Reassessing Bush’s Foreign Policy Legacy

The Atlantic’s Ross Douthat points to several essays from prominent foreign policy thinkers -David Frum, Robert Kagan, Fareed Zakaria and Edward Luttwak - that go to bat for the soon to be former Commander in Chief. History, they say, will redeem Bush’s foreign policy. (Douthat makes his own contribution to the debate here.)

With the exception of Zakaria, this historical absolution is being rendered by people who are generally invested in Bush’s foreign policy. Before we can grant President Bush “Truman-esque” status, we’ll need to see some serious defections among the ranks of Bush’s liberal and realist critics (not to mention Democratic politicians).  

That said, I do think that President Bush is likely be vindicated by history – at least on a popular basis – for the reasons Douthat elucidates here.

The big question mark, to my mind, is how liberals react to Bush in the long run. Democratic Presidents like Truman and Kennedy have seen their legacy enhanced in part because Republicans eventually came around to their view of the role that values must play in foreign policy. Republicans used to be the ruthless calculators of national interest, while Democrats were the universalist moralizers. President Reagan’s repudiation of Nixon-era détente changed that, and Republicans have never really looked back (not even during the brief, under-rated, tenure of George H.W. Bush).

On the other hand, President Bush’s tenure may spark a newfound liberal love affair with Kissinger-style realism. But I’m not holding my breath.