[IP] Today's Financial Times on Bush
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Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 10:02:16 -0400
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Subject: Today's Financial Times on Bush
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Kindly delete my name if for IP -- just sending this along because it's
interesting where it comes from.
Copyright 2004 The Financial Times Limited
Financial Times (London, England)
May 12, 2004 Wednesday
HEADLINE: The saviour of democracy is run by a unilateral bully
BYLINE: By MARTIN WOLF
I am a huge admirer of the US. Freedom and democracy survived the 20th
century only because of American actions and values. Without the US, Hitler
or Stalin would have emerged as undisputed winners of the second world war.
Thereafter, the US turned defeated enemies into allies and undertook the
long - and ultimately successful - task of containing and defeating the
Soviet empire.
I am also neither hostile to Republican administrations nor opposed to the
use of force. On the contrary, I was heartened by Ronald Reagan's efforts
to liberalise the US economy and oppose the Soviet Union. I preferred
Richard Nixon to George McGovern, in 1972, and George H.W. Bush to Michael
Dukakis, in 1988. I supported the first Gulf war, though I opposed the one
in Vietnam.
This personal history is of no intrinsic importance. But if I find the Bush
administration's foreign policy disturbing, so must the vast majority of
humanity. If I feel Tony Blair has allied the UK too closely, then sympathy
for this alliance must be perilously low.
So what is wrong with this administration? Put simply, it fails to
understand the basis of US power, mis-specifies US objectives and is
incompetent in executing its intentions. As a result, the position of the
US - and so of the west - is worse, in significant respects, than it was
the day after September 11 2001. Then, a huge proportion of humanity viewed
the US as the victim of an outrage. Today, after the revelations of the
treatment of prisoners in Iraq, it is seen as a perpetrator of them. Then
it had the support of all its allies, now it can rely on the public's
sympathy in very few.
Let us start with the administration's faith in the application of US
military power. This is a double error. The first lies in its exaggerated
belief in force. The US was able to defeat the armies of Saddam Hussein,
but a civilised occupying army cannot coerce the obedience of a population.
The second error lies in its belief in the irrelevance of allies. A country
containing 4 per cent of the world's population cannot impose its will upon
the world. It needs permanent allies, not reluctant stooges, willing
acceptance of its leadership, not sullen acquiescence. The contempt shown
by leading members of the administration for those who disagree with it is
now matched by the hostility of those whipped by their scorn.
Without military power, victory would not have been achieved in the second
world war. Nor would the Soviet tanks have been kept at bay for more than
40 years. But the cold war was won not because the US had a bigger army
than the Soviet Union, but because it offered a more attractive model. The
more the US plays the unilateral bully, the more its attraction fades.
Turn then to definition of US objectives. Terrorism is a technique of the
powerless adapted to the age of mass communications. A war against
terrorism is as empty a slogan as one against crime, drugs or disease. But
proclaiming a war against terrorism justifies the indefinite suspension of
the rule of law, allows every thug on the planet to ally his repressive
policies to those of the US, spawns new enemies and foments a war psychosis
in the US itself.
As David Scheffer pointed out in the Financial Times last Thursday, the
behaviour of the guards at Abu Ghraib is the natural, almost the
inevitable, consequence of the position in which the administration has -
in its pursuit of its war on terrorism - put detainees. These are neither
prisoners of war nor criminal suspects. Instead, they are in a legal limbo
for as long as the US decides that this so-called "war" continues.
Interrogators have absolute power and, as Lord Acton pointed out, absolute
power corrupts absolutely. Nobody, not excluding Americans, is immune to
the temptations such power creates.
Now let us turn to the question of competence. In the short history of the
war on terrorism, only one institution has shown its effectiveness - the US
armed forces in "shock and awe" mode. Almost everything else has been a
humiliating shambles. Afghanistan is, once again, in the arms of the war
lords whose behaviour led to the Taliban invasion. The outcome in Iraq now
looks far worse than that.
The decision to wage a war of choice, not of necessity, was a great risk.
It could be justified only by discovering the weaponry Mr Hussein was
alleged to hold or by leaving the country, if not a Jeffersonian democracy,
at least in a reasonably stable condition. Having been so resoundingly
wrong on the first point, the US must now succeed on the second. Always
difficult, the chances of such an outcome now seem vanishingly small. What
will Iraq be a few years from now - a military dictatorship, a theocracy, a
divided country, an anarchy, or a permanent US occupation? Any of these,
except the last, seems more plausible than stable democracy.
It is impossible to exaggerate the dangers attendant upon a US failure in
Iraq: jihadis would conclude that they had now defeated a second
superpower; friendly regimes would be shaken; and US prestige would be
destroyed. Iraq is not another Vietnam. It is far more dangerous than that.
While this venture was never going to be as militarily perilous as that
war, this time dominoes could well fall. An incontinent US withdrawal could
be a deciding moment in the relationship between the US and the Arab, if
not the entire Muslim, world.
The US has, rightly or wrongly, staked its prestige not just on getting rid
of Saddam Hussein, but on leaving behind a thriving country. If, instead,
it leaves behind despotism or chaos, it will be a grievous defeat, with
huge long-run consequences. Responsibility for such a failure must rest
with the White House. It cannot be blamed on any subordinate department,
not even the defence department. This is the president's policy and
responsibility. The buck stops there.
Crafting a foreign policy for a new era is hard. The last time this had to
be done was in the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman more
than half a century ago. The institutions they established and the values
they upheld were the foundation of the successful US foreign policy of the
postwar era. Now, a task even more complex has fallen on this president. He
is not up to the job. This is not a moral judgment, but a practical one.
The world is too complex and dangerous for the pious simplicities and
arrogant unilateralism of George W. Bush. mailto:martin.wolf@xxxxxx
LOAD-DATE: May 11, 2004
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