Groundhog globe

James Gibney

One of the most striking features of the strategic landscape facing President Obama is the—dare I say it?—practical irrelevance of 9/11. Even if it did lead to a misbegotten trillion-dollar war and a nifty little security-industrial complex, the outlines of the global chessboard today would be largely familiar to anyone waking up on January 20, 2001, when President Bush took office.

Bush’s foreign policy platform was, in many ways, as simple as “ABC”—Anything But Clinton. No more coddling Pyongyang, Tehran, and Baghdad, or chasing after Middle East peace, or ineffectually launching an occasional cruise missile at Osama bin Laden, or preaching the gospel of global integration to Beijing and Moscow, or making nice with the United Nations. Slamming the Clinton Administration for ignoring Latin America, Bush announced that his first trip overseas as president would be to Mexico, because “the best foreign policy begins at home.”

In the eight years since, Latin Americans didn’t exactly get a lot of U.S. presidential love, and Mexico has become a free-fire zone for drug cartels; North Korea and Iran are both closer to a working nuclear arsenal; Russia and China have hardly turned over a new leaf; Osama bin Laden’s still out there; and Middle East peace—well, you get the point. Surely there’s a strong case for Barack Obama to drop the “T” in Bush’s signal crusade and begin his administration by just announcing a “War on Error.”

But as right and satisfying as it may be to set a date for closing Guantanamo and freeing up overseas family planning money, to name two executive orders signed by President Obama, there are good reasons for him to avoid “Anything But Bush” as a foreign policy mantra and to weigh carefully which policies should be reversed, however bungled or offensive they may appear.

Start with the single biggest crisis confronting the administration: the global economic slowdown, which has the potential to throw millions more Americans out of work, inflame geopolitical hotspots like Pakistan, and destabilize the developing world in general. Reviving the world economy is essential to advancing every significant U.S. national security interest, from fighting Islamic extremism and the spread of loose nukes to promoting democracy. As Cordell Hull, Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, said in another context, “When goods move, soldiers don’t.” Obama will need political capital to persuade not just Republicans in Washington, but leaders in Tokyo, Delhi, Berlin, and Moscow to take the measures necessary to avert a new Great Depression. Why make that immediate and vital task harder by, for example, picking a fight with Congressional right-to-lifers and the Vatican, or by irking the Chinese with loose talk of their “manipulating” their currency?

Anyone who advocates a wholesale repudiation of the policies of the Bush years also needs to remember the failings of the administration that preceded it. It’s not as if the Clintonistas got everything right. Never mind Haiti, Somalia, and Rwanda. How about their “kick the can down the road” strategy on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden when they could have, the signing of weak agreements with North Korea, and the promiscuous pursuit of Middle East peace talks? The Bushies’ solutions may often have been misguided and illusory, but the problems they faced coming into office were real enough. That ought to inspire some humility in the new gang.

Finally, maybe the best reason to go slow on rewriting our foreign policy is to spare the world another bout of hegemonic whiplash. Eight years ago, one of President Bush’s first executive orders barred federal financing for international family planning organizations that offer abortion counseling. Now, just as Bush did to his predecessor, President Obama has reversed Bush’s order. Other turnarounds are sure to follow. Pity a world that, every four or eight years, has to live through our national identity crisis. That’s not an argument for keeping bad policies in place. It is an argument for forging, whenever possible, some measure of abiding domestic consensus before revoking them.