The Bush Doctrine(merely the high-water mark of an assertive policy)

[papau]

The Bush Doctrine(merely the high-water mark of an assertive policy)


http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-fornpol14mar14,1,3323648.story
Strengths, Limits of U.S. Foreign Policy Evident
By Doyle McManus and Sonni Efron Times Staff Writers March 14, 2004

<snip>"Iraq is about our limits rather than our reach," said Lee Feinstein of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The burden of building a new Iraq, said Graham Allison of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, has sapped U.S. resources from other foreign policy priorities — including the pursuit of terrorists elsewhere.

"What has been undertaken is something hugely ambitious," he said. "Our plate is full, and it's full for some time. We're not physically constrained, we're just constrained in terms of political realities."

President Bush and his aides insist that committing thousands of troops and billions of dollars to Iraq hasn't subtracted from their ability to deal with challenges anywhere else. But the administration, which only a year ago was willing to invade Iraq without the support of many of its foreign allies, has scrambled recently to win international help not only in Iraq, but also to meet challenges in Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea and Haiti.

"The war was the first test of what has been called the Bush doctrine, the assertion that the United States may launch a preventive war against any country thought to hold weapons of mass destruction if it consorts with terrorists. But the war also has been the only instance of that rule being invoked; Iran, North Korea and Syria, which all arguably qualify, have not been attacked. As a result, scholars aren't sure whether Iraq was the beginning of a pattern or, as now appears possible, merely the high-water mark of an assertive policy."<snip>