed on the position the U.S. should have worldwide. The gap shows significant variance, which can easily help U.S. foreign policy when in need for the right allies. Despite the variety of positions, Europeans reacted in the same way to the evolution of U.S. leadership from 2002 to 2008. When President Bush left the White House, the range of Europeans desiring U.S. leadership internationally varies from 28 percent in France to 52 percent in the Netherlands, an overall decline of about 20 percent across the nations. In particular, only about half of the respondents in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom supported U.S. leadership in 2008, whereas the numbers in 2002 were about three out of four. In most of Europe, less than 40 percent in 2008 viewed U.S. leadership as welcomed internationally.

Source: Transatlantic Trends 2007. Topline Data. (trends.gmfus.org/archives/transatlantictrends/transatlantic-trends-2007/).

Q. Over the last year, do you think relations between the United States and Europe have…? Answers reported are percentages of Gotten Worse.

Figure 3. Evolution of Relations between U.S. and Europe.

If approval ratings for President Bush and U.S. leadership declined significantly in between 2002 and 2008, perceptions in Europe about transatlantic relations remained stable, with few important exceptions. During President Bush’s second term in office, less than 40 percent of public opinion in Europe thought that the U.S.-Europe relations had deteriorated over the previous years (2005-2008) (Figure 3). Europeans have a slightly different perception of the evolution of transatlantic relations, yet their variance does not change overall over a period of three years. The only exception in the group is France, whose

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assessment of the state of U.S.-Europe relations improved significantly. In 2008, 22 percent of the French respondents in the Transatlantic Trend survey stated that relations had worsened over the previous year, half the size of the same group of respondents in 2005.32 Over time, French public opinion became less critical of the way the U.S. was treating Europe.

To understand the evolution of European public opinion during the Bush presidency, it is relevant to consider the reasons behind Europe’s negative reactions to U.S. foreign policy. In a long term perspective, negative reactions from Europe were expected. The historical overview in the previous section highlighted some of the more common complaints Europeans had towards the U.S. A major factor Europeans used to assess the international policies of American presidents is the use of war (Figure 4) as well as the relevance of military power (Figure 5).

Source: Transatlantic Trends 2007. Topline Data. (trends.gmfus.org/archives/transatlantictrends/transatlantic-trends-2007/).

Q. Under some conditions, war is necessary to obtain justice. Answers for 2003-2005 are sum of Agree Strongly and Agree Somewhat, answers for 2006-2008 are percentages for Agree.

Figure 4. War is Necessary for Justice.

The U.S.-European divide on the necessity of war under some conditions perfectly explains why European public opinion opposed U.S. decisions. As early as 2003, in most European countries, with the exception of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, less than 50 percent of the respondents agreed with the statement that “war is necessary to obtain justice.” The corresponding value in the U.S. at the same time was 84 percent. The only two European exceptions recorded answers between 60 percent (The Netherlands) and 74 percent (The United Kingdom). More telling instead is the corresponding cluster of European countries at the end of President Bush’s terms in office. In 2008, with the exception of the UK, European countries range from 21 percent (Germany) to 38 percent (The Netherlands) when it comes to the thought of using war to obtain justice: an overall decline in support of

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about 20 percent. The actual war experience indeed affected the opinions in Europe towards the use of war and when it is necessary. Yet, the American value for that same statement lost only 10 percent of support between 2003 and 2008. Europe reacts differently to war and related policies. The initial gap showed in the data, and confirmed historically, remains unchanged, if not wider in 2008.

Source: Transatlantic Trends 2007. Topline Data. (trends.gmfus.org/archives/transatlantictrends/transatlantic-trends-2007/).

Q. Economic power is more important in world affairs than military power.

Figure 5. Economic Power vs. Military Power in World Affairs.

A second fundamental reason why Europe reacted unfavorably to American foreign policy regarded the view of military power in world affairs. European countries had come to the conclusion that economic power can be as critical as military power. From 2006 to 2008 for instance, well after the war on terror had started, Europeans and Americans remained divided on the value of military power vs. economic power (Figure 5). European countries agreed with the statement that economic power is more important than military power (at least 84% in each of the European countries polled). Americans shared the interpretation, although about 10 percent less than the European levels. Both sides of the Atlantic were closer than maybe expected, with very minor changes over the period of time considered. As the decline in support for war as a necessary mean for justice is consistent between 2003 and 2008, in the minds of most Europeans economic power remains more relevant than military power.

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Source: Transatlantic Trends 2007. Topline Data. (trends.gmfus.org/archives/transatlantictrends/transatlantic-trends-2007/).

Q. Next I’d like you to rate your feelings toward some countries, institutions and people, with 100 meaning a warm, favorable feeling, 0 meaning a very cold, unfavorable feeling, and 50 meaning not particularly warm or cold. You can use any number from 0 to 100.

Figure 6. Feelings towards U.S.

As Europe recorded negative positions towards U.S. international policies and the American President between 2002 and 2008, European positions towards Americans seemed to have suffered from the overall interpretation of America’s international standing (Figure 6), contradicting expectations that European public opinion could separate their views on the U.S. President from their corresponding assessment of American citizens.33 A measure of feelings towards the U.S. as a country confirms the parallel evolution of interpretation among Europeans. In 2002, a feeling thermometer, with a possible range of 0 to 100, indicated levels of overall warm feelings towards America in Europe: from the lowest value of 59 percent in the Netherlands to the highest level of 68 percent in Italy. Respondents were not told what to consider, so their overall value probably is based on a balanced view of values and positions associated with the U.S. Two years later, the feeling assessment in Europe is already lower, by about 5-10 percent. Kuisel reports a sharp increase instead in unfavorable views of the U.S. in April 2004: from 34 percent in Italy to 69 percent in Spain.34 According to the Transatlantic Trends data, in 2008 the final range of favorable feeling is between 45 percent in Portugal to 58 percent in Italy, on average 10-15 percent lower than at the beginning of the period considered, yet with a smaller decline in comparison to the corresponding assessment of the American President and official U.S. foreign-policy positions. Europeans’ favorable views of America declined overall, but substantially less than their corresponding interpretations of President Bush and U.S. policies during his presidency. If this is good news overall for a long term assessment of the impact of European public opinion’s decline with

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regards to their view of America, scholars are still unclear about whether opposition to the U.S. and its policies is peculiar to some types of Europeans only or not.35 In the end, the European public’s perception of the American presidency in 2008 provided both short term and long term concerning issues to deal with. If President Bush could not modify his image in Europe, despite some policy changes towards more collaboration in the second term, the long term impact of U.S. foreign policy decisions confirms the need for open consultation in the transatlantic partnership. President Bush’s successor significantly shifted American foreign policy decision making by incorporating a strong consultative process with allies, especially in the case of European partners. President Obama’s approval ratings among Europeans reflected that important change.36

THE EUROPEAN LEGACY OF THE BUSH PRESIDENCY After two terms in office, President Bush’s decisions and positions created both short term disagreements and long term consequences for European countries, whose views of the President and the U.S. reflected the transatlantic mood. According to the 2007 Transatlantic Trends survey data, Europeans shared a critical understanding of the cause for the increasing tension in U.S.-Europe relations. President Bush was named the most important factor for the deterioration of transatlantic relations in five European countries: France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Portugal. The corresponding percentages of respondents across Europe agreeing with that same cause for the decline in U.S.-Europe relations ranged from 36 percent in Portugal to 42 percent in the Netherlands. Europeans named the management of the Iraq war as the second most important factor responsible for the decline in friendship among allies, with a range of those in agreement from 39 percent in France up to 53 percent in Poland.

Immediate concerns about the problems in communication between the allies on the two sides of the Atlantic led to speculation about a possible disruption in international cooperation.37 Although some countries had already manifested in the past a serious mistrust of cooperation with the U.S. internationally, the issues were now broader, and American national security could have been affected.38 Keohane and Katzenstein discuss possible repercussions on the ability of the U.S. to expand its foreign relations and contacts when needed, as public opinion in many countries could have become more skeptical about the American intentions for open and mutual collaboration.39 Other scholars, such as Kuisel, depict a scenario where the real price of the Bush presidency for the U.S. is instead a bolder, more demanding Europe.40 Even more intriguing, the decline in the state of U.S.-Europe relations helped some European leaders win national elections: Chancellor Schrӧder getting reelected in the fall of 2002 with a campaign against German intervention in the Iraq conflict, following the country’s pacifist commitment41. In a perverse way, disagreement with the U.S. president became a source of consensus and rally in some European countries (France, Germany, Spain, etc.), where national debates unified positions among Europeans, beyond their possible ideological divide.42 As a legacy, President Bush could actually claim to have helped the achievement of a better European political harmonization.43 Despite the deterioration of political discourse between the U.S. and Europe, from the European perspective, transatlantic relations could still be saved. In 2007, the Transatlantic

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Trends survey asked Europeans whether U.S.-Europe relations were too strained to recover.

