Different Drummers, Same Drum.

• Author: Bacevich, Andrew J.
• Position: Foreign policy under President George W. Bush

WHEN, on February 16, George W. Bush ordered combat aircraft to attack targets in Iraq, White House staffers let it be known that the new President was putting Baghdad on notice: In Washington, the "adults" had once again grasped the reins of power. The bombing of a handful of Iraqi air defense facilities was indeed an important signal, but not because it marked any notable departure from past practice. On the contrary, taken in conjunction with other early indicators, the incident suggests that when it comes to foreign policy, the new Bush administration will hew more closely to precedents established during the Clinton era than either its supporters had hoped or its detractors are likely to acknowledge. The emerging story is one of continuity, not change. Understanding why is crucial to comprehending the essential nature of American foreign policy after the Cold War.

Throughout eight years during which Democrats controlled the White House, few things raised greater ire among Republicans than the fecklessness with which Bill Clinton employed U.S. military power. Attracting particular ridicule was Clinton's penchant for pinprick air attacks portrayed as demonstrations of toughness and resolve. The effort to contain Saddam Hussein displayed this tactic at its worst. As a symbol of allied vigilance, American (and British) pilots flying nearly daily combat patrols over the so-called no-fly zone have launched dozens of attacks against Iraqi military installations, in effect waging an open-ended war of attrition. Saddam's response has been to mount ever bolder acts of defiance. Determined to sustain the fiction that Saddam remains securely in his "box", but unwilling to risk a showdown, Bill Clinton relied on faux air power to camouflage the deteriorating situation in the Gulf. The impact on Saddam and his regime was demonstrably nil.

During the run-up to the 2000 election, Bush and his surrogates let it be known that, if elected, they would jettison this amateurish Clinton doctrine. When it came to using force, George W. Bush would exhibit the prudence and sound judgment that had characterized his father's administration. By implication, a second Bush presidency would revive some variant of the Powell Doctrine, using military power only when vital U.S. interests are at stake, and then doing so overwhelmingly and decisively. Bush's appointment of Colin Powell, the doctrine's namesake, as secretary of state seemingly affirmed this intention. When it came to Saddam, the Bush team promised to have done with the temporizing and vacillation. Two words sufficed to define the essence of a more assertive policy toward Iraq: "regime change."

But the adults have now had their chance, and the results show a remarkable resemblance to the lamentable practices of the Clinton era. In explaining his decision to bomb Iraq, President Bush took pains to emphasize that doing so had long since become simply "routine." Indeed, the media discovered that the February 16 bombing was by no means the "first" of Bush's presidency, that on several other occasions after January 20, U.S. warplanes had hit targets inside Iraq. Insisting that endless American air patrols form "part of a strategy", President Bush vowed that "we will continue to enforce the no-fly zone." Reporters present for these remarks politely refrained from pressing Bush to explain exactly what that strategy might be.

But within weeks the answer to that question became clear. During the course of Secretary Powell's first trip to the Persian Gulf in February, tough talk about removing Saddam from power was notable by its absence. Instead, Powell touted the administration's plans for "retooling" the sanctions regime established during the first Bush presidency and continued by Bill Clinton. Although Saddam over the past decade has evinced extraordinary skill in evading that regime, Secretary Powell promised that a new set of unspecified "smart sanctions" would deny Baghdad access to arms and militarily relevant technology, keeping Saddam from causing further mischief while easing the hardships of the long-suffering Iraqi people. Yet stripped of the flourishes intended to convey a sense of novelty, the smart sanctions policy amounts to little more than a promise to try harder.

Thus is the Bush team, in the apt judgment of a March 4 Washington Post editorial, well "on its way to adopting the same Iraq policy pursued in recent years by the Clinton administration--a policy President Bush and his top aides repeatedly and vociferously condemned." Why the apparent flip-flop?

SEVERAL plausible explanations exist. The first and most obvious is the different perspective that results from assuming the mantle of power. Advocacy when free of responsibility is one thing; action when one will be held to account for the consequences is, to put it mildly, something else. Employed as a basis for actual decisions, campaign rhetoric is as likely to produce disaster as sound policy. John F. Kennedy ran for the presidency vowing to get tough on Castro, a stance that landed him in the Bay of Pigs. Skeptics warn that attempting to overthrow Saddam Hussein could well produce a comparable debacle --a Bay of Goats. That George W. Bush, wary of such a prospect, might discover hitherto overlooked virtues in the Iraq policy of his predecessor is eminently understandable.

A realistic appraisal of the facts on the ground provides a second possible explanation for Bush's about-face on Iraq. Although viewed in Washington as an event of cosmic importance, the inauguration of a new president left those facts unchanged, chief among them the strength of the security apparatus sustaining Saddam's grip on power; the haplessness of the Iraqi opposition; the limited appetite of the American people for another large-scale Persian Gulf war; and the cost-benefit calculus persuading other nations that the time has come to cut a deal with Saddam. Just as candidate Clinton, after berating the elder Bush for coddling the "butchers of Beijing", discovered once in office the merits of "engaging" China, so too the younger Bush, who denounced Clinton for being soft on Saddam, is finding practical alternatives to containing Iraq to be few and risky

But there is a third explanation, one that looks beyond the particular problems posed by Iraq. To an extent that neither partisan supporters nor members of the chattering classes are willing to concede, Bush and his chief advisers conceive of America's proper role in a post-Cold War world in terms nearly identical to those used by Clinton and his advisers. They assume the same intimate connection between U.S. foreign policy and America's domestic well-being; they embrace the same myths about the past; they voice similar expectations for the future, ascribing the shape of that future to the same set of factors. To a remarkable extent, they agree on the basic aims that should inform U.S. policy and the principles that should guide its conduct. Even when it comes to overlooking or ignoring inconvenient facts, Bush and Clinton share the same blind spots.

Thus, it is not really surprising that when setting its foreign policy azimuth the Bush administration spent its first weeks tacking away from the positions taken during the campaign, back toward the course previously charted by the Clinton administration. This was true not simply with regard to Iraq but on a number of other issues. Would a Bush administration act promptly to return U.S. forces to their true vocation as warfighters and leave peacekeeping to others, as Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, had hinted during the campaign? Not really: President Bush announced that he had no immediate plan to withdraw U.S. troops from the Balkans and assured NATO that any changes would occur only after thoroughgoing allied consultation--a signal for nervous Europeans to rest easy. Would the new administration reverse the Clinton policy of showering North Korea with blandishments whenever Pyongyang hints darkly about...