Decent Regard (GOP critical of go it alone Foriegn Policy)

[papau]

WashPo suggest only non Bush hatred of Bush foreign policy critique is to note the administration's failure to win broad international support for the war and for other major policies."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21156-2004Mar1.html
Decent Regard by Robert Kagan Tuesday, March 2, 2004; Page A21

The chief criticism of President Bush's foreign policy in this campaign is obviously not going to be that he invaded Iraq. The big antiwar candidate, Howard Dean, is finished. The two remaining candidates for the Democratic nomination both voted for the war. The failure to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- and the stunning ineptitude of the administration in defending itself against unfair charges of prewar deception -- has not undermined basic public support for the war. <snip>

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 problem is not that the administration skirted the U.N. Security Council last year … no serious Democrat argues the United States should renounce the right to "go it alone" when all else fails. Last week John Kerry said no president should "ever" let our allies "tie our hands and prevent us from doing what must be done."… The problem the United States faces today is harder to quantify but arguably more profound. It is a problem of legitimacy. Contrary to the claims of partisan critics, moreover, it is a problem that neither began with nor will end with the Bush administration.<snip>

...it is questionable whether this country could operate effectively over time without the moral support and approval of the democratic world. This is not for the reasons usually cited. Most American advocates of "multilateralism" focus on the need for the material cooperation of allies -- in Kerry's words, to "take the target off the back of our troops" and put it on someone else's back. That essentially self-interested sentiment is not likely to inspire others to help. Nor is it even the most important reason why we need allies. In the end, it is America's need for international legitimacy that will prove more decisive in shaping America's course. Whether the United States can "go it alone" in a material sense is an open question. Militarily, it can and does go virtually alone, even when the Europeans are fully on board, as in Kosovo and in the Persian Gulf War. But whether the American people will continually be willing and able to support both military actions and the burdens of postwar occupations in the face of constant charges of illegitimacy by their closest democratic allies -- that is more doubtful. <snip>

Pursuing the "national interest" always sounds right. But in fact the idea that the United States can take such a narrow view of its "national interest" has always been mistaken. For one thing, Americans had "humanitarian interests" two centuries before that term was invented, as well as moral, political and ideological interests for which Americans have historically been willing to fight. Beyond that, the enunciation of this "realist" view by the dominant power in a unipolar era is a serious foreign policy error. A nation with global hegemony cannot proclaim to the world that it will be guided only by its own definition of its "national interest." That is precisely what even America's closest friends fear: that the United States will wield its vast power only for itself. <snip>

Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post. This article is adapted from the new afterword to his book "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order."