Iran, Iraq, North Korea: Bush is No Longer Just Muscles

A little more than a year after that speech, Bush implemented that strategy in Iraq, pushing aside international objections and removing the regime of Saddam Hussein by force. The idea was that the invasion of Iraq would demonstrate to other countries the costs of opposing American will. After success in Iraq, dictators would realize the risks of defying the United States, and recalcitrant allies would find that they were better off joining US-led coalitions than opposing them.

Not everyone was convinced by the logic at the time, but now even the Bush administration no longer seems to believe in it. On Iran, as recently as 18 months ago, Bush was still dismissing European diplomacy as bound to fail and insisting that the United States would never "reward bad behavior" by negotiating with Tehran. Since then, however, Washington has reversed course, not only formally embracing the "EU3" diplomatic approach but offering Iran incentives of its own, agreeing to join nuclear talks, and patiently avoiding any unilateral action.

North Korea shows a similar pattern. One of Bush's first actions as President, in 2001, was to announce an end to US support for the "Sunshine Policy" of South Korea, decisively breaking with what Bush felt was the Clinton administration's excessive patience with dictators and their weapons programs. The Bush team denounced as appeasement the 1994 Agreed Framework according to which North Korea would suspend its nuclear program in exchange for economic aid and the provision of proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors.

Having broken with the Clinton approach and put North Korea on notice that the United States would not "stand by as dangers gather," Bush is doing a lot of standing by. In September 2005, his administration agreed to a deal with North Korea - energy aid, security guarantees, and normalization of relations in exchange for an end to the nuclear program - that looked an awful lot like the Agreed Framework. And just last week, after warning Pyongyang that testing its long-range Taepodong 2 missile would have grave consequences, the Bush approach has consisted of little more than reiterating its desire to revive the multilateral "Six-Party talks."

Iran and North Korea are not the only examples of how far significantly Bush has reversed course since the Bush Doctrine was proclaimed. Indeed, ever since Condoleezza Rice announced in her confirmation hearings to become Secretary of State that "the time for diplomacy is now" the administration has adopted a far more pragmatic course than during the first term. Unilateralist hawks like Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith and State Department official John Bolton were moved out of key positions, and professionals like Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns took over. The new Bush team softened its criticism of international organizations like the UN, EU and even the International Criminal Court, accepted the reality of climate change, and increased foreign aid. Under pressure from the public and the courts, it has raised standards for detainee treatment and is now applying the Geneva Conventions in Guantanamo. The notion that promoting democracy - "ending tyranny in our world" - would become the centerpiece of American foreign policy has been tempered by business-as-usual diplomacy toward Egypt, Pakistan, Kazakhstan and any number of other autocracies.

There are, of course, still hard-liners and ideologues left in the administration - not least the Vice President. At some point they may try to make the case that patience and diplomacy and that only decisive US action can make the world safe. But the tide has clearly turned against the neoconservative movement, whose success rested on the premise that the United States was rich, powerful and inherently virtuous. Now Americans themselves are starting to have their doubts. The Iraq war has been far more costly and less successful than planned, the U.S. military is overstretched, the budget has moved from surplus to deficit, America's image in the world has never been worse, and popularity of the President himself is at an all-time low. No wonder, then, that Bush is reverting to the more "humble" approach he called for in the 2000 election campaign.