With John Bolton finally leaving the office he despised (why did he ever take it in the first place, as he held the entire institution in contempt?), I want to reminisce about American foreign policy, at least since the end of the Second World War. First, I find it intgriguing that Kenneth Adelman would praise the Truman foreign policy team. After all, it was right-wingers who labeled Dean Acheson (as staunchly conservative a man as one could imagine) "Red Dean", and who, when Joe McCarthy went after Gen. George Marshall (as honorable and decent a human being who ever graced the Army uniform, and who, next to Acheson himself, was perhaps the greatest Secretary of State in the 20th century) piled on in scurillous personal attacks. Even Eisenhower didn't have the balls to stand up and defend his old chief.
The Republicans like to crow about how "tough" and "expert" their foreign policy advisors are. Let's run down a few of them, shall we? John Foster Dulles, of whom Winston Churchill said he was the only bull who carried around his own china shop. William Rogers was a cipher, purposely chosen to be useless so that Nixon and Kissinger could run foreign policy as they chose, and as a result destroyed American diplomatic credibility and gave us disastrous SALT agreements (see Seymour Hirsch's The Price of Power). All I will say is - Al Haig and Iran-Contra.
Adelman claimed the group around George W. Bush was as expert as Truman's advisors. Colin Powell was a figurehead, maladroit at the game of bureacratic in-fighting, a public spokesperson for views he reviled and policies he thought were wrong. Condoleeza Rice is not much better, and she has all but disappeared from the public stage recently.
The best foreign policy has always been driven by Democrats - McGeorge Bundy and George Ball, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Cyrun Vance, even Madleine Albright, for all her faults (and they were legion) was better by far than any of the Republicans mentioned. Yet, the Republicans still claim an expertise in foreign affiars, and the stenographic press, ignorant of history and blind to what they see around them, largely follows, echoing these same tired falsehoods. Why?
Of all the post-war figures here, Kissinger in many ways is prototypical. Wanting to be tough and realistic (in all senses of the word), his ego was no match for his intellect or abilities. He wanted to be Tallyrand and Stalin (if you read his book Diplomacy there is an obvious man-crush for the Soviet leader, which should tell one all one needs to know about Kissinger), but he practiced foreign policy in a country that tries to be open and discuss its policy, even its foreign policy. The idea that politics stops at the water's edge has never been true in American politics, and is only fostered by those who do not want discussion of foreign affairs. Kissinger was a failure not only because he lacked the ability to be either as clever or as ruthless as those with whom he dealt; he failed because, in a democracy, we all get to figure it out as ew go along. The long string of Republican disasters that followed are only a coda to the authoritarianism Kissinger tried to emulate.
I realize this is all controversial, but I have never been comfortable with Bolton sitting in the chiar once held by Eleanor Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (I know Noam Chomsky doesn't like him for selling out East Timor). They were giants. Bolton is a smudge on the pages of American diplomatic history. Personally, I hope he writes his memoirs; I can't imagine anything more funny or ridiculously sophomoric than a person whose whole intellectual and professional career has been spent bashing the UN, then turning around and trying to defend his miserable tenure there. The contortions alone should be worth reading.
Virtual Tin Cup
