Doug Bandow hace un repaso a la calamitosa política exterior de Bush: Assessing the Bush Administration: A Foreign Catastrophe at Every Turn. El artículo responde a un documento de la Administración en el que se aplauden las medidas y los "logros" de los últimos 8 años en política exterior. Según Bandow prácticamente no se salva nada.
The president's principal claim, leading p.1, is that he "kept America safe." One aspect of that was waging "the Global War on Terror." Too bad al-Qaeda survives and the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan with a military solution looking ever more distant. Nuclear-armed Pakistan is being sucked into the vortex, creating the potential for genuine catastrophe.
As for Iraq, the administration glories in the fact that it "freed 25 million Iraqis from the rule of Saddam Hussein." Yes, and in the process left millions of Iraqis dead, wounded, and displaced. Those who survived are living under a government likely to become increasingly authoritarian and sectarian. That's sure a great way to create democracy. (...)
The Bush administration claims to have "invigorated international alliances and partnership," yet most of America's friends reacted in horror to Washington's militaristic and hubristic approach to foreign affairs. The administration squandered the enormous goodwill generated by 9/11, making it more difficult to convince sympathetic states to cooperate in destroying transnational terrorist networks.
As for expanding NATO, the administration has made America less secure by multiplying security commitments in a region of no significant geopolitical interest to America. The Bush administration sacrificed relations with Russia, a rebounding power whose aid Washington desires in a number of areas. Last August the US even found itself confronting nuclear-armed Russia in the Caucasus over a war started by a third country. Ironically, the administration set the precedent for Russian intervention against Georgia with Washington's misguided efforts to dismember Serbia and create an independent Kosovo. A foolish "success" is no success.