Among Europeans who responded to the question, at least 6 out of 10 disagreed. Whereas in Poland (47%) and Portugal (41%) less than 50 percent thought the alliance with the U.S. could be improved, a range from 59 percent in the UK to 65 percent in Germany did not believe the relations were too strained to recover. The election of President Obama in 2008 confirmed this interpretation as Europeans showed record high support for the new American president, with a very quick turnaround in opinions.44 In the U.S. as well, optimism was also present, as 73 percent of the Americans surveyed disagreed and viewed recovery of transatlantic relations possible. Both Americans and Europeans also agreed in the same survey that on national security issues, Europe and the US should act together with allies: at least 76 percent among Europeans and 89 percent (!) among Americans.

As a general point about the legacy of the Bush Presidency among Europeans, public opinion strongly reacted to the decisions taken by the President. Yet, citizens in Europe could still see the relevance of the transatlantic relationship, even if they were unable to reconsider their assessment of President Bush in office.

FINAL ASSESSMENT The Presidency of George W. Bush was not well received in Europe. U.S. foreign policy in particular after September 11, 2001 highlighted again differences in preferences between allies. From previous past divisions on the use of military force, the perceived strive for hegemony, as well as the open unilateralism, Europeans reacted to an American President and his “as expected” political behavior.

There are overall two main conclusions that can be drawn from an analysis of public opinion in Europe during President Bush’s terms in office. The first conclusion from the data considered seems to be that Europeans do not forgive or forget when their positions are consistently ignored. As increasing disagreement with the decisions taken by the U.S. became very open, European public opinion reacted persistently in a negative way, and levels of support for the American president remained consistently lower, even less than for the U.S. in general. President Bush’s approval ratings in Europe paid the price for decisions taken mainly in his first term in office, and could not regain steam later on. This type of decision making behavior for European public opinion is slightly different than the corresponding assessment from European elites, who disagreed with President Bush, yet later managed to move past critical positions towards the President to favor the alliance over previous contention. The Bush presidency was indeed a critical juncture for European public opinion, which showed consistency rather than volatility when grading U.S. presidents.

A second conclusion from the survey data analysis suggests that Europeans are not necessarily all alike, yet they did react in a similar way to President Bush and U.S. decisions, with very few outliers. If indeed some countries may have historical domestic sources to critically view the U.S., in the case of the Presidency of George W. Bush, external factors (decisions in the U.S.) affected reaction in Europe the most45. As citizens in Europe are more likely to behave as a group when assessing the U.S., they have a broader impact on transatlantic relations than the simple sum of all the countries on the continent. Old Europe

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vs. new Europe does not matter as much for public opinion, even if it likely does matter for political elites in Europe.

The author is grateful to the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Southern Maine for a travel grant to participate in the 12th Presidential Conference “The George W. Bush Presidency” at Hofstra University, and the Centre for European Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra for hosting her as a Visiting Fellow in 2015, when this chapter was revised for publication.

ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6

7 8

9 10 11 12 13

14

15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28

Lawrence Jacobs and Benjamin Page, “Who Influences U.S. Foreign Policy?” American Political Science Review, 99, 1 (February 2005), 107-123.

Benjamin Goldsmith and Yusaku Horiuchi, “In Search of Soft Power. Does Foreign Policy Matter for U.S. Foreign Policy?” World Politics, 64, 3 (July 2012), 555-85.

Carl Hodge, “An Ocean Apart: The Legacy of the Bush Years in Transatlantic Security,” Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 8, 3 (2010), 279-289.

The countries selected for this study are: France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Portugal. In addition, the graphs included in the paper have a Europe 7 average of the countries considered.

Selection of these seven countries allows a possible long term comparison over President Bush’s two terms in office.

Richard Kuisel, “What Do the French Think of Us?” French Politics, Culture and Society, 22, 3 (2004), 91-119; Russell Berman, Anti-Americanism in Europe: A Cultural Problem (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 2004).

Pierangelo Isernia, “Anti-Americanism in Europe During the Cold War,” in Anti-Americanisms in World Politics, edited by Peter Katzenstein and Robert Keohane (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 77.

Isernia, “Anti-Americanism in Europe During the Cold War,” 75.

Jessica Gienow-Hecht, “Always Blame the Americans: Anti-Americanism in Europe in the Twentieth Century,” American Historical Review, 111, 4 (2006), 1067-1091.

Including the French, as explained in Kuisel, “What Do the French Think of Us?” 105.

Isernia, “Anti-Americanism in Europe During the Cold War,” 75.

Gienow-Hecht, “Always Blame the Americans: Anti-Americanism in Europe in the Twentieth Century,” 1080.

Isernia, “Anti-Americanism in Europe During the Cold War,” 79.

Sergio Fabbrini, “The Domestic Sources of European Anti-Americanism,” Government and Opposition, 37, 1 (2002), 3-14.

Fabbrini, “The Domestic Sources of European Anti-Americanism,” and Gienow-Hecht, “Always Blame the Americans: Anti-Americanism in Europe in the Twentieth Century.”

Kuisel, “What Do the French Think of Us?” 105.

Gienow-Hecht, “Always Blame the Americans: Anti-Americanism in Europe in the Twentieth Century.”

Berman, Anti-Americanism in Europe: A Cultural Problem.

Gienow-Hecht, “Always Blame the Americans: Anti-Americanism in Europe in the Twentieth Century,” 1089.

John Dumbrell, “Unilateralism and ‘America First’? President George W. Bush’s Foreign Policy,” The Political Quarterly, 73, 3 (2002), 279-287; Kuisel, “What Do the French Think of Us?” Kuisel, “What Do the French Think of Us?” 101.

Kuisel, “What Do the French Think of Us?” 100-11.

Isernia, “Anti-Americanism in Europe During the Cold War,” 83.

Pew Research, “Bush Unpopular in Europe, Seen As Unilateralist,”Global Attitudes Project. (August 15, 2001).

Dumbrell, “Unilateralism and ‘America First’? President George W. Bush’s Foreign Policy.”

Kuisel, “What Do the French Think of Us?” 98; Giacomo Chiozza, “Disaggregating Anti-Americanism: An Analysis of Individual Attitudes Toward the United States,” in Anti-Americanisms in World Politics, edited by Katzenstein and Keohane, 95.

Dumbrell, “Unilateralism and ‘America First’? President George W. Bush’s Foreign Policy,” 281.

Pew Research, “Bush Unpopular in Europe, Seen As Unilateralist.”

Pew Research, “Americans and Europeans Differ Widely on Foreign Policy Issues,” Global Attitudes Project.

(April 17, 2002).

Europeans’ Views of the Bush Presidency 29

30 31

32

33 34 35

36

37

38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45

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Kuisel, “What Do the French Think of Us?” 94; Sergio Fabbrini, “Layers of Anti-Americanism: Americanization, American Unilateralism and Anti-Americanism in a European Perspective,” European Journal of American Culture, 23, 2 (2004), 90.

Dumbrell, “Unilateralism and ‘America First’? President George W. Bush’s Foreign Policy,” 285.

Stefaan Walgrave and Dieter Rucht, eds., Protest Politics: Anti-war Mobilization in Western Democracies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).

In 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy had been elected to the French Presidency, a conservative politician who surprisingly showed a strong support for the U.S. and American values, an anomaly among Gaullist political leaders in the country. This pattern was not repeated in Germany where the arrival of center right Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2005 did not help German approval ratings for President Bush. Instead, the 2006 appointment of a center left Prime Minister in Italy (Romano Prodi) aided the decline of disapproval in the country for President Bush’s international policies.

Isernia, “Anti-Americanism in Europe During the Cold War,” 79.

Kuisel, “What Do the French Think of Us?” 94.

Studies on anti-Americanism so far have failed to present the picture of a stereotypical anti-U.S. position among Europeans. If political ideology and age might have helped identifying Europeans more likely to oppose certain American decisions, this view has changed after more recent studies (Isernia, “Anti-Americanism in Europe During the Cold War”; Chiozza, “Disaggregating Anti-Americanism: An Analysis of Individual Attitudes Toward the United States”). Appeasing Europeans is not as easy and predictable as it was in the past. AntiAmericanism is now more common among Europeans with different backgrounds and socio-demographic characteristics.

Francesca Vassallo, “As Time Goes By: Europeans’ View of Obama in Office,” L’Europe en Formation, 52, 361 (2011), 115-128.

Robert Keohane and Peter Katzenstein, “The Political Consequences of Anti-Americanism,” in AntiAmericanisms in World Politics, edited by Katzenstein and Keohane, 275.

On France specifically, see Kuisel, “What Do the French Think of Us?” 95.

Keohane and Katzenstein, “The Political Consequences of Anti-Americanism,” 276.

Kuisel, “What Do the French Think of Us?” Berman, Anti-Americanism in Europe: A Cultural Problem.

Kuisel, “What Do the French Think of Us?” 107.

This is in sharp opposition to the domestic state of division among American voters during the later years of the presidency.

Vassallo, “As Time Goes By: Europeans’ View of Obama in Office.”

