Before the war in Iraq began, the Bush White House’s diplomatic skills looked pretty ridiculous. The administration bullied our friends, threatened our neighbors, alienated allies, and effectively told the world we just didn’t care what anyone else thought.
This quote from the Washington Post almost a year-and-a-half ago is still striking:
A senior diplomat from another council member…was told not to anguish over whether to vote for war.
“You are not going to decide whether there is war in Iraq or not,” the diplomat said U.S. officials told him. “That decision is ours, and we have already made it. It is already final. The only question now is whether the council will go along with it or not.”
With a diplomatic record like this one, it’s encouraging to see Bush personally begin to reach out to our one-time allies. In fact, given the circumstances, you’d think the president would be prepared to be completely obsequious to leaders of countries he helped alienate just last year.
It turns out, however, that Bush hasn’t really learned much after all.
There’s a great article on the front page of the Washington Post today about Bush establishing relationships with world leaders — but on his terms, not theirs.
“Friendship” may seem like a strange word for world leaders, who are responsible for representing the interests of their nations when they meet at events such as this week’s Group of Eight summit in Sea Island, Ga. But personal bonds can help smooth out rough patches when national interests conflict — or sometimes cause a blind spot when a cold assessment is required.
Clinton forged links with leaders who had similar outsized appetites and personalities, and he generally did not let disputes over policy interfere with those personal relationships. In President Bush’s case, the relationships are very much on his terms, said former and current officials, as well as officials overseas.
Bush bonds with leaders who see the world as he does, who in his view “get” the war on terrorism, who talk simply and straightforwardly and do not break any private commitments and understandings, officials said. Leaders who are willing to accept his point of view may be able to modify it somewhat, or gain something in return, but those looking for real negotiations or give-and-take are liable to come away disappointed, officials and diplomats say.
In fact, Bush applies the same black-and-white standard to diplomacy as he does to everything else.
According to one former White House official, Bush appears to have a simple test for evaluating his fellow leaders: Good people or bad people? Do they have a vision for their countries or not?
“Whenever he talked about leaders, these were the categories he used,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He said a CIA official who regularly attended the president’s daily intelligence briefings first pointed out to him Bush’s use of these terms, which was then confirmed by his own experience as a senior policymaker in the White House.
And when he’s not leading with his overly simplistic worldview, Bush bases diplomacy on uninformed “gut” instincts.
Bush puts a lot of stock in his gut-level assessments of his fellow leaders. The fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin treasures a cross given by his mother — and had it blessed in Israel — convinced Bush he could deal with the former KGB operative. As a result, Bush declared after their first meeting that Putin was “very straightforward and trustworthy” and he was able to “get a sense of his soul.”
Since then, Bush has continued to have close relations with Putin, who also will attend the summit, even as questions have arisen about whether Putin was smothering Russia’s fragile democracy. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that the relationship is “so broad and deep, the presidents could talk about anything on the map” when they meet at the summit.
Yeah, like maybe how a former KGB agent helped convince an unwitting president how great his soul is?
Just 147 more days until the election…