THE BUSH DOCTRINE
George Woodrow Bush
The president is becoming a Wilsonian interventionist.
In searching the political clouds for the origins of last week's thunderclap from President Bush--his call for the overthrow of Yasser Arafat--the meteorologists of the press corps have focused on the predictable rift between "hardliners" and "pragmatists." A more accurate description would be to say this represents the triumph of--for want of a better term--Wilsonians over realpolitikers, a development of considerable longterm consequence.
Wilsonians, who long predate Woodrow Wilson, believe that both morality and self-interest should lead the U.S. to champion liberal values abroad. While often portrayed as a soft, fuzzy doctrine, Wilsonianism often requires the use of force. Wilson himself was one of our most interventionist presidents, dispatching troops not only to France but also to Mexico (twice), Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Russia. Wilson was discredited by his post-World War I failures, but the ideas he championed have been one of the sturdiest strains in American foreign policy thinking.
Realpolitikers scoff at intrusions by morality into foreign policy. They believe that nations are governed by immutable geostrategic imperatives and that ideology counts for little in international relations. Realpolitikers preach stability; Wilsonians prefer revolution.
Ronald Reagan, while more adroit in the use of power than Wilson himself, was essentially Wilsonian in his orientation. Not only did he bring down the "evil empire," he also helped nudge aside friendly dictators in the Philippines, South Korea and elsewhere. The first Bush administration, by contrast, was the embodiment of realpolitik. George H.W. Bush was devoted to stability above all else. He was dismayed that his negotiating partner, Mikhail Gorbachev, might lose power and the Soviet Union might break up. (Remember the "chicken Kiev" speech in July 1991, when he warned Ukraine not to secede--just a few weeks before it did.) He resisted going to Baghdad for fear of the upheaval that would result. And of course he cozied up to the Saudis, paragons of medieval, not Midwestern, values.
It was not at first obvious which way the second Bush administration would swing. Its foreign policy team includes both prominent Wilsonians like Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz, and prominent realpolitikers like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice (protege of ur-realist Brent Scowcroft). Early on, the administration sent out "realist" signals by denigrating "nation-building." Its foreign policy seemed primarily defensive, focusing on missile defense, withdrawal from treaty shackles, and the original incarnation of the Bush Doctrine, which was limited to punishing terrorists. Mr. Bush shied away from expansive rhetoric about America's role in the world; he said we needed to be humbler and less ambitious.
Well, there's nothing "humble" in his proclamation last week to the Palestinians: "I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty." Or what about his West Point speech a few weeks earlier, in which he announced: "The requirements of freedom apply fully to Africa and Latin America and the entire Islamic world. The peoples of the Islamic nations want and deserve the same freedoms and opportunities as people in every nation. And their governments should listen to their hopes." True, he added a caveat: "America cannot impose this vision--yet we can support and reward governments that make the right choices for their own people."
But caveat or not, it sounds as if George W. Bush's middle name might now be "Woodrow." If taken seriously, his recent pronouncements could be the most consequential foreign policy statements since George Kennan's "X" article in 1947, which laid out the case for containment. These speeches have radical, though as yet unrealized, implications for our relations with the rulers in Riyadh, and elsewhere, who ignore "the requirements of freedom."
Sweeping presidential pronouncements, however, have a way of getting whittled back in the course of implementation. This is already happening in Afghanistan, where the president now talks warmly of "nation building" but still refuses to expand the international peacekeeping force outside Kabul.
The test of the nascent Bush Doctrine will occur in Iraq. There are still many within the administration who think that the ideal outcome would be for some Baathist colonel to knock off Saddam Hussein and establish a pro-American dictatorship. This is precisely the same unrealistic "realism" that led the U.S. to think it could work with Arafat, the House of Saud--and the pre-1990 Saddam. The problem is that rulers who treat their own citizens badly are not likely to treat other nations well.
The Wilsonian alternative is clear: We will settle for nothing less than the establishment of liberal democracy in Iraq within a federalist framework that allows a great deal of autonomy to the Kurds and Shiites. And if this requires American and allied troops to undertake occupation duty, so be it. Yes, this is an ambitious agenda, but no more ambitious than transforming Germany, Italy or Japan after World War II; in fact a great deal less so, because Iraq is a smaller country led by a thug less popular among his own people than Tojo, Hitler and Mussolini were.
This is not, to put it mildly, a policy likely to win favor with administration realpolitikers like Colin Powell, who in his 1995 memoir scoffed at the notion that Iraq could ever become a "desert democracy where people read The Federalist Papers along with the Koran." (Isn't that the way people used to pooh-pooh the prospects of democracy taking root in Asia or Latin America?) But that is where the logic of Mr. Bush's recent speeches should lead him.
Mr. Boot, the Journal's editorial features editor, is the author of "The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power" (Basic Books, 2002). You can buy it at the OpinionJournal bookstore.
