New Old World Order? The Foreign-Policy of the George W. Bush Administration

Will the election of Republican George W. Bush as President usher in changes in foreign policy with regard to Serbia, Yugoslavia, and the Balkans? Will there be a continuation of „humanitarian interventionism“, „military humanism“, „economic globalism“ and „globalization“?

The Bush Administration foreign policy team has rejected the selective humanitarian interventionism of the Bill Clinton/Al Gore Administration, as espoused by Madeleine Albright and James Rubin. John Hulsman, Balkans adviser to Bush, announced that Bush was concerned about „imperial overstretch“ and has rejected a foreign policy that uses the US military in „nation building“. Hulsman has announced a „philosophical sea change“ in Balkans foreign policy? But is that assertion valid? Who will make up the new foreign policy team in the Bush Administration?

President-elect George W. Bush has announced his foreign policy team: Colin Powell will be Secretary of State, Donald Rumsfeld will be Secretary of Defense, and Condoleezza Rice will be the National Security adviser in the new cabinet. Along with Vice-President-elect Dick Cheney, they are Republican conservative veterans of the Cold War foreign policy paradigm. They are all experienced in Cold War diplomacy, all are hard-nosed Cold Warriors. Donald Rumsfeld joined the Richard Nixon Administration in 1969 and was Secretary of Defense in the Gerald Ford Administration in 1975. Colin Powell was Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman in the George Bush Administration. Rice was a senior adviser on Soviet affairs and Eastern Europe during the same Administration.

Like Cheney, Rumsfeld was part of the Gerald Ford Adminstration. Rumsfeld was Ford’s chief of staff. He became a Congressman in 1962, resigning in 1969 to join the Richard Nixon Administration during the Vietnam War. He was ambassador to NATO, headed the poverty program, and was part of a Commission in 1998 that warned of a missile threat to the US by „rogue“ states. He strongly supports the missile defense program, the revamped „Star Wars missile shield“ from the Ronald Reagan era. Michigan Democratic Senator Carl Levin of the Senate Armed Services Committee called his nomination a strong choice. Republican John Warner of Virginia stated that it was â€œfortunate that this experienced, tested, tough-minded old hand had returned.

Rice will be the chief foreign policy adviser to Bush. She has a political science background and was a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. After 1986, she worked with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C. on nuclear strategic planning as part of the Council for Foreign Relations. In 1989, she was the director of Soviet and Eastern European affairs within the National Security Council in the Bush Administration. She was senior director for Soviet affairs. She is thus a political scientist and a Soviet „specialist“. She is also a corporate board member of the Chevron Corporation, the Hewlett Foundation, Charles Schwab, and is on a council for J.P. Morgan. She is an experienced hand from the Bush Administration of 1989-1993 so she is merely making a return, like Cheney, Powell, and Rumsfeld. We are seeing the return of many old faces.

The Bush Administration is committed to withdrawing all US ground troops from the Balkans in four years. John Hulsman, the Balkans adviser to Bush, announced this change in US foreign policy as follows:

“There will be a philosophical sea change when Bush is in the White House. After four years there will be no American ground troops in the Balkans.”

There are currently 10,000 US ground troops in the Balkans. As part of the Kosovo KFOR contingent, there are 5,500 US troops at Bondsteel in eastern Kosovo. As part of SFOR in Bosnia at the Tuzla base there are 4,500 US troops. The Bush Administration has plans to change Sfor, Stabilization force, to DFOR, Deterrence force, with a reduction in troop strength. Richard Perle, a foreign policy adviser to Bush, supports „a drawing down“ of US troops. The Bush foreign policy team thus rejects humanitarian interventionism as developed by Madeleine Albright and rejects using the US military in nation building and peace-keeping projects. Colin Powell has long voiced the view that the US military should not be used for peace-keeping and nation building. The US should only use massive force to achieve clearly defined military objectives, the so-called Powell Doctrine. Powell, a veteran of the Vietnam War, seeks to avoid Vietnam-style quagmires. Instead, the Bush team wants to base foreign policy strictly on national interest. What do these changes in foreign policy entail?