Fabbrini, “The Domestic Sources of European Anti-Americanism.”

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS TOM BASILE is President of Empire Solutions LLC and a national political commentator. He is an Opinion Contributor to Forbes and SiriusXM Radio, and he is the author of Tough Sell: Fighting the Media War in Iraq (Potomac, 2017). He serves as Deputy Town Supervisor and Councilman in Stony Point, New York.

JOHN B. BELLINGER III is Partner in Arnold and Porter’s National Security and Public International Law Practices. Before joining the State Department, Mr. Bellinger managed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s confirmation process and co-directed her transition team. He received the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award in 2009.

MEENA BOSE is Executive Dean of Hofstra University’s Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs, and the Director of Hofstra’s Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency. She is the author or editor of many books on the American presidency and American politics.

ANN E. BURNETTE is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Texas State University. She publishes scholarship on presidential rhetoric, political campaign rhetoric, and freedom of expression issues. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in political communication, persuasion, American public address, and rhetorical criticism.

DANE J. CASH is Assistant Professor of History at Carroll College in Helena, Montana.

His research focuses on the intersection of US foreign policy and American politics during the early Cold War, and he has authored articles and book chapters on presidential foreign policy and the conflict between liberalism and conservatism during the Truman administration.

BYRON W. DAYNES was Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Brigham Young University. He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago. He published widely on American politics, the American presidency, and social policy. He spent 2006/2007 as the William J. Clinton Distinguished Fellow at the University of Arkansas’s Clinton School of Public Service.

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CAROLYN EISENBERG is Professor of History at Hofstra University. She is the author of the prize-winning Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-49 (Cambridge University Press, 1998), and her forthcoming book is Never Lose: Nixon, Kissinger and the Illusion of National Security (W.W. Norton Press). She chaired the task force on the Iraq Occupation for the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy and has written and spoken widely on U.S. foreign policy and the invasion of Iraq.

PETER D. FEAVER is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Duke University. He is Director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies and Director of the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy. He is the author or co-author of numerous studies of U.S. military policy and civil-military relations.

MAX PAUL FRIEDMAN is Professor of History and Affiliate Professor at the School for International Studies at American University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Rethinking Anti-Americanism: The History of an Exceptional Concept in American Foreign Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2012), among other publications.

PAUL FRITZ is Associate Professor of Political Science at Hofstra University. He specializes in international politics, security studies, and American foreign policy. He has published work on imposed democracy, United Nations Security Council reform, and alliance formation.

MICHAEL A. GENOVESE is Loyola Chair of Leadership and President of the World Policy Institute at Loyola Marymount University. He is the author of more than forty books on the American presidency, executive leadership, and American politics.

PORTER J. GOSS is a retired Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, retired Director of Central Intelligence, and a former U.S. Congressman (R-Florida). He served in Congress for fifteen years, and he was chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 1997-2004.

MICHAEL V. HAYDEN is Principal, The Chertoff Group, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs, George Mason University. He is the author of Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror (Penguin Press, 2016). He is a retired four-star general in the U.S. Air Force, where he served for almost forty years.

WAYNE L. KRAEMER is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Debate Society at Texas State University. He publishes scholarship on political rhetoric and teaches classes in argumentation and debate, persuasion, and public advocacy and civic engagement.

PETER KUZNICK is Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University. He and filmmaker Oliver Stone co-authored the book and documentary film series The Untold History of the United States.

List of Contributors

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WILLIAM W. NEWMANN is Associate Professor of Political Science at Virginia Commonwealth University.

He has published Managing National Security Policy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003) as well as articles on U. S. national security and the U.S. Presidency.

JOHN D. NEGROPONTE is Vice Chairman of McLarty Associates and Distinguished Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Yale University. During his extensive career in diplomacy and national security, he held government positions in the United States and abroad from 19601997, and again from 2001-2008.

R. JAMES NICHOLSON is Senior Counsel at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. He advises clients in several areas, including public policy, health care, alternative energy, and international relations. Pope John Paul II knighted him for his leadership on human rights issues. He served as chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1997-2001.

JERRY PUBANTZ is Professor of Political Science and the founding dean of the International Honors College at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is coeditor of the Encyclopedia of the United Nations, and the author of several other volumes on the world body as well as works on American foreign policy.

GLEN SUSSMAN is University Professor of Political Science at Old Dominion University. His latest books are American Politics and the Environment, 2nd ed. (with Byron W. Daynes and Jonathan P. West), SUNY Press, 2016, U.S. Politics and Climate Change (with Byron W. Daynes), Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013, and White House Politics and the Environment (with Byron W. Daynes), Texas A&M University Press, 2010.

FRANCESCA VASSALLO is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern Maine. Her publications have focused on conventional and unconventional political behavior, French politics, European public opinion, and US-EU relations. She is the author of peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and France, Social Capital and Political Activism (Palgrave, 2010).

BEN VOTH is Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Director of Debate at Southern Methodist University. He is an adviser for the Bush Institute and the Calvin Coolidge Foundation Debate Fellow.

MATTHEW C. WAXMAN is Liviu Librescu Professor of Law, Columbia School of Law, and Adjunct Senior Fellow for Law and Foreign Policy, Council on Foreign Relations.

He is Co-Chair of the Cybersecurity Center at the Columbia Data Science Institute.

LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON is Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy, The College of William and Mary. Before serving in the State Department, COL (R) Wilkerson served for 31 years in the U.S. Army. He retired from active service as a colonel in 1997 and began work as an advisor to GEN Colin Powell.

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MICHELLE MURRAY YANG is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland. Her scholarly work focuses on how China is rhetorically portrayed by policy makers and media outlets within the United States. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, and the Chinese Journal of Communication. Dr. Murray Yang is currently working on a book project that traces the evolution of yellow peril and Cold War tropes in U.S. political discourse to discern how historical Sinophobic depictions infuse contemporary portrayals of U.S.-Sino relations.

INDEX # 20th century, 23, 24, 60, 70, 109, 161, 171 21st century, 48, 49, 71, 161, 162, 171, 186 9/11, xi, xii, xiii, 4, 8, 14, 25, 31, 38, 39, 40, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 65, 70, 71, 73, 79, 86, 93, 94, 95, 101, 105, 107, 116, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 127, 145, 147, 181, 188

A A More Secure World Our Shared Responsibility, 75 abstraction, 85 abuse, 3, 113, 118, 165 access, 9, 22, 35, 62, 79, 112, 115 accountability, 112 Adams, John Quincy, 70 adjustment, 79, 186 advocacy, 86, 91, 150, 169, 172, 208 affirming, 48 Afghanistan, vii, xi, 25, 26, 31, 33, 38, 40, 41, 46, 49, 53, 71, 72, 74, 77, 80, 81, 95, 105, 111, 119, 122, 124, 126, 128, 148, 167, 179, 180, 181, 182, 185, 192, 196 Africa, 75, 163, 169, 170, 171, 174, 185 age, 5, 25, 26, 48, 52, 114, 166, 205 agencies, 117, 127 aggression, 19, 20, 24, 74, 75, 78, 92, 100, 107, 111, 136, 146, 150, 165, 181 AIDS, 48, 185 Air Force, 59, 154, 166, 208 airports, 49 Akan, 104 Al Qaeda, 9, 33, 72, 94, 114 Alaska, 7 alienation, 114 alternative energy, 209

alters, 145 amalgam, 100 ambassadors, 59 American culture, 182, 184 American Presidency, 14, 15, 16, 105, 157, 158, 159, 207 anger, 92, 138, 162, 183 Annan, Kofi, 74, 80 antagonism, 183 Anti-Americanism, vi, 177, 179, 184, 187, 188, 189, 193, 204, 205, 208 antithesis, 148, 156 anxiety, 39 appointees, 38 Arab world, 167 architect, 27 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 7 Aristotle, 101 armed conflict, 64, 155 armed forces, 38, 126 arms control, 33, 38, 140, 143 arms sales, 153 arms trafficking, 39 arrest, 102, 180 arsenic, 7 articulation, 65 Asia, 80, 134, 142, 146, 157 aspiration, 110 assault, 7, 42, 72, 113, 170 assessment, 5, 13, 71, 75, 192, 193, 199, 201, 203 assets, 34, 139, 143 atrocities, 166, 168 Attorney General, 8, 16, 33, 120 authorities, 115 authority, xii, 5, 9, 10, 40, 70, 90, 91, 102, 103, 111, 113, 120, 123, 135, 141, 148 aversion, 108 Axis of Evil, 72, 173, 180, 185, 196

