Abstract
The Bush Administration's Domestic Policy Is Simplicity itself: more money for the rich. But could the administration's foreign policy be described as plainly? One might say it is the determination to do just about anything it likes, war-making-wise, to any country it perceives as some sort of threat. At least that was the message, minus the embroidery, of the administration's September 2002 “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” the first real-life test of which began with the U.S. invasion of Iraq on March 19.
Results are mixed at this writing. Predictions by the administration and friends, including the vice president and policy planners like Defense Department adviser Richard Perle, were that the invasion would be a romp, perhaps resembling 332 B.C., when the defenders of Egypt, supposedly massing to resist, are believed instead to have greeted Alexander the Great by tossing thousands of flowers in the air. Perle's description of the collapse of Iraq–told over the last several years to every audience he could find–sounded a lot like that.
But few cheering crowds have greeted the Yankee liberators–Iraqis apparently believing that the gritty reality of an invasion, no matter how benevolent, was best done without. The war may become a long struggle, unless shortened by increasingly harsh measures that will greatly threaten the civilian population.
The situation could be worse. Only freelance Islamic nationalists–not their countries of origin–have so far joined the fight. Neither Turkey nor Iran has yet sent in troops in hopes of carving out some territory as their own. And although both British and world opinion (which the president has likened to a focus group) are fiercely against the war, Prime Minister Tony Blair remains in office. Perhaps only 80 percent of the world population wants to see the United States suffer a defeat.
As for the casus belli–the harboring of “weapons of mass destruction” and the president's assurance that Iraq would gladly distribute them to terrorists–by early April no such weapons had been found. John Prados (“A Necessary War?”) details the disconnect between U.S. intelligence reports describing Iraq's post-Gulf war arsenals as molehills, and the administration's determination to describe them as mountains. He predicts that any chemical or biological weapons that turn up should be of limited quantity.
Meanwhile, the other “axis of evil” countries–Iran and North Korea–have yet to take full advantage of the U.S. preoccupation with Iraq, although both have robust nuclear programs that are proceeding apace. But the administration has fallen silent on the question of the mythic Iraqi program. In their article, “Furor over Fuel,” David Albright and Corey Hinderstein fill Bulletin readers in on Iran's remarkable progress.
Sheltered in the safety of their duct-taped, plastic-sheeted safe rooms, Americans might also want to read Peter Amacher's article on civil defense. As he points out, “You're on Your Own–Again.”
It's important to remain philosophical, no matter how familiar the experience of foreign adventures not going as well as promised may seem. With the Bush administration in charge, even those who have learned from history seem doomed to repeat it.