IP: Middle East blurs "Bush's Doctrine"

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Analysis 
Bush Doctrine Begins to Blur
Mideast Complicates Good-vs.-Evil Approach
By Dan Balz and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 3, 2002; Page A01


In the days after Sept. 11, President Bush outlined a global war on
terrorism that was striking in its moral clarity, summed up in his Sept. 20
speech to Congress when he said: "Every nation in every region now has a
decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

That either-or approach has given way to a murkier reality in the Middle
East, where the administration's response to the chaos -- particularly
regarding whether to consider Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a terrorist
-- has shown the limitations of doctrines drawn in the language of
absolutes.

The problem of classifying Arafat has angered foreign policy doves and hawks
alike. Hard-liners say Bush should call Arafat a terrorist and treat him as
an enemy. Others say the Arafat case exposes the flaw in the Bush doctrine:
It ignores the vast gray area between friend and foe.

In the past few days, the president has defended himself against the
sharpest criticism of his conduct of foreign policy since the attacks of
Sept. 11. He and his advisers now must reckon with the prospect that the
Middle East conflict will force a delay in, or substantial changes to, the
next phase of the war on terrorism -- apparently aimed at Iraq -- that they
have been planning for months.

Bush's instincts to see the war on terrorism as one of good vs. evil served
him well after Sept. 11, as he rallied an international coalition for a
military campaign in Afghanistan that dislodged the Taliban regime and at
least dispersed the al Qaeda terrorist network responsible for the attacks
on the United States.

But as he has confronted the escalating war between Israel and the
Palestinians, Bush has sounded anything but certain, the black-and-white
rhetoric of his war on terrorism replaced by what administration critics
have described as hesitancy, inconsistency and ambiguity.

"Bush had great clarity immediately after 9-11 and has gone from being sharp
to being blurry," said former Reagan administration official Kenneth
Adelman, who is close to Vice President Cheney and other Bush national
security officials. "I think it's been very fuzzy and disappointing."

Adelman embraces Bush's with-us-or-against-us formulation and says it should
be applied to Arafat. "The administration should say regardless of the
reasons the Palestinians are upset, what they are doing is violating all
principles of decency and civilization," he said. "These are not suicide
attacks, these are homicide attacks. That's the kind of clarity I don't
see."

Equally critical, but for the opposite reason, are less conservative
strategists who say Bush's good-vs.-evil approach is too black and white.
Bush, they point out, is not the first to use the with-us-or-against-us
formulation. Vladimir Lenin used a similar phrase in his revolutionary
writings: "He who is not with us is against us."

"This is Leninism," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy
Carter's national security adviser. "In sheer common sense, if someone is
not with you, does that mean he's automatically against you? I don't think
it's a good principle. Unfortunately, most of life cannot be delineated in
terms of black and white. It's in various shades of gray, and foreign policy
has to be sensitive to that."

Brzezinski, who teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies, said the attempt to impose the all-or-nothing
doctrine has created a muddle. "I wish I knew what our policy is," he said.
"On the one hand we're winking and giving [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel]
Sharon the green light, and on the other hand we're voting in the United
Nations for Israeli withdrawal."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell sought to explain that seeming
contradiction during a round of interviews yesterday on network television.
The administration, he said, has told Sharon that the United States
recognizes Israel's right to defend itself but that it wants the current
invasion to end as quickly as possible.

"We have never given him a blank check, we have never given him a green
light; we have never talked about traffic signals at all," he said on ABC's
"Good Morning America." "We have made it clear that we believe the right
answer is a political process that moves us forward, and that political
process is also there for the Palestinian side."

The administration's critics argue that two miscalculations have plunged
Bush into the current problem. The first was the decision at the beginning
of his administration to play down the importance of the Middle East, and
the second was seeming to ignore allies' recommendations to become more
engaged immediately after Sept. 11.

"I think his advisers underestimated the negative impact the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict was having on the region -- pretty badly," said
a former official in the Clinton administration. "They underestimated the
level to which the violence would go, and they did not appreciate the
importance of U.S. engagement and the effect it could have on the second leg
of this anti-terrorism war, which was Iraq."

Gary Schmitt of the Project for a New American Century said, "The
administration is caught between those who are arguing the primary strategic
goal is now Iraq and this is something of a tactical diversion -- that we
need to calm down to stay focused on our priority -- versus others who say
now, whether we like it or not, something that has been an irritant is now
the front line. It's no longer a strategic sideshow but a strategic theater
of its own."

The Middle East conflict challenges another of Bush's post-Sept. 11
doctrines -- that a cumbersome international coalition should not be allowed
to define the mission in the war on terrorism.

"The administration's view has been that it can single-mindedly focus on
what they perceive the threats to us [to be] and that others will acquiesce,
accommodate or ultimately support that," said James Steinberg, who was
President Bill Clinton's deputy national security adviser. "But that we
don't, in turn, have to make any accommodations to the priorities of
others."

A former official in the administration of Bush's father noted that the
current president made an accommodation after Sept. 11 by calling for the
creation of a Palestinian state. But he said the administration has been
"asleep at the switch" as the violence has escalated out of control. "His
advisers dropped the ball," the official said.

Leon Fuerth, who was Vice President Al Gore's top foreign policy adviser,
said it was inevitable that the Bush doctrine would founder, noting that no
such doctrine can apply to all circumstances.

"It catches us in a dilemma, and the consequences of that dilemma are very
powerful," he said. "They make you choose between fidelity to your doctrine
and muddling your way through. We're in the muddle-your-way-through phase,
[because] the application of this doctrine throws us so completely onto the
Israeli side that it can create ruinous consequences in the Arab world."

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