212

Index

B backlash, 171, 185 backwardness, 113 bad behavior, 133, 134 baggage, 41 ballistic missiles, 34, 35, 139 ban, 6, 36, 39 bargaining, 137 base, 97, 100 Bashir, Omar, 162, 169 behaviors, 111 Beijing, 136, 147, 148, 149, 150, 154, 156, 158, 159, 160 benefits, 7, 21, 33, 46, 48, 137, 140, 149 benign, 189, 194 bias, 32 Biden, Vice President Joseph, 35 bilateral, 62, 136, 187 Bin Laden, Osama, 163, 188 biological weapons, 34, 109, 127, 166, 167 Blair, Tony, 8, 76, 93 blame, 14 blogs, 173 blueprint, 22, 37 Bolton, John, 36, 38, 41, 78, 134, 142 bones, 23 Bosnia, 72, 77, 80, 182, 195 Boumediene v. Bush (2008), 10 Britain, 18, 65, 93, 127, 180 brutality, 170 Budget Committee, 34 Bulgaria, 19 bullying, 98, 170 Bush Doctrine, v, xii, 6, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 44, 71, 72, 78, 128, 133, 141 Bush, George H.W., xii, 33, 37, 38, 75, 84, 88, 89, 95, 99, 102, 107, 117, 146, 147, 148, 153 Bush, Laura, 98 Bush, President, vi, xi, xii, xiii, 3, 6, 7, 9, 14, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 44, 49, 54, 61, 62, 63, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 102, 103, 108, 112, 116, 117, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 133, 134, 137, 145, 146, 147, 149, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158, 159, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 180, 185, 187, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205 Bush, President George Herbert Walker, 10, 83, 84, 89, 116 Bush, President George Walker, v, vi, xi, xii, xiii, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 37, 38, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49,

55, 65, 69, 70, 79, 80, 83, 84, 88, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 117, 118, 121, 122, 123, 128, 131, 141, 142, 145, 146, 147, 149, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 170, 172, 173, 175, 177, 184, 189, 191, 192, 195, 196, 203, 204, 205 Bush’s “go-it-alone” attitude, 8, Bush's world view, 12

C Cabinet, 38, 43, 109 Cairo, 84, 89, 99, 104, 106 Camp David, 93 campaigns, 48, 147 candidates, 4, 25, 37, 147, 149, 156, 157 capitalism, 194 case studies, 161, 165, 171 case study, 14, 140 casting, 151, 155 Catholics, 125 CBS, 16, 158 ceasefire, 75, 102 challenges, 10, 21, 50, 53, 54, 77, 86, 148, 149, 156, 169, 170 chaos, xii Chapter VII of the UN Charter, 79 charities, 6 Charles Taylor, 162, 169, 170 checks and balances, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13 chemical, 25, 34, 72, 109, 126, 127, 138, 165, 166, 167, 168 Cheney, Dick, 4, 8, 9, 23, 34, 35, 36, 91, 93, 94, 96, 126, 131, 132, 141, 195 Chicago, 14, 35, 43, 56, 104, 187, 188, 207 Chief of Staff, 126, 133 child mortality, 114 childhood, 185 children, 48, 60, 114, 115, 163, 166, 169 China, xi, xiii, 89, 111, 134, 136, 138, 139, 143, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 185, 210 Chinese government, 150 Chirac, Jacques, 80, 180 Christian conservatives, 6 Christian Right, 15 CIA, 11, 40, 43, 64, 105, 118, 127, 133, 135, 182 cities, 72, 92, 114, 166, 167, 180 citizens, 10, 35, 50, 53, 60, 62, 73, 125, 136, 165, 166, 168, 169, 179, 191, 192, 201, 203 citizenship, 41 civil liberties, 7, 12, 31 civil war, 7, 12, 32, 42, 88, 96, 163, 164, 173

Index civilization, 77, 166 clarity, xii, 31, 36 classes, 208 classification, 9 Clean Air Act, 7 clean energy, 8 cleft palate, 114 clients, 73, 209 climate, 7, 9, 14, 40, 64 climate change, 7 Clinton, President William Jefferson (, 10, 23, 28, 36, 43, 63, 72, 77, 102, 103, 146, 149, 151, 153, 154, 157, 195, 207 closure, 55 CNN, 118, 145, 152, 157, 158, 159, 172, 180 coalition of the willing, xi, xii, 69, 70, 74, 95, 100, 102, 120 Coast Guard, 166 coercion, 19, 146 cognition, 5 cognitive style, 85 Cold War, 8, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 29, 34, 35, 38, 39, 49, 77, 84, 86, 87, 92, 99, 101, 107, 111, 112, 122, 124, 126, 132, 148, 157, 193, 194, 195, 198, 204, 205, 207, 210 collaboration, 12, 148, 156, 202 collective security, xii, 25, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81 College Station, 141 color, 8, 62 commercial, 7, 146 common sense, 46, 47, 99, 164 communication, 49, 162, 163, 202 communism, 19, 27, 33, 34, 116, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 155 communist countries, 198 communities, 178 community, 21, 26, 33, 42, 46, 48, 49, 69, 77, 111, 127, 135, 162, 165 compassion, 51, 52, 92, 162 competition, 111, 132 competitors, 22, 35, 151 complexity, 98, 155, 156 compliance, 76, 91, 135 comprehension, 5 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, 39 conception, 25 conceptual model, 85 conditioning, 111 conference, xii, 103, 127 conflict, 24, 26, 34, 35, 37, 51, 55, 60, 64, 80, 146, 151, 166, 167, 179, 184, 185, 193, 202, 207 conformity, 26

213

confrontation, 75, 110 Congo, 42 Congress, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 24, 28, 32, 42, 64, 85, 87, 88, 89, 91, 94, 102, 103, 104, 105, 126, 135, 140, 142, 153, 162, 172, 173, 177, 181, 185, 208 congressional hearings, 169 consensus, 8, 27, 60, 61, 75, 76, 80, 92, 132, 134, 135, 137, 178, 202 conservation, 7 consolidation, 171 conspiracy, 183 Constitution, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 63, 65, 85, 104 constitutional amendment, 6 construction, 53, 54, 148, 150 consulting, 139 consumption, 110 contradiction, 184 controversial, xi, xii, xiii, 10, 17, 36, 50, 65, 146, 164, 177, 178, 192 convergence, 69, 70 conversations, 116, 135, 136 conviction, 47, 50, 51, 108 Coolidge, Calvin, 209 cooperation, 22, 49, 64, 75, 96, 103, 123, 153, 154, 156, 177, 181, 202 cost, 12, 91, 96, 99, 108, 111 counsel, 5, 91 counterterrorism, 95, 132, 133, 140, 183 Coup, 15 covering, 7, 62 credentials, 124, 155 crimes, 116, 165, 167, 168 crises, 4, 12, 23, 24, 78, 84, 87, 109, 124, 154 criticism, 88, 145, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 177, 178, 183, 187, 207 cruise missiles, 194 Cuba, 117 cultural differences, 193 cultural heritage, 42 cultural imperialism, 48 culture, 6, 59, 69, 73, 80, 111, 112, 163, 167, 170, 172, 182, 183, 185 cure, 75 currency, 149 cyberspace, 38

D damages, 19 danger, 21, 26, 32, 35, 49, 52, 54, 74, 79, 108, 111, 113, 165, 167, 180

214

Index

Darfur, 63, 78, 169, 173 data analysis, 192, 203 database, 173 de Villepin, Dominique, 76, 103 Dean, John, 5, 15 death rate, 171, 173 deaths, 77, 168, 169, 173 decision makers, 12, 100, 132 Decision Points, 75, 79, 80, 81, 104, 105, 108, 117, 118, 121, 141, 142, 151, 159 decision-making process, 97, 122 defects, 114 deficiencies, 178 deficit, 123 degradation, 96 Delta, 142 democracy, xii, 6, 9, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 39, 44, 47, 48, 49, 54, 55, 70, 73, 74, 77, 81, 94, 98, 100, 104, 105, 111, 113, 115, 116, 118, 123, 125, 133, 150, 151, 152, 155, 163, 164, 165, 167, 168, 171, 172, 173, 177, 178, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 193, 194, 208 democratization, 35, 78, 151, 152, 155 demographic characteristics, 205 demonstrations, 178, 197 Denmark, 178 Department of Defense, 22, 80, 122, 132, 133, 136, 141 Department of Homeland Security, 49 Department of Justice, 15 Department of the Treasury, 142 deployments, 171 derivatives, 124 despair, 48, 49 destiny, 21, 48, 92 destruction, 18, 34, 73, 94, 125, 172 detainees, 9, 10, 62, 113 detention, 11, 64, 179 deterrence, 73, 110 developing countries, 180 developing nations, 34 deviation, 153 dichotomy, 55 dignity, 164, 170 diplomacy, xi, 6, 7, 8, 23, 36, 41, 46, 64, 90, 103, 126, 137, 150, 169, 171, 172, 178, 186, 209 directors, 38 disappointment, 124, 187, 195 disaster, xii, 27, 42, 83 discomfort, 179 dismantlement, 138 disorder, 19 disposition, 108, 109

dissatisfaction, 185 dissidents, 48 distillation, 164 divergence, 155 domestic agenda, 46 domestic factors, 192 dominance, 8, 23, 132, 139 draft, 22, 31, 138 drawing, 178 drugs, 185

