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Late last year, Prof. Fukuyama, the author of The End of History, joined a core group
(including Brzezinski)
separating from the neoconservative alliance at The National Interest, a
publication of The Nixon Center. The
American Interest is their response to the war hawk dominance in the
Republican party. I’ll paste a link to that story below this. As I just mentioned, Prof. Fukuyama seems to be continuing to distance
himself from any paternity to the Bush’s administration’s application of
conservative philosophy. He appears to endorse a time table for staged
withdrawal. Don’t miss the final sentence. What is it they say, success has many mothers but failure no fathers?
kwc Invasion of the
Isolationists
Commentary by Francis Fukuyama, NYT, August 31, 2005 Francis
Fukuyama, a professor of international political economy at the Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies, is editorial board chairman of a new
magazine, The American Interest.
Washington - As we mark four years since Sept. 11, 2001, one
way to organize a review of what has happened in American foreign policy since
that terrible day is with a question: To what extent has that policy flowed from the wellspring of
American politics and culture, and to what extent has it flowed from the
particularities of this president and this administration? It is tempting to see continuity with the American character
and foreign policy tradition in the Bush administration's response to 9/11, and
many have done so. We have tended toward the forcefully unilateral when we have
felt ourselves under duress; and we have spoken in highly idealistic cadences
in such times, as well. Nevertheless, neither American political culture nor
any underlying domestic pressures or constraints have determined the key
decisions in American foreign policy since Sept. 11. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Americans
would have allowed President Bush to lead them in any of several directions,
and the nation was prepared to accept substantial risks and sacrifices. The
Bush administration asked for no sacrifices from the average American, but
after the quick fall of the Taliban it rolled the dice in a big way by moving
to solve a longstanding problem only tangentially related to the threat from Al
Qaeda - Iraq. In the process, it squandered the overwhelming public mandate it
had received after Sept. 11. At the same time, it alienated most of its close
allies, many of whom have since engaged in "soft balancing" against
American influence, and stirred up anti-Americanism in the Middle East. The Bush administration could instead have chosen to create
a true alliance of democracies to fight the illiberal currents coming out of
the Middle East. It could also have tightened economic sanctions and secured
the return of arms inspectors to Iraq without going to war. It could have made
a go at a new international regime to battle proliferation. All of these paths
would have been in keeping with American foreign policy traditions. But Mr.
Bush and his administration freely chose to do otherwise. The administration's policy choices have not been restrained
by domestic political concerns any more than by American foreign policy
culture. Much has been made of the emergence of "red state" America,
which supposedly constitutes the political base for President Bush's
unilateralist foreign policy, and of the increased number of conservative
Christians who supposedly shape the president's international agenda. But the
extent and significance of these phenomena have been much exaggerated. So much attention has been paid to these false determinants
of administration policy that a different political dynamic has been
underappreciated. Within the Republican Party, the Bush administration got
support for the Iraq war from the neoconservatives (who lack a political base
of their own but who provide considerable intellectual firepower) and from what
Walter Russell Mead calls "Jacksonian America" - American nationalists whose
instincts lead them toward a pugnacious isolationism. Happenstance then magnified this unlikely alliance. Failure
to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the inability to prove relevant
connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda left the president, by the time
of his second inaugural address, justifying the war exclusively in
neoconservative terms: that is, as part of an idealistic policy of political
transformation of the broader Middle East. The president's Jacksonian base, which provides
the bulk of the troops serving and dying in Iraq, has no natural affinity for
such a policy but would not abandon the commander in chief in the middle of a
war, particularly if there is clear hope of success. This war coalition is fragile, however, and vulnerable to
mishap. If Jacksonians begin to perceive the war as unwinnable or a failure,
there will be little future support for an expansive foreign policy that
focuses on promoting democracy. That in turn could drive the 2008 Republican
presidential primaries in ways likely to affect the future of American foreign
policy as a whole. Are we failing in Iraq? That's still unclear. The United
States can control the situation militarily as long as it chooses to remain
there in force, but our willingness to maintain the personnel levels necessary
to stay the course is limited. The all-volunteer Army was never intended to
fight a prolonged insurgency, and both the Army and Marine Corps face manpower
and morale problems. While public support for staying in Iraq remains stable,
powerful operational reasons are likely to drive the administration to lower
force levels within the next year. With the failure to secure Sunni support for the
constitution and splits within the Shiite community, it seems increasingly
unlikely that a strong and cohesive Iraqi government will be in place anytime
soon. Indeed, the problem now will be to prevent Iraq's constituent groups from
looking to their own militias rather than to the government for protection. If
the United States withdraws prematurely, Iraq will slide into greater chaos. That would set off a chain of unfortunate events that will
further damage American credibility around the world and ensure that the United
States remains preoccupied with the Middle East to the detriment of other
important regions - Asia, for example - for years to come. We do not know what outcome we will face in Iraq. We do know
that four years after 9/11, our whole foreign policy seems destined to rise or
fall on the outcome of a war only marginally related to the source of what
befell us on that day.
There was nothing inevitable about this. There is everything
to be regretted about it. Francis Fukuyama, a professor of international political
economy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, is
editorial board chairman of a new magazine, The American Interest. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/31/opinion/31fukuyama.html For details on the breakup of a neoconservative power-team, see
Milbank’s May 2005 item, No Lack of Interest http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/06/AR2005050601448.html |
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