[A-List] US imperialism: 'the Rice doctrine'

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Misunderstanding the Rice doctrine
By Walter Russell Mead
Financial Times: October 2 2002

In the US and abroad, the consensus view of the Bush administration's
foreign policy is twofold. First, it is shaped by a conflict between the
liberal multilateralism of Colin Powell, secretary of state, and the
conservative unilateralism of Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defence.
Second, it constitutes a radical departure from the foreign policy of
past administrations.

Wrong on both counts. Despite the public disagreements between the
Pentagon and the State Department, the most striking thing about this
administration's foreign policy is its intellectual consistency. The
ideas that Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, outlined in
a Foreign Affairs article in 2000 shape the administration's foreign
policy today. In particular, Ms Rice laid down an approach to
multilateralism versus unilateralism to which the administration has
returned at every important moment since - and that forms the basis of
the new US national security strategy.

Ms Rice's article rejected the liberal multilateralism espoused by
Woodrow Wilson as a basis for US foreign policy. The US must not, she
warned, forget the pursuit of its national interest in a grand quest for
the common interests of a global world order. This did not mean that the
US should act as a Lone Ranger. The key would be to manage relationships
with the Great Powers - notably Russia and China - to achieve key US
goals. Organisations such as the United Nations should neither be
dismissed nor seen as embryonic global governing bodies.

To convinced Wilsonians in the US and elsewhere, this sounds like a
repudiation of the goal of a liberal international order. What most
observers miss is that Ms Rice's position is not new. Wilson wanted the
League of Nations to become the core of a global governing body with the
power to issue orders to national governments; that is perhaps the key
reason why the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles. During the cold
war, no US government ever accepted the idea that it needed UN approval
for enterprises ranging from the Vietnam war to the invasion of Grenada.
A lack of Russian support on the Security Council did not stop the
Clinton administration from attacking Yugoslavia over Kosovo. The Bush
administration, like its predecessors, rejects the Wilsonian approach to
supranational institutions but supports the remaining core principles of
liberal internationalism.

Why does such a traditional and conservative foreign policy - very much
in the mainstream of US thinking throughout the 20th century - strike so
many intelligent observers as a dangerous and radical deviation? The key
is September 11 2001, which touched off a popular response comparable
with the wave of patriotic fury that swept through the US after the 1941
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The eruption of a new type of mass terrorist threat led the
administration to formulate a doctrine of pre-emption that naturally
unsettled much of the international community. Pre-emption is not a new
idea. Nor is it uniquely American. Ronald Reagan's invasion of Grenada
and Lyndon Johnson's of the Dominican Republic were pre-emptive strikes,
as was Winston Churchill's attack on the French fleet in 1940.

Normally, a US president announcing such a bold - if incremental -
change in US foreign policy would spend months developing a consensus
among allies. He would wrap the message in warm and fuzzy talk designed
to reassure the country's partners. But George W. Bush does not have the
option; US voters want decisive action.

Rhetoric aside, US policy remains well within the postwar consensus.
Like his father before him, Mr Bush has said he will pursue US interests
over Iraq whatever the UN Security Council says - but has also
approached both the UN and Congress before taking military action.
Despite tough rhetoric, US policies toward Russia and China continue to
reflect Ms Rice's commitment to managing those relationships with great
care. Military partnerships with Nato and Japan remain the cornerstone
of security thinking.

Under Mr Bush, the US has paid its UN dues and increased its foreign aid
budget. It is both rejoining Unesco and deferring to its European allies
over the timing of any US pull-out from the Balkans. No US president has
been as decisive and clear as he has about the need for a democratic
Palestinian state with secure boundaries.

Ms Rice's doctrine of realist multilateralism may not be an inspiring
rallying cry and many legitimate and helpful criticisms of it can no
doubt be made. But the policy, whatever its faults, is neither
rudderless nor radical. Until the critics grasp that, they will continue
to have little impact.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations