Before running for president, this oil businessman from the backwoods town of Midland, Texas, showed virtually no interest whatsoever for the great wide world. He once visited Beijing, because his father was the US ambassador to China, and was practically unfamiliar with Europe and the Middle East. In a television interview during the 1999 presidential campaign, he was unable to name the Pakistani head of state. Even his inaugural speech contains only vague references to foreign policy: He will, of course, abide by international treaties, the deployment of America's troops will be kept to a minimum, and he will bring his soldiers back home when in doubt.
The fact that, in terms of foreign policy, George W. Bush has become the most ambitious president of the past few decades is primarily the work of 19 men who hijacked airplanes -- and of a handful of men who have hijacked America's foreign policy. The story, without which the current developments only make partial sense, begins during the administration of Bush senior.
The Soviet Union has collapsed and the Cold War is coming to a close, and Richard Cheney (now the Vice-president) is the Secretary of Defense. He asks his two top strategic thinkers, Colin Powell (now Secretary of State) and Paul Wolfowitz (now Deputy Secretary of Defense), to assess this historical turning point for Washington and to formulate proposals for the future. The internal working title? "Cheney's Song for America."
Powell's basic melody in the 1991 working paper sounds upbeat: In his opinion, the United States is the sole remaining controlling power, and it must prepare itself for poorly defined regional conflicts and "unforeseeable surprises of any nature." Powell, a military man, recommends further increases in defense spending and that other efforts be directed toward maintaining and expanding America's preeminent position. At the same time, however, Powell stresses the importance of allies and international organizations.
In contrast, civilian Wolfowitz's world view is filled with pessimism. According to Wolfowitz, every effort must be undertaken to take advantage of the "unipolar moment in world history," as other states can be expected to conspire against the United States. The supreme objective is to prevent potential competitors such as China from gaining power. In Wolfowitz's opinion, international institutions and treaties will only unduly constrain the United States. He believes that Washington must actively deal with rogue states and, if necessary, conquer them with preventive wars.
Bush senior tends to favor Powell's approach. Even Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, feels that Wolfowitz's "Guideline for Military Planning" is too radical, and it disappears into a drawer. For the time being.
The two political strategists with different points of view are not just opponents in the development of a doctrine for an imperial America. They have also been in different camps ever since the United States has been at odds with Saddam Hussein. In the wake of the US's rapid victory on the battlefield, Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, argues for ending the war and not marching on to Baghdad. He is convinced that the Iraqi dictator, after having suffered a crushing defeat, will be unable to survive military humiliation.
Wolfowitz disagrees, but does not prevail. Once again, Bush senior pays heed to the more thoughtful man, a decision viewed at the Pentagon as the biggest miscalculation since the Vietnam War. Saddam Hussein intensifies his power, defies America and the UN inspectors, and apparently attempts to have Bush senior assassinated by special commandos in Kuwait in 1993. In spite of occasional imperial solo efforts, President Bill Clinton essentially abides by the prevailing principles of US foreign policy since the end of World War II: military containment of potential adversaries, integration into international treaties.
Even in George W. Bush's administration, "containment," a form of peaceful coexistence backed by deterrence, is still the guiding principle in the year 2000. Back then, in an essay in the publication "Foreign Affairs," Bush's current National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, wrote: "Saddam Hussein's regime is isolated, and his conventional military power has been severely weakened. If the Iraqis and North Koreans do in fact acquire weapons of mass destruction, they will be unable to use them, as any attempt to do so will result in the annihilation of their countries." Her summary: "These regimes are living on borrowed time, so there need be no sense of panic about them."
Then panic acquired a different name, the World Trade Center, and it acquired a date: September 11, 2001. Only days after the mass murder by Al Qaeda terrorists, old adversaries Powell and Wolfowitz face off again in a new showdown: the war about war. This time, the agitator wins. In addition to the Taliban's Afghanistan, Iraq is also mentioned as a target.
George W. Bush proclaims his "War on Terror," and expands it to include all nations that -- in America's opinion -- "provide safe haven to terrorists." In a speech at the West Point military academy in June 2002, the president says: "Our military must be capable of attacking in every dark corner of the world, from one moment to the next." In his September 2002 national security strategy, Bush finally abandons the containment strategy, stating that he will "preventively" counter dangers in other countries. And: "Those who are not with us are against us."
One of the most vocal of the preventive warmongers, in addition to Wolfowitz, is Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He makes it clear that Washington places only a very limited emphasis on international treaties and common actions by the community of nations. "The mission must determine the coalition, and not the other way around. Otherwise we end up with no more than the lowest common denominator, and that's something we cannot afford." Whether weapons of mass destruction are found in Iraq or a link exists between Saddam and Osama bin Laden is irrelevant, in the opinion of the hawks. After all, the United States makes its decisions unilaterally and on its own authority.
