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The author is an associate researcher at the Raoul-Dandurand Chair, where his work focuses on the study and analysis of American politics.
“They’re still writing books about the first George W.” liked to say George W. Bush on America’s first president, George Washington. In this context, “the 43e does not need to worry about the judgment of history”, was it necessary to argue when he was staying at the White House.
He should. Looking at the state of US international relations today, history may already be judging him harshly. With the hindsight of a little over a decade since the end of his presidency, the conclusion seems clear: Bush and his vice-president Dick Cheney will have caused their country extraordinary damage, the effects of which are still being felt. strongly and will persist for years.
Among the consequences of the Bush-Cheney disaster is the threat to peace in Europe, the greatest since the Cold War, posed by the current crisis between Russia and Ukraine.
It started with Iraq
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush, who had initially campaigned in 2000 on the promise to conduct a “humble” foreign policy, has become the bearer of an almost messianic vision of the role of the United States, namely that of “liberating” peoples struggling with autocratic regimes.
First there was the invasion of Afghanistan — which culminated in a 20-year war that ended in monumental disasterwith few lasting gains.
And we remember, of course, that of Iraq. The most significant and controversial decision of the Bush-Cheney White House — which led to another quagmire, from which eventually sprang not the “liberal order”… but the Islamic State. The motive — to eliminate the terrorist threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime — was false.
What is remembered a little less is that Afghanistan and Iraq were only the first two pieces of a larger plan. While the United States was bogged down in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the White House was also planning an invasion of Iran.
Once that idea was discarded due to the obvious setbacks in the other two theaters of operations, Bush turned his attention to the north… and Russia.
The consequences of this approach haunt the world today.
After completely ignoring Russia’s clearly stated objections to an invasion of Iraq (Vladimir Putin had offered his collaboration with Bush after September 11), the United States supported actively the expansion of NATO, as well as the “orange revolution” in Ukraine in the mid-2000s. The Kremlin was convinced of the American will to support “color revolutions” all the way to Moscow. The situation was so threatening to the security of the Russian regime that an adviser to Putin referred to it as ” [leur] own September 11”.
Then, in April 2008, in his last year in the White House, Bush used the NATO summit held in Bucharest to push the military alliance to welcome Georgia… and Ukraine, despite the unfavorable opinion of the American intelligence services. These two former Soviet territories were dear to Moscow… and moreover shared their border with Russia. And NATO, it should be remembered, is the most important international coalition formed with a fundamental vocation: opposition to the Soviet Union (thus today Russia).
Four months later, in August 2008, Russia invaded Georgia. It was the first war of the XXIe century in Europe. The risk of a second appears now, regarding the admission into NATO… of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, in the Far East
These military adventures in the Middle East quickly squandered the large budget surpluses accumulated under Bill Clinton, then dragged the country into a spiral of public over-indebtedness unprecedented in American history, the repercussions of which constitute one of the main sources of the problems inflation today.
And at the same time, the Bush administration opened the doors of the United States economy… to China, convinced that by allowing the Middle Kingdom to participate in the world economy, it would adopt the customs and values Western democrats. All based on the principle that democracies that do business with each other do not attack each other, which would make America more secure.
In his first year in office, Bush pressed the admission of China into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the “regularization” of trade with the United States. By the same token, the Americans were then, directly or indirectly, consciously or not, subsidizing the construction of the greatest threat to their security—and to the western liberal democratic order—since the fall of the Soviet Union.
And by pushing Russia aside, the presidency of Bush Jr. pushed Russia into the arms of this menace.
In the months following Bush’s departure, Donald Trump, then a private citizen considering launching his own presidential campaign, said that the Chinese “believe that we are the dumbest children of bitches” in the world. It was a theme he was not going to let go.
This doesn’t quite sound like the distinguished words of a great historian… but it’s still an observation that shouldn’t take two centuries to recognize.
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