Quote of the Day

"But that's really just a single piece of a broader, and even more remarkable turn of events: the Bush administration literally seems to have no foreign policy at all anymore. They have no serious plan for Iraq, no plan for Iran, no plan for North Korea, no plan for democracy promotion, no plan for anything. With the neocons on the outs, Condoleezza Rice at the State Department, and Dick Cheney continuing to drift into an alternate universe at the OVP, the Bush administration seems completely at sea. There's virtually no ideological coherency to their foreign policy that I can discern, and no credible followup on what little coherency is left. As near as I can tell, George Bush has learned that 'There's evil in the world and we're going to stand up to it' isn't really adequate as a foreign policy for a superpower but is unable to figure out anything better to replace it with. So he spins his wheels, waiting for 2009. Unfortunately, the rest of us are left spinning with him."
--Kevin Drum, at the Washington Monthly (THE END OF DEMOCRACY PROMOTION)

And that's where we stand.

While I am not asking for a return to the Rumsfeld-fueled uber-hawkish foreign policy (war fun!) that ruled from 2002 to just recently, I was surprised by the White House's almost nonchalant reaction to the North Korean missile situation. These people spent over a year planning an invasion of Iraq, a country that was not a threat to us, based on the flimsiest evidence that they could shine up and show off... and now barely a whimper from 1600 Pennsylvania as Kim Jong Il shoots off his rockets to show G.W. that he has a big dick too. Is Bush burnt out? Too afraid that people thinking about North Korea might remind them how all our resources were thrown away on the neocons' pet project in the Mesopotamia? Or simply trying to be patient- gasp!- and figure out the most sensible way to respond (or not respond) to this situation?

Like I said, I'm not saying I even remotely prefer the old cowboy approach to every situation that comes up, but I think it's clear that the White House is stuck in some foreign policy limbo. He's already made it clear he's going to leave the Iraq mess to the next President, so why bother sticking his toes into the North Korean water when evidence indicates that Kim Jong Il has mostly just hot air to throw at us right now? He may just ride out the rest of his term and not bite off more than he can chew.

We could only be so lucky.

[Related reading:
-Washington Post: A Driven President Faces a World of Crises
-Dan Froomkin (WaPo): Bush's Foreign Legacy]