1. Presentation by Dr. Kevin Lasher
POL 314: U.S. Foreign Policy
Presentation by Dr. Kevin Lasher

2. The Bush Foreign Policy:
An Evaluation

3. Bush Foreign Policy

4. Bush: The New Truman?
President Truman left office very unpopular, but is viewed as great or near-great by many historians

5. The Events of September 11, 2001

6. Bush Doctrine
Realism
Hegemonism

7. Bush Doctrine Preemptive/preventative war Unilateralism
Maintain US hegemony
Terrorism and rogue states
Fight terrorism wherever it appears
Focus on Afghanistan and Iraq

8. Foreign Policy Successes
Significant increase in aid to Africa to combat AIDs

9. Foreign Policy Successes
Typical “complicated” relationship with China

10. Foreign Policy Successes
Good relations with Russia; close Bush-Putin ties; manage Russian opposition to BMD system
Slight late deterioration intensifies under Obama

11. Foreign Policy Successes
Six party talks with North Korea in efforts to encourage de-nuclearization
?????????

12. Foreign Policy Successes
US (and others) convince Libya’s Gaddafi to abandon WMD programs in 2003 in an effort to “normalize” relations with West

13. Foreign Policy Successes
NATO added seven new members – Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – during the Bush years

14. Foreign Policy Successes
Free trade agreements with ten additional nations including El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua

15. Foreign Policy Successes
Iraq in the post-surge period
?????????
Improvement of a very bad situation
Iraq – NOT a success

16. Global War on Terrorism

17. Global War on TerrorismX

18. Global War on Terrorism
Dept. of Homeland Security
USA Patriot Act
Improved intelligence
Int’l cooperation to weaken terrorist networks
Afghanistan, Part I

19. GWOT: However …
Have been attempted attacks within US and successful attacks outside US
Al-Qaeda in Iraq (ISIS)
Al-Qaeda “got lucky”
Resurgence of Taliban (and Al-Qaeda) in Afghanistan
Bin Laden had achieved goals

20. GWOT: However ---
Guantanamo and torture
Alive as Bush leaves office

21. Global War on Terrorism
Flawed but successful in #1 area – no additional attacks on US soil
History will clarify view of this issue X

22. Foreign Policy Failures
Bush administration ignores the issue of global warming

23. Foreign Policy Failures
USA viewed unfavorably by majority of the world by the end of the Bush presidency

24. Foreign Policy Failures

25. Foreign Policy Failures
Hurricane Katrina response

26. “It takes a truly spectacular domestic-policy blunder to register as a foreign-policy screw-up, too. Yet Bush’s bungled response to Hurricane Katrina was exactly that. Observers around the world saw this debacle as both a demonstration of waning U.S. competence and a revealing indicator of continued racial inequality, if not outright injustice. …Because America’s “soft power” depends on other states believing that we know what we are doing and that we stand for laudable ideals, the disaster in New Orleans was yet another self-inflicted blow to America’s global image. If the United States cannot take good care of its own citizens, why should anyone think we can ‘nation-build’ in some distant foreign land?”
Stephen Walt, November 2010

27. Foreign Policy Failures
Could the Bush administration have done more to prevent 9/11 attacks?

28. Iraq War

29. War with Iraq: Why?
War of choice
(not a war of necessity)

30. Preemptive War for WMD
“The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.”
March 19, 2003
George Bush

31. Preemptive War for WMD
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”
August 26, 2002
Dick Cheney

32. Preemptive War for WMD
“We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.”
February 5, 2003
Colin Powell

33. Preemptive War for WMD
“We know for a fact that there are weapons there.”
January 9, 2003
Ari Fleischer,
WH spokesman

34. Preemptive War for WMD
“We have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That was this war was about and it is about. And we have confidence it will be found.”
April 10, 2003
Ari Fleischer,
WH spokesman

35. Preemptive War for WMD
“We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”
March 30, 2003
Donald Rumsfeld

36. No Weapons of Mass Destruction Found

37. “The ISG has not found evidence that Saddam possessed WMD stocks in 2003.”
Iraq Survey Group Report, October 2004

38. “Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq.”
George Bush, July 12, 2004
“Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there.”
George Bush, October 8, 2004

39. Failures: Iraq
Bush administration “misled” nation into war with claims of WMD
Bush administration “misled” nation by implying that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11
Iraq ( ) after toppling regime is marred by poor planning, chaos, rise of insurgency (DVD No End in Sight)

40. Failures: Iraq
Horrors of Abu Ghraib prison

41. Failures: Iraq Hegemonism discredited
Did not bring democracy to Iraq or greater Middle East

42. Failures: Iraq
Crucial caveats …

43. Failures: Iraq
What f Iraq becomes a “functioning democracy” in the future?
What if “Arab Uprisings” (depending on the final outcome) can be partially credited to the overthrow of Saddam?

44. Bush Foreign Policy

45. The End