The Bush Administration and the Iraq War

Let's go back to this new problem set that you were talking about. I would like to get your assessment of what has emerged as the Bush doctrine, which would seek to define a doctrine for the United States in the same way that Kennan's policy of containment did during the Cold War. That document makes a very important connection between the elements of the problems that you mentioned, namely rogue states, weapons of mass destruction, and transnational terrorists groups without an address, and argues that the United States should and will act preemptively or maybe in a preventive manner [against] these negative possibilities.

These words are used very confusing. Preempt, prevent.

Preemption is a word we ought to strike from our vocabulary, because preemption means only that I'm going to go first on the assumption that the war has already begun. Prevention is when you see a threat materializing against the national security, which maybe two, three, four years hence, and the balance of powers tilting against you, and you want to act before it has tilted against you. This is a classic war that Israel fought in '56 when it attacked Egypt. It saw how Soviet weapons were pouring into Egypt, and they could plot that by '61 or so, the Egyptians would have acquired more military power. So they moved to nip it in the bud.

Now, under the international law, that's a very hard thing to justify. But in terms of national security, and given the fact that nations are the ultimate arbiter of what the security demands, it was a rational thing to do. And it was a rational thing for the Israelis to do when they wiped out the Iraq nuclear reactors that the French, by the way, had delivered to Saddam Hussein, and which had no other function but to breed nuclear-capable materials. So everybody is yelling and screaming at the Israelis, but in retrospect, I think they did the right thing.

It's very hard to define prevention and the right to prevention in legal terms. We certainly don't have the idea of prevention in our domestic legal codes, but we don't need to because if I see that my neighbor is stockpiling AK's in his basement, and he brandishes them at me every day across the fence, I can take him to court. We don't have a court in the international world.

Now, let me shift to something else. Bush says from this new situation, we derive a right to prevention. But I would turn it around, especially when it comes to terrorism. Prevention in the realm of terrorism is the essence of good police work. In fact, all police forces all over the world act on the basis of prevention. It's better to break up the gang before it robs the bank. It's better to break up a conspiracy before it blows up the capital. Prevention is the essence of good police work. But good police work, in this case, means the closest and most sustained cooperation with other nations. That's what's missing in the Bush doctrine.

Let me give you a very simple example. As we sit here and talk, there are U.S. FBI and customs officials ensconced in the port of my hometown of Hamburg diligently and cooperatively working with German customs agents checking containers for terrorist contraband bound for the East Coast. That's the essence of preventative work. And the essence of that is cooperation with others, with the largest number of nations' police force, intelligence force, what have you. That's something that the Bush doctrine simply doesn't take account of. The idea is that the United States, being so powerful, so excessively powerful, as we've described it earlier, need no longer to take any recourse, need no longer to take any succor from others -- that is logically and in practical terms wrong. You need all the friends you can get against enemies with a shadowy face and no address, and no return place where you can punish them or deter them. So to repeat the same point in the strongest possible terms, it's precisely because of the nature of these new threats like terrorism that you need more cooperation with other states rather than less. That's another paradox of twenty-first century power.

How do you account for this failure to see the importance of cooperation? Is it this particular American regime or is it a byproduct of having all of this power?

Maybe all of the above. Surely, Gulliver suddenly liberated from the ropes or the disciplines of bipolarity, seeing his power had always been kept at abeyance, suddenly, buoyed up or revalued, or whatever metaphor you might use. "Hey, we are Mr. Big. We are the biggest gun in town. We have driven the bad guys out and there's nothing that is not in our power to do." So that's the structural reasons that would have impinged on any American government.

But they may be something else in this administration which descends from the Clinton administration. The Clintonistas, after all, already existed in that post-bipolar world with the ropes having fallen away from Gulliver. Maybe it was a schmooze-fest writ large, and they easily transposed it into national power. These dudes just talked a lot more with friends. But, by the way, so did Jim Baker and Bush's parent.

So is it a difference of noblesse oblige? If you are that way and have all the power, you still are in a way respectful of those who have lesser power? And that's all for the good, because, in fact, you need practical things from these people in terms of intelligence, cooperation?