But the hawks are unable to prevail entirely. Secretary of State Powell convinces Bush that the United Nations must be involved in an attack on Baghdad. He is firmly convinced that the permanent members of the Security Council will not use their vetoes, and that the remaining members can be won over to the US point of view with a little arm-twisting and a few injections of billions of dollars -- an expression of hubris that has become the trademark of the entire Bush administration.
While the US Secretary of State steadfastly continues to stress that the US's only concern in Iraq is "disarmament," the US Secretary of Defense is already in the process of explaining "regime change." And the president makes it clear that he views the UN as little more than a chat room, one that can only be relevant, if at all, when it votes in a manner consistent with Washington's aims. America has been disdainful of the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Protection, contemptuous of the International Criminal Court, and shown no interest in a global convention on biological weapons. Most nations already seemed to have accepted the arrogance and unilateralism of the United States. But the Bush doctrine of aggressive defense, which takes Article 51 of the UN Charter and its criteria regarding the rights of armed self-defense to absurd heights, does appear to have triggered acts of defiance in many. It's as if they were saying: No one can do anything about the overwhelmingly powerful position of the United States and the arrogance resulting from it. Nevertheless, no one can force us to give our blessing to Washington's attempts to bend international law. This approach has not been without impact, even with the American president.
It is not just European critics, such as France's Todd, who feel that George W. Bush is overstepping his bounds with his foreign policy doctrine. In terms of economy policy, the United States is dependent on a patchwork of binding treaties and quotas; if they are violated, Washington runs the risk of being just as severely penalized by its trading partners as it would penalize them.
In this respect, the Bush administration values international organizations, at least as long as they are clearly of use to Washington. This is already evident in the fact that it supported the People's Republic of China's admission to the World Trade Organization. Economic interdependency requires compromises. Even some of America's weapons systems are difficult to imagine today without components manufactured in Asia. And it is precisely in the international, computerized fight against terrorism that the "soft power" of other nations is so important.
A look at Africa and Central Asia shows just how selectively the Bush administration pursues its quarrels with dictators. The West African nation of Liberia, a republic founded by idealistic black Americans and modeled on the principles of the US founding fathers, is ruled by Charles Taylor, probably the most horrible of despots. He is responsible for tens of thousands of murders, has women tortured, and forces children to fight in his civil war. An American incursion into the poorhouse is out of the question, and Washington supports the UN embargo of Liberia.
In Central Asia, a strategically important region on the far side of the resource-rich Caspian Sea, the Bush administration supports authoritarian rulers whose human rights violations become progressively worse from month to month. Unlike Saddam Hussein, Presidents Emomali Rachmonow of Tajikistan, Islam Karimow of Uzbekistan, and Askar Akajew of Kirgyzstan should not expect a US attack. In fact, they even profit from the military bases they have made available to the US army.
According to a classified document leaked from the Pentagon last month, the Bush administration is planning a secret meeting in August at the "Strategic Command" headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, and the topic on the agenda will be further development of the US nuclear program. The objective is to develop smaller, tactical nuclear weapons and neutron bombs, weapons to be deployed in preventive attacks against "rogue nations." According to Pentagon chief Rumsfeld, potential targets include North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya.
Even the pro-American British press has voiced its criticism of US military campaigns, based on the motto "praise God, and pass the ammunition." In France, the papers are filled with furious editorials against the aggressive Rumsfeld, King of the faux pas, claiming that another ally falls by the wayside whenever he opens his mouth. Attacks by American columnists against "cheese-eating capitulating monkeys" have become commonplace. Is it possible that only 18 months have passed since the Paris newspaper Le Monde wrote, as a caption to images of terror from New York and Washington, that "We are all Americans"?
A US professor who has been living in Brussels for many years and is familiar with both sides no longer believes that the countries on both sides of the Atlantic have very much in common. "We should no longer pretend that we share the same world view. The Americans are from Mars, and the Europeans are from Venus," says political scientist and best-selling author Robert Kagan. In Kagan's view, Europe operates in a functioning world of laws and rules, transnational negotiations, and international cooperative agreements, while the United States lives in an "anarchic world," mistrustful of international law and of all treaties that would constrict its actions. "In our eyes, true security, as well as upholding and promoting an order based on the principle of liberty, depend on the possession and use of military power."