E East Asia, 38, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 153, 157, 160 East Timor, 77, 80 Eastern Europe, 33, 35, 192, 198 eavesdropping, 187 eBay, 181 echoing, 25, 26 economic assistance, 135, 138 economic development, 8 economic growth, 7 economic landscape, 25 economic power, 146, 200 economic relations, 151, 191 economic systems, 22 education, 34, 46, 185 Egypt, 41, 74, 163, 182 Eisenhower, Dwight David, 86, 104 election, 24, 31, 37, 84, 114, 154, 156, 157, 164, 169, 184, 186, 187, 203 electricity, 114 electrodes, 113 embassy, 92 emergency, 184 emotional reactions, 164 employment, 10 endangered, 7, 88 endangered species, 7 enemies, 23, 26, 40, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 108, 165, 166, 184 enemy combatants, 9, 10 energy, 7, 8, 9, 97, 141 enforcement, 39, 59, 74, 76, 77 enslavement, 167 environment, 7, 12, 38, 65, 69, 70, 87, 97 environmental policy, 8, 12 environmental protection, 7, 8 Environmental Protection Agency, 122 EP-3, 154 equality, 164, 170 equipment, 139, 153, 166 ethical standards, 115

Index ethics, 52 euphoria, 31, 42, 92, 125 Europe, 19, 20, 25, 27, 28, 33, 35, 38, 60, 65, 180, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205 European Union, 59, 191 evidence, 5, 7, 40, 80, 93, 94, 95, 98, 133, 135, 146, 149, 165, 183, 186, 192 evil, 20, 25, 26, 41, 46, 53, 55, 71, 77, 103, 108, 110, 115, 124, 135, 167, 173, 185 evolution, 54, 77, 156, 191, 192, 197, 198, 199, 201, 210 examinations, 46 exclusion, 8 execution, 4 executive branch, 11 Executive Order, 9 Executive Order 13292, 9 executive power, 4, 8, 9, 11 exercise, 4, 5, 10, 11, 21, 69, 72, 74, 76, 99, 178 exile, 94 expertise, 97 exploitation, 7, 122 extremist movements, 24 extremists, 53, 54

F fabrication, 127 faith, 21, 24, 46, 51, 52, 72, 98, 102, 133, 137, 170, 182 families, 50, 51, 116, 125 family members, 51 fantasy, 31, 33, 42 FBI, 9, 180 FDR, 4, 87, 168 fear(s), 8, 12, 25, 41, 71, 74, 78, 110, 161, 162, 163, 165, 167, 186 federal courts, 10 federal government, 7, 12 federal law, 4 feelings, 32, 193, 201 fever, 100, 184 financial, 49, 50, 99, 138, 139 financial records, 49 fires, 109 first generation, 32 first responders, 51 fiscal year, 22 flaws, 100 flexibility, 89 flight, 36, 96 fluctuations, 187

215

food, 113, 134, 167 force, 8, 9, 11, 22, 24, 26, 32, 37, 41, 47, 48, 60, 61, 65, 70, 71, 72, 75, 76, 78, 81, 88, 90, 92, 93, 96, 98, 102, 103, 110, 114, 115, 120, 125, 126, 132, 136, 138, 145, 146, 150, 152, 153, 155, 164, 166, 167, 173, 178, 180, 181, 184, 185, 195, 203, 208 Ford, 33, 87 Ford, Gerald Rudolph, 87 foreign affairs, 8, 97, 132, 150 foreign aid, 180 foreign person, 10 foreign policy, xi, xii, xiii, 9, 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, 27, 29, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 45, 47, 64, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 78, 80, 84, 85, 86, 89, 94, 99, 100, 111, 112, 119, 121, 131, 132, 145, 146, 153, 155, 156, 162, 163, 164, 171, 179, 183, 184, 185, 187, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 202, 203, 207, 208, 209 foreign public opinion, 192 formation, 208 formula, 35, 74, 88, 184 foundations, xii, 19, 33, 39, 50, 75 France, 44, 74, 75, 76, 103, 177, 180, 186, 188, 189, 196, 198, 202, 204, 205, 209 Franklin, Benjamin, 41 free trade, 21, 177, 195 free world, 54 freedom, xi, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 33, 47, 48, 49, 54, 55, 70, 73, 74, 80, 93, 123, 125, 137, 139, 141, 148, 150, 151, 152, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 167, 168, 170, 171, 172, 177, 178, 184, 185, 186, 207 friction, 61 friendship, 91, 202 funding, 6

G GAO, 188 Geneva Convention, 9 genocide, vi, xiii, 63, 161, 162, 163, 165, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 174 genre, 172 geography, 40 Georgia, 78 Germany, 74, 76, 111, 167, 178, 180, 181, 184, 186, 187, 195, 196, 199, 202, 203, 204, 205, 208 gestures, 180 global leaders, 191 global warming, 7, 39 God, 5, 47, 52, 93, 124, 164, 170, 185 Google, 160 Gore, Al, 149 governance, 120, 163

216

Index

governments, 70, 78, 90, 99, 122, 179, 182, 194 governor, 63, 97 grading, 203 grants, 9, 141 Great Britain, 18, 20, 72, 195 Greece, 18, 19, 20, 24 greed, 63 grotesque, 114 grounding, 21, 115 growth, 6, 20, 50, 69, 73, 86, 112, 165, 172, 183 Guantanamo, 64, 111, 113, 117, 118 guidance, 35 guidelines, 88, 113, 135, 177 guilt, 32 guilty, 115, 167

human, xi, xii, xiii, 7, 18, 21, 24, 25, 26, 48, 49, 51, 54, 62, 77, 92, 99, 107, 108, 113, 115, 138, 148, 149, 150, 152, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 178, 185, 209 human activity, 99 human condition, 162 human dignity, 26, 49, 54 human health, 7 human right(s), xiii, 49, 62, 77, 113, 115, 138, 148, 149, 150, 162, 165, 169, 170, 171, 185, 209 hurricanes, 100 Hussein, Saddam, xii, xiii, 8, 23, 24, 26, 36, 39, 40, 44, 49, 55, 74, 75, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96, 102, 103, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 113, 122, 123, 125, 127, 162, 165, 166, 168, 179, 180, 183 hypocrisy, 170

H I Hadley, Stephen, 135 Haiti, 72, 77, 81 Hamas, 74, 123 Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), 10 handbags, 181 harbors, 167 hardliners, 33 hardness, 170 harmonization, 202 harmony, 69, 70 health, 209 health care, 209 hegemony, 20, 22, 31, 35, 133, 192, 195, 203 heroism, 37 Hezbollah, 40, 74, 75 High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, 75 historical overview, 199 history, 9, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 33, 34, 40, 41, 46, 50, 51, 53, 62, 63, 70, 71, 80, 95, 99, 108, 109, 152, 163, 164, 165, 168, 170, 178, 179 HIV, 75 HIV/AIDS, 75 homeland security, 12 homes, 53, 108, 114, 115 homogeneity, 192 hopelessness, 20 host, 86, 107, 112 hostile acts, 73, 110 hostility, 75, 116, 125, 178, 182, 183 hot spots, 88 House, 11, 91, 93, 94, 118, 121, 179, 181, 182, 185, 187, 188, 189, 208 House of Representatives, 121

ICC, 64 idealism, v, 37, 69, 70, 78, 84, 101 ideal(s), 27, 52, 70, 148, 150, 151, 152, 155, 156, 160, 164, 168, 183 identification, 53 identity, 170 ideology, 5, 6, 13, 18, 47, 53, 54, 75, 85, 86, 107, 108, 111, 112, 148, 150, 152, 167, 168, 179, 184, 194, 205 idiosyncratic, 97 illusion, 32 imagery, 168 image(s), 23, 26, 71, 99, 158, 159, 164, 166, 167, 168, 179, 183, 185, 187, 194, 202 immunity, 116 Imperial presidency, xii, 4 imperialism, 36, 41, 54 inaugural, 23, 28, 70, 73, 78, 80, 163, 164, 170, 172, 173 inauguration, 24, 134, 186 incumbents, 147, 148, 155, 156 independence, 19, 39, 71, 105, 151, 152, 153, 154, 191 individual action, 193 individual character, 5, 85 individual characteristics, 5, 85 individuals, 51, 52, 85, 92, 163, 172, 178, 193 Indonesia, 183, 184 industry, 8, 9 infancy, 19 infrastructure, 34, 122, 125, 138 initiation, 168 injuries, 52, 116 inspections, 76, 109, 127, 137, 138, 139, 165, 166

