A Truman for Our Times.

Sempa, Francis P.

A Truman for Our Times

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10309

By Edward Luttwak, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Reviewed by Francis P. Sempa, Contributing Editor

In a thought-provoking article in Britain's Prospect Magazine, the respected defense/foreign policy analyst Edward Luttwak persuasively refutes the conventional wisdom that George W. Bush's foreign policy has been an unmitigated failure. Bush, instead, writes Luttwak, should be viewed as a "great president in the Truman mould."

Like Truman and Korea in 1952, Bush today is unpopular and considered a failed president due to an unpopular war in Iraq. Luttwak contends, however, that the perspective of time will demonstrate that the Iraq War is a costly sideshow in Bush's otherwise successful "global counteroffensive against Islamic militancy," just as history demonstrated that the Korean War was a costly sideshow in Truman's otherwise successful global policy of containment.

Luttwak argues that the focus on the difficulties in Iraq has deflected attention from the broad success of Bush's anti-jihadist policy. That success consists of: "the destruction of al Qaeda training bases in Afghanistan, the killing or capture of most of its operatives, and, most importantly, the conversion of Muslim governments from the support of jihad to its repression." Bush has also succeeded, Luttwak writes, in denuclearizing rogue states such as Libya and Syria, while marshaling international support against North Korean and Iranian efforts to obtain nuclear weapons.

Although Luttwak is critical of Bush's fiscal policies and foresees trouble ahead if we cannot get out from under the "colossal accumulation of private debt" and restore the value and credibility of the dollar, he does not agree with the "declinists" who see America being overtaken by rising great powers such as China and India. The United States, he writes, "is set to remain the chief source of western innovation" due to its relatively young population and flexible society, and because its "spirit of discovery and invention" is as strong as ever.