The George W. Bush Administration is by all appearances merely a continuation of the George Bush Administration of 1989-1993, which itself was merely a continuation of the Ronald Reagan Administration of 1981-1989. This was the Administration that intervened in Panama and launched the Persian Gulf War. Many of the foreign policy staff of that period will be returning to the new administration, including Powell, Rice, and Perle. The new administration looks a lot like the old administration. Is it the Old World Order or is it the New World Order or the New Old World Order? There is a return to the past rather than a turn to the future. Indeed, the anachronistic Star Wars missile defense shield of the Reagan Administration is returning under the sponsorship of Rumsfeld. Is the US really in danger of missile attack from „rogue states“? Moreover, the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty with the Soviet Union would be violated if the US created a „Missile Shield“. This new/old Star Wars Program endangers relations with Russia. Will there be a new arms race? Will we see a return of the Cold War? Everything old is new again. There is an atmosphere of déjà vu. But what changes does this return entail for the Balkans?

It was George Bush who announced that he was drawing a „line in the sand“ in Kosovo in 1992. He warned that Serbia would be attacked if Serbia „invaded Kosovo“. It was George Bush who initially characterized the Kosovo Conflict in anti-Serbian terms, de-legitimized the borders, and rejected Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo. The Bush Administration US Ambassador to Yugoslavia, the self-proclaimed „last ambassador“, Warren Zimmermann, initiated the disastrous foreign policy in Bosnia that resulted in civil war and the needless loss of life and suffering. Bush’s Secretary of State James A. Baker III initiated the anti-Serbian propaganda and infowar against Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox populations of the former Yugoslavia. His callous and cynical statement that the „US has no dog in that fight“ only encouraged the propagandists and the US State Department to manufacture an interest, whether it was to prevent genocide, to exert leadership around the globe, to expand NATO into Eastern Europe, or to find a role for the anachronistic NATO, to prevent Russia from establishing a warm water base in the Adriatic (as espoused by Cokie Roberts of ABC News). It was a propaganda free-for-all. The propaganda that worked best was the Holocaust propaganda and the genocide propaganda. The US had a dog in that fight, it was to see that minorities were protected, that all ethnic groups be given the right of self-determination, that democracy be espoused for all ethnic groups, that justice and democracy prevailed, that secession be negotiated with Belgrade and the successor states and not imposed by Germany. It was Baker who told Margaret Tutweiler to begin the infowar against Serbia as related in his memoirs The Politics of Diplomacy. Tutweiler was told to inform her contacts in the major US media networks what policy line they were to follow, i.e., handout journalism. Baker also informed Haris Siljadzic that the Bosnian Muslim leadership should seek to gain support for their position through public relations and through a propaganda war against the Serbian populace. Bush, Zimmermann, and Baker, thus, bear a large share of the responsibility for the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia and especially the conflict in Bosnia. Moreover, the Republican position on Bosnia and Kosovo, especially as espoused by Bob Dole, differed very little from the Democratic position.

What we are seeing is not only a return of the Reagan/Bush era, but a return of a Vietnam and Cold War era mentality or mind-set. The Bush Administration is made up of Cold Warriors who are anachronisms in the 21st century. There is no longer a Cold War. The primary foreign policy objectives now are economic development, commerce, and trade. Why did Bush select persons who are veterans of the Vietnam and Cold Wars? Is he looking forward or backward?

