“Quick: What is the Bush administration foreign policy?�
(Sound of my foot tapping as time passes.)
“Yup. I thought so. You don’t know what the Bush foreign policy is. That’s because it’s a trick question. The Bush administration doesn’t have a foreign policy.�
From an historical perspective, this is mighty strange. For many years, presidential election cycle after election cycle, there always were discussions about and debate over what a candidate’s foreign policy was likely to be.
The importance of having a coherent and effective foreign policy is as important as ever, but it has faded from the forefront in recent years and even more so during the Bush Era when the State Department has been so marginalized and the current secretary, Condoleezza Rice, has been such a huge disappointment. So we hardly notice the absence of a foreign policy until somebody turns the heat up in, say, Lebanon or North Korea.
Then there’s this report from the L.A. Times:
“President Bush and his top advisors fanned out across the troubled Middle East over the last week to showcase their diplomatic initiatives to restore strained relationships with traditional allies and forge new ones with leaders in Iraq.
“But instead of flaunting stronger ties and steadfast American influence, the president’s journey found friends both old and new near a state of panic. Mideast leaders expressed soaring concern over upheavals across the region that the United States helped ignite through its invasion of Iraq and push for democracy — and fear that the Bush administration may make things worse.
“President Bush’s summit in Jordan with the Iraqi prime minister proved an awkward encounter that deepened doubts about the relationship. Vice President Dick Cheney’s stop in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, yielded a blunt warning from the kingdom’s leaders. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s swing through the West Bank and Israel, intended to build Arab support by showing a new U.S. push for peace, found little to work with.â€?
“In all, visits designed to show the American team in charge ended instead in diplomatic embarrassment and disappointment, with U.S. leaders rebuked and lectured by Arab counterparts.�
More here.