Understand Bush's Foreign Policy Approach

To understand the Bush’s foreign policy approach, one must be able to understand Bush’s foreign policy team in order to understand why certain approaches were taken regarding foreign policy. Dick Cheney was vice president during the Bush administration. Cheney was not new to Washington as he had served as chief of staff under President Gerald Ford and Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush ( ). Cheney had also represented Wyoming in Congress ( ). Cheney during his time in Congress had voted more conservatively. Cheney had later become the face of the neoconservative in the White House ( ). Neoconservatism is the political ideology of conservatism along with political individualism ( web). Neoconservatism believe that the
United States should be “more assertive and robust in its foreign policy actions” ( ). Another huge part of Bush’s foreign policy team was Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld served as United States representative of NATO in 1973 to 1974. He served as the Secretary of Defense under President Gerald Ford. He had served as Secretary of Defense again under George W. Bush. These two would play a huge role in Bush’s foreign policy.
Before being elected into presidency, Bush’s foreign policy focused on pursuing a distinctly American internationalism which ment focusing on american national interest instead on global interest ( ).
Bush believed that America’s role in the Middle East involvement should be reduced ( ). This would all change after September 11th 2001. September 11th would have a huge affect on the president and the American people. On this day, four aircrafts were hijacked. Two had flown into the Twin Towers in New York City causing the towers to collapse. The third plane had hit the Pentagon in Washington D.C. In an attempt to gain control of the plan from the hijackers, the third plane had crashed in Pennsylvania. Almost 3,000 people had died during the attacks on September 11th. This attack was the first attack on American soil along with it being the most deadliest terrorist attack in American history ( ). Bush’s foreign policy had changed to a more strong American approach overseas ( ). As a result of these attacks Congress had passed the Senate Joint Resolution 23 which allowed for the president to use force against “those nations, organizations, or persons, he determines planned, authorized ,committed or aided terrorist attacks” ( ). The USA PATRIOT act was also passed. This act allowed for smaller civil liberty protections as the government was allowed to essentially spy on anyone was suspected of being a terrorist or involved with terrorist organizations. Eventually the Department
of Homeland Security was created to protect the security of the United States. Al-Qaeda which was a terrorist organization whose leader was Osama bin Laden was identified as being responsible for the hijackings. After investigation, the United States had found that the Taliban, which was an extremist Islamic regime that had control over much of Afghanistan, had allowed al Qaeda to use it’s territory to train thousands of terrorist in many different camps (internet). As a response the United States began to use air strikes against Taliban military installations and al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan ( ). This four phased war plan which was eventually called “ Operation Enduring Freedom” had turned into a sixteen year war ( ). Bush’s foreign policy approach had changed after September 11th. The once foreign policy that focused on American internationalism, now moved towards creating a “balance of power that favors freedom” (216 ). To be able to create this peace, the foreign policy would focus on defending the peace,preserving the peace, and extending the peace. Defending the peace would include fighting terrorism around the world along with stopping actors with possible access to weapons of mass destruction. The first real test of this policy approach was the Iraq War. After the attacks on September 11th, many raised the question if Iraq was involved. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld raised that question many times. Rumsfeld is said to have been the central policy maker during this time. Rumsfeld along with the support of vice president Dick Cheney pushed the idea of an Iraq War. Bush however, wanted to focused the attention on the Afghanistan War (220 ).
A year later in 2002 however, the topic of Iraq had “once again gained attention of President Bush and his key policy makers because Saddam Hussein’s regime had used chemical and biological weapons against its own people and had started to develop a nuclear weapons program” (220 ).
Some such as Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to remove Hussein while others such as Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested that removing Hussein would have “risk and complexities” (220 ). Being so divided Bush and his administration brought the idea of weapons and mass destruction to the United Nations. On November 8, 2002, the UN Security Council found Iraq in material breach of a previous UN resolution which stated that Iraq had to disarmed its weapons of mass destruction (220 ). Iraq had allow for the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors into their country to be able to inspect the disarmament of the weapons ( 220). President Bush and his administrators grew tired of waiting on the UN Security Council and had issued Iraq an ultimatum that Saddam Hussein and his son had to leave Iraq within 48 hours or the United States would take military action(222). On March 20th of 2003, the United States launched an attack on Iraq. Although the war had went fairly well for the United States in the beginning by the summer of 2003, with the rising death toll and the weapons of mass destruction still unfound, many began to question the intelligence that had supported the war (222). The Iraq
War could continue to be very controversial over the next couple years Bush remained in office.
Defending the peace would also mean making sure other countries, other than Iraq, did not have weapons of mass destruction. Bush had identified North Korea, Iran and Libya as the “axis of evil”. The goal of the United States was to deter the countries attempts in developing or obtaining weapons of mass destruction. The approach and outcomes of these countries was much different than what had occured in Iraq. North Korea had planned to reopened it’s previously closed nuclear facility claiming that it needed to have “nuclear capability to deter the United States from taking action against it” (223). The United States employed “multilateral diplomatic efforts to deter and roll act North Korean actions” (223). With Iran, the United States took a more similar approach to North Korea. The United States’ strategy was to use bilateral and multilateral pressures (224). The United States strategy with Libya was different as the U.S. bad always had concern with Libya’s efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction (224). In 2003, the United States and Great Britain had secret meetings with Libya in which Bush claims as successful because Libya had agreed to give up all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons nine months later (224).