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In Defense of the Bush Doctrine, by Robert G. Kaufman
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The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, shattered the prevalent optimism in the United States that had blossomed during the tranquil and prosperous 1990s, when democracy seemed triumphant and catastrophic wars were a relic of the past.President George W. Bush responded with a bold and controversial grand strategy for waging a preemptive Global War on Terror, which has ignited passionate debate about the purposes of American power and the nation's proper role in the world. In Defense of the Bush Doctrine offers a vigorous argument for the principles of moral democratic realism that inspired the Bush administration's policy of regime change in Iraq. The Bush Doctrine rests on two main pillars―the inadequacy of deterrence and containment strategies when dealing with terrorists and rogue regimes, and the culture of tyranny in the Middle East, which spawns aggressive secular and religious despotisms. Two key premises shape Kaufman's case for the Bush Doctrine's conformity with moral democratic realism. The first is the fundamental purpose of American foreign policy since its inception: to ensure the integrity and vitality of a free society "founded upon the dignity and worth of the individual." The second premise is that the cardinal virtue of prudence (the right reason about things to be done) must be the standard for determining the best practicable American grand strategy. In Defense of the Bush Doctrine provides a broader historical context for the post–September 11 American foreign policy that will transform world politics well into the future. Kaufman connects the Bush Doctrine and current issues in American foreign policy, such as how the U.S. should deal with China, to the deeper tradition of American diplomacy. Drawing from positive lessons as well as cautionary tales from the past, Kaufman concludes that moral democratic realism offers the most compelling framework for American grand strategy, as it expands the democratic zone of peace and minimizes the number and gravity of threats the United States faces in the modern world.
- Sales Rank: #2627973 in Books
- Brand: Brand: The University Press of Kentucky
- Published on: 2007-05-11
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .88" w x 6.00" l, 1.14 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 264 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
"Kaufman's fine book is required reading for thoughtful candidates and citizens alike."―George Weigel, Catholic Exchange
"The best part of Kaufman's book is his critical analysis of alternatives, in U.S. grand strategy, to the Bush doctrine, whose moral democratic realism entails the prudent application of American power to replace dangerous regimes in the Middle East."―Library Journal (starred review)
"A very interesting book, based on a fresh concept of 'moral democratic realism,' that distinguishes Kaufman's work from that of Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Francis Fukuyama, and others. A helpful and clarifying book."―Michael Novak, coauthor of Washington's God and author of The Spirit of Democ
"In this excellent new book, Kaufman describes the Bush approach to foreign policy as the latest example of what he calls moral democratic realism, an approach he attributes to FDR, Truman, and Reagan as well."―National Review
"This is a very well-grounded defense of the Bush Doctrine. It is scholarly and political in the best sense of both terms. Those who disagree (as I do) will be challenged and informed."―Robert Jervis, author of American Foreign Policy in a New Era
"An important book about the central issue of our time."―Senator Joe Lieberman
"President Bush could use an unapologetic argument for his foreign policy these days, and this is it...[Kaufmann] makes a persuasive case."―The Weekly Standard
"Kaufman offers a much needed, well-reasoned defense of the present Bush doctrine in the Middle East. As Kaufman shows, for all the heartbreak in our present efforts in Iraq, ultimately it remains the best practical and moral course to foster some third way other than either autocracy or theocracy"―Victor Davis Hanson, author of A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spart
"Kaufman presents a thoughtful, comprehensive case. It ranks as the most histocially powerful support of Mr. Bush and his doctrine, including the Iraq war."―Washington Times
"The author has compiled, better than anywhere else that I have seen, a systematic explanation of the Bush Doctrine and its moral and historical foundations."―Modern Age, Ted V. McAllister
"Kaufman is passionate without being polemical, and is quite evenhanded, consistently pointing out arguments and examples that disagree with his point of view. This is a provocative book written by a first-rate mind."―John Robert Greene, Historian
"Robert Kaufman's short and provocative book provides and interesting and timely defense of what is perhaps become one of the most contentious concepts in international politics."―Andrew J. Futter, University of Birmingham, Political Studies Review
About the Author
Robert G. Kaufman, professor of public policy at Pepperdine University, is the author of numerous publications, including Henry M. Jackson: A Life in Politics. He is a former Bradley Scholar and current adjunct scholar at the Heritage Foundation.