Index inspectors, 103, 109, 113, 136 instinct, 97, 114 institutions, xiii, 6, 19, 25, 27, 28, 69, 70, 73, 75, 107, 108, 111, 122, 123, 177, 180, 185, 187, 193, 201 insurgency, 7, 12, 18, 27, 29, 123, 182 integrity, 19 intellectual property, 149 intellectual property rights, 149 intelligence, xiii, 9, 11, 33, 36, 49, 59, 93, 94, 100, 102, 108, 109, 122, 127, 135, 180, 184 intelligence gathering, 11 interference, 8, 171, 195 international affairs, 7, 9, 60, 84 International Atomic Energy Agency, 109, 127 International Criminal Court, 39, 60, 62, 63, 64, 78, 195 international law, xii, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 73, 79, 111, 187 international relations, 20, 35, 46, 76, 79, 109, 147, 209 international terrorism, 183, 192 internationalism, 35, 70, 89 interrogation methods, 9 intervention, 25, 27, 32, 35, 37, 72, 76, 77, 78, 88, 112, 122, 152, 180, 184, 191, 194, 195, 202 intimidation, 167 invasions, 80, 171 investments, 185 Iran, 7, 25, 40, 41, 43, 72, 77, 78, 103, 110, 111, 116, 121, 125, 126, 132, 180, 185 Iraq, v, vi, vii, xi, xii, xiii, 5, 6, 8, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 35, 36, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 53, 54, 62, 65, 67, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 84, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 131, 132, 133, 136, 140, 141, 161, 162, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 171, 172, 173, 178, 179, 180, 184, 186, 187, 192, 196, 202, 207, 208 Iraq War, xii, 29, 65, 104, 105, 106, 117, 131, 132, 141, 187 irony, 84, 96, 120 Islam, 27, 53, 54, 123, 163, 181, 182, 183, 185, 188, 189 Islamic world, 182 Islamism, 188 isolation, 135 isolationism, 27, 34, 49 Israel, 40, 74, 126, 180, 182, 183

217

issues, xi, xii, xiii, 7, 22, 62, 64, 75, 87, 91, 97, 103, 109, 139, 148, 156, 181, 191, 192, 194, 202, 203, 207, 209 Italy, 124, 180, 186, 195, 196, 197, 201, 204, 205 Ivory Coast, 170, 171

J Japan, 19, 80, 111, 134, 135, 136, 139, 146, 167 Jefferson, Thomas, 124 Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 208 Johnson, President Lyndon B., 32 Joint Economic Committee, 34 journalists, xi, 29, 116, 184 jurisdiction, 10 justification, xii, 24, 45, 50, 54, 55, 65, 76, 111

K Kahneman, Daniel, 86, 104 Kelly, James, 134 Kennedy, Edward Moore, 34 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 28, 73 kill, 24, 53, 63, 165, 182 Korea, 25, 27, 111, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 185 Korea, North, vi, xi, xiii, 7, 22, 25, 27, 35, 41, 72, 77, 78, 103, 110, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 154, 155, 156, 180, 185, 189, 195 Kosovo, 37, 40, 72, 77, 80, 195 Krauthammer, Charles, 31, 34, 43, 44, 72, 179, 188 Kurds, 165 Kuwait, 77, 80, 89, 90, 91, 92, 96, 102, 125, 126 Kyoto Protocol, 4, 7, 8, 195

L labeling, 116, 149 landscape, 110 Latin America, 33, 112 law enforcement, 49, 59 laws, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 50, 64, 115, 170 lawyers, 11 layering, 86 leadership, 20, 22, 37, 77, 79, 83, 84, 85, 87, 97, 108, 123, 169, 174, 185, 197, 198, 208, 209 leadership style, 97 learning, 26 Lebanon, 41, 74, 75 legality, 41, 75 legislation, 10, 12

218

Index

leukemia, 114 liberalism, 207 liberation, 116 Liberia, 81, 161, 162, 165, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173 liberty, 6, 13, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 47, 48, 49, 50, 54, 73, 151, 163, 164, 167 lifetime, 116 light, 11, 24, 47, 78, 108, 109, 135, 138, 141, 162 Lincoln, Abraham, 168, 172, 173 lobbying, 135 longevity, 194 Louisiana, 41 lying, 115

M magnitude, 49 majority, 10, 19, 54, 62, 75, 94, 111, 179, 180, 186 malaria, 48 management, 71, 83, 97, 99, 132, 169, 202 manslaughter, 115 marches, 197 Maryland, 117, 145, 172, 173, 185, 210 mass, 34, 73, 94, 112, 125, 166, 168, 185 matter, xi, 11, 24, 33, 51, 61, 65, 71, 74, 75, 79, 83, 86, 87, 100, 102, 108, 109, 110, 113, 121, 125, 137, 163, 204 McCain, Senator John, 37 media, 183, 194, 210 medical, 114 medicine, 48 Mediterranean, 81 membership, 78, 80 memory, 27, 32, 52, 86, 164 mercury, 7 messages, 136 metaphor, 6, 47, 170 Mexico, 180 Middle East, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 25, 26, 27, 32, 42, 48, 70, 73, 74, 94, 98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 107, 111, 113, 123, 163, 171, 182, 183, 187 military, xi, xii, 6, 8, 11, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 61, 64, 65, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 102, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 120, 121, 122, 123, 126, 135, 139, 145, 146, 148, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 162, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 178, 179, 180, 184, 185, 191, 192, 195, 199, 200, 203, 208 military contacts, 154 military spending, 35 militia, 113

Minneapolis, 205 minorities, 19, 184 mission(s), 37, 38, 42, 46, 48, 73, 78, 88, 92, 108, 122, 123, 162, 164, 171, 181 misunderstanding, 20, 63 models, 14, 84, 172 moderates, 33 modernity, 95, 178, 182, 183 momentum, 22, 55, 112, 133 money laundering, 138 monopoly, 90 Montana, 207 moral code, 46 morality, 42, 50, 51, 52, 54, 100, 166 motivation, 17, 21, 53, 100, 109, 112, 184 multilateral, 101 multilateralism, xiii, 39, 41, 177, 180 multiplier, 180 murder, 54, 113, 166, 167, 169 music, 9, 183 Muslims, 53, 54, 179, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189

N naming, 169, 181 narcotics, 35 narratives, 52 nation building, 7, 42, 96, 125, 168 nation states, 47 national interests, 21, 70, 71, 88 National Public Radio, 157, 158 national security, xiii, 5, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 21, 22, 24, 32, 47, 49, 50, 55, 60, 61, 73, 75, 86, 89, 107, 108, 110, 112, 117, 131, 179, 202, 203, 209 National Security Agency, 59 National Security Council, 38, 60, 61, 64, 79, 89, 93, 132, 141 National Security Strategy, xiii, 18, 21, 22, 26, 28, 40, 65, 69, 73, 78, 80, 110, 111, 192 nationalism, 180 nation-building, 12, 71, 73, 77, 110 NATO, 25, 35, 70, 71, 72, 78, 154, 178 Nazi Germany, 19, 167, 193 negative consequences, 111 neglect, 126 negotiating, 121, 132, 136, 140, 185 negotiation, 89, 133, 137, 139 Negroponte, John, 80 Netherlands, 81, 198, 199, 201, 202, 204 neuroscience, 86 New Hampshire primary, 103 New Zealand, 179 news coverage, 116

Index Nigeria, 163, 171, 172 Nixon, Richard, 3, 14, 71 nobility, 46 North Africa, 38, 163, 171 North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 70, 72 North Korea, vi, xi, xiii, 7, 22, 25, 27, 35, 41, 72, 77, 78, 103, 110, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 154, 155, 156, 180, 185, 189, 195 Northeast Asia, 138 nuclear program, 78, 109, 127, 134, 138, 139, 140, 141 nuclear weapons, 25, 42, 65, 72, 109, 123, 126, 136

O OAS, 33 Obama, Barack, 79, 118, 147, 149, 158, 186 Obama, President Barack, 61, 79, 112, 116, 118, 147, 149, 157, 158, 162, 186, 202, 203 obedience, 47 obstruction, 169 Office of Management and Budget, 15 officials, xi, xii, 11, 23, 35, 49, 78, 80, 107, 109, 111, 115, 118, 131, 135, 138, 139, 147, 148, 153, 154, 180, 181, 187, 195 oil, 7, 22, 35, 48, 84, 112, 136, 166, 171 oil revenues, 166 Omar Bashir, 162, 169 open markets, 23 openness, 33, 101 Operation Iraqi Freedom, 93, 103, 168, 173 operations, 45, 76, 91, 92, 96, 112, 120, 121, 166, 168 opinion polls, 177, 186 opportunities, 78, 87 oppression, 19, 48, 49, 99, 113, 170 optimism, 52, 203 orchestration, 127 organ, 36, 86 overlap, 36, 110 oversight, 8, 11, 12

P Pacific, 134, 138, 157 pain, 40, 177 Pakistan, 33, 72, 183, 189 Palestinian Authority, 41 Panama, 33, 43, 92 paradigm shift, 111, 122 parallel, 26, 27, 84, 201

