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InresponsetoSteveWalt|ForeignPolicy

In response to Steve Walt

BY WILL INBODEN

NOVEMBER 9, 2010 - 6:34 PM

With former President George W. Bushs memoir being released today, Steve Walt yesterday launched
a preemptive strike against the Bush record. In this article, my fellow Foreign Policy blogger attempts
to blame Bush for just about everything that went wrong in the last decade, while crediting Bush with
nothing that went right. One suspects that Walt might even hold Bush responsible for the Texas
Rangers recent loss in the World Series according to Walt, as owner of the Rangers, Bush "wasnt
particularly good at that job either."

Walt offers up a 14-point indictment against Bush (perhaps its a sign of how animated some Bush
opponents get that even the realists start imitating Woodrow Wilson, at least when it comes to writing
14-point documents). The more spurious accusations merit responses and the omissions bear noting
as well:

Walt singles out the Bush administration for "insufficient attention" and a "cavalier attitude"
towards Osama bin Laden and terrorism in the eight months before the September 11th attacks,
and notes accusingly that "9/11 happened on Bushs watch, and the buck stops at his desk." Yet
Walt fails to mention the Clinton administrations preceding eight years of relative inattention to
the threat from bin Laden (including missed opportunities to kill or capture him). Nor does Walt
give Bush any credit for one of his administrations signal achievements in the 7.5 years following
September 11th: protecting the United States from any further large-scale terror attack.
He calls the "Global War on Terror" a "rhetorical catastrophe" because of the vagueness of the
term "terrorism" and the purported inaccuracy of the term "war," since terrorism allegedly is not a
"military problem." This ignores the fact that the Bush administration deliberately made the
strategic choice to focus on "terror" precisely to make clear that the conflict was not with Islam
itself a matter of first-order importance in the battle of ideas. Of course the administration knew
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itself a matter of first-order importance in the battle of ideas. Of course the administration knew
that terrorism is just a tactic, and that this didnt mean a new U.S. campaign in Northern Ireland or
Sri Lanka. Moreover, both Walt and the Bush White House would agree that the conflict demanded
stepped-up intelligence efforts, new law enforcement tools, domestic security measures, and
multilateral cooperation all of which the Bush administration embraced. But al Qaeda also
declared war on the United States and followed through with the bloodiest act of war on U.S. soil in
our history, under the sponsorship and protection of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. If that
doesnt qualify as a "military problem," then nothing does.
He accuses Bush of "sabotaging peace in the Middle East," while neglecting to mention that Bush
was the first president to declare that official U.S. policy supports the creation of a Palestinian
state. This was a paradigm shift in the U.S. posture, a notable affirmation of Palestinian
aspirations, and continues to be a key pillar of the otherwise-troubled peace process today.
Moreover, Bush articulated another uncomfortable truth necessary to the cause of peace: Peace
would not be possible as long as the Palestinian leadership (read: Yasir Arafat) was compromised
by support of terrorism and unaccountability to the Palestinian people. For all of his limitations,
current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is a more credible and capable
negotiating partner in helping build a viable Palestinian state a vindication of Bushs insight.
Walt cites the Bush administrations refusal to recognize the Hamas victory in the 2006
Palestinian elections as evidence of a cynical, selective approach to democracy. But an essential
pillar of democracy is the renunciation of terrorism and peaceful participation in the political
process terms which Hamas refused to embrace, and the reason why the EU and the Obama
administration dont recognize the Hamas government either.
He says that Bush administration policies "unwittingly encouraged" nuclear proliferation by North
Korea and Iran under the myth that if only more concessions and inducements had been offered by
the United States, Pyongyang and Tehran would have disavowed their pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Yet this implicitly ascribes an unrealistic omnipotence to the United States (i.e. U.S. actions are the
most important factor in determining other nations behavior) and ignores several other crucial
variables, such as the serious flaws in the Clinton administrations 1994 Agreed Framework with
North Korea; the fact that both the North Korean and Iranian regimes decided to pursue nukes in
part to divert domestic attention from their own misrule and to assert their power in their
respective regions; or the many concessions and incentives the Bush administration did offer in
both cases. Not to mention that any discussion of the Bush record on non-proliferation needs to
include the significant success of persuading Libya to give up its nuclear program.
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And yes, no litany of accusations against Bush would be complete without blaming him for the
global financial crisis (though to be fair, Walt admits that Bush "does not deserve all the blame,"
just most of it). Again, what Walt fails to mention is telling, including factors such as the Clinton
administrations irresponsible expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act and sub-prime
mortgage lending, the categorical blockage by Congressional Democrats of any efforts to reform
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or the longstanding bipartisan support for the Feds easy money
policies. Scholars will no doubt spend decades trying to understand the causes of the economic
crisis, and few actors, including the Bush administration, will emerge faultless. But any serious
effort to understand the crisis needs to go beyond simplistic polemics.
And what of Walts omissions? Well, any fair assessment of President Bushs record also needs to take
into account his robust support for free trade (including the Central American Free Trade Agreement,
and increasing the number of bilateral FTAs from three to 14); his multilateral efforts to combat WMD
proliferation through the Proliferation Security Initiative; his landmark development policies such as
the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the $15 billion committed to HIV/AIDS relief, and
indispensable support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; and especially
Bushs successful management of great power relations such that the United States pulled off two
delicate trifectas of solid relations with Asian powers Japan, China, and India, and (by his second term)
with European power centers France, Germany, and Britain.
Perhaps most telling is a fact that Walt concedes, and laments: the significant number of Bush
administration policies and strategies that the Obama administration has adopted. If this continues to
be the case, then critics of the Bush administration record will have to shift their critique to U.S.
foreign policy in general.

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