|
Jewish World Review Sept. 25, 2002 / 19 Tishrei, 5763
Michael Ledeen
First and foremost, it defines America's national interest in dramatically political terms: Security, both for the United States and for those who want to be our friends and allies, depends on the spread of political freedom. Over and over again, the president stresses that we seek friendship and alliance with free countries, and that we must use our great power and influence to expand the zone of freedom throughout the world. It has been a long time - perhaps since John F. Kennedy's finest oratory - since we heard an American president enunciate our core values so clearly, and proclaim the unbreakable commitment of an American administration to a global democratic revolution. Not for Bush the doubletalk of "peace processes" and "negotiated settlements" that has dominated so much of the discussion of our foreign policy, nor the silly pidgin Marxist theory that redistributing wealth will eliminate war or terrorism. Not at all. He insists, rightly and refreshingly, that poverty is not the "root cause" of war or terrorism, and that freedom is the best guarantee of peace. Best of all, the president fully and proudly accepts America's dominant position in the world, and, unlike many of his predecessors, views it as an opportunity for leadership instead of an occasion for remorse and apology. He sees the uniqueness of the moment, proclaiming that this is "the best chance since the rise of the nation-state in the 17th century to build a world where great powers compete in peace instead of continually prepare for war." History students, please take note: Peace is not the normal condition of mankind. War is the norm; peace is rare, and depends on great leadership. Finally, in what is likely to be the least-noticed part of Bush's strategy, he firmly rejects the misguided populist call for redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor nations. He accepts the obligation to improve the lot of those living in misery, but rather than hand out money to corrupt governments he instead insists that the United States will work with the poor countries - calling for doubling their wealth within a decade - to give their people the freedom to improve their lot. And he's even good on the details: grants linked to performance rather than loans that will never be repaid, and, as always, the primacy of freedom in the workplace, in the press, in places of prayer and at the ballot box. That's the core of Bush's ambitious vision. The rest is footnotes, mostly excellent, only occasionally disappointing. The best footnotes concern terrorism in general and the Middle East in particular. By now, we all know the antiterrorist litany by heart: unrelenting war against the terrorists, their organizations and their sponsors, most definitely including "nations that are compromised by terror . . . because the allies of terror are the enemies of civilization." Since the greatest danger "lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology," we no longer have the luxury of waiting until the bad guys are proven to have weapons of mass destruction, and thus we are fully entitled to launch preemptive attacks. Call it the Saddam Rule. And Bush reiterates his policy for the Israel/Palestinian question: When there is a democratic Palestinian leadership committed to real peace - not before, and not otherwise - we'll insist on a Palestinian state. It's probably inevitable, but nonetheless a little disconcerting, to see terrorism dealt with as if it were a purely Middle Eastern disease, and from time to time the president lapses into language that makes it sound like terrorism is a poor man's war tactic. In fact, terrorism is a tyrant's tactic against free societies, and terrorism has occurred all over the world, mostly in well-off democratic countries like Uruguay in the '60s and Italy and Germany in the '70s. The president is prematurely enthusiastic about his ambitious program to reorganize the government (yet to be approved by Congress), and he remains inexplicably cheerful about the abilities of the intelligence community, calling for a great increase in the powers of the director of Central Intelligence. This sounds alarmingly like the foolish scheme proposed by the hapless Brent Scowcroft some time back, and somebody really must challenge it. The intelligence community desperately needs more internal competition, not greater centralization, and it needs better leadership than it has gotten since the passing of William Casey. There is also a slight excess of optimism concerning the People's Republic of China, about which the president notes that Chinese leaders are learning that "economic freedom is the only source of national wealth. In time, they will find that social and political freedom is the only source of national greatness." This is surely too much. We may hope that the Chinese decide to introduce political freedom, but there is no particular reason to expect they will, and it is quite wrong to say that freedom is the only source of greatness. At best, one can argue, as did Machiavelli, that free societies are more stable than tyrannies, but history does not lack for examples of glorious tyrannies, from Alexander to the Caesars to the Sun King and beyond. The other disconcerting theme in the president's strategy is the notion that great power conflicts are a thing of the past, and we must build a military capable of dealing with the smaller and more shadowy battles we will have to fight against the likes of Hezbollah and al Qaeda. He says that we are less menaced by "conquering states than we are by failing ones. We are menaced less by fleets and armies than by catastrophic technologies in the hands of the embittered few." No doubt we need such (call them special operations) forces, but there is also no doubt that we will inevitably face another challenge from another big enemy. The president promises to maintain unchangeable military power, suggesting that he is aware of the potential of another major conflict, but he would have done better to avoid the implication that all big wars are behind us. But these are small nits, and (faced with the overall grandeur and courage of the president's vision) relatively insignificant. This is a first-class piece of work, and like so much of George W. Bush's foreign-policy declarations, is as gratifying as it is surprising. It is also another stern rebuttal of the conceits of the intellectual class, because it shows once again that a fine president does not need advanced degrees or high standing in the salons to understand what's important. For the third time since the Second World War we have a president without intellectual pretensions, and for the third time we've been fortunate to find a man with sound instincts and an inspiring vision. Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush.
Maybe there's a lesson there?
Like this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
09/23/02: Intelligence? What intelligence?
|