Fukuyama
I had the opportunity to see Dr. Francis Fukuyama give a lecture on U.S. foreign policy in the Bush doctrine era. Fukuyama was once a part of the Neo-Conservative inner circle, and has worked for or with many of the current Bush Administration officials. It was very interesting to hear his insight and reflections on how we got to where we are today and why the Neocons so radically shifted their policy in the last six years.
He offered five lessons in foreign policy learned during the Bush presidency:
1. Hard power has limited use in unstable regions like the Middle East. This is in contrast to classic foreign policy doctrine of using a large military for deterrence and persuasion. The critical difference in the Middle East is a lack of powerful central states. Al Quaeda and Hezbollah are two examples of powerful non-state actors that operate within the framework of weak states. Simply put, a strong military presence is not an effective deterrence in the absence of true state power. Worse, our presence in Iraq actually empowers non-state groups by further destabilizing the region.
2. Preventive war is not an effective strategy in enforcing nonproliferation. Quoting Otto Von Bismarck, “Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.” Supposing that the goal was to prevent Iraq from acquiring WMD, preventive war was not the correct action. Economic and political sanctions are much more effective at enforcing nonproliferation, and as we discovered all too late, they were working in the case of Iraq. The only deterrence to come out of our adventure in Iraq is self-deterrence: the U.S. public is now much less likely support military intervention with other dangerous regimes such as Iran and North Korea.
3. Promoting democracy does not directly stop the spread of terrorism. Quite to the contrary, most influential radical leaders use the spread of modernity and democracy as a recruiting tactic. The teachings of Islam are centered on rules and a highly structured community–quite different from the personal liberties and freedoms favored in a democracy. In the long run, the spread of democracy is a good thing, but in the short run it may fuel more radicalization if done too aggressively.
4. Multilateral solutions are critical to nonproliferation and world peace. The U.S. has lost its claimed moral superiority in the world, and anti-US backlash is at an extreme. We cannot act unilaterally in the future if we hope to avoid further conflict.
5. The current U.S. government is incompetent. The ambitious goals of the Bush doctrine were carried out with such egregious incompetence that there was never the possibility of success. The decline of Iraq into civil war was preventable at the onslaught of the war, but with so many errors in judgement it is now impossible to make a clean exit.
Filed under culture, politics, war : Comments (0) : Apr 12th, 2007 by tadfad
