In this respect, Bush is much like Truman, who developed the sinews of war for a new era (the Department of Defense, the CIA, the NSA), expanded the powers of the presidency, established a new doctrine for active intervention abroad [bold mine-DL], and ultimately engaged in a war (Korea) — also absent an attack on the U.S. — that proved highly unpopular. ~Charles Krauthammer

Well, that’s odd, since Krauthammer insisted just last week that everyone would understand the Bush Doctrine first of all to be the “freedom agenda” and not a doctrine entailing preventive war.  But that was last week when he needed to find some convenient spin to help shield Palin from her critics.  Here he is now saying that, like Truman, Bush established a “new doctrine for intervention abroad.”  It’s almost as if Krauthammer is willing to contradict himself to make whatever rhetorical flourishes any given column needs!

There is a more significant point here, and it is that Bush’s legacy will be closely tied to the perceived viability of the Bush Doctrine of preventive war and the success of the “freedom agenda.”  As the authoritarian charade of Saakashvili’s “democratic” government has been the poster boy for the latter, and the other main beneficiaries of democratization have been Hamas, Hizbullah and Shi’ite sectarians in Iraq, Bush will probably be judged harshly on his bizarre and dangerous fetishization of democracy.  If Washington abandons the possibility of successfully waging preventive war on account of limited or flawed intelligence and the sheer strategic folly of invading Iraq, as seems likely, this central aspect of the Bush Doctrine will not outlive this administration.  Unlike the Truman Doctrine’s enduring importance in the Cold War, preventive war will not become the basis for future policy and democracy-promotion, while still paid lip service, will once again take a back seat to some definition of U.S. strategic interests.  The signature policies of the Bush administration will likely be judged not simply to have been failures, but to have been calamitous blunders from the very beginning. 

Filed under: foreign policy, politics