The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
By Tony Blankley
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published February 11, 2004
The Boston Globe -- the respected, liberal
newspaper owned by the New York Times -- ran an article last week that
Bush critics may wish to read carefully. It is a report on a new book
that argues that President Bush has developed and is ably implementing
only the third American grand strategy in our history.
The author of this book, "Surprise, Security,
and the American Experience" (Harvard Press) to be released in March,
is John Lewis Gaddis, the Robert A. Lovett professor of military and
naval history at Yale University. The Boston Globe describes Mr. Gaddis
as "the dean of Cold War studies and one of the nation's most eminent
diplomatic historians." In other words, this is not some put-up job by
an obscure right-wing author. This comes from the pinnacle of the
liberal Ivy League academic establishment.
If you hate George W. Bush, you will hate this
Boston Globe story because it makes a strong case that Mr. Bush stands
in a select category with presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
James Monroe (as guided by his secretary of state, John Q. Adams) in
implementing one of only three grand strategies of American foreign
policy in our two-century history.
As the Globe article describes in an interview
with Mr. Gaddis: "Grand strategy is the blueprint from which policy
follows. It envisions a country's mission, defines its interests, and
sets its priorities. Part of grand strategy's grandeur lies in its
durability: A single grand strategy can shape decades, even centuries
of policy."
According to this analysis, the first grand
strategy by Monroe/Adams followed the British invasion of Washington
and the burning of the White House in 1814. They responded to that
threat by developing a policy of gaining future security through
territorial expansion -- filling power vacuums with American pioneers
before hostile powers could get in. That strategy lasted throughout the
19th and the early 20th centuries, and accounts for our continental
size and historic security.
FDR's plans for the post-World War II period
were the second grand strategy and gained American security by
establishing free markets and self-determination in Europe as a
safeguard against future European wars, while creating the United
Nations and related agencies to help us manage the rest of the world
and contain the Soviets. The end of the Cold War changed that and led,
according to Mr. Gaddis, to President Clinton's assumption that a new
grand strategy was not needed because globalization and democratization
were inevitable. "Clinton said as much at one point. I think that was
shallow. I think they were asleep at the switch," Mr. Gaddis observed.
That brings the professor to George W.Bush, who
he describes as undergoing "one of the most surprising transformations
of an underrated national leader since Prince Hal became Henry V."
Clearly, Mr. Gaddis has not been a long-time admirer of Mr. Bush. But
he is now.
He observes that Mr. Bush "undertook a decisive
and courageous reassessment of American grand strategy following the
shock of the 9/11 attacks. At his doctrine's center, Bush placed the
democratization of the Middle East and the urgent need to prevent
terrorists and rogue states from getting nuclear weapons. Bush also
boldly rejected the constraints of an outmoded international system
that was really nothing more that a snapshot of the configuration of
power that existed in 1945."
It is worth noting that John Kerry and the
other Democrats' central criticism of Mr. Bush -- the prosaic argument
that he should have taken no action without U.N. approval -- is
rejected by Mr. Gaddis as being a proposed policy that would be
constrained by an "outmoded international system."
In assessing Mr. Bush's progress to date, the
Boston Globe quotes Mr. Gaddis: "So far the military action in Iraq has
produced a modest improvement in American and global economic
conditions; an intensified dialogue within the Arab world about
political reform; a withdrawal of American forces from Saudi Arabia;
and an increasing nervousness on the part of the Syrian and Iranian
governments as they contemplated the consequences of being surrounded
by American clients or surrogates. The United States has emerged as a
more powerful and purposeful actor within the international system than
it had been on September 11, 2001."
In another recent article, written before the
Iraqi war, Mr. Gaddis wrote: "[Bush's] grand strategy is actually
looking toward the culmination of the Wilsonian project of a world safe
for Democracy, even in the Middle East. And this long-term dimension of
it, it seems to me, goes beyond what we've seen in the thinking of more
recent administrations. It is more characteristic of the kind of
thinking, say, that the Truman administration was doing at the
beginning of the Cold War."
Is Mr. Bush becoming an historic world leader
in the same category as FDR, as the eminent Ivy League professor
argues? Or is he just a lying nitwit, as the eminent Democratic Party
Chairman and Clinton fund-raiser Terry McAuliffe argues? I suspect that
as this election year progresses, that may end up being the decisive
debate. You can put me on the side of the professor.
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