Home >> United States & Canada >> Foreign Policy & Military

     Email   Print 

America’s Lopsided Foreign Policy

Bhuwan Thapaliya - 8/6/2007

A foreign policy crisis has loomed in America. And what should the president intrude? What he should do to mend all his mistakes and in next several months build a new foreign policy model, one that could help him earn a distinguished place in the history books.

No one knows the solution and given Mr. Bush’s stubbornness, analyst predict that instead of easing off, Mr. Bush during the remaining months of his tenure would try to create further uproar in the global issues and would further complicate the geo-politics.

Will he invade Iran, Syria, Venezuela, or will he at least try to stabilize the situation by diplomatic means, the last push to leave his mark, on otherwise his stained reputation, muddled by his hasty war in Iraq?

The condition in Iraq has all the potential for the sort of trouble that Americans are so cautious of: complex lines of control, the possibility of ethnic diffusion, uncertainty of prime objectives and of exit strategy.

Looking at Iraq today, there seems little hope for a U.S. victory. Today, no matter, how you see, Iraq has disintegrated into a Sunni-Shi’ite civil war zone that stirs secessionist trouble throughout the region. And moreover, Iraq runs the risk of becoming a failed state if tensions between Sunni and Shiite were to spill all over Iraq; the damage would affect all its neighbors, Iran included. And slowly but surely it is slowing turning into the haven of terrorism as more and more terrorists are making Iraq their operational base.

But even so, some of these Iraqi problems require non military solutions. But America, for one, is reluctant to be drawn into every spat diplomatically. As many of Iraq’s problems can best be solved not by armed forces but my more careful attention to the region’s complex and shifting base of power, it is better if America play a crucial diplomatic role.

Apart from Iraq, there are other problems for Mr. Bush. On foreign policy more broadly, he has been a complete failure. He is not able to strengthen NATO, build new alliances in Asia, halt the march of dictators in Africa, dethrone the Arab autocrats, stop the rise of leftists in America , separate Muslims from Extremists, stop the genocide in Darfur, and push the cart of peace in the Middle East.

What does all this mean for the Bush administration? Total embarrassment, as Mr. Bush was hoping for a vital American world leadership, here is America struggling to save its face. This is not an argument most Bush’s administrators find easy to swallow. Yet they have to steel themselves to do a lot more if they are to prove their critics wrong.

Moreover, Iraq is not the only matter calling for urgent attention. Afghanistan, has lately seen the worst outbreak of fighting and the revival of Taliban, other major issues- ranging from NATO enlargement to the appointment of the World’s Bank President, from the currently scratchy relations with Iran to the perpetually fraught policy towards Venezuela – are giving headache to the Bush administration.

Yet in another sense, lately the situations for confiscating with foreign policy decisions are Luke warm that they have ever been under the Bush presidency.

When Mr. Bush first came to the White House, he tended to see global issues as an unwelcome distraction from his busy domestic agenda but that all changed after the September 11. And over the past several years, though many a stumble, he has gained experience but lost credibility.

But now, with a relatively slim agenda at home, foreign policy offers a bigger field for Mr. Bush’s energies, a laudable challenge for a maturing second- term president.

So, how did things go wrong? The Bush Administration is not entirely to blame for the world’s trouble and the conflicts that have been going on throughout the world since ages. But as the President of only country with the political weight to balance the world’s other big powers, American president has a much coveted role to play and make this world a safer place to live for all.

Considering this, what he should do? He should therefore at least accept some intrusion of the outside world, with all its complications. However, a new foreign policy – in particular, a more pro- world can signal a new sense of activism.

Experts say, American presidency is all about salesmanship. Perhaps, they are right. So in part, Mr. Bush’s task is one of salesmanship. But till date, he has been a failure as a salesman as he has not been able to convince the world about his misdirected fight against the terrorism and his terrible strategical blunder in Iraq.

Leave Iraq aside for a moment. Sure, terrorism is a monster and it must be defeated before it defeats the humanity but not certainly at the humanity’s cost. Which many blame the Bush administration of actually doing. May be, they are bit harsh on the president who has done a lot to curb the terrorism.

Nonetheless, he has yet to sell the idea of foreign troop deployments in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan, for example, to his skeptical observers. And more than that, if the president is really serious about America ’s future as the world’s sole superpower, he needs to make allies see the seriousness of America’s security concerns in their dealing with terrorism and make sure that enemies such as Syria, Iran and North Korea appreciate the serious consequences of any misbehavior.

Why Mr. Bush is finding it difficult to showcase before the world his salesmanship qualities? May be, because in the context of a foreign policy, salesmanship is difficult to conduct on a case by case basis. Till now, it seems that, “case by case basis,” has been the approach taken by the Bush administration, on the assumption that the post cold – war world remains too baffling, and its security challenges after the September 11th too immense, for any principle to have much practical value.

Hence, judging America and the Bush administration, it is high time to question that speculation and to work out an apparent categorization of American interests, along with a coherent rationale for the resources needed to fulfill them. It may be just another hypothetical solution to many of you, so until and unless it is practiced in reality, nothing can be said about or against it. But it is worth trying because that would assist the duty of salesmanship and it would make America ’s foreign policy less reactive and more creative.

Such changes are needed to strengthen what has come to seem a dangerously lopsided American foreign policy. But more stretching will be needed. Knowing Mr. Bush and his administration, no one would envision the clarity of such purpose sprouting easily. It needs a mammoth investment of time and endeavor.

That is why Mr. Bush should make sure that plenty of presidential thinking time is set aside for foreign policy or else America will be caught napping. Time is running out of his hand, but with political will, however, America ’s foreign policy could be reinterpreted again, but this demands a new attitude from the Bush administration.

Whereas, the focus on the reformation of the policies ought not to mean abandoning its security policies, for example, its fight against terrorism but in abandoning its politics of haste. America ’s war against the terrorism must go on but time has come for the Bush administration to change the modalities of war.

Finally, in many ways everything is going against the desire of a second-term president who is conscious of his place in history. But most observers will be waiting to see whether, during the last few months of his tenure, he can stick with the world; and whether, having done that, any healing can come out of it.