What about Bosnia and Kosovo? NATO expansion is a goal of the Bush Administration. The Bush Administration policy on Yugoslavia is identical to the Clinton Administration position. Bush and Gore and Clinton differ on that very little. So will there be a „philosophical sea change“ in Balkans foreign policy when Bush takes the helm from Clinton? Few recall that it was the George Bush Administration that committed US peace-keeping troops in Somalia, a crisis which the Clinton Administration inherited from Bush. Like-wise, the Bosnia conflict was inherited by Clinton from the Bush Administration. Now George W. Bush seeks to re-construct and re-assemble the Reagan/Bush Administration. The context and the conditions, however, have changed. The assertion that US ground troops will be returned from the Balkans is empty and hollow rhetoric and political posturing. It was Bill Clinton who asserted that US ground troops would be out of Bosnia within one year. Does anyone recall? It is now five years and the US ground troops are still there. With Bush, they will remain for another four years for a combined deployment of nine years. Is this a Vietnam-style quagmire? So the new assertions by the Bush foreign policy team are empty rhetorical statements meant as a slap in the face for the outgoing Administration. Very little looks to change in US foreign policy towards the Balkans. It will be business as usual.

Originally published on 2007-07-28

Author: Carl K. Savich

Source: Serbianna

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!

Donate to Support Us

We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

READ MORE!

Oliver Stone’s American History: “We’re not under Threat. We are the Threat”

As he launches his new TV series offering a critical view of US overseas exploits, the film director tells MEE he didn’t always see it that way. American controversies are Oliver Stone’s forte. The Hollywood movie director has turned his cameras on the assassination of John F Kennedy, the Vietnam War and the 9/11 attacks. But, when researching his television series, The Untold History of the United States, it was American exploits in the Middle East that left him with the most lasting impression, he told Middle East Eye on Wednesday. “When I studied the untold history, one thing that really hit me hard was ...

Russia or the Neocons: Who Endangers American Democracy?

Political discourse of American mass media is inundated with another wave of Russophobia and fear mongering. Besides the obvious military threat (Russia’s nuclear arsenal), or the challenges to the US foreign policy (the conflicts in Ukraine or Syria), a new fear has been introduced into the news: the US political system is endangered by Russia’s computer hacking, informational warfare, and its support of Donald Trump. The newspaper titles sound like a commercial for the upcoming Invasion of the Body Snatchers sequel. The Washingon Post announces: “Russia Is Now a Threat. The US Should Treat It Like One.” Time magazine raises the ...

Kosovo Serbs ‘Terrified’ by Proposed Creation of a “Greater Albania”

Fresh calls for a Greater Albania, incorporating the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, have led to an angry backlash from politicians in Belgrade. Sputnik Radio’s Mark Hirst talked to Marko Djuric, Director of the Government Office for Kosovo and Metohija. Such a move by Albania, if acted upon, could plunge the entire region back into a bloody and costly war on a scale not seen since the 1990s. Marko Djuric said that Serbia will not allow the creation of a Greater Albania in its southern province and that it is not alone in opposing the idea, which stems from the times of Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia. When asked whether this inflammatory statement ...

Washington Leads the World to War

What must the world think watching the US presidential campaign? Over time US political campaigns have become more unreal and less related to voters’ concerns, but the current one is so unreal as to be absurd. The offshoring of American jobs by global corporations and the deregulation of the US financial system have resulted in American economic failure. One might think that this would be an issue in a presidential campaign. The neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony is driving the US and its vassals into conflict with Russia and China. The risks of nuclear war are higher than at any previous ...

West Rules Macedonia (FYROM) as a US-EU Protectorate, To Put a Check on Russian Influence in the Balkans

A year ago, at a closed-doors meeting between the USA and EU officials and the leaders of the four major parties of FYROM in Strasbourg, a route map for the resolution of the protracted political crisis was agreed on (or rather imposed). The roots of this political crisis are to be found outside FYROM: it is actually more a confrontation by proxy between “the West”, which supports the opposition, and Russia, which is trying to maintain its influence in the region. In conjunction with the public discontent at government policies and the escalating corruption, the negotiations have contributed to sharpening ...

