Neocon Inaugural?

George W. Bush proclaimed his vision before the whole nation at the inauguration of his second term: “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world.”

There it was they claimed; the president had formally adopted the neoconservative mission to take democracy to the world and install freedom everywhere. The United States had finally accepted its Woodrow Wilsonian responsibility to create a hegemonic empire to bring peace and democracy to all. Neocon par excellence, William Kristol, was ecstatic. He characterized the speech as “informed by Strauss and inspired by Paine,” referring to the American radical revolutionary Tom Paine, and to Krisol’s college mentor, Leo Strauss. No higher compliment is possible in the neocon pantheon.

Kristol proclaimed the principles of the speech “historic,” going further than the “defensive formulation” of Harry Truman and “transcending” the communist-centered policy of Ronald Reagan to “a more expansive embrace of America’s ‘ultimate goal,’” of ending tyranny. This expansiveness of the new vision was not only not reckless, he contended, it was nuanced, noting that military action was not the only means mentioned by the president. Indeed, Kristol seemed more nuanced in his own reaction, apparently backing off some of his previous aggressive positions relating to China, Russia and “the Arab dictators.” Yet, the main point remained clear: “Still, as sophisticated and nuanced as it is, [the president’s address] does proclaim the goal of ending tyranny” and in the case of “outlaw regimes” to “promote regime change” in them all, although the president did not actually say the latter.

Another neocon intellectual, Joshua Muravchik writing in The Wall Street Journal, reveled in the distressed reaction to the president’s rhetoric by “realist” conservatives like William F. Buckley, Jr., Mark Helprin and Peggy Noonan, who found the speech overly idealistic and sanguine about what can be done to rid a mostly intractable world of something so imbedded in its history as tyranny. Muravchik replied that the idealists were actually more realistic than the realists since they had already turned most of the world into democracies, citing Freedom House data that 117 nations are now democratic, representing 61 percent of the world’s population. He especially praised idealist President Jimmy Carter’s preeminent role in this process, having “elevated human rights to a new prominence” so as to have “changed the world for the better.”

We have dealt with this Freedom House data before in a more extended manner but suffice it to say that it also rates freedom in the world--and only a few dozen nations rate at the top rank of real freedom, all Western or former Western colonies. Even its broadest category of “free nations” merely represents forty percent of world population, including such questionable paragons of “freedom” as Ghana, Mali and Thailand. The fact that President Bush has recently changed his rhetoric to set freedom as the goal rather than democracy suggests he recognizes the difference and the greater value of the former to the peoples of the world than the latter. Many peoples may be able to vote in elections but are by no means free.

Muravchik is correct that the genesis of the idea of democracy and human rights as the primary goal of foreign policy in modern times can be traced to Mr. Carter. Yet, his foreign policy does not seem to have been all that successful, at least from this vantage point. The real danger of Carter’s and Muravchik’s placing democracy first is that it necessarily leads to poor relations with allies who have less than spotless records but are necessary to prosecute the war on terror successfully. Muravchik wants the U.S. to target Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon by supporting dissidents who propose democracy for them and the Middle East generally, although it seems likely the more serious democratic opposition would be from fundamentalist Islam.

Kristol, Muravchik and company were not the only ones to draw these conclusions. Foreign offices throughout the world questioned whether the speech meant a more aggressive U.S. position in the world. Did the president endorse the neocon goal of American military hegemony and a Pax Americana, Europe wondered? Vice President Dick Cheney appeared to confirm the view that the speech signaled a more aggressive policy in the Middle East by saying in an Inauguration Day radio interview: “Iran is right at the top of the list” of “potential trouble spots” and by adding that “the Israelis might well decide to act first” to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities even “without being asked” by the U.S.

Even allies were concerned. The democratically elected and American raised president of the former soviet republic of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, said, while agreeing with much of what Mr. Bush said, he hoped that the speech “shouldn’t be understood as a call for immediate revolt. That won’t work. You cannot impose civil society from the outside—you see that in Iraq. There is the Internet, TV, Nongovernmental institutions” that should lead the way to any meaningful type of democracy and freedom. And he was by no means alone in his concerns.

Top Bush Administration officials immediately went to the media to explain, off the record, that the president and vice president did not intend to set a new policy direction. As the world reaction continued to build, in an unprecedented step, former President George H.W. Bush went to the White House briefing room to go on the record. “People want to read a lot into it,” said the president’s father concerning the inaugural speech, “that this means new aggression or newly asserted military forces. That is not what the speech is about. It’s about freedom” and certainly does not imply “any arrogance on the part of the United States.”

Finally, the president decided he, himself, in what the media characterized as “a hastily called appearance in the White House briefing room,” had to respond. President Bush said: “My inaugural address reflected the policies of the past four years” rather than representing something new. When asked if it represented a “policy shift,” the president said, “No. As I said, it reflects the policy of the past but it sets a bold new goal for the future. Obviously we’re discussing a process. As I said in my speech, not every nation is immediately going to adopt America’s vision of democracy and I fully understand that. But we expect nations to adopt the values inherent in a democracy, which is human rights and human dignity.” He said he was pressing China and Russia but that it was a “work in progress. There won’t be instant democracy.”

Whether this represents Wilsonianism or not remains to be seen. As Mr. Kristol correctly noted, the Bush foreign policy will be judged on what actually happens on the ground. We have repeatedly referred to the president’s April 2004 news conference where he said he expected U.S. troops to be on the way out of Iraq after the second set of elections in December 2005. Assuming that Iran is off the table—and columnist Robert Novak has reported that a high administration official unambiguously told him “We are not going to war against Iran”—the disposition of U.S. forces in early 2006 will be the test of where President Bush is heading.

Having a long-term goal of world freedom is not necessarily Wilsonian. The architect of America’s traditional foreign policy, John Quincy Adams summed up the realist conservative view this way: “America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” As long as promoting freedom is mostly wishing well and action is primarily restricted to vindicating American’s own self interest in protecting its own freedom, this is a traditional, realist conservative foreign policy. Where President Bush’s policy ends up by this criterion, we shall soon see.

Donald Devine, Editor.

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