Bush's classic conservatism

Artigo de Henry R. Nau, no International Herald Tribune de ontem (com os meus agradecimentos à Carolina Cordeiro, pelo envio do artigo):

Do Europeans understand President George W. Bush any better after his recent trip to Europe? They may. But they would be wrong to dismiss Bush's previous diplomacy as aberrant.###

Bush is unusual. He is a conservative internationalist. Europeans have heard of liberal internationalists, such as Bill Clinton. And they know about conservative nationalists such as Pat Buchanan or Ross Perot.

But they have probably never heard of conservative internationalists. Indeed they might think, as many liberal Americans do, that the term is an oxymoron.

Well, it's not. Conservative internationalists exist in the American diplomatic tradition, and Europeans - as well as liberal Americans - should recognize this school of diplomacy even if they disagree with it.

Bush draws on four features of conservative internationalism.

First he believes, like Thomas Jefferson, that freedom, not stability, is the essence of democracy. Jefferson wanted the tree of liberty to be watered periodically by the blood of patriots. Bush is not quite so sanguinary, but he mentioned freedom 27 times in his Inaugural Address and 21 times in his State of the Union address and stability not once. By contrast, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany mentioned stability eight times in his NATO address and freedom not once. Bush, like Jefferson, wants freedom to spread by commerce, not force. Both lowered defense expectations when they came into office. But then war came for both.

Second, Bush, like Andrew Jackson, reacts to war fiercely and unilaterally. As a general, Jackson invaded the Florida Territory in 1818 to squelch Indian attacks without authorization from President James Monroe or Congress. That's about as unilateral as it gets. After 9/11, Bush called the enemy evil and attacked him unilaterally without authorization from the United Nations. Unilateralism is not premeditated or mean-spirited; it's instinctive and self-protective.

Third, Bush, although an internationalist, is not Woodrow Wilson. He is not a strong believer in national administrations (of which Wilson was a student) or international institutions. He is very sceptical of the United Nations, where non democracies have veto power. His appointment of John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations signals continued tough love for that institution. Even among democracies Bush is more comfortable with "coalitions of the willing" than decision-making by NATO committees. He prefers NATO à la carte. For Europeans, of course, that's NATO as a "tool kit" and unacceptable.

Fourth, Bush, like Ronald Reagan, is a selective internationalist, not an institutional one. He sees negotiations as episodic not continuous. He often shuns or delays negotiations, as Reagan did, in order to alter the balance of forces on the ground and improve his bargaining position.

Take the Middle East. Bush pulled back from Arab-Israeli negotiations before Sept. 11. He was not opposed to negotiations or in favor of doing nothing, as critics charged. He was instead unhappy with the setup for negotiations. Unlike Bill Clinton, he rejected Yasser Arafat as a negotiating partner, insisted on prior reforms of the Palestinian Authority, and backed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policy of building a wall to improve Israel's position on the ground against extremists. The invasion of Iraq eliminated one state that rejects Israel. Now elections in Iraq have emboldened moderates in Egypt and Lebanon. All these pieces were put into place before Arafat died, giving negotiations their best chance since Oslo.

Bush's approach to North Korea is similar. While delaying meaningful negotiations, the United States repositioned forces in South Korea (to make them less vulnerable to a North Korean attack) and created a new negotiating setup with the six-party talks. That setup gives the allies more leverage. Even if North Korea builds more nuclear weapons, what is Pyongyang going to do with them? As long as the other five parties stick together, the weapons serve only to isolate North Korea. Look how quickly North Korea rethought its decision this past month to flaunt its nuclear weapon capability and withdraw from the talks.

Now attention is focusing on Bush's diplomacy in Iran. There, too, he has played a patient hand - supporting European diplomacy but waiting until Tehran feels the heat. The better things go in Iraq and Afghanistan, the more heat Iran feels. Elections in Iraq clearly raised the temperature. Forces on the ground are moving in Bush's direction. And Bush is now playing his hand and backing the European strategy of incentives.

Europeans may not understand or agree with this conservative internationalist approach. But they should at least take it seriously. It is vintage American conservatism.

(Henry R. Nau is a professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School and author of ‘‘At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy.’’ He served in the Ford and Reagan administrations.)