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Solid explication of a particular point of view
By R. Henderson
Kaufman's book sets out to defend the "indefensible" and does a pretty good job of it. He answers some of the more common criticisms of the Bush Doctrine, all the while reminding us (as we are apt to forget) that the situation looked very different in 2002-2003 than it does now. He explores some of the alternatives to it, such as multilateralism, and reminds us with recourse to history (without any egregious examples of anecdotal cherry-picking) that most of them have serious drawbacks as well. Some of the book's strong points were also incident to its flaws; for instance in reminding us how the world looked in 2002-2003 he becomes wedded to an international and diplomatic snapshot that has since changed, namely our relationship with Germany and France after the succession of Merkel and Sarkozy, respectively. On the whole a solid and important book.
15 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
Bush Administration Talking Points With Citations
By Steven Metz
The easiest way to review this is via ideology. People favorably inclined toward Bush will like it; those who oppose him will hate it. But since the author elected to publish it with a university press, I'm going to assess it as a work of scholarship and analysis. On that count, it comes up woefully short. It is well-written but panglossian defense of the Bush strategy. I am amazed that the University Press of Kentucky, which is an up and coming academic publisher, produced it. It is most certainly not an academic work but a ideological polemic masquerading as scholarship as per Noam Chomsky or Chalmers Johnson. There is no critical analysis of the Bush strategy, but simply a legal brief asserting that is it the best of all possible approaches. The author develops caricatures or strawmen of alternative strategies and then demolishes them. For instance, on p. 129 he write, "As the lessons of history attest, critics are wrong to object to the Bush Doctrine because it does not defer categorically to the UN Security Council or to multilateralism as any guise as an end in itself." This is Rush Limbaugh discourse--invent a position that no serious person actually holds (who, exactly, advocates categorical deference to the UN Security Council?) then ridicule it.
Let me give just a couple of examples of Kaufman's selective use of history and double standards to sustain his partisan argument (there are many dozens more). On p. 120 he writes, "By the end of his administration, Ronald Reagan has shifted away from his initial inclinations to back America's right-wing allies unconditionally, as it became apparent in El Salvador, the Philippines, Korea, and Chile that liberal democracy was a plausible alternative to either authoritarianism or communism." In reality, it was the Democratically controlled Congress that forced Reagan to push for democracy in these places, not some personal epiphany.
Second, Kaufman excoriates Clinton for not preventing the genocide in Rwanda (although failing to mention that in 2000 candidate Bush explicitly said he would not have used the U.S. military in Rwanda had he been president). Alan Kuperman has demonstrated that even had Clinton moved immediately once he was aware genocide was underway, it would only have had a limited effect, so I have to assume that Kaufman's criticism is because Clinton did not act in advance to prevent the killing. But in anything other than a hagiography, if Clinton deserve blame for not being prescient in Rwanda--a place with very limited American attention or involvement--then Bush deserves even greater criticism for for not anticipating the emergence of armed resistance in Iraq and taking steps to limit or prevent it (such as an infusion of a large number of troops and implementation of an effective reconstruction program in 2003). Kaufman does suggest "we [sic] should have anticipated better" in Iraq when, in fact, those who did anticipate better were attacked by the administration. Even after this mousy criticism, Kaufman goes to great lengths to make the ridiculous argument that even though "we" didn't anticipate better, it wasn't a big deal anyway since more Americans died in the world wars and the Civil War than in Iraq! At that point, I could no longer take the book seriously. It was, from the start, a blend of propaganda and scholarship. Since I assume the author does actually understand that the criterion for judging strategy is not the aggregate lives lost, but whether the benefits justified the costs, I have to believe that along the way he elected to jettison the veneer of scholarship and shift purely into propaganda.
