American Grand Strategy
The Imperial Logic of Bush's Liberal Agenda
by Edward Rhodes
with responses by
Owen Harries,
Allan Gyngell,
Peter Jennings,
Coral Bell, and
David Flint

Rhetoric matters
Owen Harries

Edward Rhodes' critique of what is, in effect, the 'Bush Doctrine' is the most penetrating that I have yet come across.

That doctrine is set out in the presidential document, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, published in September 2002. Anyone (or at least any Australian accustomed to understatement and scepticism) reading President Bush's three page introduction to that document is likely to conclude that what follows in its 31 pages is going to be an exercise in windy rhetoric. In that introduction the words 'free', 'freedom' and 'liberty' occur 28 times, while the word 'interest' appears only twice-an unusual balance for a document purporting to address the question of national security.

Yet to dismiss the document as 'mere rhetoric' would be a profound error in at least three respects. First, as Rhodes advises and as the history of the last hundred years copiously demonstrates, it is wise to take rhetoric seriously. If people had done so, they would have been much better equipped to understand the Lenins, Hitlers and Mussolinis of the world-as well as the Woodrow Wilsons, Churchills and Reagans. It is a false sophistication to believe that what political leaders say publicly is only window-dressing, and that they say and think quite different things in private.

Second, the particular ideological content of this particular document reflects a deep and persistent strain in the American psyche-one that insists that the United States has an historic, even a divine, mission to reshape the world in its own image. As Robert Kagan, one of the strongest and most effective supporters of the Bush doctrine, has put it, 'This enduring American view of their nation's exceptional place in history, their conviction that their interests and the world's interests are one, may be welcomed, ridiculed, or lamented. But it should not be doubted.' There are, of course, other competing strains in the American makeup, including very realistic ones. But one of the effects of the terror of 9/11 is that it has created a climate that favours the uniting of this messianic strain with the realist strain, producing a very assertive strategic stance, a muscular Wilsonianism.

A third and obvious reason for not dismissing the content of the document as windy rhetoric is that very shortly after it was spelt out, all its principal components were put into effect in Iraq: the ideological goal of 'draining the swamp' and replacing it with the fertile meadows of liberal democracy; the dependence on military power to achieve this goal; the readiness to use that power pre-emptively and not just to deter; and the evident willingness to proceed unilaterally if necessary-not to let any concern with consensus or compromise define the mission.
The Bush doctrine can be and has been criticised on several grounds: for overstating what even America's awesome power can achieve; for not being modest and restrained enough to reassure other powers and reconcile them to American hegemony; for creating dangerous precedents that others may exploit; for insisting on double standards for itself and others (as when it simultaneously declares that it will maintain its military supremacy and advises China to give up the 'outdated' policy of pursuing advanced military capability).

But Rhodes makes an even more fundamental criticism when he argues that the end the doctrine is concerned to pursue-a liberal democratic world-and the means it intends to use to achieve it-military power-are incompatible. The doctrine misunderstands not only the magnitude but also the nature of the task. For it 'fails to acknowledge the possibility that individuals who are free to choose may not choose what we believe is best for them, or what is in fact best for them.' And you cannot force people to be liberal and free.
Is all this irrelevant now? Does the American experience in Iraq mean that the Bush Doctrine has been discredited almost at its birth and that it will now be quietly dropped? Perhaps. But I would not bet on it just yet. For the cast of mind that it represents is a powerful one, and its advocates are determined, able and influential. Besides, a retreat from the doctrine would carry serious political costs in terms of prestige and influence.

That is why what happens in Iraq in the next few months will have an importance that transcends Iraq itself. If the American grip on the situation strengthens and rapid progress is made, the problems of the last few months will be relegated to teething trouble as part of a learning process. On the other hand, if instead of draining the swamp the United States starts to feel that it is being drawn deeper and deeper, it is likely that it will rethink how best to play its hegemonic role.

The Author
Owen Harries is a Senior Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies. He presented the ABC's 2003 Boyer Lectures on the theme, Benign or Imperial? Reflections on American Hegemony.

The 'vision thing'
Allan Gyngell

High foreign policy rhetoric has never been the Howard Government's style. Partly it smacked too much of the 'Big Picture' approach of its predecessor. But more importantly it is at odds with the pragmatic, cautious, instrumental way in which John Howard seems to view foreign policy and with the equally cautious, tactical way in which he had practised it. For the most part, policy under the Howard Government has been an incremental business, enunciated more often in talk back radio interviews than in grand set piece speeches. The exception-the two White Papers on foreign policy issued in 1997 and 2002-both caused problems: the first was overrun by the Asian financial crisis; the second had a long and difficult gestation and saw its views on the South Pacific fall victim to a policy shift almost as soon as it was published.

The long period of joint management of external policy between John Howard and Alexander Downer, now outlasted as a double act only by Menzies and Casey, has bedded itself down into a comfortable alliance of pragmatist and realist. 'Practical' and 'realistic' are, indeed, two of the Government's favourite adjectives in speeches on international policy. (In contrast, the defining coalition in the preceding Labor Government was between essentially realist Prime Ministers-Hawke and Keating-and essentially idealist foreign ministers-Hayden and Evans.)

