BROOKS: BUSH IS FOR SMALL WORLD GOVERNMENT, KERRY IS FOR BIG WORLD GOVERNMENT...


For the past couple of months, GOP pundits have been furiously trying to raise the foreign policy debate above the unfortunate level of the facts on the ground to questions of vision and grand strategy. After all, from the clouds, Bush's platform of muscular democracy-promotion looks to be a far stronger long-term response to the threat of Islamist terror than Kerry's platform of international cooperation and domestic preparation. The recent article in the N.Y. Times Magazine, which aimed to reassure readers that Kerry in fact has a grand strategy in the war on Terror, acheived exactly the oppposite effect for me. Reducing the impact of terror to a nuisance level exalts a tactical objective to the level of strategic goal. However,
the reality is that on the ground Bush's lofty goals are being thwarted by the fiscal irresponsibility, cronyism, pervasive polticization and sheer incompetence of the Bush Administration.


In today's Times, David Brooks finds an original way to over-simplify the differences in worldviews of the two candidates, by mapping the Blue/Red America dichotomy onto the Kerry-Bush foreign policy agendas. Bush, the candidate of wide-open, libertarian, gun-shooting, meat-eating Red America is for small world government. Islamic terror, like Communism was, is rooted in a lack of freedom, and freedom is best preserved by the good guys - America and other freedom-loving nations (namely the U.K. and Poland) having more firepower than the bad guys. The U.N. and other international institutions are more likely to get in the way than be constructive.


On the other hand, Kerry, the candidate of crowded, communitarian, tax-and-redistribute, smoke-banning Blue America is for big world government. Islamic Terror, like illegal narcotics, environmental concerns and other trans-national problems, is rooted in a lack of order, and that order is best established through America helping to build multilateral alliances and institutions. The least constructive way to do this is for the U.S. to round up posses to dole out vigilante justice.


Putting things that way, however, it clearly the Jacksonian vision of Bush that is lacking. You simply cannot fight global problems such as failed states, nuclear proliferation and global warming with the good-will of freedom-loving nations. Too many nations are run by regimes that are any but freedom-loving, and too many nations that believe in freedom for their own citizens (France) are indifferent to the freedom of others. We need strong international institutions to solve these problems, to lock otherwise selfish nations into firm commitments the global good.


To take Brooks' domestic analogy further, we are currently at a place analogous to the 1980s debate over dysfunctional social programs. Conservatives pointed to the programs dysfunction and argued for in effect ignoring the underlying problem (whether it be poverty or education or health care) while liberals pointed to the underlying problem and ignored the programs dysfunctions. It took a New Dem, neoliberal approach to begin to reform welfare and other programs.


It is no surprise that Bush is taking the same politically effective "small government" critique on international issues. After all, the U.N. is corrupt, the IAEA impotent and the Kyoto Treaty hopelessly flawed. Unfortunately, up until now, John Kerry has played the role of the paleoliberal - so focused on the need for these institutions to work that he is denial about how little they actually do. If Kerry was able to, like Clinton on domestic issues, articulate a reform agenda for international governance, he could dramtically shift the terms of the debate. More importantly, if he were to win, a Kerry Administration might be something more than "anything but a second Bush" administration.