Balkan Islamist Galaxy in a Nutshell

The Balkan political environment is shaped-amongst other- by the existence of two political strains of Islam, the Wahhabis, related to the Saudis & Gulf states and the Muslim Brotherhood ones, related to the Turkish-Qatar axis. In both cases networking developed under a series of upturns since the 1990’s and is inexorably related to wider events of interest such as the ongoing wars in the Middle East and the culminations in countries such as Turkey, Egypt but also EU , Western European ones; including direct security affairs. Nowadays we are witnessing a massive buyout of land and corporations by mostly UAE, Kuwait and ...

America and the Great Abdication: Don’t Mistake Donald Trump’s Withdrawal from the World for Isolationism

When great powers fade, as they inevitably must, it’s normally for one of two reasons. Some powers exhaust themselves through overreach abroad, underinvestment at home, or a mixture of the two. This was the case for the Soviet Union. Other powers lose their privileged position with the emergence of new, stronger powers. This describes what happened with France and Great Britain in the case of Germany’s emergence after World War I and, more benignly, with the European powers and the rise of the United States during and after World War II. To some extent America is facing a version of this—amid ...

Jamala’s 1944: Song for Nazi Tatars

In April-May of 1944, the Crimean Tatar battalions took part in battles against the Red Army in the Crimea. The units that were evacuated from the Crimea in June 1944, were compiled into the Tatar mountain-Jaeger three-battalion SS Regiment. A month later, the group became the first Tatar-mountain-Jaeger SS Brigade (2,500 troops) under the command of SS Standartenführer Fortenbah. On 31 December 1944, the unit was disbanded to become a part of the East Turkic branch of SS as the Crimea battle group: two infantry battalions and one hundred horses. German Field Marshal Erich von Manstein testified: "Most of the Crimean ...

The American War

I was 23-years-old the first time I was arrested. It was at the Pentagon— an act of civil disobedience in protest of the U.S. war on Vietnam. My boyfriend, Jerry Rubin, and I were organizers for the National Mobilization Committee Against the War (familiarly called The Mobe).Here we call it the Vietnam War. The Vietnamese more accurately call it the American War. After all, the U.S. was the aggressor. It was our troops that landed on their soil; our planes that bombed their cities and sprayed Agent Orange; our army massacred their civilians, women and children included. Not the other ...

Kosovo’s Mafia: How the US and Allies Ignore Organized Crime

PRISTINA, Kosovo — It was the fall of 2000, just over a year after the end of the war in Kosovo, when two NATO military intelligence officers produced the first known report on local organized crime, painting the former political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), Hashim Thaci, as having “established influence on local criminal organizations, which control [a] large part of Kosovo.” The report, the existence of which has not been previously reported, was widely distributed among all NATO countries, according to former NATO sources interviewed by GlobalPost. And year after year as the nascent democracy of Kosovo struggled ...

Western Silence as 20,000 Neo-Nazis March in Ukraine

In one of the largest, if not the largest, Neo-Nazi demonstration in Europe since WW2, 20,000 facists marched through the streets of Ukraine’s capital Kiev last weekend under the silent gaze of the western media. Other than Russian state media RT and Sputnik News facists throwing Nazi salutes and parading in their tens of thousands in a European capital didn’t concern any of the major western news outlet. Nothing on BBC, France24, CNN, New York Times, The Guardian…the silence of the media lambs when it comes to a growing facists movement in Ukraine is deafening. The Ukrainian Nazis were honoring their ...

The Criminalization of Parliamentary Democracy

Syria is being bombed as part of a “counter-terrorism campaign” allegedly against the Islamic State, an elusive “outside enemy” based in Raqqa, Northern Syria. While the ISIL is said to be “threatening the Western World”, the evidence confirms that the Islamic State is supported and financed by the Western military alliance, together with Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Amply documented, Al Qaeda and its various affiliates including the Islamic State Caliphate Project are creations of Western intelligence. Moreover, whatever the justification, the bombing of a sovereign country is an illegal and criminal act under international law. It constitutes a war of ...

