National Strength in Chaos

MANILA —  The events of Sept. 11 precipitated one of the most dramatic periods in U.S. foreign policy since the early years of the Cold War. After President Bush summoned an aroused nation to a far-reaching, if ill-defined, “war on terror,” U.S. troops and their allies toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Since then, they have committed themselves to what could become a dangerous, long-term military occupation of one of the poorest, most violent and most chaotic places on Earth. In much of the world, a wave of sympathy for the victims of the terrorist attacks has gradually yielded to apprehension about what many perceive as excessive U.S. combativeness and unilateralism--and especially about the Bush administration’s determined support for “regime change” in Iraq.

An ugly rift has opened between the U.S. and many of its closest Cold War allies in Europe as recriminations fly across the Atlantic, an ocean that seems to widen and deepen from one month to the next. U.S. diplomatic isolation appears to be growing. Bitter battles have erupted over U.S. opposition to the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Protocol. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was roundly booed at the U.N. summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg, South Africa.

As suicide bombers caused grisly havoc across Israel, and as European and Arab criticism of Israeli defense policy reached new levels of intensity and bitterness, the U.S. committed itself as never before to support the security policies of a hard-line Likud government. A nation initially more unified than at any time since Pearl Harbor was gradually divided by questions and doubts about the White House’s strategy for winning the war. A series of Republican senior statesmen, many with close ties to the Bush family, came forward with strong words of caution about rumored plans for invading Iraq even as heated disputes among the president’s inner circle of advisors boiled over into public view.

Like George Washington at Valley Forge, James Madison fleeing British troops set to burn the White House, James K. Polk beset by domestic critics over the Mexican War or Abraham Lincoln facing down the peace movement during the Civil War, Bush is discovering that war is the sternest test of an American president’s political skills. Nobody knows yet whether Bush will ride the tiger and surmount the challenge of wartime leadership like Lincoln, Madison and Polk--or whether Bush, like Lyndon B. Johnson and Harry S. Truman, will be forced out of the White House prematurely by the political consequences of a difficult war. But a year after Sept. 11, there can be little doubt that the political fortunes of this administration will be determined by the war that Osama bin Laden unleashed.

Fortunately, the dark and stormy clouds hovering over the White House these days have their share of silver linings. First, despite increasing doubts about the administration’s war strategy--and despite troubling news on the economic front--the president continues to command high levels of public trust. His job-approval ratings, down a little from their stratospheric highs, remain solidly positive. The first president in more than 100 years to scrape into the White House trailing his opponent in the popular vote is retaining his stature in the public eye.

Second, the shock of Sept. 11 has made Americans (even senators and members of Congress) much more willing to support a strong and active foreign policy. This is not just about the military. After Sept. 11, Congress finally appropriated money to pay U.S. dues to the United Nations. The foreign-aid budget has received its most substantial increase in years, and the president won trade-promotion authority. Just as the Soviet threat during the Cold War persuaded many skeptical Americans to support sustained and expensive U.S. initiatives overseas, so the war on terror is persuading us today that the U.S. must pay the price of leadership.

Down the road, this renewed national commitment to foreign-policy leadership is likely to strengthen the president’s hand. There is little doubt Americans would support substantial financial and even military commitments to facilitate the Arab-Israeli peace process and help a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq get back on its feet.

Third, and perhaps most significant, there is every reason to believe that U.S. foreign policy is in better shape than it looks. The foreign policy process is notoriously messy. Cabinet members squabble openly with one another. Congress and the executive branch are at one another’s throats. Foreign-policy experts and former government officials write blistering opinion pieces denouncing administration shortcomings. Europeans and famous American intellectuals denounce the simplicity, militarism and unilateralism of U.S. foreign policy.

It’s important to realize that this kind of chaos doesn’t mean that our system is breaking down. It means that our system is working. U.S. foreign policy has its own unique style. It isn’t the product of masterminds developing long-term national strategies in ivory towers. It is the product of give and take, of political battles, of struggles between lobbies, interest groups and bureaucracies in both the Congress and the executive branch. The Pentagon pulls one way; the State Department another; the House and the Senate throw their weight around. The result is almost always a hideous, embarrassing and very public mess.

For more than 200 years, experts and seasoned political observers have looked at the U.S. foreign policy process with fascinated horror--and predicted imminent disaster. Yet something very strange keeps happening: It keeps working.

Consider containment. Conventional wisdom today looks on the Truman administration as a golden age of statesmanship and bipartisan harmony, a time when “wise men” shaped the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

That isn’t how it looked at the time. Richard Nixon denounced Truman Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s “Cowardly College of Communist Containment” and the “striped-pants” conspirators in the State Department who were giving away the store to the communists. Sen. Joseph McCarthy charged that the government was riddled with traitors. The Korean War came as a surprise to Washington. Gen. Douglas MacArthur openly challenged Truman’s war leadership. Europeans and intellectuals couldn’t conceal their contempt for the simple-minded anti-communism of Washington’s attitude toward the Cold War.

But in the end, it worked. Containment brought down the Soviet Union without a nuclear war, just as Truman and George F. Kennan had hoped. It is likely to work again.

The war on terror is a new kind of challenge and a new kind of war. It isn’t surprising that we aren’t yet sure how to go about winning it.

The American process of open debate is already beginning to show signs of consensus. On Iraq, for example, the solid center now seems to agree with the president that regime change is necessary, by force if there is no alternative, but that both congressional approval and international support are needed. An increasingly broad consensus holds that the U.S. should support the birth of a Palestinian state--and that the U.S. should work harder to promote democracy in the Arab Middle East.

We have a long way to go before we build a national consensus about the war on terror, but history suggests that in our own messy way we will get there in the end.