'America Unbound' weighs Bush Revolution

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- "America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy," by Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay Brookings, 246pp, $22.95

There are three prevalent myths about President George Bush's foreign policy and this spirited and objective -- but still critical -- analysis by two veterans of Bill Clinton's National Security Council explodes each one.

The first myth is that Bush is a foreign policy novice whose policies are run by more experienced veterans like Vice President Dick Chaney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Ivo Daalder, now at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, and James Lindsay, now director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, point out that it was Bush himself who decided to befriend and trust Russian President Vladimir Putin at their first summit meeting, even though his chief advises had been far more cautious.

It was also Bush himself who took the decision to respond to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with an unprecedented campaign in Afghanistan that mixed covert action with precision air power, against the advice of his military advisers.

The second myth is that Bush's foreign policy has been captured in a kind of political putsch by a small group of "neo-conservatives," some of them supposedly more devoted to Israeli than to American interests. That view confronts the reality that Bush is the first U.S. President to commit to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and that he has also warned Israel that U.S. credits will be cut for every dollar that Israel spends on building its controversial 'security fence."

Moreover, Daalder and Lindsay point out that no neo-conservative holds a top-ranking position in the Bush Cabinet. The top jobs, held by Cheney and Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and NSC director Condoleezza Rice, are occupied instead by traditional conservatives, who put the nationalist interest first, and Powell is a convinced multilateralist.

The third myth is that Bush has abandoned 60 years of "multi-lateralism," working with allies and international institutions, in favor of a "unilateral" or go-it-alone reliance on raw American power that gratuitously offends traditional allies and thus makes foreign policy goals harder to achieve.

There is no doubt that some old allies like France and Germany took a firm stand against the Iraq War, and global opinion polls reflect widespread dismay that the Bush administration so bluntly rejected international efforts to tackle global warming, war crimes, landmines and bio-warfare. But then President Clinton's decision to back those various international initiatives were hollow, when large majorities in Congress were determined that the United States should reject them.

Moreover, Bush succeeded in building a real international coalition for the war against the Taliban, which is now being run by NATO, in an operation where European troops outnumber Americans. And the Iraq War, however controversial, can now claim retrospective endorsement by the UN Security Council, which last week voted 15-0 to give a UN mandate to the U.S.-led security force now in Iraq.

Most important of all, while Bush was prepared to go it almost alone in Iraq with the ever-loyal British, he has adopted a classically multilateral approach to the other two cardinal foreign policy crises, on the nuclear weapons programs of Iran and North Korea.

On Iran, the Bush administration is working with its allies and the International Atomic Energy Authority (a UN agency) to pressure Iran to abide by the Non-Proliferation Treaty and subject its nuclear program to international inspections. On North Korea, the Bush administration is committed to working through the six-power group, including China, Japan, Russia and South Korea, to persuade Pyongyang to give up or freeze its nuclear program in the context of a regional stabilization agreement.

Given the controversy aroused at home and abroad by Bush's foreign policy, the Daalder-Lindsay tome is a useful, thoughtful and fair corrective, all the more important because it is written by two Democrats with strong foreign policy credentials. As a result, their conclusion that Bush appeared to be learning the hard way of the limits to U.S. military power and of the need to work with allies and partners, deserves to be taken seriously.

"The lesson of Iraq was that sometimes, when you lead, few follow," they conclude. "Far from demonstrating the triumph of unilateral American power, Bush's wars demonstrated the importance of basing American foreign policy on a blend of power and cooperation."