The end of Cowboy Diplomacy

WASHINGTON

The era of "Cowboy Diplomacy" is over, writes Time magazine.

The Bush Doctrine -- "The world's worst regimes will not be allowed to acquire the world's worst weapons" -- is being defied by Iran's Ahmadinejad and North Korea's Kim Jong Il with impunity.

The White House seems to have lost interest in its democracy crusade, after free elections advanced the prospects of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas on the West Bank. In Ukraine, the victors of the Orange Revolution have made a mess of things and pro-Putin forces are making a comeback.

Neither the Afghan war nor the Iraq war goes well. U.S. casualties are not falling, while the death toll among Afghans and Iraqis mounts toward levels where they may have to be described as civil wars.

America is backing Israel in the Palestinian conflict as she seeks to starve to death a Hamas that came to power in elections Bush sponsored.

What has happened• What has rendered impotent the Cowboy Diplomacy of George W. Bush, a policy of pre-emptive strikes and preventive wars, of crusades for global democracy and ridding the world of tyrants?

Answer: Bush has run up against the limits of power. U.S. air and missile power, and U.S. special forces guiding warlord armies, can knock over a Taliban regime. U.S. armored divisions, backed by unrivaled air and missile power, can roll over an Iraqi army and unhorse an Iraqi regime. But building a nation is another matter.

Americans are discovering you cannot build a democratic nation on Islamic soil in Texas-sized nations like Iraq and Afghanistan without a massive, long-term occupation if a slice of the population looks upon the regime you support as a sock puppet of American imperialism.

Why has Bush decided diplomacy is the better part of valor in dealing with Iran and North Korea• Consider the alternative.

Pyongyang is a formidable power with a million-man army and 11,000 artillery pieces on the DMZ. Iran is three times as populous and four times the size of Iraq. Should Bush attack either, he could end his term with U.S. forces fighting three major wars.

But if the military option carries too many risks, multilateral diplomacy appears to offer little hope. China and Russia will veto any tough U.N. sanctions on Iran or North Korea. Is the U.S., then, "the pitiful, helpless giant" Nixon warned we could become?

By no means. America remains the first military, economic, cultural and political force on the planet. We are simply not omnipotent.

What is needed is fresh thought on foreign policy. We are at what Walter Lippmann called a "plastic moment," when a new foreign policy can be imposed to meet a changed world. The place to begin is by returning to basics. What are the vital interests of the U.S. and who threatens them?

On the terrorism front, the president has done well. Since 9/11, 85,000 Americans have been murdered, but not one because of a terrorist attack.

As we cannot ensure Iran and North Korea are free of nukes, we should put both on notice that if any WMD used in an attack on the U.S. is traced to either, a full retaliatory response will follow. If they wish such relations as we had with China and Russia in the late Cold War, they are on offer.

We should pull our troops out of Korea, where they are hostages in harm's way.

And if we are about to jettison Bush's Cowboy Diplomacy, perhaps it is time to look again at the policies Bush and the neocons dismissed. For these policies never failed America.

What are they• The anti-interventionism of the Founding Fathers from Washington to Wilson and the conservative policy of containment and deterrence pursued by Eisenhower and Reagan.

Both deserve a hearing in the politics of 2008 -- one that neither McCain nor Hillary will give them.

Pat Buchanan edits The American Conservative magazine.