News - More On Nixon Doctrine

As promised several days ago, here is a little more of the Time article regarding President Bush adopting the Nixon Doctrine on foreign affairs...

In Afghanistan, the U.S. has handed over much of the anti-Taliban fight to NATO, on North Korea, America works largely through China. On Darfur, we have banked on peacekeepers from the African Union, this past summer the Bush administration briefly put Israel in charge of our Iran policy, supporting Jerusalem’s war against Hezbollah in hopes of crippling Tehran's powerful Lebanese ally. And in Iraq the U.S. is relying more and more on Nouri al-Maliki to defeat the insurgents, disarm the militias and give us a way out.

All this outsourcing makes some sense. Bogged down in Iraq, America simply can't intervene as aggressively—militarily or even diplomatically—as we could a few years ago. But there are costs too. When America relies on other countries to do our bidding, they often end up doing their own instead. Ethiopia may capture some terrorists, but it is also making a play for dominance in Africa's horn. Somali Islamists have already vowed to wage guerrilla war against the country's new occu­piers. If Ethiopia tries to make Somalia its puppet, it could spur a nationalist insurgency backed by archrival Eritrea. And that could spark a regional war.

Outsourcing has created problems elsewhere as well. Some of America's NATO part­ners won't send their troops to Afghanistan's dangerous south. On North Korea, China has put enough pressure on Pyongyang to make it resume talks on its nuclear program but not near­ly enough to make those talks go anywhere. Finally, while the Bush Administration cheered on Israel last summer as it de­stroyed Hezbollah encampments from the air, the bombing campaign virtually destroyed Lebanon's pro-Western govern­ment as well—wrecking what was once a crown jewel in Bush's campaign for Middle East democracy.

Peter Beinart
Time Magazine, 1/15/2007