Perhaps the most pressing conceptual flaw in the work is its disregard for the role of culture. The author uses the spread of liberal democracy to Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Pacific rim as evidence of its universality and hence as support for the idea that it should be the cornerstone of American strategy. What that overlooks is the idea that liberal democracy can only develop stable roots in Western, Western-influenced, or Confucian cultures. Kaufman reiterates the Bush idea that Islamic violence is caused by the "insidious interaction of poverty, brutality, and oppression" rather than deep flaws in a culture which create unstable, uncompetitive states and then seeks external scapegoats for the ensuing failure. Unless the United States is willing to alter this culture--and nothing in the Bush strategy is designed to do that--the violence will persist.
Since Kaufman's book is a defense of the Bush strategy rather than an analysis of it, the author does not address the real criticisms of that strategy. For instance, rather than dealing with the question of whether liberal democracy is feasible in Islamic cultures, Kaufman simply demonstrates that it would be a good idea. To counter the criticism that Islamic culture is not fertile ground for liberal democracy, Kaufman, like Bush administration spokesmen, simply points to post World War II Germany and Japan. But, like the administration, he does not address the valid criticism that the Bush approach to Iraq and Afghanistan has not, in fact, followed the Germany-Japan model. Rather than a massive and protracted occupation while the foundation for democracy was built, the administration has sought democratization on the cheap. Kaufman cannot have it both ways--arguing that the post-war occupation of Germany and Japan validate the feasibility of a method while defending the Bush approach which did not replicate that method.
In most places, Kaufman simply re-asserts Bush administration talking points, taking them at face value. There are dozens of examples. In justifying the intervention in Iraq, he writes (p. 140)that "victory" there will "keep terrorists on the run by depriving them of the sanctuary of a rogue regime." While ideas like that are the standard stock of talk radio, Kaufman ignores the fact that Hussein was a very minor provider of sanctuary to transnational terrorists and whatever system emerges in Iraq--be it a fragile democracy, a fragmented state, a militia-dominated quasi-state, or some new authoritarian system--is much more likely to provide sanctuary to terrorists, either deliberately or by virture of its inability or unwillingness to fully control its own territory. Kaufman also lauds Libya's decision to abandon its nuclear program as validation of Bush's strategy of regime change and democratization without noting that Qaddafi's decision was a result of decades of sanctions, not anything Bush did. He attributes democratic reforms in Lebanon to Bush even though, in reality, democracy in that country is decades old (and floundered during the Reagan administration). He accepts without question the flawed assumption of the Bush strategy that democratization in the Islamic world will limit anti-American militancy. And, like the Bush administration itself, he does not grapple with the fact that Islamic violence in Spain and the U.K. refutes the connection between democracy and terrorism.
Ultimately readers looking for a balanced and rigorous analysis of the Bush strategy will be disappointed by the book. Bush supporters looking for intellectual ammunition to defend the administration will find it useful.
8 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
about time we had an informative, cogent explanation of the Bush policy
By Sarah Hart
I am most of the way through this book and have been impressed by its clear, readily understood prose and its straight-to-the-point sentences explaining the various foreign policies that the U.S. has embraced and the proofs of their failure or success with the reasons why. Naming and explaining one by one the foreign policy schools of thought and their proponents, as the author does in the first part of the book, was helpful in placing the current Bush doctrine in an historic context. The author then describes the Bush policy as, on the one hand, vigorous encouragement of the growth of stable, liberal democracies -- because stable, liberal democracies historically do not fight each other -- and, on the other hand, vigorous opposition to totalitarian regimes that deny freedom to their oppressed populations -- because oppressive regimes historically have defiantly ignored negotiated agreements of peace. Ironic that this book is available just as the tide of our miltary success in Iraq and public opinion at home and abroad is seen to be turning. Short and important, this book should be on everyone's coffee table.
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