It seems that the devastating experience of September 11th has not so much changed America, but has helped it to find itself. To find its roots. Even the founding fathers, who embarked on a mission to tame the wilderness, sought to dominate their environment. Benjamin Franklin once said that "the affairs of America are the affairs of all mankind." Against this historical background, Washington's multilateralism of the past 60 years seems like a period of history digression.
Americans also believe that it is normal for their country to take the law into its own hands, to break the rules on occasion, and to act unilaterally. When they have sought -- and continue to seek -- legitimation for their actions overseas, they have not called upon transnational institutions, but instead have invoked their own principles.
In Paris, Moscow and Berlin, experiences with international ambitions have been entirely different, and different conclusions have been drawn from history. But even in Italy, Spain and Great Britain, where the administrations are leaning toward a US attack on Iraq, millions of people have taken to the streets to protest the Americans' Messianic military ambitions. Whether in the Far East, South America or the Arab world, virtually no one believes that Washington is mainly interested in democracy in Iraq. Once again, everyone is talking about the "ugly American."
Anger is even beginning to escalate in the US's otherwise friendly neighboring countries. Mexican president Vicente Fox has publicly criticized the brutal pressure being exerted by the Americans, and in Canada leading politicians are talking about "tangible alienation." The new Paris-Moscow-Berlin axis is more decisive in terms of power politics. If it lasts, it could also serve as a counterweight to the United States on the global political stage.
Deeply religious President Bush is especially hurt by the concerted opposition of churches. The Pope in Rome, the Archbishop of Canterbury, America's Baptists: all have called into question the moral and legal legitimacy of the Iraq war. As South African Archbishop and Noble Prize winner Desmond Tutu has said, "President Bush is a man of faith. Let us hope he is also a man of justice." Will an ideological counter-argument to American militarism materialize? Is the giant truly on such shaky ground as European authors have steadfastly claimed, precisely those authors whose books critical of Bush have been appearing on a weekly basis?
Against the background of its overwhelming military might, Washington may find the unipolar world to be rather comfortable at the moment. Bush on top of the world, an entirely different scenario than on that traumatic September day 18 months ago, as the world's most powerful politician was forced to spend hours circling over American airspace in Air Force One, his advisors unable to agree on where to land. But signs of a possible long-term decline of the hyper-power, the United States, are popping up everywhere: Bush and Co. could be overtaxing themselves. The greatest risk for the United States is probably what historian Kennedy calls "imperial overextending," and what has resulted in the downfall of vast empires, from the Habsburgs, through the British Empire, to the multiracial state of the Soviet Union. But the "Roman model" of decline is not far behind. Not unlike the empire of the Caesars, the empire of the Bushists could also decay from within. America has begun, smugly and even self-destructively, to forsake its own ideals in its own country. The civil rights, of which those in the land of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington are so proud, are beginning to soften.
For fear of ever more devastating terrorist attacks, US judges have taken it upon themselves to routinely monitor "racially suspect" citizens. The Americans apply the term "illegal combatants" to those suspected terrorists who, after one year and without any access to legal counsel, are still in detention at the Guantanamo Bay naval base. The Geneva Convention, which protects prisoners of war, is not applied to these detainees. Even freedom of expression is being restricted. Those who openly oppose the war are currently having a difficult time of it in the United States. American actors who publicly oppose Bush's war course risk losing their contracts. Only a few newspapers, such as the New York Times, are publishing critical reports on plans to deploy troops in Iraq. The recommendation of an anchorman at the American Fox News Network, which has taken a particularly aggressive stance, is to "either support the military or keep your mouth shut."
Former President Jimmy Carter has warned against the erosion of civil rights: "Now a group of conservatives, under the cover of war, is attempting to pursue the ambitions it has harbored for years." And Carter has voiced a fiery appeal against the Iraq adventure: "There is no justification for an attack. We are undermining the United Nations and destabilizing the region. This will certainly lead to a further decline in America's standing in the world."
The neo-imperial Bush doctrine is supposed to force the world to accept its good fortune. But even before the first bomb has been dropped on Baghdad or the first shot has been fired in Basra, the new doctrine has already produced tremendous collateral damage. The UN has been gagged, Europe is split (partly of its own making), and it is quite possible that international law is about to be broken -- and all of this because of a war for the benefit of mankind. The Prussian military strategist Karl von Clausewitz once said: "In such dangerous affairs as war, the gravest mistakes are those that stem from benevolent intent."
And Saddam Hussein? He will be deposed, and yet he has achieved far more than he could ever have hoped: the Western world split in two, its principles in disarray. As he once told a biographer, "I am not interested in anything they write about me today, but in what they will be saying about Saddam in 500 years." And now the dictator has the opportunity to at least go down in the annals of history as an important destroyer.
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© DER SPIEGEL 12/2003
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