home > by publication type > interviews > Mead: Bush Gets an A for Effort in Iraq And a C- for Achievement
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| Interviewer: | Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor |
|---|---|
| Interviewee: | Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy |
September 1, 2004
Walter Russell Mead, the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, says he supports the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq as part of its war against terrorism. He gives Bush an A for effort but only a C- for execution. Overall, he gives the administration’s foreign policy an “incomplete.” “It is what I would have given Clinton after his first four years. In any administration, you do a lot of things that you try out and you really can’t at this point say what the final result will be.”
Mead graded the eight years of the Clinton administration’s foreign policy in 2000. He awarded President Clinton an overall C+, but he now says he would have lowered the grade if he’d known about the looming terror threat and North Korea’s effort to evade restrictions on its nuclear program.
He was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on September 1, 2004.
In December 2000, you co-authored an article with E. Benjamin Skinner that gave the Clinton administration a C+ for its foreign-policy efforts. How would you grade President Bush’s first term?
Well, the first thing is that I probably would have given Clinton a lower grade if I had known then how far al Qaeda was advanced.
Yes, your article did not even focus on terrorism.
That’s right, because my assumption was— which was pretty much the public understanding then— that terrorism was dealt with and we didn’t have to think about it. So, points off for terrorism.
For Bush, I think you would have to talk about an overall average. There are so many things. I’d give him a solid B to B+ in terms of managing relations with the great powers; that is to say, Russia, China, India, and Japan. I’d give him an A in South Asia. Bush gets points for the combination of dealing with President [Pervez] Musharraf— and getting Pakistan, which had been a Taliban backer, more or less on course— and preventing a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.
[Concerning] Iraq, I guess I would divide between effort and achievement. I’d give an A for effort. I would also say that the administration made the right decision that Saddam Hussein was the next address to visit, but I think the administration obviously did not do a very good job of building international support before the war, and [it] clearly underestimated the risks and difficulties that would follow afterward. [Administration officials] also didn’t take advantage of some of the planning that their own State Department was doing for postwar reconstruction. They have to lose some points there. I guess you are stuck with a C-.
In an earlier interview we did, you called the postwar planning “a catastrophic misjudgment.”
I notice the president has used the phrase “catastrophic success,” which I was also hearing from other people in the administration last spring. So I guess “catastrophic” is now an acceptable phrase, if in a different context.
So you give him an A in Iraq for effort?
Yes. But in terms of achievement, just a C-. Saddam Hussein is gone, so you can’t flunk him. But you might also say “incomplete.” If six months from now, a year from now, we are looking at an Iraqi government that more or less has a security system evolving, if the Shiite situation has calmed down a little bit and [the government is] able to concentrate on the more dangerous insurgency in the north within the Sunni triangle, and if Iraqis are more and more taking the lead politically, well maybe it works out. But it is too soon to tell.
The Kerry campaign is making much of the Bush administration’s strained relations with European powers— other than Britain— and it is clear Kerry is mostly concerned about France and Germany. Would the French have been involved normally?
If you are going to fail Americans for not having good relations with France, then a lot of our presidents would have to come down in their grades, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, who failed to have good relations with [Free French President] Charles de Gaulle even when we were in the midst of physically liberating France from the Nazis. I do think that the Bush people probably thought that in the end France will do what it so often does, which is sort of pounce and prance and drive everyone crazy and get all the limelight and then at the end of the day go along.
The real problem was Germany. It is interesting that the Kerry people have not made U.S.-German relations more of a focus, because, in fact, what has changed is that Germany sided with Paris rather than with Washington in this latest round. There are a lot of factors there, but I think the reality is that even before the invasion of Iraq, when Gerhard Schroeder was re-elected chancellor on a pledge to oppose Bush’s policies no matter what, the die was cast. Bush at that point had not taken a lot of the steps seen as so provocative later.
Another factor is that Europe, in the last 10 years, believed it was strong and getting stronger and more important [as a result of] the euro and the development of European institutions. The United States was going to have to pay more attention to Europe. And in the United States, very quietly, I think both Democrats and Republicans were thinking maybe in the future we’ll pay less attention to them. The Europeans are not spending money on their military. They are not a source of threat, but they are also not particularly willing to do a lot to help us beyond their own immediate interests. And on probably our biggest long-term issue, the future of Asia, Europe has no real interest. You could look at a country like India, which is concerned about the Middle East and about the future of China, and argue that the connections between American and Indian interests are greater than the connection between American and European interests in the future.
This is a tectonic shift. I blame the Bush people for rubbing salt in wounds and being unnecessarily provocative. But I think the structural changes in U.S.-European relations are probably something no administration could control.
So, a B or a B- for relations with Europe?
Probably a B because, at the end of the day, the biggest loser of the past year was France, not the United States. A year ago, France was defying America and leading a worldwide coalition against us. Now, after failing to influence the leader of the new EU [European Union] Commission, it is stuck with the transport portfolio in the new EU Commission. So, in a sense, France paid a much higher price for this than Bush did.
Some people have said that the war in Iraq has interfered with the war against terrorism. What do you think?
