US: Bush's foreign policy footsteps

International relations scholars are not known for injecting themselves into political campaigns.

But during the 2004 US presidential election, the 2002 National Security Strategy, known also as the "Bush Doctrine," drew the ire of a group of scholars calling itself the "Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy."

Responding to Doctrine's pledge of a "balance of power favoring freedom," the Coalition members stated that they were "united by our opposition to the American empire." They also warned that continued unilateralism on the part of the US would weaken the country.

Even though the Coalition has not been vocal in recent months - perhaps due to the country's focus on domestic issues rather than international affairs - its view, along with the effect of the Bush Doctrine, perhaps is still worthy of review during the 2008 election cycle.

US President George W Bush assumed office on a traditional realist paradigm, only to adopt an expansive view of the US' global role after the 9/11 attacks: a combination of brute military power and democratization. Yet his second term has been highlighted by the traditional diplomatic route on North Korea, Iran, Libya and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Some observers deemed Bush's foreign policy as a revolutionary program without precedent since World War II. Others stated that its ideas about preventive war, US power and idealism had a historical lineage dating back to the 19th century - if not the country's founding principles.

Yale University historian John Lewis Gaddis called the Bush Doctrine more bold and forceful than that of his White House predecessor. But even President Bill Clinton's 1996 National Security Strategy, considered a response to economic globalization, spoke of promoting democracy in strategic regions where it "will help us most."

Partisan politics between Republicans and Democrats have polarized the debate in recent years, as did discord among realists themselves - whether from the traditional or democratic/neoconservative schools.

Professor Henry R Nau of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University terms Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain, a supporter of the US-led Iraq war, a "realist in terms of recognizing the importance of force.

"It's something to accompany or enhance diplomacy," Nau told ISN Security Watch

He also stated McCain saw the world "very much in terms of democracies versus non-democracies."

The senator made his views clear in a March foreign policy speech in Los Angeles. Calling himself a "realistic idealist," McCain promised more respect toward US allies, an international "League of Democracies" and to exclude Russia from the G8 in favor of Brazil and India.

As for US efforts at political reform in the Middle East, he said: "This is not just idealism. It is the truest kind of realism. It is the democracies of the world that will provide the pillars upon which we can and must build an enduring peace."

Among US foreign policy academics, Robert Kaufman is a self-acknowledged rare breed: someone who supports the Bush Doctrine as an effective grand strategy.

"On the basic philosophical positions, McCain is closer," he said. "There would be a large degree of continuity. In certain respects, McCain may even be closer [to the Bush Doctrine] than Bush himself," he told ISN Security Watch.
Diplomacy vs force

Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama has distanced himself from nearly all aspects of the Bush administration, especially foreign policy.

The senator's platform calls for better multilateral efforts in East Asia and within NATO, a stronger response to Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo, a tougher Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and UN reform. He has said he would set a definitive timetable for withdrawing US troops from Iraq, with a subsequent focus on Afghanistan, al-Qaida and even Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province if necessary.

Yet he called America the "last, best hope of Earth" that requires a strong military and the resort to unilateral force if necessary - though with allied support if possible.

Experts would still place him in the liberal internationalist tradition of US foreign policy, willing to use force only as a last resort after diplomacy fails.

"I think Obama believes in a strong military and American national interests," said Kaufman, a professor of public policy at Pepperdine University in California who authored In Defense of the Bush Doctrine in 2007 and is close to McCain.

"But there's a legitimate argument about how to use force. This is an honorable debate among people of goodwill.

While promoting democracy abroad is important, the Obama platform reads, so is "dignity, opportunity, security and simple justice […] Not just deposing a dictator and setting up a ballot box."

Obama is unlikely to disagree with the Bush Doctrine's belief in democracy, liberty, US exceptionalism and the right to unilateral military action if necessary. However, pre-emptive wars to install democratic governments in strategic locations such as the Middle East and Central Asia are a stronger possibility with McCain in the Oval Office, Kaufman said.

"It would take more to convince Obama," he added.
Three major ideologies

The US has pursued three major foreign policy ideologies since the Vietnam War.

Traditional realism, the purview of Henry Kissinger and George H W Bush, is focused on international order, preventing disastrous wars and securing US territory, with less emphasis on the country's values and historic sense of purpose. Liberal internationalism centers on multilateralism and international bodies.

George W Bush and Ronald Reagan belong to the third category - a muscular combination of hard military power with idealism and regime change where American interests demand it.. Kaufman calls it "democratic realism." Nau has a different name, "conservative internationalism," evoking presidents from Thomas Jefferson and James Polk to Harry Truman and Reagan.

The 1976 campaign was a three-way theoretical debate between Jimmy Carter's liberal idealism and internationalism, Gerald Ford's (and Henry Kissinger's) traditional realism, and Reagan's upstart Republican bid.

Four years later, Carter and Reagan were deemed to have radically different foreign policy ideologies, though their party platforms were remarkably similar regarding the Soviet Union and US military decline.

Several neoconservatives supported Clinton's 1992 Democratic campaign against incumbent George H W Bush, though the infatuation did not last after a series of interventions in Somalia, Haiti and the Balkans.

Many seasoned observers would remark that the following two elections featured similar foreign policy platforms from the Republicans and Democrats, given the post-Cold War confusion over US grand strategy.

Still, George W Bush ran in 2000 on a foreign policy platform of US independence, national missile defense, reduced diplomatic efforts from Northern Ireland to the Middle East and an abhorrence of nation building.

"He was never originally a neoconservative," Nau told ISN Security Watch. "In fact, he was a nationalist."

That nationalist impulse continued after the 9/11 attacks, Nau told ISN Security Watch. The impulse toward promoting democracy only appeared after the initial combat phase of the Iraq war.

In 2004, Democrat nominee John Kerry received no shortage of advice from scholars on how to counter Bush's democratic realism with a liberal realism focused on international legitimacy and multilateralism.

Some commentators parsed Kerry's rhetoric, especially during the televised debates, and found a brimming neoconservative in terms of pre-emption, rogue states and overall grand strategy.
Gas is the key, maybe

This year, American voters are worried about the economy, energy prices and health care. Foreign policy, national security and the war on terror - unless tied to gas prices - will likely play less of a role this fall than four years earlier.

But the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia, combined with China's powerful display as Olympic hosts, may thrust national security back into the spotlight, according to Kaufman.

"By any traditional analysis, Obama should be up by double figures," he said. "But McCain is perceived to be a more viable commander-in-chief."

Robert Kagan, a noted neoconservative writer and McCain foreign policy advisor, recently told Newsweek magazine that the candidates' foreign policies are closer than people think regarding US power, exceptionalism and unchallenged military strength.

Other observers disagree, fully expecting theoretical cleavages to simmer as the race takes center stage in the weeks leading to 4 November.