The National Interest
Summer 2001

Different Drummers, Same Drum

by Andrew J. Bacevich

 

. . . To an extent that neither partisan supporters nor members of the chattering classes are willing to concede, Bush and his chief advisers conceive of America's proper role in a post-Cold War world in terms nearly identical to those used by Clinton and his advisers. They assume the same intimate connection between U.S. foreign policy and America's domestic well-being; they embrace the same myths about the past; they voice similar expectations for the future, ascribing the shape of that future to the same set of factors. To a remarkable extent, they agree on the basic aims that should inform U.S. policy and the principles that should guide its conduct. Even when it comes to overlooking or ignoring inconvenient facts, Bush and Clinton share the same blind spots.

Thus, it is not really surprising that when setting its foreign policy azimuth the Bush administration spent its first weeks tacking away from the positions taken during the campaign, back toward the course previously charted by the Clinton administration. . .