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The problem in U.S.-Russian relations today is that the personal friendship initiated by Bush has produced little in the way of the tangible outcomes that Bush himself has defined as his major foreign policy objectives.
U.S. and European leaders want to see greater freedom, and democracy in the Middle East. Americans see this as the crucial battleground in the war on terror; Europeans want their southern neighbors to be stable and well-governed, to stem the flows of illegal migration and organized crime. Working with local partners for peaceful democratic regime change is the best way to achieve these goals.
The pace of developments in nuclear proliferation over the past 18 months is unprecedented, and it is hard for even dedicated experts to keep track and make sense of all the latest developments. Yet with all the developments, from Libya to Pakistan to North Korea, several questions have emerged to form the core debate over the future direction of U.S. nonproliferation policy.
If there is a substantive critique of Bush foreign policy beyond mere Bush-hatred, it is the administration's failure to win broad international support for the war and for other major policies. The emergence of a unipolar order and the nervousness these new circumstances can create even among America's friends has made gaining support a difficult task.
American nationalism today imperils America's global leadership and its success in the war against terrorism. More than any other factor, it is this nationalism which divides the US from a post-nationalist Europe. And insofar as it has become mixed up with a chauvinist strain of Israeli nationalism, it also plays a disastrous role in US relations with the Muslim world.
There has been a good deal of talk in the US about a parallel between President George W. Bush's "plan" for democratising the greater Middle East and the Helsinki process that contributed to the fall of the Soviet empire. When thinking about western policy and the Muslim world, it does indeed make sense to look for lessons from the cold war - but this is not the right one.
One way of looking at the United States today is as a European state that has avoided the catastrophes nationalism brought upon Europe in the twentieth century, and whose nationalism therefore retains some of the power, intensity, bellicosity, and self-absorption that European nationalisms have had kicked out of them by history.
Recent events in Pakistan and Libya are directly affecting the Bush Administration's approach to North Korea's nuclear program. The disclosure of A.Q. Khan's elaborate efforts to uranium enrichment and nuclear weapons technology and the decision by Col. Khadaffi to abandon his WMD programs have reinforced the Bush administration's perception that their tough approach is paying dividends.
What happened to campaign-finance reform? Did the McCain-Feingold reform bill—and its successful defense in court—accomplish anything? President Bush is set to shatter all fund-raising records this year. Next time McCain and company set their sights on reform, they should learn from countries like Mexico, Latvia and Thailand that have appointed fair, nonpartisan oversight boards.
Beijing would ultimately rather confront the United States rather than permit Taiwanese independence; an expression of democratic self-determination is insufficient to establish territorial sovereignty; and it is not necessarily immoral, or fundamentally contrary to U.S. interests, to oppose any manifestation of democracy in Taiwan. Accordingly, it is prudent to maintain the status quo.
With all the turmoil surrounding the failure to find stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons in Iraq, it is time to return to first principles, and to ask the question: Was it right to go to war?
On Friday, there was a coup d'etat in Iran. By preventing thousands of democratic candidates from participating in the parliamentary elections, the clerics eliminated yet another relatively independent institution of political power. Their next target is the presidency.