The Hysterics of Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė

The outbursts of anti-Russian rhetoric of Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė is certainly very bizarre in view of her curriculum vitae. Dalia Grybauskaitė is a very educated woman. Because of the free education system of the former USSR, she was able to complete her university education at the elite Saint Petersburg State University. She became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1983, some five years before she earned a doctoral degree at the prestigious Academy of Social Sciences in Moscow. It is generally known that not every applicant is routinely accepted to become a Party member. This ...

Lithuania’s Diplomatic Hitman Takes Aim at Irish-Russian Relations

Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius is no ordinary diplomat. He is more a diplomatic hitman whose ideological mission is to blow holes in European-Russian relations at every opportunity.One of his recent “jobs” was to write an op-ed for the Irish Times in which he castigated the European Union for appeasing Russian President Vladimir Putin. Linkevicius used a hoary old historical analogy comparing the EU with British leader Neville Chamberlain and his appeasement in 1938 of Nazi Germany’s Hitler.Apart from the ignorant historical waffling, the other curious thing about Linkevicius’ op-ed piece in Ireland’s so-called “paper of record” was the timing. It was ...

Bismarck’s System of Continental Alliances

In an interview for the German news magazine Zuerst! (April 2015) Srdja Trifkovic considers the significance of Otto von Bismarck’s legacy, 200 years after his birth. Dr. Trifkovic, how would Bismarck react if he could see today’s map of Europe? Trifkovic: He would be initially shocked that the German eastern border now runs along the Oder and Neisse rivers. Otto von Bismarck was a true Prussian. In his view, cities such as Königsberg, Danzig or Breslau were more properly “German” than those in the Rhineland. His first impression therefore would be that Germany has “shifted” to the West, and that an important social and ...

America’s Jews are Driving America’s Wars

I spoke recently at a conference on America’s war party where afterwards an elderly gentleman came up to me and asked, “Why doesn’t anyone ever speak honestly about the six-hundred-pound gorilla in the room? Nobody has mentioned Israel in this conference and we all know it’s American Jews with all their money and power who are supporting every war in the Middle East for Netanyahu? Shouldn’t we start calling them out and not letting them get away with it?” It was a question combined with a comment that I have heard many times before and my answer is always the same: ...

Export of Kosovostan Jihad in the Middle East: The Christian Genocide in Syria

Many of us go through life searching for our purpose, for something that we are passionate about. After years of searching finally I stumbled upon mine a few years ago. Having the world hear Syrians telling their side of the story while living through this imposed war is what ignited that fire in me. As a Syrian American that was born in Syria and lived in both countries my entire life, I feel a strong link to my heritage, my birth country, my culture, my language, my customs, my nationality, and my history. We have been bombarded with lies and propaganda ...

The Demonizing of a Nation

For centuries, the strategic Balkan Peninsula has featured as a slice of Europe over which wars have been fought, treaties made and broken. It became a vital pawn in the carve-up of nations after World War i, had the boundaries of its ethnic enclaves confused under Tito’s regime, then its various nationalist feelings taken advantage of and played against each other in the latest push for its colonization by the EU. In this latest process, one nation has been demonized in the mind of the public: Serbia. In the words of British political economist Rodney Atkinson, “The grossest calumny in the continuing ...

World War I Homage – A Triumph of Lies and Platitudes

World leaders gathered in Paris on Sunday under the Arc de Triomphe to mark the centennial anniversary ending World War I. In an absurd way, the Napoleon-era arc was a fitting venue – because the ceremony and the rhetoric from President Emmanuel Macron was a “triumph” of lies and platitudes. Among the estimated 70 international leaders were US President Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, each sitting on either side of Macron and his wife. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was also given pride of place beside the French president. Macron’s address to the dignitaries was supposed to be a call for international ...

Twenty Principal Misconceptions about the Kosovo Issue

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement! Donate to Support Us We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations. Save Save