The Imperial Temptation: The New World Order and America's Purpose

Yogi Berra is reputed to have said "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Foreign policy academic Robert W Tucker's analysis of Gulf War 1, written in 1992, seems to have successfully anticipated the foreign policy strife that engulfed America from 2001. All the usually listed sore points of Bush II foreign policy were, as Tucker shows, clearly on display under Bush I. Tucker delivered a powerful (and obviously unheeded) warning of the dangers of unilateralism, preventive war, exploding national debt and disregard for the responsibilities of victors whilst Bush I was still celebrating his Kuwait triumph. As Tucker's account illustrates, both administrations were fully prepared to operate with or without a fig leaf of UN approval. In this Bush I was essentially "luckier" than Bush II. Perhaps for other Security Council powers, it was a case of once bitten, twice shy. After reading Tucker it is impossible maintain that Bush II was some kind of wayward son unwilling to follow good fatherly example. The example may have been the failure. Bush I's dishonourable call for a popular uprising against Saddam Hussein and then leaving the Kurd and Shi'ite rebels to suffer Hussein's revenge seems echoed in Operation Iraqi Freedom's lopsided priorities, guarding the oil ministry while looters plundered Baghdad. Tucker's book weakens the case that the Bush II "neocons" were wholly to blame whist Bush I "realists" were blameless. In fact their differences are of degree, not of kind. There is blame enough for both. Tucker argued that full scale intervention in response to Iraq's Kuwait invasion was unnecessary, overblown and unwanted in the region, even by regimes fearful of Hussein. Tucker saw that the heavily one sided nature of the war's body count as both dangerously misleading to Americans and as inviting other risks. Tucker argued America's legitimate goals of countering Hussein could have been met with a lower profile response he calls "punitive containment." Had this approach been followed, the cost to the US both in blowback and the trillion dollar war on terrorism may have been avoided. Tucker also highlights the dollar cost of an `empire' fuelled by foreign debt. Looking back after the crash and with US national debt now exceeding 92% of GNP this was a timely warning. Tucker's 1992 book anticipates almost all the issues raised by contemporary critics like Andrew Bacevich. But, unlike most contemporary critics, Tucker's critique is placed within the context of a hundred year of US diplomatic history. In other books published from the late seventies on, Tucker advocated "neo-isolationism". This was never a back to Lindberg (Senior or Junior) position. He regarded classic 19th century isolationism as sound, but based on an unacknowledged yet favourable balance of power made possible by the Royal Navy. In turn, the US had unacknowledged leverage over the British, thanks to the long exposed border with Canada. Tucker saw th

This book covers the first Bush administration and the foreign policy decisions they took around the end of the cold war and the Gulf war. The book covers the authors views as to what the U.S. should and should not do as far as aggression across the globe. I must say that I found this book more interesting reading it now, after the second Bush's first term and the Iraqi war. There were so many parallels in what the authors are concerned about and what has taken place over the past four years that one would have thought the book was written in 2004 and not 1992. Basically, the authors felt that the fist Bush administration was too eager to send the military off to do the job that the diplomats should have been doing. An interesting view given that most people view the first President Bush as one of the stronger Presidents in the area of Foreign Policy and diplomacy that we have had over the past few decade's. Given the climate today the authors took some rather interesting positions that today would be met with a mixture of contempt and adoration from both sides of the political isle. They are dead set against preemptive war and want the U.S. to fall back to more of a isolationist position, at least in regard to military action. They argue that this is keeping with what the countries founding fathers would have done. They also think the UN should be the body used to work through these type of international disputes. But in a fit or either hard edged pragmatism or just plain ruthlessness, the authors argue that once we were engaged in the Gulf war the only logical outcome was to go all the way to Baghdad and oust Saddam. Overall the book is interesting and presents its arguments is a well thought out and calm if not cautious way. This is not one of the many over dramatic, shout at each other type of political book that is so common today. These two authors are college professors and reading the book you did get the feeling of a senior level class room lecture. This is my one complaint, the book was written far to dry to gain wide acceptance among general readers. Unless you are truly interested in the topic, I would assume the general reader would put the book down after the first chapter thinking it was too dense.