Fishing for a Way to Change the World

There's some support for the dynastic reading that George W. Bush intended to invade Iraq from the outset of his presidency to avenge his father. "After all, this is a guy that tried to kill my dad at one time," Bush declared at a political fund-raiser in Houston in September 2002. Considerable doubt has since arisen around the incident Bush was referring to, a supposed plot by Saddam to blow up the former president with a car bomb on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. But there's little doubt that Bush himself believed what intelligence officials told the family after that incident: that Saddam planned to murder not just George W.'s father, but the other family members visiting Kuwait with him: his mother, Barbara, his wife, Laura, and his two youngest brothers, Neil and Marvin. The incident cast a long shadow in the family. According to family intimates, the Bushes felt they were at risk so long as Saddam remained in power.

Yet of the top-level players in the administration, only Paul Wolfowitz directly advocated military action against Iraq before September 11. From the collective perspective of Bush's foreign-policy team, Iraq fell into the category of big problems that weren't urgent. His people were instinctually critical of Clinton's proportionate responses to Saddam's provocations and felt they might have to act more decisively at some point in the future. But the same category of problem also included North Korea and Pakistan's nuclear programs, Russia's growing authoritarianism, and China's belligerence toward Taiwan. There were no preparations or significant planning for war in Iraq until September 2002 and no point-of-no-return buildup until January 2003.

In other words, George W. Bush did not arrive in the White House determined to invade Iraq. So why did he ultimately decide to do it? Bush's struggle to vindicate his family and outdo his father predisposed him toward completing a job his dad left unfinished. But it was his broader attempt to develop a foreign policy different from his father's that led him into his biggest mistake. Act One of the Bush Tragedy is the son's struggle to be like his dad until the age of forty. Act Two is his growing success over the next fifteen years as he learned to be different. The botched search for a doctrine to clarify world affairs and the president's progressive descent into messianism constitute the conclusive third act.

Bush Doctrine 1.0 was Unipolar Realism (3/7/99–9/10/01). Driven more by the refutation of Clinton's liberal internationalism than of 41's diplomatic realism, it challenged his father's worldview only obliquely. Bush steered clear of his father's men, former Secretary of State James Baker and former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, but was advised by Colin Powell and Scowcroft's protégée Condoleezza Rice, who was likewise grounded in classic "balance of power" realism.

He was a realist with a different list of things to do, a harder shell, and less use for the "smiles and scowls of diplomacy." In his first eight months he showed how much less. Bush declared his intention to abrogate the ABM Treaty and move ahead with developing missile defense. Where his father was a Sinophile, the son saw a growing military threat. He talked tough when the Chinese forced down a U.S. military plane violating their airspace and held its crew hostage. He spoke ambiguously about whether he supported continuing the long-standing policy of "strategic ambiguity" with respect to Taiwan. He repudiated the Kyoto Accords on global warming. He spurned Yasir Arafat and stood by Ariel Sharon in Israel. He broke off negotiations with North Korea.

Unipolar realism survived its initial encounters with reality, but not with September 11. By the end of that day, the president had a new approach. Bush Doctrine 2.0 was With Us or Against Us (9/11/01–5/31/02). The new doctrine didn't represent a repudiation of the first one so much as an elaboration of it to deal with the previously neglected problem of terrorism. It provided the justification for not just pursuing Al Qaeda, but for deposing the Taliban, its host in Afghanistan. If Rice first came up with the "no distinction" idea, it was [Vice President Dick] Cheney who first started calling it the "Bush Doctrine" in public. In a November 2001 speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Cheney offered this definition: "We will hold those who harbor terrorists, those who provide sanctuary to terrorists, responsible for their acts."