Constructive Internationalism: An American Foreign Policy for the Early Twenty-First Century

The American military expedition to Mesopotamia launched in March 2003 has generated in its wake deep concerns about the nature and future course of Bush administration foreign policy. While the regime of Saddam Hussein is being laid to rest, questions and doubts about the future goals of the "American Goliath" abound in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Traditional allies fear that the Iraq campaign portends a lurch toward unilateralism and a pursuit of narrow national self-interest; others suggest the contrary, that is, an anomaly in American policy that will self-correct with a return to balanced multilateralism.

The Fractured World of American Foreign Policy

In reality, the markings of policy have been clearly delineated since the tragic events of 11 September 2001. They reflect a crisis-driven perspective emanating from the Oval Office, the national security policy team, and Congress. They emphasize the dangers and vulnerabilities the United States faces from terrorist organizations, so-called rogue regimes allied with terrorists, and governments seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD). President George W. Bush graphically portrayed the crisis confronting the country as an open-ended state of war and immediately began to mobilize the nation to meet a danger presented as transcendental.

The imperative for drastic change in national security policy was made clear in a view of the international arena as one divided between good and evil, with a political-diplomatic polarization reflected in Bush's observation that "you are either with us or against us." No nuances or shadings were to be accepted. At the same time, the nation's tolerance for domestic civil dissent and external allegiances was constricted with passage by Congress of the Patriot Act and assertions by the attorney general that narrowed the margins of civil liberties previously enjoyed by American citizens. Arab members of the population—a unique diaspora group—were subsequently subjected to special surveillance measures.

However, it was in the military and counterintelligence realms that the U.S. response to the events of 11 September proved most immediately dramatic in effect. A brilliantly conceived and swiftly executed campaign brought the end of the Taliban regime and caused the al Qaeda leadership to flee Afghanistan. Fissures, however, soon thereafter emerged when the expressed willingness of Western allies to provide military support was summarily rejected by Defense Department officials, causing public embarrassment to some European governments. Mindful of frustrations experienced by the United States during the 1999 Kosovo campaign, the Bush administration appeared on the threshold of rejecting North Atlantic Treaty Organization military solidarity. Concerns mounted in early 2002 when President Bush, without prior consultation with U.S. allies, characterized Iraq, North Korea, and Iran in his State of the Union address as an "axis of evil," implying that no diplomatic accommodation was feasible or worthy of serious consideration by the U.S. government.

The capstone was the presidential address at West Point in June 2002, when Bush unveiled his administration's new global strategic doctrine of preemptive war. Understandably, it aroused widening concern among U.S. allies. While the Bush administration contended that the doctrine would be applied in a pragmatic fashion, its foreign policy spokesmen have presented more open-ended, absolutist perspectives. Of special concern, international conventions and rule-of-law principles appeared to be placed in limbo. Military intervention in Iraq without a supportive Security Council resolution was seen as a precipitous action, which produced the emergence of a Security Council "coalition of the unwilling."

While supporters of the administration's action in Iraq point for justification to the article 51 self-defense provisions of the United Nations Charter, issues of immediacy and legitimacy obtain. Article 51 makes clear that self-defense is warranted only in the face of a clear and imminent threat. The U.S. action in Iraq suggests a looser interpretation of article 51 by...