219

paralysis, 32 parents, 116 Parliament, 116 participants, 115, 187 patriotism, 51 peace, 19, 20, 21, 24, 26, 34, 47, 48, 49, 70, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 89, 91, 92, 93, 113, 124, 125, 137, 138, 140, 164, 166, 169, 171, 185 peacekeepers, 169 peacekeeping, 75, 77, 78 Pentagon, 4, 28, 35, 36, 38, 39, 43, 51, 97, 103, 105, 109, 110, 118, 177 perchlorate, 7 permission, 18, 91, 139 permit, 35, 72 perpetrators, 93, 112 Persian Gulf, 22, 35, 83, 84, 88, 103, 110 Persian Gulf War, 22 personal qualities, 87 personality, 85, 86, 98, 187 persuasion, 207, 208 pessimism, 160 phosphorus, 114 phronesis, 101 physical abuse, 179 physicians, 114 piano, 35 pitch, 168, 184 platform, 6 Poland, 19, 80, 197, 202, 203, 204 polar, 59, 150 police, 77, 102, 125, 127, 166 policy, xi, xii, xiii, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 17, 19, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 31, 35, 36, 37, 42, 43, 59, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 84, 85, 89, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 109, 110, 112, 121, 122, 123, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 145, 146, 147, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 159, 161, 162, 164, 168, 169, 172, 177, 180, 183, 185, 187, 191, 192, 195, 197, 201, 202, 207, 208, 210 policy choice, xiii, 109, 192 policy making, 8, 12, 97, 131, 133, 134, 140, 141 policy options, xiii policymakers, xiii, 210 political enemies, 53 political force, 86 political leaders, 53, 196, 205 political opposition, 147 political party, 147 political system, 8 politics, 5, 16, 49, 64, 69, 70, 77, 84, 85, 87, 98, 164, 165, 172, 207, 208, 209

220

Index

pollution, 7 population, 123, 169 Portugal, 186, 197, 201, 202, 203, 204 post 9/11 world, 101, 145, 147 poverty, 20, 21 Powell, Colin, 33, 37, 39, 76, 88, 91, 93, 103, 104, 126, 127, 132, 154, 168, 195, 209 PPP, 142, 172, 173 pragmatism, 89 prayer, 52, 71, 124 PRC, vi, xiii, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156 precedent(s), 75, 77, 78, 92, 107, 125, 146, 147, 149, 160 predatory pricing, 148 preemption, xii, 22, 65, 73, 74, 77, 78, 80, 119, 121, 133 preemptive war, 28, 45, 46, 54, 80, 93 prejudice, 181 preparation, 5, 127 preservation, 21 presidency, xi, xii, xiii, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 27, 32, 33, 37, 46, 47, 62, 71, 73, 76, 84, 85, 86, 97, 99, 122, 123, 124, 145, 146, 147, 149, 152, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 162, 165, 168, 170, 171, 186, 187, 191, 192, 195, 197, 199, 201, 202, 203, 205, 207, 208 presidential campaign, 6, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 155, 157 presidential performance, 87 presidential politics, 149 Presidential rhetoric, 46, 52, 147, 164, 171, 207 Presidential war rhetoric, 46 prestige, 151 prevention, 171 Preventive war, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 74, 77, 80, 100, 179 primacy, 4 Primakov, Yevgeny, 75 principles, 7, 8, 13, 23, 37, 69, 70, 73, 74, 91, 92, 116, 151, 152, 167, 169, 177, 183, 186 prisoners, 9, 10, 11, 113 prisons, 182 probe, 118 problem-solver, 89 producers, 113 profit, 109 profiteering, 112 project, xi, 37, 74, 146, 173, 192, 210 proliferation, 35, 72, 133, 134, 135, 138 propaganda, 182 proportionality, 75 proposition, 6, 64, 164

prosperity, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 27, 48, 49, 50, 86 protection, 7, 9, 12, 193 protectionism, 49 psychologist, 86 psychology, 109, 185 psychopathology, 178 public health, 185 public interest, 24 public life, 5 public opinion, xiii, 7, 12, 177, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 209 public policy, 209 public support, 8, 193

Q questioning, 4, 11

R race, 126, 136 racism, 182 radar, 79 radicalism, 48, 79 radicals, 182 rape, 169, 170 rationality, 86 raw materials, 35 reactions, 97, 191, 192, 193, 199 reading, 61, 98, 119, 172 Reagan, Ronald, 7, 10, 28, 33, 43, 89, 141, 147, 148, 150, 157, 158, 167 realism, 43, 71, 84, 101 reality, 33, 94, 98, 112, 116 recall, 92, 121 recalling, 49 reception, 7, 165 recognition, 19, 181 reconciliation, 135, 136 reconstruction, 72 recovery, 203 reform(s), 11, 26, 28, 48, 60, 74, 79, 80, 135, 155, 208 regions of the world, 136 regulations, 7 rejection, 7, 35, 110, 182, 185, 194, 195 relevance, 26, 107, 199, 203 relief, 36, 54, 184 religion, 5, 6, 19, 54, 111, 178 renaissance, 27 rendition, 11 reporters, 9, 89, 115

Index repression, 48 Republican Party, 6 reputation, 17, 112 requirement(s), 47, 77, 135, 137, 164 RES, 143 resentment, 164, 179, 182, 186 resistance, 32, 42, 114, 180 resolution, 41, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 90, 94, 103, 119, 120, 121, 140, 151, 152, 181 resources, 8, 13, 35, 53, 71, 87, 110, 171, 184 response, xi, 27, 40, 45, 46, 54, 61, 75, 78, 80, 88, 90, 91, 92, 107, 109, 112, 114, 131, 146, 152, 169, 178, 180, 182, 183, 184 Responsibility to Protect, 73, 79 restoration, 77, 91 restrictions, 110 retaliation, 73, 112 rewards, 21, 26 rhetoric, v, vi, xii, xiii, 7, 21, 24, 25, 37, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 163, 164, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 178, 185, 207, 208, 210 Rhetoric of imperial righteousness, 45, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55 Rice, Condoleezza, xiii, 37, 39, 62, 75, 98, 103, 111, 131, 132, 137, 141, 142, 153, 181, 207 Rice, Secretary of State Condoleezza, xiii, 37, 62, 75, 98, 103, 111, 131, 132, 137, 141, 142, 153, 207 righting, 35 rights, 63, 148, 150, 151, 158, 164, 165, 171 risk management, 100 risk(s), 33, 73, 80, 94, 100, 110, 125 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 28, 79, 87, 167 Roosevelt, Theodore, 13, 16, 46, 55, 70 root(s), 112, 184 rotations, 116 rule of law, 6, 12, 14, 70, 73, 74, 92 rules, 34, 39, 85, 87, 109, 166 Rumsfeld, Donald, 23, 36, 93, 95, 96, 102, 126, 142, 180 Russia, 39, 74, 76, 78, 103, 136, 139, 181, 182, 187, 198 Rwanda, 77, 168

S sabotage, 113 Saddam Hussein, xii, xiii, 8, 23, 24, 26, 36, 39, 40, 44, 49, 55, 74, 75, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96, 102, 103, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 113, 122, 123, 125, 127, 162, 165, 166, 168, 179, 180, 183 sadism, 113

221

safe haven, 53 safety, 26, 34, 49, 52, 71, 110 sanctions, 90, 102, 103, 109, 110, 125, 135, 138, 139, 165, 166, 181 Sarkozy, French President Nicolas, 205 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 205 Saudi Arabia, 42, 90, 102, 126, 182, 188 scholarship, 178, 181, 207, 208 school, 6, 49, 116, 167, 178 science, 36, 182, 183 scope, 12, 49, 60, 90, 133 Scowcroft, Brent, 75, 89, 91, 96, 104, 107, 112, 116, 117, 137 second generation, 36 Second World, 18 Secretary of Defense, 23, 35, 41, 64, 88, 95, 109, 132, 139, 180, 189 sectarianism, 116 secularism, 182 security, xii, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 28, 35, 37, 38, 46, 47, 49, 50, 54, 59, 60, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 88, 91, 112, 116, 123, 131, 137, 146, 164, 165, 168, 180, 208 security forces, 168 seed, 27 selectivity, 181 selenium, 7 self-confidence, 84 self-interest, 20, 99 Senate, 15, 34, 39, 42, 62, 63, 91, 94, 188 Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 15 September 11, xi, 17, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 38, 45, 46, 47, 50, 55, 71, 73, 79, 93, 108, 123, 131, 133, 146, 154, 156, 162, 172, 173, 177, 180, 181, 191, 192, 195, 196, 203 Serbia, 182 services, 154 shape, 9, 23, 84, 85, 87, 102, 109, 126, 140, 141, 146, 192 Sharia, 123 shock, 7, 12, 42, 111, 167, 177 showing, xiii, 75, 182, 183 Sierra Leone, 169 Signing statements, 10, 12, 15 signs, xii, 70, 103, 110 Six Party Talks, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140 slavery, 124, 170 slaves, 171 sleep deprivation, 9 social movements, 52 social policy, 207 social responsibility, 46 socialism, 34

