Jeb Bush Lays out Limited Foreign Policy Vision

Posted February 20, 2015

Jeb Bush Lays out Limited Foreign Policy Vision

February 20, 2015

On Wednesday, Jeb Bush laid out the foreign policy framework for his anticipated presidential campaign in a speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Bush’s remarks covered a broad range of subjects, and while he identified many of the pressing international challenges facing the United States, his remarks lacked clarity or solutions. As the presidential race moves forward, the national security debate will require more depth of understanding on issues including resolving Iran’s nuclear program, addressing the threat from the Islamic State, the fighting in Ukraine, normalizing relations with Cuba, and ongoing Pentagon spending debates, and we will look for candidates that back up emerging positions with effective policies.

Bush doesn’t seem to understand the goal of the nuclear negotiations with Iran – or the consequences if they fail. In his speech on Wednesday, Bush stated the threat from Iran in extreme hyperbole, calling it “an existential threat to Israel and to the world, including the United States.” He stated that the goal of the negotiations has changed from solving the problem to managing it. That’s not true: The goal of the Administration’s nuclear negotiations is, and always has been, to prevent Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon. This would entail managing and monitoring Iran’s nuclear program to extend the time it would take Iran to enrich the material necessary for a bomb while giving the United States and the international community time to respond, militarily if necessary, should Iran renege on its commitments. Bush’s dismissal of a tightly regulated Iranian nuclear program doesn’t consider the alternatives seriously. As Roger Cohen wrote last week, “This situation comes down to alternatives. Either you get a negotiated solution that ensures over some 15 years that Iran’s program is strictly limited, at least a year from breakout, with eyes and ears on the ground you’ve never had before, and the plutonium path to a bomb cut off by the transformation of the Arak research reactor — or you go for military action. And what would war achieve? It may set the program back some, but it will ensure that Iran goes for a bomb, inflame anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, and see the current international coalition for sanctions fall apart.” As NSN hasfrequently noted, passing legislation now that would impose new sanctions on Iran or force an up-or-down congressional vote on an agreement, which Bush encouraged, would make a comprehensive deal less likely. [Roger Cohen, 2/12/15]

On the Islamic State, Bush agreed with the Obama Administration’s approach, while claiming otherwise. As Bush observed, the challenge of confronting the Islamic State “gets really, really complicated,” but he seemed to not understand either what the current Administration policy has been or how he would improve it. “We have to develop a strategy that’s global that takes them out. First, the strategy needs to be restrain them, tighten the noose, and then taking them out is the strategy,” Bush said, actually echoing President Obama’s own rhetoric. Bush, like Obama, also stressed the importance of the international coalition, noting that the fight against the Islamic State “has to be done first in concert with folks in the region.” As NSN noted in its new report, Confronting the Islamic State: An Assessment of U.S. Strategic Options, there is a serious debate about the best approach to prosecute this fight, but all politicians should be wary of strategies that would escalate the conflict. And that’s a real concern with Bush, who seems fuzzy on the actual threat posed by the Islamic State. In his remarks he claimed they are “a fighting force of more than 200,000 battle-tested men,” though his office later claimed he misspoke and meant 20,000. As Juan Cole wrote yesterday, “A slip like that can reveal how a person views the world. Jeb Bush seems to think that menacing groups out there are 10 times larger than they are,” equivalent in size to the French military. [Juan Cole,2/19/15]

On Cuba, Bush called the normalization of relations “a bad deal” and said the United States should have held out longer on the status quo, despite every reason to believe the status quo was worse. “I think it was the wrong thing to do,” he said Wednesday. “Had they waited, they would have seen significant economic strains that would have brought Cuba to the table.” But, as Dan Drezner, professor at Tufts University and sanctions expert, explained in December, “while the benefits of catalytic carrots [i.e., engagement with renegade regimes] are not all that great, the status quo policy was worse. Way worse. It’s not like 50 years of economic sanctions altered Cuba’s regime. Sure, Cuba’s chief economic patron Venezuela is ailing right now, but Cuba endured far worse when the USSR disintegrated and the Special Period started. So anyone who tells you that the sanctions just needed more a little time [sic] to work is flat-out delusional. After more than a half-century, they were never going to work. By switching course, the United States reaps a few benefits. First, the odds of orderly liberalization and democratization in Cuba have increased. Not by a lot — maybe from 2 percent to 10 percent. But that’s still an improvement. Even if full-blown regime transition doesn’t happen, economic liberalization does make a society somewhat more free.” Moreover, Bush’s comments dodge the reality that America’s Cuba policy was isolating the United States and constituted one of the biggest obstacles towards renewed leadership in Latin America, as NSN has explained before. [Dan Drezner, 12/8/14]

On Ukraine, Bush struggled to find a difference with the Administration’s approach while sidestepping key details. Bush called the Obama Administration’s support of Ukraine “feckless,” insisting that the United States should not ignore Kiev’s request for weapons while also agreeing with America’s military reinforcement in the Baltic States. But the Obama Administration is considering sending arms to Ukraine. What has been missing from the debate among politicians on Ukraine, and the opportunity that Bush missed, was to engage more deeply with the risks of arming Ukraine and how U.S. policy should navigate those risks – if it should go forward with arms at all. As NSN hasdetailed previously, the challenges of arming Ukraine include driving a wedge between the United States and Europe (France and Germany are so far strongly opposed to sending arms), inducing Russian escalation, strengthening Putin’s hand domestically, and ultimately failing to affect the order of battle in Ukraine given Russian military superiority over Kiev.

Bush’s ideas about increasing Pentagon spending lack explanation and dodge the issue. Bush said it was “really dangerous” that the United States is “on the path of only spending two and a half percent of GDP on defense by the end of the decade,” insisting that the United States should increase Pentagon spending and President Obama should work with both parties to increase military expenditures. However, he did not say what specifically was dangerous about spending that sticks to the spending caps imposed by the Budget Control Act (BCA), which for FY 2016 are set to $499 billion, or more than all of Asia and Oceania dedicates to military spending ($407 billion) or all of Europe including Russia ($410 billion), according to data collected by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Additionally, President Obama has alreadyattempted to work with Congress to eliminate the BCA caps, including submitting a Pentagon budget request this year that was $35 billion above the caps. Finally, Bush did not explain what he would do differently with Congress. Defense News reports, “the likely candidate did not lay out the kind of broader fiscal plan that would replace defense cuts on the books into the 2020s with other deficit-reduction items. Without successfully pushing that kind of legislation through both chambers of Congress, the 2011 Budget Control Act’s defense and domestic spending cuts must occur each year through 2021.” [Defense News,2/18/15]