Bankrupt export of democracy
Fri., February 04, 2005 Shvat 25, 5765
By Tony Karon
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While Bush and Condoleeza Rice paint a picture of the Western world locked in a mortal struggle for survival against "Islamist totalitarianism" on a scale of the Cold War or World War II, to much of the rest of the world, they sound distracted by secondary issues. Nobody's making the problem of Islamist terrorism the organizing principle of their foreign policy, and rather than dividing into two camps, today's geopolitical map is showing a plethora of horizontal connections of growing economic, political and sometimes even military significance.
These connections, which are increasingly simply bypassing Bush's efforts to tee up Iran via the UN, will come to naught not simply because of the Iraq debacle, but because China's burgeoning thirst for fossil fuels has prompted it to make a $30-billion investment in exploiting Iran's oil and natural gas reserves. And when China's central bank admonishes the U.S. over the slide of the dollar, its message resonates a lot more immediately with the concerns of many of America's traditional allies than does Bush's sermon on liberty. Being the world's largest debtor nation, America's weakening currency may be a portent of serious troubles ahead. So, whatever Bush's revolutionary ambitions, he may well find himself grounded by an old Clintonian mantra: "It's the economy, stupid."
Those who fear that the second Bush term will bring a new crusade for democracy led by the Third Infantry Division are missing the bigger picture. Just as the soaring, unyieldingly principled visions of Natan Sharansky - its prime inspiration - don't ultimately determine the policy decisions of the government of which he forms a part, so will President Bush's lofty inaugural speech about "lighting the fires of liberty" have precious little bearing on the tough strategic choices that will confront his administration over the next four years.
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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/536057.html