You should go read this. In makes a lot of good points about how the Bush team learned the wrong lessons from the end of the Cold War, and that those misperceptions have led to a foreign policy that's doomed to fail (and has assisted the rise of terrorist organizations and astonishingly negative views of the United States across large sections of the globe). There are a number of important points in this, so read the whole thing.
Too lazy? OK, well, among the key points (and there are more, so read it!) are that 1) the political and social history of the former Soviet Empire is fundamentally different from the Middle East and 2) we didn't win over those who were oppressed by the Soviets in Europe and Asia by invading their countries. While you'd think those points are obvious, it appears they weren't obvious to team Bush, and now we're paying the price. Clark discusses this, and the basic steps we need to take to try to save the situation. His view is that if we hope to spread Western political beliefs and our brand of freedom across the globe, we can best do so by spreading ideas and norms and engaging allies, not by installing "democracy" at the point of a gun upon. Now I know that kind of thinking is likely to lead to treaties and multilateralism, and we all know what the president thinks of those. But maybe, just maybe, the president doesn't have the first clue about how to run an effective foreign policy.
Posted by armand at May 22, 2004 10:59 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics