CIAO DATE: 09/03

Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy

July/August 2003

Grading the President – Views from Around the World

 

 

A View From Latin America
By Jorge I. Domínguez

Latin Americans giggle or moan when they hear Washington apologists for the Bush administration sing the praises of the American empire. They’ve heard it all before. For them, Pax Americana is not exactly a foreign policy innovation. Nicaraguans, Panamanians, Dominicans, Cubans, and Haitians stand ready to tutor the French about how to live with and complain about the American empire. They can clue in the rest of the world on the not-so-subtle meanings of more than a century of U.S. military preemptive strategies toward foe—and friend. The anthem of the U.S. Marines gets it right: It all began with the “Halls of Montezuma.”

Afghanistan? Yesterday’s war. Unresolved, neglected, needy, but boooring. Nicaraguans have much to teach the cabal in Kabul about how the United States forgets its nice rhetoric and apparent commitments to its erstwhile allies. Other Central Americans, to a lesser extent, have had similar experiences. For many of them, the principal problem regarding the U.S. empire is not its might but its amnesia.

Love in the Time of Cholera is not just the anglicized title of a wonderful novel by Gabriel García Márquez; it’s also a crisp summary of Mexican President Vicente Fox’s unrequited love for President George W. Bush. The romance had a promising start, as Fox compelled the U.S. government to finally begin negotiating about the free movement of peoples in North America. But as Fox plucks petals from a daisy—Bush loves me, Bush loves me not—he watches his administration’s once glittering accomplishment fade fast on the horizon of a flickering Texas sunset.

Bush got an MBA from the Harvard Business School, which apparently taught him to appoint a strange collage of people to work for him. There is U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, who has reactivated the U.S. government’s engagement in trade negotiations worldwide and with Latin America in particular. A free-trade agreement between the United States and Chile had languished for years; now it will soon be signed. Central Americans had been pining to start negotiations on their own free-trade agreement with the United States; at long last these talks have begun. Progress continues on the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, while the administration continues to work on the Doha round of the World Trade Organization. Impressive.

Then there is Otto Reich, the almost assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. His 15 minutes of fame came in April 2002, when it appeared that a military coup was imminent in Venezuela. Problem: Hugo Chávez is the constitutional president of Venezuela. What should almost Assistant Secretary Reich have done? Should he have rallied to the defense of constitutional democracy as the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations had done? Should he have helped topple Chávez? He chose to do all of the above, simultaneously encouraging mass demonstrations against Chávez and declaring support for constitutional democracy in Venezuela. And then, to top it all off, the Bush administration blamed Chávez for bringing the attempted coup upon himself. Such befuddled policies help to explain why Reich is now the former almost assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs.

Latin America looked upon the George W. Bush administration as a dream come true. The president seemed committed to strengthening U.S.–Latin American relations—from Mexico to Chile and everywhere else in between. He had promised to “look south, not as an afterthought but as a fundamental commitment of my presidency.” But the Yale University class of 1968 had no geography requirement for graduation, and Bush has looked east and west, not south. Alas, Latin America is again experiencing the downside of a well-known cycle in U.S. policy toward the region: After the high rhetoric, comes neglect.

Jorge I. Domínguez is the Clarence Dillon professor of international affairs at Harvard University.

 

A View From South Asia
By Pratap Bhanu Mehta

In South Asia, the impact of a U.S. president’s policies on the parochial concerns of the region is of more consequence than his global agendas. George W. Bush’s rejection of treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court has convinced the subcontinent that he has little use for multilateral institutions. But, since few people in either India or Pakistan are themselves multilateralist out of conviction rather than necessity, judgments of Bush are not much influenced by those considerations.

Instead, whoever is sitting in the White House becomes the emblem of South Asia’s hopes and disappointments. In the case of Bush, both India and Pakistan have desperately tried to court the United States and enhance their statures as regional powers; both have been inevitably dismayed that the United States has not reciprocated in full measure.

