Neocons accuse Bush of appeasement in face of N Korea and Iran threat

By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Financial Times
Jul. 15, 2006

Appeasement is not a word normally associated with the muscular foreign policy of President George W. Bush. But on the eve of the annual G8 summit, some of his strongest supporters in the past now accuse his administration of wobbling before Iran and North Korea.

As China and Russia seek to extract more time and better deals in the diplomatic tussle over the two remaining members of the US-nominated "axis of evil", neoconservatives in Washington are dismayed that Mr Bush appears to be abandoning his commitments to stop nuclear proliferation and stand by freedom-seeking peoples.

"It is appeasement," said Danielle Pletka, vice-president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a bastion of neoconservatism. "Certainly they feel appeased," she told the FT, referring to Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

"Iran thinks we are on the retreat. What your opponents perceive is very important," she said, arguing that the recent attacks and capture of Israeli troops by Hamas and Hizbollah had been encouraged by a perception of US weakness.

"For those of us who said [Bill] Clinton was leading us to perdition in the 1990s, there is a sense of déjà vu."

More widely in Washington - in Congress and among foreign embassies and think-tanks - there is a sense of relief that Mr Bush is not rushing towards another potentially explosive conflict. Yet this is tempered by concern over the more assertive policies of Russia and China, using their diplomatic and economic muscle.

Accusations of betrayal and suggestions that Mr Bush has abandoned his doctrine of pre-emptive war left the White House struggling to defend itself this week.

"Pre-emption is not merely a military doctrine, it's also a diplomatic doctrine," said Tony Snow, White House spokesman. "And in this case, we are engaging in pre-emption at the diplomatic level . . . and so there is no change."

Richard Perle, a former adviser to the Pentagon and advocate of the Iraq war, is among those charging the administration with appeasement.

"How is it that Bush, who vowed that on his watch 'the worst weapons will not fall into the worst hands', has chosen to beat such an ignominious retreat?" he asked in a newspaper commentary.

One reason he cites is Condoleezza Rice's move last year to the State Department, where, he says, she represents a diplomatic establishment "driven to accommodate its allies" at the expense of appeasement of adversaries.

What exactly lies behind the policy shift in Bush's second term is much debated. Factors cited include the struggle to pacify Iraq, the expense of that war and its effect on US standing in the world, the rising influence of the more pragmatic Ms Rice, a general sense of fatigue in the White House, a recognition of the limits of US power and, perhaps above all, domestic US politics and opinion polls that have seen the president's popularity plummet.

While the White House argues that Mr Bush's patient efforts at multilateral diplomacy have produced a strong international consensus confronting Iran and North Korea, his critics say he goes to St Petersburg today weaker than a year ago. Iran has extracted more concessions from the transatlantic alliance while continuing to enrich uranium, and North Korea has exposed the fragility of South Korea and Japan as US military protectorates.

Michael Lind, political scientist at the liberal New America Foundation, sees the US shift as a tactical retreat to multilateralism but not a strategic change. He says there is no abandonment of the widely held view in Washington - among both neoconservatives and Clintonites - that the US must dominate a post-cold war "unipolar" world. Where Ms Rice may differ with some neoconservatives is her perception of the US as a "cautious, benign" hegemony, rather than a revolutionary democratising force, says Mr Lind.

"They all take US hegemony for granted as the bone structure of the international system," he says.

In that context, Mr Lind says, North Korea's missile tests are a test of the credibility of the US commitment as the sole Pacific power to protect South Korea and Japan. South Korea and China were alarmed by comments this week by senior Japanese officials that there might be a reappraisal of the post-1945 constitutional limits on Japan's military capabilities. The White House sidestepped questions on how the US would view Japan's development of a pre-emptive strike capability.

It is also an issue that divides conservatives in the US. AEI's Ms Pletka said she would feel fine if Japan acquired nuclear weapons as a democratic ally of the US but conceded not all neoconservatives would agree.

David Frum, a former speechwriter for Mr Bush and co-author of a book with Mr Perle on the "war on terror", played down the threat presented by North Korea. But, he said, it highlighted again what he calls another instance of China's non-co-operation in world security. He said the US had operated on an assumption China would emerge as a good global citizen. "But this assumption keeps being contradicted by events," he said. "So what do we do? That is the question the American political system is in the process of considering. There is not a consensus view."













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