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Analysis: For Bush, 2008 Makes or Breaks

Council on Foreign Relations

January 2, 2008
Author: Michael Moran

The year 2007 brought significant course changes in Bush administration foreign policy, from North Korea to Iraq and Iran, and from Middle East peace diplomacy to climate change. Whether time remains during President George W. Bush’s tenure to lock in equally significant accomplishments remains uncertain.

Walter Russell Mead, CFR senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy, says 2007 brought important corrections in U.S. policy but adds that “the administration has lacked proper follow through.” The most significant change, he suggests, was the shift in military strategy in Iraq known as the “surge,” which was engineered not by the administration but by the commander of military forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus. More U.S. troops, plus a policy of wooing pro-Saddam Sunnis back to the political process, so far has paid off. “With the return of the moderate Sunnis into the political arena,” Mead says, “it may be possible to see the gradual emergence of an Iraqi political center which is open to sectarian compromise.”

As the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign unfolds, President Bush will seek to build on the gains accrued in the second half of 2007, when U.S. military tactics brought new stability to Baghdad. Will reform of Iraq’s political institutions follow? Al-Ahram, a state-run Egyptian newspaper, says the prospects for sectarian reconciliation seems distant and thus predicts progress will be fleeting. Even U.S. leaders admit there is much work to be done. As U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker recently told the BBC, “You're certainly not going to hear from me that al-Qaeda is defeated and that victory is at hand.”

Beyond Iraq, trouble spots abound. In spite of a recent reevaluation by U.S. intelligence agencies that suggests Iran has suspended its quest for a nuclear weapon, Tehran and Washington remain at loggerheads over Iran’s insistence on uranium enrichment activities.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.