Good bye America! Part III

Now that is worrying. It can be suggested that they have reached a consensus in Washington, DC, and now are only waiting for a suitable moment to launch another military adventure in the Middle East.

Samuel R.Berger - former National Security Advisor to President Clinton, Chairman of a strategy firm Stonebridge International believes the following to be true:

The Bush Doctrine has become "a radical shift in the nature of American foreign policy. Now certainly it has been shaped by perhaps the most stunning external reality of our time and that is the attack on us on 9-11. At that moment America lost the sense of invulnerability that we had felt for most of our history… So that is a fundamental change which would have taken place which had to be dealt with no matter who was President. It represents it seems to me the first layer of the Bush Doctrine and that is that from that point on the central strategic priority of American foreign policy is the war on terrorism.

The second element really derives from the first. That is I think equally justifiable. As President Bush has said, our highest priority is to keep the most deadly weapons out of the hands of the most dangerous regimes and the most dangerous people, to focus on proliferation.

The advent of a new stateless terrorism with global reach changed the classic deterrence model that had applied over 200 years in a state context. Whether or not we can deter a North Korea from using nuclear weapons on the south, it's hard to deter suicidal terrorists. I would say so far so good.

Then the President both in principle and practice extended his doctrine in several ways that I think have been both controversial and wrong-headed. First, he extended the war on terrorism to include an axis of evil nations- Iraq, North Korea and Iran - who could supply weapons of mass destruction to terror groups. That with respect to such countries he declared that we must be prepared to strike first even before the threat is imminent.

This poor Bush Doctrine says that we will seek to prevent - essentially it says - we will seek to prevent a second 9-11 not only by aggressively pursuing individual terrorists and by issuing ultimatum to state sponsors of terrorism that they give up weapons of mass destruction programs or face the possibility of U.S.-sponsored regimes."

"New American Strategies for Security and Peace" conference,

28-29 October 2003, Washington, DC, USA.

President Bush did more harm than good to America. Of course, September 11, 2001, presented a real reason for global interference. But that did not mean that the USA could undertake a responsibility of dividing the world countries into 'good' and 'bad' ones. The principle of assessing whether a country is terrorist or not is subjective in itself. It is noteworthy that the choice of the evil countries was random: Iraq-North Korea-Iran.

It is the so called "axis of evil", of which we used to make part as the USSR. Two Gulf countries and North Korea, which cannot play a key role in geopolitics even if it wishes it too much. If we study this "axis" attentively we risk understanding the criteria by which it was drawn up. The heads of the above-mentioned stated were critical about the US-dominated new world order. I would specify that it is the order particularly envisioned and understood by the Bush administration. I do not say, "law and order," because it is far from what the USA is doing in the world.

If "the threat to the national security is unavoidable," the USA can make a preventive use of its military force. Such doctrine is very dangerous. In the first turn, it is related with the positions and the criteria by which the unavoidable threat to the USA should be assessed. It is a convenient position: the USA reserves a right to assess the threat and to make preventive strikes.

And what about the world community, other states, the United Nations? Neither of them participates in the assessment of the threats to the US national security.

Formally the United States passed the Iranian nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council, but it is highly improbable that Bush and Co were going to take into consideration what the former would have to say.

The principle is clear: to withstand formal conditions of the international participation and then eventually to do everything in its own way.

Russia following the USA assumed a right to deliver preventive strikes. The air raid of Russian air forces against Pankiz gorge in Georgia was a clear example of that. Americans have created a precedent and I am afraid that in the future all countries possessing sufficient intellectual, military, and human resources will start undertaking unilateral actions. There are China, Pakistan, the European Union… Is not such practice of preventive strikes brining the world into a dead-end?

If the United States is coherent, it will soon extend its list of the 'rogue states' to Venezuela and several other Latin American countries going "Left."

It seems that nobody in the Bush administration wants to analyse and make at least an attempt at understanding why anti-Americanism is now being spread worldwide. Actually, the reasons lie within the United States itself, their violating one international treaty after another and its wish to establish a world order in its own image and liking.

"There are also I think some corollaries I think to the core Bush Doctrine which are equally important to recognize, - Samuel Berger continues. - Coalitions I think in their view are more useful instruments with which to deal with the world than alliances.

A second corollary I think to the Bush Doctrine has been that international support generally is useful but basically will fall behind us if we exercise our power. Something we have discovered to be not true. The third corollary I believe of the Bush Doctrine is that military power is the dominant instrument of advancing our national interests in the world. And related to that that the exercise of non-military forms of power, so-called soft power, diplomacy, persuasion, leadership across the broad range of common concerns of mankind, is peripheral, not central…

But let me simply say that the mess that we are in today in Iraq in my judgment is not simply to product of bad decisions. But it is the inexorable consequence of this accumulated set of ideological principles that I just articulated...

Let's be clear, notwithstanding the number of schools that we have built or hospitals that we have painted, what we're involved in today in Iraq is a classic guerilla war, and in a classic guerilla war most of the country often does look fine because the guerillas choose the time and place of the conflict...

But let me lay out a few of the questions that I think the critiques of the Bush Doctrine must answer if not today than going forward. If the doctrine of preemption is not wrong, is not a unsuitable counter-proliferation strategy in and of itself what is the alternative for dealing with states that are intent upon going nuclear beyond the past policy of export controls, job owning, diplomacy, unilateral sanctions and a flawed an inadequate non-proliferation treaty. I think we have to develop our answer to that question.

If we make - if we're serious about - if we make a serious offer to Kim Jong Il in North Korea, question number two, and he refuses that, is he is determined to develop a nuclear factory in North Korea, what are our alternatives? Three. How important is it for America to be admired as well as respected in the world today and what will that involve?"

The antiterrorist coalition created first during the operation in Afghanistan, then during the invasion into Iraq is nothing more than a fiction. In major part a formal approach to the coalition undertakings only prevented American militaries from acting in a more efficient and mobile manner. The countries that owed something to Washington "subscribed" for the coalition participation and then without too much ado retired from dangerous zones.

What is also surprising is that the public opinion of the coalition member states was always again the participation in the American military adventures. It was a superficial, but a visible factor.

Is Bush personally responsible for the current events in Iraq?

From Berger's point of view, yes, he is.

Can Bush stabilise the situation in Iraq?

According to Berger, no, by no means.

And how does Bush understands such term as "respect"?

Berger is sure that Bush doesn't know the sense of this word.

And he is unlikely to learn it…

To be continued