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Interview: Robert Dallek Discusses the Bush Administration's New Foreign Policy Doctrine and How it Compares to Previous Administrations
All Things Considered: September 21, 2002
 Bush & War
HOWARD BERKES, host:
President Bush sent to Congress this week a new strategy for national security. The document describes a dramatic change in American foreign policy. The focus is not deterrence and containment anymore. Instead, pre-emptive action is emphasized to protect the country from threats by terrorists and others seeking weapons of mass destruction. The new policy asserts US military dominance in the world but promises cooperative arrangements with other nations, promoting global security and assistance for developing countries. The document sent to Congress formalizes many of the ideas President Bush has promoted informally since the September 11th attacks. Historian Robert Dallek has written biographies of presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson and is currently at work on a study of John F. Kennedy and he joins me now in our studios.
Welcome.
Professor ROBERT DALLEK (Historian): Thank you.
BERKES: How does President Bush's vision of American power compare with the policies and pronouncements of past presidents that you've studied?
Mr. DALLEK: Well, Howard, this is a significant departure from what we've had since the end of World War II. During the Truman era, we embarked upon containment, deterrence; the idea being that we weren't eager to get into a hot war and that the best way to preserve the peace was to contain our adversaries. And it worked. It worked brilliantly because what we had, of course, was a Soviet Union. George Kennan was the architect of this idea, a Soviet Union that collapsed because it did not have the wherewithal to sustain its economy, to sustain the military buildup that it had committed itself to over the many decades that we were involved in the Cold War.
BERKES: So how is it different now? What is this administration seeing and proposing that is different from the past?
Mr. DALLEK: Well, this administration is saying that deterrence, containment no longer works and what we have to do is take up a doctrine which I think is probably best described as dominance. The United States is the premier power in the world, and we're not going to let anyone around the globe steal a march on us. We're going to, if we see a threat in any region, be it the Middle East, be it East Asia, be it Latin America, we are going to act pre-emptively, what they describe pre-emptively.
Now I think there are problems with this whole thing, and this is not pre-emption. What they're talking about is prevention. Pre-emption was when John Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis was able to show the United Nations and the world photographs of the missiles that the Soviets were emplacing in Cuba and this was going to change the military balance because the Soviets did not have the capacity to reach the United States with their missiles, but if they put them in Cuba, they certainly would. And so Kennedy pre-empted by demanding that they withdraw those missiles.
Prevention is what this current administration is committed to which is the idea that we're going to stop someone we think who's intent upon harming us. They don't have evidence. They don't have clear-cut photographs or demonstration of the fact that they are about to strike at us. It's their assumption that they're going to strike at us. See, this is the difference between the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis. The Bay of Pigs was prevention. Kennedy was being told the same exact thing that Bush is being told now, namely that time is on the side of our adversary and you've got to prevent them from getting excessive power.
BERKES: Are there precedence, looking back in history, for this kind of vision of American power?
Mr. DALLEK: Yeah, this is a kind of evangelism that Woodrow Wilson expressed but in a very constructive way, but it's the idea that America is the responsible party or the policemen, policemen of the globe, but the difference here is that Wilson believed in collective security, and he wanted to create a world organization that would be responsible for overseeing the peace and preventing aggression. This administration is saying, `We're going to do this unilaterally if we need to. We are the responsible party,' and this is something which I think is going to be, and already is, frighting to countries all over the globe and disturbing to lots of people in this country.
BERKES: What about times of war, though? This policy that the president outlined to Congress this week, essentially, he asked Congress to do this, you know, pass a resolution confirming that he is already authorized--and I'm quoting here--"to use all means that he determines to be appropriate, including force, in order to enforce UN resolutions, defend US interests and restore international peace and the security in the region." The president seems to be saying that he already has the authority to go to war and he's simply asking Congress to confirm that authority. Is that consistent with the way past presidents have approached Congress when the nation is perhaps going to war?
Mr. DALLEK: Well, it's consistent with what Lyndon Johnson did, and he extracted the Gulf of Tonkin resolution from the Congress and that proved to be a disaster. Lyndon Johnson was very happy about that resolution, saying, `It's just like Grandma's nightshirt. It covers everything.' And Johnson operated by a degree of stealth in escalating the Vietnam War. And instead of building a proper democratic consensus in this country and around the global for that conflict, he went ahead in a rather high-handed way and, of course, it worked against him. It destroyed his administration.
BERKES: Is it unusual for presidents to seek this kind of latitude when we might be using military power, or, you know, this is what presidents do and what politicians do is seek as...
Mr. DALLEK: Sure.
BERKES: ...much latitude as possible...
Mr. DALLEK: Sure.
BERKES: ...so your options aren't limited. Yeah.
Mr. DALLEK: Without question, but there are degrees and degrees and that is the business of the courts and the other branches of government to assure that a president doesn't carry this too far. We do have a separation of powers in this country which has worked brilliantly through our history and it comes into play again now.
BERKES: Thank you.
Mr. DALLEK: My pleasure.
BERKES: Robert Dallek is a historian and biographer of presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson and is working on a study of John F. Kennedy.
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