Doomsayers and skeptics

Perhaps Colin Powell gave the most authoritative narrative of second Bush administration's foreign policy goals during his most recent visit to Mexico. Powell reiterated that war on terror would remain a priority of the administration, others being consolidation of "success" in Afghanistan, fighting alongside Pakistan "to defeat the Al-Qaida and Taliban elements that are working in the frontier areas of Pakistan" (reconfirmed to the Pakistani Foreign Minister by Richard Armitage), situation in Iraq, unfolding drama in the Middle East(foremost being Yasser Arafat's health condition), and cementing strong transatlantic relations. Powell's failure to mention Iran issue could be indicative of adjournment of Bush first term policy in view of Franco-German-British negotiations with Iran while relating to North Korea the omission was perhaps due to as yet unformed foreign and defense team of the Bush second administration. One, however, should remind oneself of President Bush's unambiguous declaration in favour of six way talks with North Korea over John Kerry's proposal for bilateral talks.

However much the skeptics doubt the Doomsayers projections for the next four years it is difficult to foresee a complete transformation of Bush personality from a blind folded racehorse raring to go to a monkish patience and tolerance to see the other side of the coin. Indeed under Bush, writes Robert Tucker and David Hendrickson (Foreign Affairs­Nov/Dec 2004) the United States has assumed many of the very features of "rogue nations" against which it has rhetorically and sometimes literally done battle over the years. They describe Bush policy in the words of Edmund Burke after seeing the French revolutionaries as "military in principle, in its maxims, in its spirit, and in its movements". The Doomsayers concerns also resonate in the words of Alexander Hamilton that the "spirit of moderation in a state of overwhelming power is a phenomenon which has not yet appeared and which no wise man will expect ever to see".

It has been argued that Bush's running amok as a bull in a china shop in his first term was due to his inexperience with the complexities of the Presidency as he was only a governor of Texas before he became President. Such an argument becomes untenable if one considers Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and many others. Only those who are elected President for the second time or have been Vice President can claim familiarity with the labyrinthine intricacies of the Oval Office. Bush chose, according to Ivo Daldaar (of Brookings Institution), not to follow Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman who could have imposed an imperium commensurate with American prowess after the Second World War but chose to create the UN, NATO and Breton Woods system. Bush's choice to pursue military option ran counter to the four pillars that supported US legitimacy in the post World War II era, writes Tucker and Hendrickson, which were its commitment to international law, its acceptance of consensual decision making, its reputation for moderation, and its identification with the preservation of peace. Doctrine of preemption replaced the doctrines of containment and deterrence that had served the world well for over fifty years.

It is claimed that Bush's victory over Kerry is due to strong backing from his party's conservative base, urban, Jewish, Catholic and female voters. Many voters cited 'moral values" as the most important issue as opposed to economy, terrorism or Iraq. Though forty nine percent of the Americans voted for John Kerry one has to ask oneself as to whether the US has become a conservative society.

But then it would be fallacious to assume that only Republicans have been wedded to conservative values and that Democrats are awash with libertarianism. Daniel Griswold (of Cato Institute) has described American two party systems as "like cold pizza for people who love individual liberty, free market and limited government. The two major parties seldom nominate candidates who pursue those principles in a consistent way. Neither the Republican George Bush nor Democrat John Kerry would ever be mistaken for a libertarian".

Migration of Marxism to the land of no return (despite China and North Korea) has mercifully rid the world of ideological conflict and the end of the Cold War can be compared with the Thirty Years' War (1618-48) as the last of the great wars of religion.

Global concern, therefore, is not so much about a possible virulent conflict between conservatism and libertarianism because of self-transmutation of their values making their hitherto purist conception a thing of the past. Problems could emerge if a conservative Bush administration disparaging forty nine percent opposition to it as incoherent and dispensable objection by a non-covenanted group embark on a crusade to impose upon the world a neo-conservative agenda with elements of Christian Right and Pentecostal movement forming its inherent parts then a clash of civilizations would be unavoidable. But if instead of pursuing improvident policies Madisonian advice is heeded in that the formation of the government should not only be aimed to control the governed but also to control itself then Bush administration's proclivity to transgress the boundaries of international law based on self-induced conviction of moral imperative to accord legitimacy to conduct exceptional to international law might be kept in check.

If "democracy deficit" is a problem in some parts of the world then "legitimacy deficit" continues to be a problem of some of the actions of the Bush administration. To restore global confidence in the US leadership will take time and sincere efforts by the second Bush administration which would in part depend on the composition of the next administration and the leadership, now that both houses of the Congress are in Republican hands, demonstrated by President Bush. Regardless of incontestable military prowess President Bush has to be sensitive to European modern liberalism as proximate partners in global security and economic development and no less to the sensitivities of developing countries. Otherwise regrettably Doomsayers' projection of an apocalyptic world order may come to pass.

Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador.