What Bush Got Right

Like Obama, Defense Secretary Gates has talked about sending more troops to the region. But the problem is bigger than a lack of American soldiers. European countries haven't contributed enough troops to the effort, and have put absurd restrictions on the forces they do have in theater. Afghanistan itself is extremely complex. The country contains vast swaths of mountainous territory that have never been ruled effectively by the central government, where levels of illiteracy and unemployment are stunningly high, and where Pashtun nationalism has got mixed up with Islamic extremism. Many serious scholars and local politicians argue that more troops would not solve the problem—particularly since the Taliban's back bases are located across the border in Pakistan. And the administration has ramped up spending in the region considerably. Whereas in 2003 it spent $737 million on reconstruction and equipping the Afghan Army, by 2007 it was spending $10 billion.

On North Korea, the administration's reversal has been near total. Within months of entering the Oval Office, Bush publicly repudiated his secretary of State, Colin Powell, for even suggesting that the administration would continue Bill Clinton's efforts to negotiate with Kim Jong Il. But since July 2005, Bush has pursued a very similar approach, in fact an even more multilateral one than Clinton's—four additional parties are now at the table. Bringing in the Chinese has been crucial because they are the only ones who have any real leverage with Pyongyang. Bush began by describing North Korea as part of the Axis of Evil. Today he is considering taking the country off the terror list and has offered economic aid to its regime.

On Iran, the third charter member of the Axis of Evil, the administration has performed a similar about-face. Forget the muttering of various proponents of military action, periodically leaked to newspapers. The efforts of the administration have been diplomatic and multilateral. Its point-person for most of the second term was Nicholas Burns, a veteran diplomat who is viewed with great suspicion by neoconservatives. Last month one of the State Department's senior most officials, William Burns (no relation), joined the Europeans at the table with Iranian negotiators, the first physical American involvement in these talks. One could argue—I would—that the administration's diplomacy is half-hearted and lacks ambition. An offer of direct engagement and negotiations would be a bolder step. But that's not a silver bullet. Such an offer could well prove fruitless. The principal obstacles to a negotiated settlement are Iranian intentions, suspicions and dysfunctions. The general thrust of Bush administration policies has now evolved into the correct one.

The same could be said for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Bush began his term in office vowing that he would not involve himself in Clinton-style efforts at peacemaking. His administration adopted a hands-off approach, allowing resentments to build and conditions to worsen. It gave free rein to irresponsible policies from all parties, encouraging, for example, a thoughtless and ill-planned Israeli attack on Lebanon that ended up weakening Israel, devastating Lebanon and empowering Hizbullah. This year Bush has plunged into the process, holding an international conference in Annapolis at which, for the first time, both Israel and the Palestinians accepted that the purpose of the exercise was to create a Palestinian state. Since that meeting, Rice has made a half dozen visits to the region. All this hasn't produced much yet, may be seven years too late, and perhaps is not the right approach (what is?). But few would argue that U.S. policy is currently on the wrong track.

The ones who would are revealing. Disgruntled conservative hard-liners have been dismayed by the administration's policy in many areas, particularly North Korea, Iran and Israel. John Bolton, formerly Bush's U.N. ambassador and a superhawk, publicly makes the case for betrayal. When Burns joined the talks with Iran, Bolton fumed sarcastically on television that the State Department was obviously "doing its best to ensure a smooth transition to the Obama administration." (Obama has long advocated American negotiations with Tehran.) He described Bush's handling of North Korea as a capitulation, comparing him to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. John Bolton is absolutely right that Bush has changed course fundamentally in many of these areas. Of course, I would celebrate that fact rather than condemn it.

Other reversals have drawn less opposition. In its early years the Bush administration seemed intent on confirming the conservative stereotype of being utterly uninterested in assistance to poor countries, especially if the money was going to treat AIDS patients. In each of its first two years it spent less than $1 billion on global HIV projects. This year the United States will spend almost $6 billion, most of it in Africa. The president's signature program, PEPFAR, has been a bipartisan success story (although the requirement that some of the money be spent on abstinence programs dilutes the program's effectiveness). Bush's overall efforts on disease prevention and aid have won him praise from an unusual assortment of figures—Bono, Bob Geld of and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who wrote that "George Bush has done much more for Africa than Bill Clinton ever did."

Politically the picture in Africa is more mixed. Bush put time, a presidential envoy and considerable effort behind the negotiations to broker a peace between north and south in Sudan, and he's made some similar attempts in Darfur. (These haven't yielded much, though mostly for reasons that cannot be blamed on the administration.) More generally, however, the administration has been far too focused on the threat of terrorism, providing aid and military assistance to any and every regime—from Ethiopia to Equatorial Guinea—that claimed to be battling Al Qaeda. In a sad replay of the cold war, the United States has allied itself with unscrupulous dictators for no particular gain, only because they have learned to mouth the language of the global War on Terror.