Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Now, as George W. Bush's first term is ending and his second is about to begin, is a good time to examine his foreign policy under the lens of scholar Walter Russell Mead's splendid 2001 book, Special Providence . Mead describes four "contrasting, competing voices and values" that have contributed to American foreign policy over the years, each named after a major statesman. How well is Bush doing on each?
. . .
Thomas Jefferson's tradition, in Mead's view, "has consistently looked for the least costly and dangerous method of defending American independence while counseling against attempts to impose American values on other countries." This ain't George W. Bush. In fact, Jeffersonians in the career ranks of the State Department and CIA tried to defeat Bush with well-timed leaks to sympathetic reporters. CIA Director Porter Goss seems determined to get career officers under control. It's not clear whether Condoleezza Rice will do so at State.
Mead's Wilsonians believe that the United States "has both a moral and a practical duty to spread its values through the world." George W. Bush did not campaign as a Wilsonian in 2000, but he became one after September 11. His continued insistence that freedom is a universal yearning recalls the rhetoric of Woodrow Wilson himself.
But institutionally, the first Bush term has fallen far short in promoting its values. Few appointees abroad have effectively countered the fashionable anti-Americanism of European elites and media. Efforts to create favorable media outlets in the Arab world have been limited. There has been nothing like the broad-scale creation of pro-American cultural institutions in the early years of the Cold War. There seems to be no counterpart in the Islamic world of the Reagan administration's covert programs encouraging peaceful regime change in Eastern Europe. The administration sometimes seems to discourage more than encourage the efforts of evangelical Christian and Jewish organizations to spotlight religious persecution of Christians and others.
. . .
Thomas Jefferson's tradition, in Mead's view, "has consistently looked for the least costly and dangerous method of defending American independence while counseling against attempts to impose American values on other countries." This ain't George W. Bush. In fact, Jeffersonians in the career ranks of the State Department and CIA tried to defeat Bush with well-timed leaks to sympathetic reporters. CIA Director Porter Goss seems determined to get career officers under control. It's not clear whether Condoleezza Rice will do so at State.
Mead's Wilsonians believe that the United States "has both a moral and a practical duty to spread its values through the world." George W. Bush did not campaign as a Wilsonian in 2000, but he became one after September 11. His continued insistence that freedom is a universal yearning recalls the rhetoric of Woodrow Wilson himself.
But institutionally, the first Bush term has fallen far short in promoting its values. Few appointees abroad have effectively countered the fashionable anti-Americanism of European elites and media. Efforts to create favorable media outlets in the Arab world have been limited. There has been nothing like the broad-scale creation of pro-American cultural institutions in the early years of the Cold War. There seems to be no counterpart in the Islamic world of the Reagan administration's covert programs encouraging peaceful regime change in Eastern Europe. The administration sometimes seems to discourage more than encourage the efforts of evangelical Christian and Jewish organizations to spotlight religious persecution of Christians and others.
