Conservative Internationalism is the Bush Doctrine 2.0

Kori Schake, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former member of the George W. Bush administration’s national security team, gives new meaning to the word “chutzpah” with a piece in Foreign Affairs that attacks Trump voters for abandoning “traditional conservative internationalism” in favor of an America First foreign policy, which Schake equates to isolationism. In the process, she applauds President Biden’s efforts at “rallying support for Ukraine, strengthening U.S. defense alliances in the Pacific, and helping Israel respond to Hamas’ terrorist assault,” though she does criticize Biden’s “protectionist economics.” Schake’s term “conservative internationalism” is nothing more than the disastrous Bush Doctrine 2.0.

The Bush Doctrine, you may recall, pushed the United States into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that drained both American resources and the blood of its soldiers, sailors, airmen and air women, and Marines in seemingly endless military conflicts in a crusade to spread democracy and American values throughout the Arab/Muslim world and beyond. Bush’s crusade was expressed most clearly in his second inaugural address on January 20, 2005. There, Bush stated that “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.” America has a “mission,” Bush said, to advance these ideals throughout the world. The goal of U.S. foreign policy, Bush said, was “ending tyranny in our world.”

The Founders—Washington, Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, and many others—would have been appalled by such rhetoric. Bush’s second inaugural was effectively a disclaimer of Washington’s Farewell Address and John Quincy Adams’ memorable Fourth of July address warning America against going abroad “in search of monsters to destroy.” Bush’s reckless rhetoric was, unfortunately and tragically, matched by his reckless policies in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I don’t know if Schake had any role in drafting Bush’s second inaugural address. But back in March of this year, Schake, writing in National Review, argued that we have “overreacted” to the failures of those wars, and lectured readers on the “responsibilities free societies have to those suffering under authoritarianism.” Where in the U.S. Constitution, one might ask, does it say that America has a “responsibility” for people suffering under authoritarian regimes?

In her Foreign Affairs article, Schake claims that the traditional Republican Party since 1952 had a “fairly clear international vision,” which she claims included “supporting the expansion of democracy around the world.” This ignores the fact that GOP President Dwight Eisenhower helped to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran and install the Shah back on the Peacock Throne. It ignores the fact that Eisenhower helped overthrow democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz and install the military rule of the Armas regime there. Eisenhower also opposed the democratic regimes of Israel, Britain, and France against the Nasser authoritarian regime in Egypt during the Suez crisis. Eisenhower did all of those things in support of America’s interests, not the interests of global democracy–and he was right to do so.

The next GOP president, Richard Nixon, was a realist to the core, who advanced American interests without regard to democracy promotion. Indeed, the Nixon Doctrine relied on friendly U.S. allies in certain regions–both democracies and authoritarian regimes–to protect and advance U.S. interests. Nixon’s greatest foreign policy accomplishment was not promoting democracy, it was effectively allying with a communist tyranny (Mao’s China) to maintain the geopolitical pluralism of Eurasia in the face of the Soviet challenge. President Gerald Ford essentially continued Nixon’s policies.

Ronald Reagan, it is true, used stirring rhetoric about democracy and freedom–but only as a weapon in the context of the Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union. Reagan, Schake may recall, was criticized for maintaining good relations with the South African apartheid regime, arming the undemocratic Contras in Nicaragua, and selling advanced weapons to the autocratic Saudi regime. Reagan’s efforts to undermine the Soviet empire, to be sure, had the effect of promoting freedom and democracy in Eastern and Central Europe, but that was a side effect of his policy of defeating the main enemy. And Reagan provided arms and support to the despotic Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War.

Bush 41, unlike his son, made no pretension about democracy promotion abroad. The first Gulf War was fought because Iraq posed a threat to the Saudi regime and the continued flow of oil through the Persian Gulf. Once the threat to the Saudi oilfields and Saudi rule was ended and the oil flow made secure, Bush 41 stopped the war despite calls from “conservative internationalists” to topple Saddam’s regime. Stability and the regional balance of power was more important that promoting democracy. And it was Bush 41’s secretary of state, James Baker, who assured Russian leaders in the wake of the Cold War that NATO would not expand to the east.

Contrary to Schake’s contention, every GOP president since 1952–with the exception of George W. Bush–was a foreign policy realist, not a democracy promoter. Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush 41 promoted America’s interests “first.” The only “crusade” those presidents participated in was the Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union–and they waged that struggle primarily for geopolitical purposes. Schake’s version of “conservative internationalism” is actually the twin of neoconservatism. It is the Bush Doctrine disguised as something new. We don’t have to guess where it will lead–just visit the countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the military cemeteries of the troops that died to “promote democracy” there. It wasn’t worth it then, and it’s not worth it now in Ukraine or any other place where people are subjected to authoritarian rule unless America’s vital national security interests are at stake.

This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.