by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n T<\/span>here is as much relief from realists as there is disappointment from neo-Wilsonians over a perceived change in\u00a0U.S.\u00a0foreign policy \u2014 what\u00a0Time<\/i>magazine clumsily dubbed \u201cThe End of Cowboy Diplomacy.\u201d It is true that there is now a regrettable new quietism about promoting democracy in theMiddle East\u00a0. And the\u00a0United States\u00a0also insists on multiparty talks with the ghoulish regimes in\u00a0North Korea\u00a0and\u00a0Iran\u00a0, in a fashion that purportedly seems much different from the go-it-alone caricature of 2001\/2.<\/p>\n But think hard: Has George Bush, or the world itself, changed in the last five years?<\/p>\n One obvious difference from the first administration is the added nuclear component to the most recent pressing crises. Taking out the Taliban and Saddam Hussein did not involve an immediate threat of nuclear retaliation. Preempting against\u00a0North Korea\u00a0does run such risk \u2014 and perhaps very soonIran\u00a0will too. That requires a different strategy.<\/p>\n The second change from the immediate past is oil. For most of the first administration, the price of petroleum was around $20-$30 a barrel. We are now well into the era of $60-$70, and the threat of constant shortages.<\/p>\n This energy frailty has had two pernicious effects on\u00a0U.S.\u00a0foreign policy. Our allies in Europe and\u00a0Japan\u00a0now view almost any American initiative withRussia\u00a0, the Middle East, or\u00a0Latin America\u00a0in terms of the potential fallout on their own energy costs and supplies.<\/p>\n In addition, the consuming nations are now providing a windfall of several hundred billion in extra profits to the likes of the House of Saud, the Iranian theocrats, the Gulf Sheikdoms, Hugo Chavez, and Vladimir Putin. Not only are some of these billions recycled in nefarious ways in arms purchases and terrorist subsidies, but also the intrinsic failures of theocracy, autocracy, and neo-Communism are masked by such accidental largess.<\/p>\n Worse still, there is now a growing new relativist standard of international behavior for roguish regimes: The degree to which a non-democratic nation has either oil or nukes \u2014 or preferably both \u2014 determines its perceived legitimacy. Any individual action the\u00a0United States\u00a0now undertakes may spike oil prices, and thus endanger the livelihood of its allies or neutrals while further subsidizing our enemies.<\/p>\n A<\/span>\u00a0third difference is the fading memory of September 11 as we reach the fifth anniversary of that mass murder. As the anger of the American people subsides, weariness with the counter-response grows, and the very human desire not to rock the boat permeates national life \u2014 especially when we have not had, as predicted, another 9\/11. It is hard to keep reminding the American people for five years that we alone must lead the world against the terrorists and their state sponsors.<\/p>\n So part of Mr. Bush\u2019s dilemma derives also from his very success. The audacious removal of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban \u2014 coupled with the killing of thousands of Islamic terrorists abroad, together with a revolution in security procedures at home \u2014 have combined to prevent another jihadist attack. Now in our complacence, we think our recent safety was almost a natural occurrence rather than the result of national sacrifice and an ordeal that must continue. And, again, such a return to normalcy makes the lonely task of prompting reform in the\u00a0Middle East\u00a0seem rather unnecessary, if not irrelevant.<\/p>\n Fourth, the rock has already been thrown into the\u00a0Middle East\u00a0pond, and the ripples are still on the water. One can argue about the effects of the Iraqi democracy on the larger Middle East \u2014 the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, the about-face in Libya, democratic peeps in the Gulf, or the end of the career of Dr. Khan \u2014 but the worst two governments are now gone, and the Middle East is in flux dealing with the detritus of these fallen regimes.\u00a0Iraq\u00a0is messy, but its chaos is no longer novel. And for all the violence, its democratic government just keeps chugging along, its enemies so far unable to derail it.<\/p>\n Fifth, the old lie that American bellicosity incited the Islamists has been shattered by a series of events that have had nothing to with\u00a0Iraq\u00a0. The French riots, the threats to Danish and Dutch artists, the plot to behead a Canadian prime minister, the Indian bombings, and on and on, have combined to educate the world. The violence reminds everyone that billions of Christians, Jews, Hindus, secularists, atheists, and modernists are hated for reasons that have almost nothing to do with\u00a0U.S.\u00a0efforts in\u00a0Iraq\u00a0. Therefore, allies are starting to renew their cooperation with us, realizing that their studied distance fromAmerica\u00a0has brought them no reprieve. Moreover, the daily griping, victimization, scapegoating, and violence of the Islamic Arab world, whether directed against us in Iraq, or the Indians, Europeans, and Russians, for many has had the aggregate effect of tiring people, perhaps best characterized as a feeling like: \u201cForget them \u2014 they are hopeless and not worth another American soldier, dollar, or thought.\u201d<\/p>\n A<\/span>ll these considerations apparently allow \u2014 or sometimes force \u2014 the Bush administration to assume a supposedly less visible, more multilateral profile. There is one important caveat, however.