DON'T DRINK THE WATER

Have we seen you some place before, George?: Bush takes the waters at Evian this week wearing the mantle of Truman (Tim Hames, May 26, 2003 , Times of London)

The second, presently fashionable, idea, which writers such as Martin Wolf in The Financial Times have embraced, is focused more directly on the President personally. It pits two of his predecessors, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, against each other. The argument is that Roosevelt personified a nationalist, assertive foreign policy with little interest in securing the consent of others, while Wilson promoted an internationalist, essentially pacific strategy in which it is possible for the planet as a whole to develop laws, norms and rules not unlike those which apply within a contemporary democracy. Europeans, the contention runs, bought Wilsonianism from the Americans after 1945 but have discovered to their horror that the Bush Administration has, unreasonably, reverted to the Rooseveltian model.

It is a clever contrast, but is it compelling? It is surely open to question. There are, I think, three respectable arguments that can be marshalled against it. The first is that it is debateable whether American foreign policy has actually been consistently and credibly ?Wilsonian?. The second is whether it is really fair to brand Mr Bush?s outlook on the world as ?Rooseveltian?. Finally, if it is necessary to pick any former President as the forerunner of the current one (and it is a dubious practice), then there is a figure who suits this President better than either Wilson or Roosevelt.

American foreign policy has never been wholly Wilsonian. Indeed, it wasn?t that Wilsonian when Wilson was President ? as the Senate?s decision not to endorse his beloved League of Nation testifies. It has had certain Wilsonian moments, such as when the United States negotiated the Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928 in which nations formally renounced war as a means of policy (it was no great success, that one) but, unsurprisingly, it proved difficult to sustain a foreign policy on the basis of love, peace and all holding hands in a circle to resolve international disputes.

It would not be unduly cynical to suggest that presidents assume Wilsonian clothing when they are either searching for an excuse for inaction or want others to do something for them that they cannot mobilise a domestic consensus to do alone. To that extent, Bill Clinton did have a Wilsonian foreign policy of sorts. But one based on Harold Wilson, not Woodrow.

Nor can it reasonably be asserted that Mr Bush is a ?Rooseveltian? President. Europeans might like to think that he speaks softly and carries a big stick, but they exaggerate the extent to which the Pentagon dominates foreign policy in Washington. They overstate the numbers and influence of the so-called ?neo-conservatives? in this Administration. There are a number of people who broadly fit that label but to insist that they are running the show is akin to saying that because there are several members of the British Government who are committed Christians, it follows that the final verdict on the euro will be taken only after a prayer meeting.

If Mr Bush should be compared with anyone it is Harry Truman. Truman was a slightly accidental President (he took office on the sudden death of Franklin Roosevelt), widely mocked by American and European elites. He was swiftly confronted with the end of the Second World War, the invention of nuclear weapons and the emergence of the superpower struggle. He had to shape foreign policy on the hoof, invent institutions at home and abroad to match new circumstances, set precedents and draw lines in the sand. Substitute the chads of Florida, religious terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and it is not a bad (if imperfect) fit.

This is in fact an opportune moment to contemplate Trumanism, the Truman Doctrine, as it happens, being 56 years of this week (May 22, 1947). The comparison to President Bush is, needless to say, a laughable fit. Had George W. Bush pursued Truman's disastrous containment policy, this time applied to expansionist Islamicism, we'd be sending aid to decrepit but friendly regimes and building up massive conventional military forces and transnational institutions to hem in the Talibans, Ba'athists, al Qaedas and PLOs of the world. We'd be looking at a debilitating long term commitment of dollars (a military budget averaging at least two and a half times the currrent level) and a system of alliances with powers we otherwise would find reprehensible--from Iraq (an anti-Islamist state) to China.

Instead, Mr. Bush is intent on destroying the axis of terror--having already toppled regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine, with Iran and N. Korea next to go--pressuring insufficiently liberalized allies (like the Sauds) and doing it all without regard to the internationalist bodies that Truman and his fellow containers crafted--like the UN & NATO. Had Mr. Truman pursued a Bush Doctrine in 1947 the world would have been spared tens of trillions of pointless military expenditures, tens of millions of lives, the rise of terrorism, etc., etc., etc. Thankfully, Bush is no Truman. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 25, 2003 8:56 PM