The Howard Government's foreign policy approach was summed up in the language of the first White Paper In the National Interest in August 1997: 'Preparing for the future is not a matter of grand constructs. It is about the hard-headed pursuit of the interests which lie at the core of foreign and trade policy'. Downer proclaimed his realist credentials almost as soon as he came to office and has repeated them often.

Howard agrees with this approach1 although he has expressed it less often and has sometimes placed more explicit weight on the role of values in foreign policy. These values, however, are seen as existing cultural realities (our 'history', as he sometimes puts it) that bind nations like Australia and America or Australia and Britain together rather than as universal goals that Australia has a responsibility to promote.2

Not even in the speeches of the Defence Minister, Senator Hill, who has come closer than any of his colleagues in government to wrestling publicly with the implications of American policy, can be found anything that looks remotely like the Wilsonian internationalism that Edward Rhodes sees pervading and undermining George W. Bush's grand strategy.

In the arguments for going to war with Iraq, for example, the language of Australian foreign policy showed little of Bush's moral universalism ('The power and appeal of human liberty is felt in every life and every land. And the greatest power of freedom is to overcome hatred and violence If Rhodes is right, the Howard government's grand strategy depends on an ever-closer union with a power whose 'liberal crusade . . . promises to lead to failure and tragedy'. and to turn the creative gifts of men and women to the pursuits of peace'3) or of Blair's thundering Gladstonianism ('But these challenges and the others that confront us-poverty, the environment, the ravages of disease-require a world of order and stability. Dictators like Saddam, terrorist groups like Al Qaida threaten the very existence of such a world.').4

Instead, the arguments offered in favour of Australia's involvement were almost all functional and national. As John Howard told the Australian people, the reasons for Australia's participation related to ' . . . the concern I have for the security of this country in the medium- to longer-term if the twin evils of the spread of weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism are not confronted and are not effectively dealt with . . . Of course, our alliance with the United States is also a factor, unapologetically so.'5 Any hint of the 'moral imperative' that Rhodes points to at the core of the Bush Administration's policies is deeply muted.

Even the case for Operation Helpem Fren, the intervention in the Solomon Islands, usually (and incorrectly in my view) presented as Exhibit A in the argument that some sort of fundamental shift has taken place in Australia's foreign policy approach, is made in quite limited terms. The reasons again come down to Australia's national security: 'If Australia wants security we need to do all that we can to ensure that our region, our neighbourhood, is stable-that governance is strong and the rule of law is just.'6

'Australian foreign policy', Alexander Downer insisted, 'must be based not on dreamy idealism, but on a hard-headed understanding of the power structures of the Asia Pacific region.'7 But what happens when the 'dreamy idealist' is your major ally?

The problem for the Howard Government is not (as it arguably is for Tony Blair) that it has signed on to a particular, flawed, vision of the world. John Howard's sceptical approach to the 'vision thing' seems much closer in tone to that of the current President's father. Rather the problem is the practical one that, if Rhodes is right, the Howard Government's own grand strategy depends on an ever-closer union with a power whose 'liberal crusade . . . promises to lead to failure and tragedy'.

For the deepening of the alliance relationship with the United States lies at the heart of that strategy. It is articulated in the latest foreign policy White Paper, although it sometimes struggles to make itself heard clearly above the buzz of diplomatic cocktail chatter going on around it. The White Paper argues that Australia's security alliance with the United States is a 'practical manifestation' of our shared values and is fundamental to our security, that the United States will remain the pre-eminent global power for the foreseeable future and that-and implicitly 'therefore'-the Government wants to deepen the alliance.8

Confidence in the continued global dominance of a strong, outward-looking and economically robust United States has underpinned the Howard Government's commitments to the Iraq war, to a Free Trade Agreement with the United States, to deeper interoperability between the Australian and American defence forces. The conviction that a stronger relationship with the United States strengthens Australia's position in Asia and the Pacific has shaped the government's approach to regional diplomacy too.

So the Australian government (not to mention the nation's reputation and international influence) has a lot riding on an American vision about which its own members have been politely silent but which seems at odds with almost everything they believe about the way the world works.

Allan Gyngell is Executive Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy.

Endnotes
1 See for example his Address to the Sydney Institute, (Sydney: 1 July 2003).
2 See Prime Minister's joint press conference with George W. Bush at the President's Texas ranch in May 2003.
3 Address to the Nation by President George W. Bush (17 March 2003).
4 Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, Address to the Nation (20 March 2003).
5 Hon. John Howard MP, Address to the National Press Club (Canberra: 14 March 2003).
6 Hon. John Howard MP Address to Australia-America Association luncheon (Melbourne: 2 September 2003).
7 Hon. Alexander Downer MP, 'ñNeither Isolated nor Isolationistî: The Legacy of Australia's Close Engagement with Asia', Speech to Murdoch University Asia Research Centre (9 August 2000).
8 see Advancing the National Interest, chapter 6.

The Author
Allan Gyngell is Executive Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy.

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