The Courage Primary

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Foreign Policy and National Security
In March 2001, in this magazine, Charles Krauthammer baldly stated what would become the foreign policy of the brand-new Bush Administration: "America is no mere international citizen. It is the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome. Accordingly, America is in a position to reshape norms, alter expectations and create new realities. How? By unapologetic and implacable demonstrations of will."

This was a profoundly radical vision, a conscious effort to use the U.S. military as the primary instrument of foreign policy, a garbled, brutish update of Theodore Roosevelt's "Big Stick" aggressiveness. But as the rationale for war in Iraq evaporated with the mirage of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, the Bush spinmeisters tacked on a new rationale, with rhetoric appropriated from a competing school of foreign policy, one that Roosevelt disdained: Woodrow Wilson's democratic idealism. But utopian militarism just isn't very American, in the end. We like to think of ourselves as having to be dragged, reluctantly, into saving the world and dominating it. And Bush's Administration turned out to be inept at both the military part and the utopian part: it failed at the strategy and logistics of the Iraq war and flirted disastrously with the idea that terrorist groups like Hizballah and Hamas are simply good citizens waiting to happen.

Belatedly, the Administration has attempted to revive diplomacy in the Middle East. But diplomacy isn't a spigot you turn on and off; it is a tepid stream of meetings and consultations. It is not for those with attention-deficit disorder; it requires patient, intensive listening to oft-repeated positions and grievances, the eternal search for a comma that will appease both sides. For that reason alone, it would be wonderful to have a President with lots of stamps in his or her passport or a President who speaks a foreign language fluently or has lived overseas or has spent time in the military or in negotiations with foreign leaders. It was possible for George W. Bush to run for President in 2000 without knowing the name of the President of Pakistan; the next President will have to know the history, politics and tribal leaders of Waziristan, the Pakistani province that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are using as a safe haven.

Beyond that, there are several questions I would ask the candidates: Under which conditions do you think the unilateral use of military force is acceptable? Do you believe that U.S. special forces and covert operators should be able to pursue, kill or capture known terrorists in unconventional ways—even pursue them across borders like Pakistan's? Do you believe the Secretary of State should be more powerful than the Secretary of Defense? Would you appoint members of the other party to be part of your foreign policy team? Can you give some names of people in the other party whose foreign and national-security policies you admire?

The primacy of the Secretary of State is crucial. Since the office of Secretary of Defense was created after World War II, there have been only two who were more powerful than their counterpart at State: Robert McNamara over Dean Rusk in the 1960s and Donald Rumsfeld over Colin Powell in George W. Bush's first term. McNamara and Rumsfeld presided over the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Indeed, the primacy of Rumsfeld and his patron Dick Cheney has created a deep wound. Their constant undermining of the U.S. intelligence community, the putdowns of "old Europe," their impatience with U.N. inspectors, the assumption that might made right—and the hints of racial and religious superiority inherent in these beliefs—all sent a clear message to the rest of the world that America believed itself innately superior to friend and enemy alike, that we didn't need to listen, not even to our allies. The next President will have to find dramatic and public ways to disassociate him- or herself from the damage that has been done.

A final word on foreign policy: beware those candidates who speak glowingly, uncritically about multilateralism. Clearly, a new era of international cooperation is necessary, given the rise of viral nonstate threats like terrorism, global warming, transnational criminal gangs and corporate powers, and actual viruses like hiv. But the failure of our NATO allies to fulfill their military quotas in Afghanistan raises a real question about which if any countries will be ready to stand with the U.S. when military action is necessary—a difficult problem for the next President.

There are also times when unilateral action is an absolute advantage. "One of the best decisions Bush made was to resist the calls to put all of the $2.5 billion in AIDS support into the international fund," says Richard Holbrooke. "It was important that the recipients know the medicine was coming directly from the United States. It has helped our reputation throughout Africa." The next President will have to understand that there are tremendous advantages to be gained from benign unilateralism.