International Negligence

It is often said that future historians will view the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, its mistreatment of enemy combatants, and its bumbled operation in Afghanistan as some of the worst foreign policy blunders in American history. There is certainly cause for such thinking. But I wonder if there’s not another great failure – often overlooked – that goes beyond poor policy choices. Senator Joseph Biden, writing in the Wall Street Journal recently, hinted at what this might be:

[In its] obsession with the “war on terrorism” [this administration has ignored the] larger forces shaping the world: the emergence of China, India, Russia and Europe; the spread of lethal weapons and dangerous diseases; uncertain supplies of energy, food and water; the persistence of poverty; ethnic animosities and state failures; a rapidly warming planet; the challenge to nation states from above and below.

It is certainly true that the Bush administration has pursued the war on terrorism for the last seven years as though of a one-track mind. Save for brief forays into “peripheral” issues like NATO expansion, Russian human rights policy, Middle Eastern democratization, and AIDS in Africa, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have consumed almost 100% of their focus. In contrast to its tunnel-vision obsession with Islamic radicalism, very little attention has been paid to the larger developments and trends in world politics, many of which will (or already do) pose far greater challenges to this country. Biden named some of these in his op-ed; To the list, I would add two more: the recent regression of democracy (corresponding with a re-entrenchment of authoritarianism) and the ongoing horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons.

A competent administration, Democrat or Republican, would have noticed these trends and acted appropriately. Yet this administration has not done that and, as a result, we’re now years behind where we should be in terms of confronting these global threats. By failing to look (and act) beyond the easy allure of terrorism in favor of a big-picture foreign policy, our country has been ill-prepared for a host of challenges. Inevitably then, not only will the next president have to deal with a range of additional threats that will surely arise during his tenure, he will now also be forced to confront those issues which this administration has blatantly overlooked.

Meanwhile, while turning a blind eye to many of these macro-level developments, the administration has also ignored numerous day-to-day international crises in which it might have played a positive role. The genocide in Darfur; the Burmese crackdown; the ongoing dispute in Israel-Palestine; and Pakistan’s recent repression of pro-democracy forces are all examples that come to mind. Rather than respond as the world’s leading power should, the Bush administration has been too distracted by its all-consuming obsession with the terrorist threat.

So perhaps the Bush presidency’s greatest foreign policy failure is not just what it has done wrong in pursuing the war on terrorism. It is also what has been ignored, and what it has turned its back to when it should have stood up and taken a stand.