Thought Theater

Newsweek: New Bush Strategy - Containment genre: Just Jihad & Polispeak & Six Degrees of Speculation

Michael Hirsh of Newsweek offers some interesting observations on what he believes will be the new Bush administration policy of "containment" with regard to a number of persistent issues. Read the full article here.

May 22, 2006 - An old word is gaining new currency in Washington: containment. You may be hearing a lot more of it as the Bush administration hunkers down for its final two years. Containment of Iraq’s low-level civil war, which shows every sign of persisting for years despite the new government inaugurated this week. Containment of Iran’s nuclear power, which may lead to a missile defense system in Europe. Containment of the Islamism revived by Hamas and Hizbullah, by the Sunni suicide bombers in Iraq, as well as by the “Shiite Crescent"—as Jordan’s King Abdullah once called it—running from Iran through Southern Iraq and into the Gulf.

While Hirsh has identified the major issues in the middle east, one must also consider North Korea, the growing trensions with leftist regimes in South America, and much of the world's increasingly negatve perceptions of America and Americans (see this prior posting).

So today’s containment is a furtive policy being developed willy-nilly behind the scenes, as Bush’s pragmatic second-term officials seek to clean up the vast Mideast mess left by the ideologues who dominated in the first term. A series of cautious concepts similar to those that came to dominate the cold war are emerging as the least worst way of holding off powerful forces that are also going to be around for along time: disintegration in Iraq, expansion in Iran, Islamism all over.

According to U.S. officials, Maliki failed to fill the critical defense and interior ministry posts over the weekend because every well-known candidate was deemed too sectarian or too associated with militias. As a result, whoever is chosen, it is becoming clear that Maliki’s government will likely become a government of nobodies—in other words, inoffensive but weak individuals.

So the very best that can be hoped for in Iraq, probably for many years to come, will be a non-bloodbath, a low-level civil war that doesn’t get worse than the current cycle of insurgent killings and Shiite death-squad reprisals. This is bad, but it could be much worse. Containment, says one Army officer involved in training in Iraq, is at least "doable." He adds: "The only real question is: How do we keep Iraq from becoming a permissive environment for terrorists."

The New York Times reported Monday that the Bush administration hopes to establish an antimissile site in Europe design to forestall Iranian attacks. (Shades of the cold war). “I think you could describe our approach as containment," says a senior U.S. official.

Whoever becomes the next president will inherit most of these problems—and, it is likely, the policy of containment as well.

The biggest problem with the new embrace of containment in this era, of course, is that it is largely unconscious—and it has gone unacknowledged in public. It may be time to call it by its name.

As I finished reading the article, one thought immediately entered my mind. In 2008, as the country will be in the midst of electing a new president, could the campaign language of the Democrats be as simple as asking the question, "Are you living in a safer world today than you were before 9/11?"

If that's the case, then the outline of the Bush legacy will be clearly in place. What will have begun as a worldwide sanctioned war on terror...then morphed into a manifesto to export democracy to the oppressed nations of the world after the invasion of Iraq...then became a failed effort to create a functional democracy in a country plagued by sectarian conflict...then became a containment policy reminiscent of the cold war where more rogue regimes possessed nuclear capability, the middle east became more unstable, Islamic extremists grew exponentially and gained influence in more countries, and South America turned sharply left. Unfortunately, that merely covers the foreign policy legacy. The domestic legacy may be equally unsettling.

If I were asked in 2009 to provide a short summation of what went wrong, I believe I already have the answer I would offer. George Bush was a man focused on legacy...unfortunately his focus came from a preoccupation with looking backward instead of looking forward. Obsessed with not repeating the mistakes that led his father to serve but one term, he was unable to separate the decisions he encountered from the fears he embraced.

He wagered his legacy on political strategies that were singularly guided by the goal of retaining a majority constituency. He partnered with the similarly motivated and equally obsessed Karl Rove to establish, exert, and retain power. They approached their goal with a fervor not seen since the presidency of Richard Nixon. In the end, George Bush will likely serve the remainder of his second term. Nonetheless, he will be seen to have won a number of battles but when all is said and done he will have ultimately lost the war.