"With Us Or Against Us."

I am attempting to engender an intelligent, open debate on what I see as a strategic and logical flaw in the current administration's foreign policy, most evident in Iraq. If your commentary runs to the lenght of my post or contrary slogans, please treat them as understood and don't bother illustrating them.


Although it was obviously important at the time, the events that have transpired since Bush uttered these words have served to heighten their significance, and in retrospect they illustrate the problems with the current administration's foreign policy as much or more than any of the several misleading statements leading up to the war.

What has become increasingly obvious over time is that this regime has an incredibly sophomoric, essentially idealistic perspective on the world, and the US's role within that world, and is operating under Cold War assumptions. While no COld War President was as tactless and arrogant so as to dictate policy to other nations as Bush did with this statemtn, there was an underlying attitude during the Cold War that nation states had no choice but to choose sides in a greater struggle. Without goiing into the political machinations exerted by both the USSR and USA during this period, there was at least a clear sense of political and moreover idealogical deliniation which afforded few the opportunity of defingin their own positions without considering how those positions related to the competing superpowers.

That both superpowers abused this situation is beyond doubt, but it can possibly be somewhat excused by acknowledging the reality of the situation a la Kissinger. So while no President would have ever said to the globe 'you are either with us or against us', that was in many respects an accurate portrayal of the political reality up till the fall of the wall.

The reason no one would have made this kind of statement was partly pure diplomatic savvy and partly because it's raminifications would have been clear to anyone in an Intro to Poly-Sci; If you are the one making someone else define his foreign policy as it relates to you, you will gradually instill fear, resentment, and portray yourself in a dictatorial light. It is one thing to operate under a political reality, and given a free hand, most nations will choose the superpower they feel will be least likely to become a threat. By dictating, you have already painted yourself as a threat to their self-determination.

But during the Cold War this attitude underscored most relations, with lesser powers opeating with the knowledge that the need to make a choice was inevitable, and superpowers trying to assuage fears that supporters and allies would become satelites or tributary states.

Since the Cold War the US had, IMO, largely played it right. In recognition of the open frame of political definition, Bush I and Clinton operated with the knowledge that while the US was essential to any significant promotion of democracy, it was also unable to enact any significant progress alone, and the need for allies and co-operation was heightened. The fall of th Wall created a huge political vacuum, and as we have seen the entities which filled that vaccum have varied from warlords to progressive states...but the vacuum itself created a significant threat to the status quo. Approximately 4 billion people who had previously been politically dormant were now awakened, and looking for definition.

But this huge new block on the political landscape was, by defnition, largely composed of the powerless. As such it's path was hard to predict, and subject to many influences, one of which was theocratic or idealistic extremism. This block, and indeed all nations at this time no longer had a vested interest in supporting the US merely to avoid the USSR, and were free to determine their own defintion. US actions at this time reflected an awareness of this, as the degree to which Bush I worked to create a substantive and active coalition for the Gulf War demonstrates. Additionally, nations were not treated as subject to US will, but as having a voice of their own. The US was the dominant power, but not overtly dominating. Clinton continued this course, and it seemed silly to assume that others would vary.


But then came Dubya. VIrtually every action he has made has revealed himself and his administration to be operating more on ideals than wisdom, more on faith than thought. And he has again and again sought to create a clear, Cold War black and white, us vs them environment which is no longer organic. When the options are no longer reduced to the USSR or the US, to tell someone that they must choose Us or Other, what you are in fact telling them is their choice is betwen what we tell them to do and self-determination. Predictably, most rejected the dictate, and this will likely prove to be more and more the case as time passes.

A further example of how the Bush administration's foreign policy is oversimplified and idealogically based in the extreme is apparent in Iraq. With no known connection to 9-11, the motivation for the war has been variously ascribed as oil, revenge, colonialism, a defense to a WMD threat, a humanistic crusade, and an attempt to promote democracy in the Middel East, but short of the defense, no debunked, the others are all symptomatic of an attempt to create hard targets in a war with shadows. It appeals to the sophomoric mind, it shows up better on television, but it is naive and arrogant in the extreme.

The nature of terrorism is that there is no hard target, no head to the Hydra. Combating it requires patience, intelligence, moral courage, and above all global co-operation. As evil as he may be, Osama Bin Laden does not represent Stalin or Hitler; a definable head of a finite enemy state. SO Bush and co. tried to recast the role with Saddam, and the results have been predictably intagnible, or even counter-productive in the war on terror.


To have had this war as the stalking horse for the new " With us or against us" foreign policy is even worse...it is one thing to be a dictator, it is another to be an inept dictator, and worse still to be an inept, inaccurate dictator. As alll the original arguments for the war have fallen by the wayside, so have our 'allies', and another confirmation of this naive, arrogant principle at play in the White House has been revealed:

The post-invasion plan depended entriely on the self-evident nature of the rightness of the United States' position and presence. Cheney was probably, frighteningly being sincrere when he stated that the administration epxpected to be welcomed with flowers and open arms...a largely Chrsitian, increasingly and aggressively dictatorial superpower in a largely Islamic land with decades of negative experience with the US's self-serving goals, and they thought we'd be seen as saviours. Just like in the Cold War, when their option was us or an arguably worse tyrant, many would have leaned towards us. But when that ultimatum is removed, and we continue to dictate, we become the problem. WIth their idealogical premise in tatters, a bewildered White House has found itself with no effective post-war strategy, and an increasingly hostile environment.

It is also if note that we have made an unprecedented move in the Israel-Palestinian issue by choosing sides, or rather by making our till now obvious choice official. Again, a decision that appeals in a limited John Wayne, Give 'Em Hell Harry soundbite kind of way, but in reality causes more and more division in the world as time passes. For those with either a black and white view of the world, and even more for those with a Red White and Blue one, this probably seems refreshingly progressive, but the trouble is that no nation can define the rest of the planet according to it's choosing, and the more you make nations take sides for or against you, effectively telling them that you, not they, will define their policy, the more you will isolate yourself.


Bush was famous for saying he didn't 'do nuance', and this was a breath of fresh air to some, but it's appeal is as simplistic as it's premise. But, sadly for Bush and his supporters, the world isn't black and white, no matter how hard you try and make it so, and a leader who doesn't do nuance is operating without a map in dangerous terrain.

 

Wow. Totally forgot about this thread...sorry I didn't respond for a few days: I think your last point is the most telling. Just today Uncle Tim ( I think, apologies if my memeory errs) was reassuring another poster because of the body count we have engendered in the past couple of days. WHile I agree that in situ it profits the unti commanders to win the engagements, it is cold war thinking to assume that we will win a war of attrition with these people, as we have a much more finite pool of human resources than do those who oppose us.

Another comment in the past day or so was that "the only thing these people understand is strength". In addition to being another example of cold war thinking, the problem with htis is simple: Who have we oppose that we have not said only understand strenght, hence excusing our actions?

 

Totoally agree. Bush has done some unprecedented things, especially with regards our treatment of allies and our statemtns about our relationship to the globe, but many of his other gaffes are precedented or built upon precedent. That is what makes him so dangerous to the future: If he isn't held accountable, future leaders will "build" on his actions. Frightening.

 

Right. So why didn;t I attemt same at the time?

You're not even amusing any more.