Joe Roberts: What the world needs now is another George W. Bush

Article content

The beauty of being born into Reagan’s America was that for over 20 years, there was consensus on foreign policy and America’s role in the world.

In the post-Soviet world, peace and prosperity reigned supreme, all guided by American strength. These were the good times.

Under Democratic and Republican presidents alike, political battles were waged on the terrain of domestic politics — America’s role in steadfastly defending Pax Americana was rarely in question.

All that was turned upside down in 2008. On the campaign trail Senator Barack Obama had promised to “change Washington.” The slogan didn’t amount to much. After two terms in the Oval Office, Washington appeared to be nearly unchanged.

American foreign policy abroad however, had taken a dangerous and dramatic turn, one that appeased wrong doers, that made the world less safe, and that we are still reeling from today — in fact, it opened the door the the Iranian attack on Israel and Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

In 2008, then Senator Barack Obama promised to “engage in aggressive personal diplomacy” after decades of American deterrence. It was a new day!

This new president would surely make friends out of the mullahs in Tehran and the brutal thug in the Kremlin, what with his cool factor, his penchant for basketball diplomacy, and his annual concerts at the White House featuring music’s a-list, how could these brutal dictators not come around?

Putin and the mullahs were unimpressed. They spoke the language of raw power, and unfortunately radical friendship didn’t quite send the right message to deter them from funding terrorism and occupying their neighbours.

This strategic softness signalled to our foes a new American era — one of vulnerability.

Obama’s “aggressive personal diplomacy” extended to the Kremlin too. Looking back on it, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arriving in Moscow with a childish reset button was the beginning of the end.

Our foes, from Iran’s Ayatollahs to Putin’s Kremlin saw opportunity in American retreat, in the absurd confidence that world peace is a product of goodwill rather than strength.

But we can’t put all the blame on the back of Democrats. Sure, Obama’s detente with Iran and Russia was the turning point. And, his failures to deter Putin from occupying 20 per cent of Georgia and his failure to deter Bashar al-Assad from using chemical weapons in Syria in 2013 only deepened the crisis. And of course, the current Biden administration’s eagerness to extract itself from issues of importance in the Middle East has signalled to America’s enemies that they were taking their ball and going home.

But, during this time, a remaking of the Republican Party was underway too. “Compassionate conservatism” was replaced with “America First.” The populism that’s swept the party, with former president Donald Trump at the helm, has been equally dangerous to America’s place in the world, with NATO allies uncertain of America’s trustworthiness should the call come in.

The Reagan doctrine, the peace through strength policy that brought down the Soviet empire, was truly just a memory on both sides of the aisle.

The last American president that truly had the frame in full view was George W. Bush. Say what you will about Operation Iraqi Freedom, but at the end of the day the military objective of that war was successfully completed.

Saddam Hussein was removed from power, his Ba’ath party dismantled, and Iraq freed from his grip. And while the vacuum left behind has proven to be tumultuous, the world is undeniably a better place without Hussein leading Iraq.

In fact, the aftermath of that war wouldn’t have been so tumultuous had President Obama took a firm hand with Iran. If Tehran had feared the consequences of American power, then it likely wouldn’t have pumped money, training, and terror to dozens of proxy groups in Iraq.

Iran wouldn’t have been able to capitalize on the Syrian Civil War either. Lebanon might even still be a deeply flawed but at least stable country instead of the failed state it is today.

As much as nature abhors a vacuum, terror states love the opportunity they present, and will gleefully fill them.

If only we had done things differently.

Then-senator John McCain’s presidential running mate Sarah Palin has not been remembered by history for her prescient foreign policy statements. On the campaign trail in 2008, however, she said “After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.” In reporting on it at the time, Foreign Policy magazine called the statement “strange.” Strange in 2008 has turned out to be prophetic.

It really makes one wonder what kind of world we’d be living in today if McCain had won the 2008 election, instead of Obama. McCain was a man steeped in the old Washington belief that America must lead on the world stage. He was a foreign policy senator, and would have been a foreign policy president.

We didn’t get McCain and his vision for American foreign policy. We got Obama and his make friends with the bad guys fantasy.

Then we got Trump with his populism. While as president, Trump took a stronger line with Iran, shepherded the Abraham accords and moved the American Israeli embassy to Jerusalem, the Republican party has become more isolationist under his leadership.

And now Biden, who at times shows flashes of the vision of the never-was president McCain, but nearly always seems to retreat to the “friends at all costs” strategy pioneered by Obama.

The world doesn’t need friends in the White House. It needs champions of liberty and architects of peace through power. Until we re-embrace these truths, we will continue to see the erosion of the order that once promised a safer, more prosperous world.

Like it or not, the free world is kept free from leaders inside the beltway, and usually one man who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. American presidents have increasingly lost sight of that truth, opening the door to a multipolar world, the degradation of Pax Americana, and the danger that comes with it.

What the world needs now is another George W. Bush. Too bad there isn’t one on the ballot.

National Post

Joe Roberts is managing director of defence and foreign affairs at Winston Wilmont Public Affairs.