A near-capacity crowd gathered at ASEAN auditorium last night to hear Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol speak about what he called a new era of American foreign policy - born on Sept. 11, 2001.
"When historians look back at the last 50, 60 years, they will probably divide international politics into three eras," he said, naming them as the Cold War, the 1990s, and the post-Sept. 11 era.
At the dawn of each new era, he said, "Things change. Things change more than you expect ... and it takes a long time for people to reorient themselves intellectually, politically."
History, and the Bush administration's place in it, guided much of Kristol's commentary. Though he warned that "old models don't help very much" in understanding a new political and historical situation, Kristol said that the United States' current transitional position is most similar to that which was experienced at the start of the Cold War, during the Truman administration.
Truman, today considered a great statesman, was criticized during his presidency for acting with few practical guidelines and little sense of timing. Kristol said that current President George W. Bush has, in the wake of Sept. 11, faced the same sort of rampant criticisms as Truman, and is likely deserving of the similar praise.
"The extent to which you keep getting surprised in the early years of a new foreign policy era needs to be remembered," he said. "To the degree that one sees chaotic decision making ... we're dealing with threats that no one even saw two years ago, much less four years ago. I would argue that, like Truman, [Bush] has more or less understood the situation and more or less done the right thing."
Kristol maintained a steady tone of approval for Bush and his policies throughout his remarks. Kristol served as Chief of Staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and Secretary of Education William Bennett under former President Ronald Reagan, and currently runs one of the nation's most well-known conservative publications.
In one objective stance, Kristol said he had a preference for Senator John McCain in the 2000 elections, and that there is a lack of close ties or privileged access for him with regard to the current Bush administration.
He said that Bush's policy decisions in the Middle East are the consequence of dramatic changes that occurred during his tenure in office, not the manifestations of a long-planned Republican agenda, as many critics have suggested. To illustrate this point, Kristol referred to the near-absence of foreign policy-related debate in the months leading up to the 2000 election.
"Just the commitment to fight terror has led the U.S. and Bush to a degree of engagement that seemed almost unthinkable four or five years ago," he said.
He rearticulated this belief in the context of Iraq in response to a question posed by Tufts junior Phil Martin.
"I don't think it's fair to say Bush used [Sept. 11] as an excuse [for Iraq], but that he rethought things," Kristol said. Employing what has become popular rhetoric in describing the President, he said, "I think we do have to give Bush credit: we made all kinds of mistakes in Iraq, but he stayed the course."
"Staying the course" remained a value to which Kristol often returned to throughout his remarks, as he praised Bush, in various contexts, for being willing to stake his presidency on Iraq.
"Bush deserves a lot of credit for refusing to pull out or pull back, for understanding that everything was on the line," he said. Had the United States pulled out, "it would have been like Somalia times 50...or times 5,000."
Kristol gave the recent movements and elections in Iraq, Palestine, Ukraine, Georgia and Lebanon as examples of an international climate change that has resulted from Bush's dedication to a policy of pushing countries to "move towards ... something decent, tolerant, non-extremist producing at home and non-extremist supporting abroad."
Throughout his speech, however, Kristol said he relied on the determinacy of history to in the future either correct or corroborate his personal convictions concerning post-Sept. 11 policy. "[Currently,] it's not fair to look back 20 years and say, 'This led to this led to this led to this,'" he said. "One does have to try to put oneself in the position at the time."
Kristol did, however, say that he employs hindsight to distinguish this new era from the last, and explain why he thought current proactive American policies were the right wave for the future.
"The problem with the '90s wasn't that we were too aggressive, too overbearing, it was that we were too slow," he said. "So the lesson is that we should be strong when committed, and use our instruments effectively to change political dynamics."
As for Bush, Kristol said, "it may turn out to be the judgment of historians both abroad and at home that his opponents have consistently [underestimated] him."
