Bush’s bipolar disorder on world affairs

I’d really recommend James Mann’s article in today’s Washington Post about Bush’s approach to dealing with America’s allies. It highlights a number of interesting points that observers of international affairs consider in evaluating the administration’s trouble with diplomacy, which Mann describes as “a major intellectual failure” of the White House.

The crux of the piece skillfully points out an obvious contradiction. Bush, for example, wants two things: to launch “preemptive” strikes against potential U.S. threats and international support for his ambitions. The breakdown occurs, evidently, when the president can’t have both. Mann, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, explains all this much better that I could, so go check it out.

But one thing that jumped out for me that I wanted to comment on is the bipolar nature of the administration’s policies. It’s been an ongoing problem for Bush since his inauguration.

Mann says, “It is almost as if the administration has been running its foreign policy out of two different sides of its brain. On one side, it has been developing a whole new set of principles, centered on the doctrine of preventive war. On the other, the administration has clung to and operated with more traditional views about the continuing importance of our friends and allies, who do not accept the administration’s new doctrines.”

The side with “traditional views” shaped Bush’s foreign policy rhetoric during the campaign. Mann notes that Bush, before he became president, spoke like his father did. “All our goals in Eurasia will depend on America strengthening the alliances that sustain our influence,” Bush said at the beginning of the race. He added that America’s allies are “partners, not satellites.” That Bush bears no resemblance to the man occupying the Oval Office today, one who has spurned allies who have the audacity to question his tactics, and worse, bully skeptics into submission.

While Mann explains this in detail, I feel like there’s a reason to explain the problem of operating out of “two different sides” of the brain that the article didn’t touch on. It’s the institutional divide within the administration itself — between multilateralists and unilateralists, between those who cherish international alliances and institutions against those who feel we can succeed without them, between those hesitant to use military force and those anxious to do so, ultimately between humility and bravado.

Bush made little effort during the campaign to hide his inexperience and ignorance when it came to foreign policy. He didn’t travel abroad, he couldn’t name leaders of foreign nations, and he didn’t know that people from Greece were called “Greeks” (he called them “Greecians”). Voters were told not to worry, because Bush would have excellent advisors. It didn’t matter that he didn’t have any experience, the people around him would.

Bush successfully surrounded himself with veterans of foreign affairs. The names read like a “who’s who” of GOP heavyweights in international relations: Powell, Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Pearl, Wolfowitz.

The problem with an inexperienced leader with skilled assistants is simple: what happens when the assistants disagree? Powell wants to engage North Korea in diplomatic discussions; Rumsfeld wants to avoid rewarding Kim Jung Il’s bad behavior. Bush doesn’t know how to choose between them, so nothing happens and the crisis builds through neglect. Rice advises that international support for an Iraqi invasion is critical; Cheney says we don’t need the U.N.’s permission to protect our interests. Bush doesn’t have an opinion of his own, so the administration flounders as it searches for direction and purpose.

The entire process of challenging Iraq has occurred, as the Washington Post notes today, with a military buildup and diplomatic efforts happening simultaneously, both pretending the other isn’t happening. Why? Because Powell sought to reach agreements with the U.N. so any action against Iraq would have strong international support, while Cheney/Rumsfeld wanted to wage war if, or rather, when Powell failed. Of course, Powell failed because, as the Post noted, the military buildup left “many foreign diplomats believing the administration’s appeal for U.N. backing was a fig leaf to cover a preordained decision to use military force against Iraq.”

It’s certainly not unusual for presidents to have competing advisors. In early 1993, Clinton’s Labor Secretary Bob Reich and Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin disagreed bitterly over the administration’s fiscal policies. Reich wanted to increase spending to generate growth, Rubin wanted to lower the deficit, which he believed would lower interest rates and fuel growth. Clinton brought his own ideas about economics to the table, surveyed the landscape, sided with Rubin, and didn’t look back. (And so began the longest and strongest period of economic growth in American history. But I digress…)

Bush, however, doesn’t have a “philosophy” he brings to international affairs. When his advisors offer competing and contradictory suggestions about how we should proceed, Bush is either paralyzed by indecision or he strays haphazardly between multiple approaches.

Bush has no unifying vision about the world and America’s place in it. A prerequisite to being a world leader is having an idea about where the world should go.