I think if you are saying that chasing down al Qaeda remnants in the hills of Afghanistan is the only priority in the war against terrorism, you can criticize Bush. My own sense has always been if you look at what Osama bin Laden and his movement want, probably its first goal is Saudi Arabia and its second goal is Pakistan. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended up tightening the U.S.-Pakistani relationship and the fundamentalists are much farther from getting hold of Pakistan now, it would seem to me, than they were a couple of years ago. And by the same token, Saddam Hussein’s refusal to disarm in compliance with the 1991 cease-fire meant that the Saudis had to have United States troops on their soil as part of the containment policy. And the presence of those troops was why Osama bin Laden declared war on both the United States and the Saudis. It was a tremendously delegitimizing and destabilizing factor in Saudi politics. With Saddam gone, the troops are gone. And what you are seeing, I think it is fair to say, is a Saudi regime, partly buoyed up by the increase in the price of oil, but also without this albatross of American troops at home, that has actually been able to take a tougher line on terrorism and al Qaeda than it was two years ago. I would say our enemies in the region are strategically in a worse situation than they were when Saddam Hussein was in power.
What is the overall grade?
Incomplete. It is what I would have given Clinton after his first four years. In any administration, you do a lot of things that you try out and you really can’t, at this point, say what the final result will be.
What about the Middle East? You came back from the Middle East earlier this year very concerned about the lack of United States support for Palestinians.
With Saddam out of the way, we do need to find a way to get to work on the Israeli-Palestinian process. Now, I would agree, as I think Dennis Ross [Middle East negotiator for presidents George H.W. Bush and Clinton] and just about everybody else who thinks about this agree, that the hope of cutting a deal with [Palestinian Authority President] Yasir Arafat appears to be— alas— dead. I have come to the conclusion that he is not really a leader. He is a cork who floats up or down, indicating the general level of Palestinian opinion. But you wouldn’t ask a cork to lead water somewhere. It only reflects the level. So the obvious route to get something moving is closed. Arafat is still blocking the emergence of a new Palestinian leadership. But he himself is not a partner.
I would say maybe it is time to look at some unconventional approaches. One of the things we should do is try to figure out a way to look at the parts of any two-state compromise solution that would be of benefit to Palestinians, which would compensate those who lost land and don’t return; it would also be a process making sure that Palestinians have citizenship and legal, economic, social, and political rights wherever they live and wherever they go. You don’t have to negotiate this with Arafat, or for that matter, with [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon, but you could start thinking about the international process.
There is no question that this administration has done very little on the Palestinian-Israeli front, correct?
I don’t blame them for that. Any administration coming in on January 21, 2001, had to face a complete collapse of the peace process, an intifada had erupted, you had Sharon. Everyone would have said, “Let’s let the situation cool down for a bit.” Then you had 9/11 coming on top of that, which was spectacularly bad timing.
Looking back on it, I would take a few more points off Clinton for basically turning a peace process that over 20-30 years had been an incremental bit-by-bit movement to somehow suddenly being all or nothing. While he was president, we either had to solve everything, or we would end up with no peace process at all. This was a terrible disaster for the United States, and [after 9/11/] we had to engage with the Arab world without a peace process, and we have lost [a lot of] momentum. I think in a second Bush term, [Middle East peace] clearly has got to be a priority. But let’s not be sentimental. You can’t turn Arafat into a peace partner just because you want a peace partner. He is what he is.
If Bush is re-elected, should Colin Powell be replaced as secretary of state?
I think a lot of the successes of the administration have come right out of the State Department: the management of Pakistan-India; the ability to keep relations with Taiwan and China on an even keel, without disturbing Japan; whatever the problems with the North Korean process, or with the Iranians, we’ve actually been dealing in a very multilateral, balanced way on these issues. We haven’t solved them, but we are moving on them without breaking with the rest of the world, at a time when we don’t want to.
I do give Bush bad marks on Latin America, particularly in neglecting President [Vicente] Fox of Mexico. One of the best things about the Bush administration when it came in seemed to be the realization that Mexico was at a historic turning point and had opened its political system and was opening to the United States in a really new way. The failure to meet the Mexicans on some common ground and try to help that direction take another step forward means we have lost some ground there. Also relations with Venezuela have not been a great success. Things in Colombia seem a little bit better. But Brazil and Argentina are bigger headaches for the United States.
In Africa, the grade would be “better than expected.” We are doing some things there.
How would you grade Bush on North Korea?
Unlike a lot of people, I have actually been to North Korea, and I have to tell you that what we have done so far looks OK in that we have maintained the group of nations working together in a united front. The Clinton people produced an agreement that we know was very flawed. I would have deducted more points from Clinton’s grade if I had known the North Koreans were cheating. The basic North Korean approach is to say, “I am going to sell you my nuclear program for a lot of money.” A few years later, because they have nothing else to sell, they want to sell it to you again for a lot of money. If Senator Kerry has some rabbits to produce out of his hat, I’d love to see the rabbits. I don’t see where we get more out of this.
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