222

Index

society, 35, 111, 148, 150, 182, 183 Solicitor General, 63 solidarity, 126, 127, 180 solution, 34, 112, 146, 153, 163, 185 Somalia, 42, 72, 77, 81, 88, 171 South Korea, 27, 134, 135, 136, 139, 142 Southeast Asia, 38, 112 sovereign state, 124 sovereignty, 78, 163, 165, 168, 184 Soviet Union, 19, 20, 21, 31, 33, 34, 36, 38, 80, 111, 112, 124, 182, 193, 194, 195 Spain, 201, 202 specialists, 39 speculation, 202 speech, 18, 19, 24, 26, 28, 48, 49, 52, 53, 70, 75, 88, 92, 94, 103, 116, 148, 150, 159, 163, 164, 168, 169, 170, 173, 178, 185 spending, 31, 34, 36, 37, 38 Spring, 78, 104, 142, 160, 163, 186, 187 stability, 22, 27, 49, 70, 77, 132 stabilization, xii, 91 staffing, 9, 14, 85 standard of living, 185 State of the Union address, 25 statehood, 154 state(s), xiii, 5, 7, 14, 18, 19, 22, 28, 32, 33, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 46, 50, 53, 59, 61, 62, 63, 65, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 86, 96, 103, 110, 112, 121, 122, 123, 133, 137, 140, 141, 142, 149, 158, 168, 169, 171, 179, 180, 186, 199, 202, 205 statutory authority, 134 statutory provisions, 10 stereotypes, 42, 181, 182 stereotyping, 181 stock, 33 Strategic ambiguity, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 152, 153, 155, 156 strategic assets, 22 strategic planning, 22 strategic position, 20 strictures, 78 structure, 76, 85, 123, 132, 134 style(s), 22, 34, 60, 83, 85, 86, 91, 97, 98, 100, 123, 133, 182, 185, 186 submarines, 153 sub-Saharan Africa, 185 substitution, 148 Sudan, 42, 63, 78, 161, 162, 165, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173 suicide, 125 suicide bombers, 125 Sunnis, 114, 117 suppression, 19

Supreme Court, 9, 12, 13, 63 surveillance, 11 survival, 4, 6, 19, 79, 164 survivors, 51, 114 sympathy, 178, 180, 196 symptoms, 100 syndrome, 32 Syria, 40, 41

T tactics, 5, 110, 113, 167 Taiwan, vi, xiii, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159 Taiwan Relations Act, 146, 148, 153, 154, 157, 158 takeover, 39 Taliban, xi, 25, 49, 53, 71, 72, 123, 173, 179, 181, 183 target, 41, 54, 110, 167, 169, 179 Task Force, 8, 11, 184, 189 Taylor, Charles, 162, 169, 170 teams, 94, 103, 109 techniques, 180 technologies, 38 technology, 36, 166, 183 telephone conversations, 121 tension(s), 4, 139, 154, 180, 195, 202 territorial, 122, 123 territory, 108, 182 terrorism, xi, 11, 22, 35, 40, 50, 70, 71, 79, 84, 86, 96, 108, 110, 122, 123, 133, 138, 140, 146, 161, 162, 163, 165, 178, 179, 181, 182, 186 terrorist activities, 18 terrorist attack(s), xi, 17, 46, 50, 93, 126, 146, 154, 156, 167, 177, 192, 195, 196 terrorist groups, 18, 122, 167 terrorist organization, 65 terrorists, 5, 18, 21, 24, 25, 40, 41, 51, 53, 54, 69, 71, 72, 73, 95, 108, 109, 112, 113, 125, 126, 167, 178, 180, 183 textbook, 39, 97 The Decider, 8, 12, 101 Third World, 54, 111 thoughts, 116, 140 threats, xiii, 4, 20, 21, 23, 26, 27, 35, 49, 50, 54, 55, 65, 72, 74, 77, 78, 88, 103, 109, 121, 135, 154, 165, 184 tides, 100 torture, 11, 113, 118 TRA, 146, 150, 151, 154, 155 trade, 21, 38, 138, 139, 148, 149, 151, 152, 155, 156, 158, 160, 179 traditions, 69, 70, 111

Index trafficking, 35 trainees, 182 training, 48, 72, 115, 118, 127 traits, 5, 6, 85 trajectory, 108, 145, 147, 151, 155, 156 Transatlantic relations, xiii, 61, 191, 198, 202, 203 transformation, 4, 38, 71, 80, 152, 186 transgression, 76 trauma, 32 Treasury, 40, 93, 142, 143 Treasury Secretary, 93 treaties, 31, 39, 62, 64, 72, 141 treatment, 9, 113, 147, 149, 154, 156 trial, 52, 168, 179 Truman, President Harry S., 17, 26, 27, 28 turbulence, 191 Turkey, 18, 19, 20, 24

U U.N. Security Council, 185 U.S. Interventionism, 191 U.S. policy, 19, 27, 37, 88, 108, 133, 134, 137, 138, 139, 179, 183, 184, 186 U.S. Treasury, 138 U.S.-Europe relations, 191, 192, 198, 202, 203 U.S.-Sino relations, 210 U.S.-Taiwan relations, 152, 158, 159 UN Security Council Resolution 1441, 109, 127 Unified executive, 4 unilateralism, xi, 14, 35, 39, 40, 69, 70, 72, 177, 180, 192, 194, 195, 203, 204, 205 United Kingdom, 197, 198, 199, 202, 204 United Nations, v, xii, 26, 29, 35, 36, 65, 69, 70, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 90, 92, 94, 107, 111, 119, 121, 126, 127, 166, 169, 180, 185, 208, 209 United Nations Security Council, 76, 94, 111, 127, 208 United States (USA), xi, xiii, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 88, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 102, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 119, 122, 123, 125, 126, 127, 134, 142, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192, 196, 197, 198, 204, 205, 208, 209, 210 uranium, 114, 135 USA PATRIOT Act, 142 Uzbekistan, 72

223

V variables, 182 variations, 86, 189 Vatican, 124 veto, 80, 103, 120, 181 Vice President, 4, 8, 9, 36, 38, 89, 94, 109, 119, 127, 131, 132, 138, 141 victims, 51, 124, 162, 171, 178, 183 videos, 113 videotape, 115 Vietnam, 24, 27, 32, 33, 42, 88, 104, 106, 111, 120, 153, 184, 194 Viking, 28 violence, 25, 26, 88, 96, 112, 123, 124, 161, 162, 163, 167, 168, 169, 170, 179, 180, 181, 182 vision(s), 5, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 31, 34, 36, 54, 72, 73, 84, 111, 162, 164, 168 volatility, 191, 203 vote, 48, 63, 76, 94, 103, 120, 127, 178 voters, 151, 152, 156, 205 voting, 94 vulnerability, 161

W waiver, 52, 135 war, xi, xii, xiii, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 34, 35, 40, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 60, 62, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 83, 84, 87, 88, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 100, 102, 103, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 114, 115, 116, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 131, 132, 133, 136, 141, 148, 154, 155, 156, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 171, 173, 178, 179, 181, 182, 184, 185, 196, 198, 199, 200, 202, 205 war crimes, 78 war hero, 84 War on Terror, v, vi, xi, xii, xiii, 5, 17, 26, 27, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 51, 61, 67, 70, 71, 105, 106, 118, 123, 124, 129, 141, 154, 155, 156, 162, 167, 188, 189, 196, 200 war on terrorism, 44, 70, 71, 105, 118, 123 Washington, 13, 15, 16, 22, 28, 31, 32, 35, 39, 43, 44, 72, 74, 76, 79, 93, 97, 106, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 137, 138, 141, 143, 149, 157, 158, 159, 160, 177, 179, 183, 187, 188, 189, 194, 208 waste, 96 water, 7, 9, 113, 114, 138, 167, 170 weakness, 23, 91, 112, 181 wealth, 32, 179

224

Index

weapons, 23, 34, 35, 36, 40, 41, 45, 47, 65, 72, 73, 79, 94, 95, 102, 103, 108, 109, 112, 125, 127, 133, 138, 153, 165, 166, 167, 168, 179 weapons of mass destruction (WMD), 22, 23, 34, 35, 36, 40, 41, 65, 73, 79, 94, 95, 102, 103, 105, 108, 109, 110, 125, 127, 133, 166, 167, 179 web, 28, 44, 117, 158 Webster, Daniel, 80 welfare, 20 West Bank, 178 West Wing, 124 Western Europe, 27, 28, 60, 179, 186, 192 White House, xi, 7, 8, 35, 44, 65, 73, 76, 78, 79, 84, 85, 91, 93, 94, 100, 105, 106, 117, 121, 122, 123, 124, 141, 153, 154, 159, 180, 194, 198, 209 wholesale, 13 Wilson, Woodrow, 6, 15, 28, 31, 43, 70, 74, 79, 141, 157, 160

withdrawal, 90, 91, 102 witnesses, 11, 97 workers, 51 world order, xii, 34, 79 World Trade Center, 39, 110, 180 World War I, 18, 20, 21, 28, 69, 70, 74, 86, 111, 193 World Wide Web, 16 worldview, 5, 38, 54, 182 worldwide, 18, 47, 54, 73, 179, 198 worse than watergate, 5, 13, 15 WTO, 150

Y Yale University, 117, 209 Yemen, 90, 163 yield, 53, 116