<\/p>\n What progress we have made since 9\/11 \u2014 thousands of terrorists killed, al Qaeda scattered, Europe galvanized about Islamism and sobered about the consequences of its cheap U.S. rhetoric, Iran\u2019s nuclear antics revealed, democracy birthed in the Middle East, Palestinian radicals exposed for their fraud, the United Nations under overdue scrutiny, America much better defended at home \u2014 all that came as a result of an often unilateralist posture that risked global alienation by challenging the easy appeasement of the rest of the world. Nothing there to apologize for or change \u2014 but much accomplished to be proud of.<\/p>\n Of course, it is possible, and perhaps even understandable, to coast for a while and advisable to cool the rhetoric about bringing democratic change through \u201csmoking out\u201d and hunting down terrorists \u201cdead or alive.\u201d But we shouldn\u2019t forget that the global village gets back to normal only after a Shane or Marshall Will Cane is willing to take on the outlaws alone and save those who can\u2019t or won\u2019t save themselves. So, remember, when, to everyone\u2019s relief, such mavericks put down their six-shooters and ride off into the sunset, the killers often creep back into town.<\/p>\n \u00a92006 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About “Cowboy Diplomacy.” by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online There is as much relief from realists as there is disappointment from neo-Wilsonians over a perceived change in\u00a0U.S.\u00a0foreign policy \u2014 what\u00a0Timemagazine clumsily dubbed \u201cThe End of Cowboy Diplomacy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[772],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-11B","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8544,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-iran-failure-has-many-fathers\/","url_meta":{"origin":3943,"position":0},"title":"The Iran Failure Has Many Fathers","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 17, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The dangerous belief that words alone can transcend an eternal truth of human nature. by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine Everybody knows the deal with Iran is a disaster. Why is equally obvious: Iran will get $150 billion to spend on weapons and its terrorist proxies, will keep its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via FrontPage Magazine","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sw-500x281.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3928,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/riding-off-into-the-sunset\/","url_meta":{"origin":3943,"position":1},"title":"Riding Off Into the Sunset","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Magazine [A shorter version of this essay appears in the current issue\u00a0of National Reviewmagazine.] \u201cThe end of cowboy diplomacy\u201d\u00a0Time\u00a0Magazine recently announced of George Bush\u2019s supposed turn to softer talk and more multilateral policy-making. The growing beltway consensus is that the beleaguered President finally awoke\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2006"","block_context":{"text":"August 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/august-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2339,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/whos-in-charge-if-diplomacy\/","url_meta":{"origin":3943,"position":2},"title":"Who’s in Charge if Diplomacy?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner 'North Korea made a colossal mistake' One of the stranger aspects of being overseas is following the upside-down logic of the\u00a0International Herald Tribune, which around January mysteriously morphed from a shrill critic of the U.S. government to its official mouthpiece. In a recent editorial\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2009"","block_context":{"text":"August 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/august-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2962,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/foreign-policy-as-magical-thinking\/","url_meta":{"origin":3943,"position":3},"title":"Foreign Policy as Magical Thinking","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPageMagazine.com President Obama\u2019s foreign policy team is built around one key idea: the neglect of diplomacy by President Bush\u2019s \u201ccowboy\u201d unilateralism has damaged American prestige, alienated our allies, and worsened our problems abroad, particularly with the Islamic jihadists. Thus the new administration will restore diplomacy to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6306,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/epitaph-for-a-foreign-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":3943,"position":4},"title":"Epitaph for a Foreign Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine If you still doubt that Barack Obama has disastrously bungled our foreign policy, check out this\u00a0video. In it Egyptian singer Salma Elmasry brutally insults Obama for supporting the Muslim Brothers and Islamists in general, her vulgar insults laced with an image of our President\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1079,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/diplomacy-carterizes\/","url_meta":{"origin":3943,"position":5},"title":"Diplomacy Carterizes","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Reset\/Outreach R.I.P It is not surprising how little foreign policy comes up in the debates, given the sorry state of the economy. 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