Value judgments aside, it’s fair to say the Bush administration is not without lofty foreign policy ambitions. Sure, those ambitions may not be grounded in reality. And sure, the likelihood that the president will actually reach his goals is very small. But at least these guys have decided to aim high.
Indeed, as of a month ago, administration officials thought that Bush might be able to succeed in Iraq, strike a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians, keep Iran in check, and rid North Korea of nuclear weapons. Once those items had been crossed off the to-do list, it would give the administration “claims on success that would significantly improve their historical reputations.”
First, the ambitions seemed a little too far-fetched to be taken seriously. As Yglesias noted, “By the same token, if earth’s yellow sun gave me the powers of a kryptonian, I’d be a super hero. If my blog had Engadget’s traffic, I’d be the most popular political blogger. If George Bush could breath underwater, he’d be a fish.”
Second, it appears that the administration now realizes that, with just one year remaining, it’s not going to have any real success stories anyway.
The Bush administration is beginning its last year in office by quietly scaling back its foreign policy ambitions as it struggles with new obstacles and rapidly dwindling influence.
Only a few months ago, senior officials predicted that before their exit, they could deliver the Middle East peace deal that had eluded so many predecessors. But this month, as President Bush toured Israel and the West Bank, officials made it clear that the deal he’s now talking about is not a long-awaited final agreement, but a preliminary pact to set the terms for talks.
In addition, the administration’s efforts to get North Korea and Iran to end their nuclear programs have suffered deflating setbacks in recent weeks. And although the administration’s greatest foreign policy undertaking, Iraq, has seen encouraging security improvements, the goal of Iraqi political reconciliation remains distant.
While the Bush administration will apparently stop trying to achieve key milestones, the encouraging news is that it will also direct its attention to “tidying up messes” it helped to create in recent years.
When speaking in public these days about the administration’s record, officials talk little about diplomatic breakthroughs, and more about laying sound foundations for those who will come after them. That shift reflects how little time Bush has left and how much work remains.
“It’s becoming clear that they’re not going to be able to achieve that much in the time that remains, and they’re simply having to adjust their ambitions,” said Gary Samore, a nonproliferation expert who served in a number of previous administrations and is now at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Bush’s foreign policy team had high hopes in 2007 that in the final stretch of a bruising two terms, it could eke out achievements to help offset the damage to the president’s record, much of it resulting from the calamities in Iraq. But in at least some instances, the efforts came after years of inaction, hobbling chances of success.
In Israel, Bush’s strategy of ignoring the problem didn’t quite work out. In North Korea, Kim Jung Il’s arsenal has grown stronger under Bush, and he’s still playing by his own rules. In Iran, the NIE apparently got in the way of military threats, and last week, when Bush was in the Middle East, “some of the Persian Gulf nations reached out to Tehran and appeared to deliberately distance themselves from the president.” In Poland, officials are interested in the administration’s missile defense proposals, but they want to wait until Bush’s successor is in place. In India, a nuclear agreement is in jeopardy. In Afghanistan, the country is slipping and Bush is arguing with NATO allies. In Pakistan, Bush has very little influence at all. All the while, political progress in Iraq is non-existent.
Given all of this, if we can just get through the next year without matters getting considerably worse, I’ll be very impressed.