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In response to Steve WaltNOVEMBER 9, 2010 - 6:34 PMBY WILL INBODEN

With former President George W. Bush’s memoir being released today, Steve Walt yesterday launched

a preemptive strike against the Bush record. In this article, my fellow Foreign Policy blogger attempts

to blame Bush for just about everything that went wrong in the last decade, while crediting Bush with

nothing that went right. One suspects that Walt might even hold Bush responsible for the Texas

Rangers’ recent loss in the World Series — according to Walt, as owner of the Rangers, Bush "wasn’t

particularly good at that job either."

Walt offers up a 14-point indictment against Bush (perhaps it’s a sign of how animated some Bush

opponents get that even the realists start imitating Woodrow Wilson, at least when it comes to writing

14-point documents). The more spurious accusations merit responses — and the omissions bear noting

as well:

Walt singles out the Bush administration for "insufficient attention" and a "cavalier attitude"

towards Osama bin Laden and terrorism in the eight months before the September 11th attacks,

and notes accusingly that "9/11 happened on Bush’s watch, and the buck stops at his desk." Yet

Walt fails to mention the Clinton administration’s preceding eight years of relative inattention to

the threat from bin Laden (including missed opportunities to kill or capture him). Nor does Walt

give Bush any credit for one of his administration’s signal achievements in the 7.5 years following

September 11th: protecting the United States from any further large-scale terror attack.

He calls the "Global War on Terror" a "rhetorical catastrophe" because of the vagueness of the

term "terrorism" and the purported inaccuracy of the term "war," since terrorism allegedly is not a

"military problem." This ignores the fact that the Bush administration deliberately made the

strategic choice to focus on "terror" precisely to make clear that the conflict was not with Islam

itself — a matter of first-order importance in the battle of ideas. Of course the administration knew

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itself — a matter of first-order importance in the battle of ideas. Of course the administration knew

that terrorism is just a tactic, and that this didn’t mean a new U.S. campaign in Northern Ireland or

Sri Lanka. Moreover, both Walt and the Bush White House would agree that the conflict demanded

stepped-up intelligence efforts, new law enforcement tools, domestic security measures, and

multilateral cooperation – all of which the Bush administration embraced. But al Qaeda also

declared war on the United States and followed through with the bloodiest act of war on U.S. soil in

our history, under the sponsorship and protection of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. If that

doesn’t qualify as a "military problem," then nothing does.

He accuses Bush of "sabotaging peace in the Middle East," while neglecting to mention that Bush

was the first president to declare that official U.S. policy supports the creation of a Palestinian

state. This was a paradigm shift in the U.S. posture, a notable affirmation of Palestinian

aspirations, and continues to be a key pillar of the otherwise-troubled peace process today.

Moreover, Bush articulated another uncomfortable truth necessary to the cause of peace: Peace

would not be possible as long as the Palestinian leadership (read: Yasir Arafat) was compromised

by support of terrorism and unaccountability to the Palestinian people. For all of his limitations,

current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is a more credible and capable

negotiating partner in helping build a viable Palestinian state — a vindication of Bush’s insight.

Walt cites the Bush administration’s refusal to recognize the Hamas victory in the 2006

Palestinian elections as evidence of a cynical, selective approach to democracy. But an essential

pillar of democracy is the renunciation of terrorism and peaceful participation in the political

process — terms which Hamas refused to embrace, and the reason why the EU and the Obama

administration don’t recognize the Hamas government either.

He says that Bush administration policies "unwittingly encouraged" nuclear proliferation by North

Korea and Iran under the myth that if only more concessions and inducements had been offered by

the United States, Pyongyang and Tehran would have disavowed their pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Yet this implicitly ascribes an unrealistic omnipotence to the United States (i.e. U.S. actions are the

most important factor in determining other nation’s behavior) and ignores several other crucial

variables, such as the serious flaws in the Clinton administration’s 1994 Agreed Framework with

North Korea; the fact that both the North Korean and Iranian regimes decided to pursue nukes in

part to divert domestic attention from their own misrule and to assert their power in their

respective regions; or the many concessions and incentives the Bush administration did offer in

both cases. Not to mention that any discussion of the Bush record on non-proliferation needs to

include the significant success of persuading Libya to give up its nuclear program.

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And yes, no litany of accusations against Bush would be complete without blaming him for the

global financial crisis (though to be fair, Walt admits that Bush "does not deserve all the blame,"

just most of it). Again, what Walt fails to mention is telling, including factors such as the Clinton

administration’s irresponsible expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act and sub-prime

mortgage lending, the categorical blockage by Congressional Democrats of any efforts to reform

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or the longstanding bipartisan support for the Fed’s easy money

policies. Scholars will no doubt spend decades trying to understand the causes of the economic

crisis, and few actors, including the Bush administration, will emerge faultless. But any serious

effort to understand the crisis needs to go beyond simplistic polemics.

And what of Walt’s omissions? Well, any fair assessment of President Bush’s record also needs to take

into account his robust support for free trade (including the Central American Free Trade Agreement,

and increasing the number of bilateral FTAs from three to 14); his multilateral efforts to combat WMD

proliferation through the Proliferation Security Initiative; his landmark development policies such as

the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the $15 billion committed to HIV/AIDS relief, and

indispensable support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; and especially

Bush’s successful management of great power relations such that the United States pulled off two

delicate trifectas of solid relations with Asian powers Japan, China, and India, and (by his second term)

with European power centers France, Germany, and Britain.

Perhaps most telling is a fact that Walt concedes, and laments: the significant number of Bush

administration policies and strategies that the Obama administration has adopted. If this continues to

be the case, then critics of the Bush administration record will have to shift their critique to U.S.

foreign policy in general.