Your question is right on the mark. For American power to prevail, a measure of self-containment is required, or what you call noblesse oblige. "Because I'm so incredibly big and strong I will not brag about and demonstrate this power, it's enough that I have it." Power, by the way, is when you don't have to use it. The moment you have to use it, and threaten and bluster, you've already lost part of it.

So, yes, noblesse oblige or what I call self-containment would certainly be a part of my grand strategy. Precisely because I want to remain Mr. Big, precisely because I want to remain number one, I would want to deliver as few as possible reasons for the lesser players to gang up on me, to balance against me. You could even go one step farther and say, "Great powers remain great powers because they also do for others." Precisely what the United States did after 1945 when it pursued its own interest by taking care of the interests of others. NATO was the American cold-hearted interest. But it was also the interest of all these little European nations who were afraid of the big Russians. The IMF, the OECD, you name it, were all American institutions that served the American interest, but they also served the interests of others.

This is something that is almost profoundly alien to the Bushies, alien to the mindset of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld -- not to Powell. They can't define American interests and American powers in larger terms which would make that power more durable and less opposed by others.

So you're suggesting that the Bush administration may have one kind of foresight -- seeing the threat -- but not the long-term foresight required for building institutions in the future?

That's precisely it. In terms of short-term power, these boys and one girl, Condi Rice, are doing very nicely. The way they ran the Iraq war was well done -- good strategy, good training, and good tactics. But a great power that wants to remain a great power has to think on the longer term. The longer term has to do with leadership, and leadership always involves an element of acceptance and legitimacy. And acceptance and legitimacy are two assets that this administration has not worked on as much as it should. In fact, it has woefully, almost criminally neglected that in terms of American interest. Not in terms of French, or German, or Russian; in terms of American interest.

An element in the question of dealing with this new threat environment touches on another motivation in U.S. foreign policy throughout its history, namely Wilsonianism. I want to touch on that briefly. You have suggested that we need to cooperate with people who can help us in policing.

In the American interest.

In the American interest. But another cut into this problem is, you can have a "high noon" in Iraq and Gary Cooper can come in. But after the gun battle is over you have to clean up the place.

Well, remember how this is an issue that High Noon and Zinneman did not take care of. We know what happened. Gary Cooper hops into his jalopy with Grace Kelly and they drive out into the sunset. They don't care about what happens to this town. That's why I'm grateful for this moviegoer's cue. The heroes rode off in the sunset, never dealt with the future of Dodge City or the OK Corral, or wherever Gary Cooper fought at. I forgot what the name of that place was.

So it's a very nice metaphor for American grand strategy. But last time around, and that was the beginning of the golden age of American diplomacy in 1945, Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly did not hop into their little jalopy, they stayed and built an institution. They made sure that the future of Japan, Italy, and Germany would be a democratic one. That Europe's future would be a democratic one, that it would never again fall prey of totalitarianism. Where shall we be in the aftermath of the Iraq war? Is it going to be Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly?

Taking off.

Trekking off into the sun, I think. If it's after high noon, it was not the sunset. Or whether it's going to be more like Acheson and Truman and Eisenhower, these people who, to use that title of the book by Dean Acheson, who were "present at the creation," built this marvelous post-War system not in a fit of absentmindedness like the way they built their empire, but deliberately by design with the idea of longer-term consequences. Another watershed: is it going to be Acheson, Truman et al., or is it going to be Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly and Fred Zinneman? I don't know.

And, in fact, cooperation is what's required if you're going to rebuild in these places.

You could argue that the United States doesn't need anybody, as the White House seemed to be arguing at the tail-end of the war. Theoretically speaking, yes, the United States and the Brits could do it, and I'm not sure whether they couldn't do it by themselves. But my hunch tells me the more additional nations you have in the game, the more legitimacy [you have in] the postwar [reconstruction]. As you know, the war itself was not seen as a very legitimate enterprise because the Brits and the Americans did it by themselves. It's going to be an interesting test case. I can't predict whether reconstruction will best be done by those who fought the war or by a larger coalition. I don't think the UN should do it because the UN has been singularly unsuccessful in the Kosovo, in Serbia, and Bosnia in nation-building. But on balance, I would choose a larger coalition rather than a coalition of two.

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