Initially, Indians saw the United States’ war on terrorism as a stunning example of Bush’s decisiveness, resolve, and ability to craft a diverse global coalition. That admiration swiftly gave way to the cynical perception that even in the war on terrorism, Bush is interested in building alliances only to the extent that they advance U.S. interests. The view from India is that the United States, for its own short-term interests, has ignored terrorism that emanates from Pakistan, forgiven Pakistan’s assistance to North Korea’s nuclear program, and consistently strengthened Pakistan’s military at the expense of civil society. For their part, many Pakistanis chafe under the impression that Bush sees their country as little more than a remote military outpost. (This sentiment, however, is tempered by Pakistan’s precarious dependence upon the United States for military aid and financial bailouts.) And Pakistanis won’t soon forget that their “reward” for assisting the Bush administration in Afghanistan was the arrest of more than 300 of Pakistan’s citizens as part of the post–September 11 crackdown on Muslim immigrants living in the United States.

Insofar as personalities matter, former President Bill Clinton’s five-day tour of India in 2000—when he charmed politicians and crowds alike—had a profound impact because he was able to convey that he personally cared deeply about India; his controversial side trip to Pakistan, however, seems not to be an object of discussion in either country. Bush labors under the shadow of Clinton’s visit to India. And, for most Indians, Bush does not measure up to his predecessor’s personal charisma, intricate knowledge of the global economy, or ability to explain his conception of a world order beyond the ephemeral “coalition of the willing.”

But overall, the perception of Bush remains directly related to the perception of the United States itself. Many people, Hindu nationalists in particular, who think of India as a great power, are genuinely ambivalent about the president’s demeanor. On the one hand, there is a sneaking admiration for his unilateralism, his single-minded ability to do whatever it takes to advance U.S. power—even if it means relying on military force and disregarding world opinion. On the other hand, because India is, to put it mildly, in no position to act like the United States, the country resents the president when he does not fully acknowledge India’s interests. In both India and Pakistan, Bush benefits from the natural esteem many have for U.S. power, but he does little to assuage those who see that power as a provocation.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is professor of philosophy, law, and governance at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

 

A View From Eastern Europe
By Jiri Pehe

President George W. Bush’s foreign policy initiatives tend to be better received in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe than in most West European countries. The roots of this generally benevolent attitude can be found in the region’s past. Many people in “New Europe” philosophically oppose the idea of war, but their experiences with the likes of Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu and Hungary’s Matyas Rakosi give them little patience for dictators such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein or Syria’s Bashar Assad. What Old Europeans perceive as American oversimplification of complex international issues, New Europeans tend to see as principled stances reminiscent of those that helped bring down the Soviet empire in the late 1980s.

When West Europeans ridiculed former President Ronald Reagan’s description of the Soviet Union as the evil empire, East Europeans understood exactly what he was talking about. And today, even as West Europeans reject Bush’s remarks about the “axis of evil,” many East Europeans listen sympathetically. Although a large number of them may not favor military intervention as a means of bringing down brutal regimes, they don’t mind too much when force is used to achieve that goal.

East and Central Europeans also feel stronger loyalty toward the United States than do their Western counterparts. Not only do they remember the U.S. role in bringing down communism, but many also remain grateful to Washington for pushing NATO expansion to the East even as the European Union (EU) was hesitating on its own enlargement. Europeans in former communist countries are more open to the idea of exporting democracy to the Middle East—a concept some West European intelligentsia dismiss as unrealistic. Eastern Europe remembers that, during the communist era, many West Europeans did not believe their neighbors were mature enough to have democratic societies, while Americans “naively” believed that freedom and democracy were universally valid aspirations.

At the same time that many East Europeans can identify with the Bush administration’s foreign policy, they are also generally critical of Bush’s disdain for multilateralism. Former President Bill Clinton’s ability to implement his agenda through diplomacy and coalition building was better received, certainly by most intellectuals in the region.

Many local politicians in Central and Eastern Europe also feel they have been needlessly caught in the middle of a messy, trans-Atlantic spat. The inability of the United States, France, and Germany to agree on important issues, such as the war in Iraq, has put East European political elites into a position akin to that of children trying to please two feuding parents. Whatever they do will be seen as a betrayal by one or the other. In that respect, however, the arrogance of West European leaders, such as French President Jacques Chirac—who, before the war in Iraq, advised EU candidate countries to shut up and mind their own business—is as much a source of criticism as Bush’s disrespect for diplomacy.

Jiri Pehe was the chief political advisor to former Czech President Vaclav Havel. He is now a political analyst and director of New York University in Prague.