The Disastrous Legacy of George W. Bush

The current geopolitical and economic worries of the United States are not the fault of Biden, nor of Trump, nor of Obama. They are the poisoned inheritance of the Bush Jr./Cheney administration.

“They are still writing books about the first GW,” George W. Bush enjoyed saying on the subject of the first American president, George Washington. In this context, when he lived in the White House, he said, “My attitude is, if they’re still writing about [George No. 1], the 43rd doesn’t need to worry about the judgment of history.”

But he should worry about it. Observing the state of American international relations today, history is perhaps already in the process of judging him severely. With the hindsight of a bit more than a decade since the end of his presidency, the assessment seems clear: Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, caused their country extraordinary harm, the effects of which are still being strongly felt and which will persist for years to come.

Among the consequences of the Bush-Cheney disaster, there is the threat to peace in Europe, the greatest threat since the Cold War, which is what the current crisis between Russia and Ukraine amounts to.

It Began with Iraq

After the 9/11 attacks of 2001, President Bush, who had initially campaigned in 2000 on the promise of a “humble” foreign policy, became the bearer of a quasi-messianic vision of the role of the United States — that is, of “liberating” peoples in the grip of autocratic regimes.

And certainly, one recalls Iraq, the most memorable and most controversial decision of the Bush-Cheney White House — which led to another quagmire, from which there eventually sprang not the “liberal order” but Islamic State. The motive — to eliminate the terrorist menace posed by the Saddam Hussein regime — was false.

What is less remembered is that Afghanistan and Iraq were only the first two pieces of a much larger plan. While the United States was getting bogged down in Iraq after the fall of Hussein, the White House was hashing out an invasion of Iran.

Once this idea was discarded due to the obvious setbacks in the two other theaters of operations, Bush turned his attention toward the north … and Russia.

The consequences of this approach haunt the world today.

After having completely disregarded the objections clearly enunciated by Russia regarding an invasion of Iraq (Vladimir Putin had offered to collaborate with Bush after 9/11), the United States actively pushed for the expansion of NATO, as well as the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine in the mid-2000s. The Kremlin was convinced of the American willingness to support “color revolutions” all the way to Moscow. The situation was so threatening to the security of the Russian regime that an adviser to Vladimir Putin spoke of it as “[their] own 9/11.”

Then, in April 2008, in his last year in the White House, Bush used the NATO summit held in Bucharest in order to push the military alliance to welcome Georgia … and Ukraine, in spite of the unfavorable opinion of the American intelligence services. These two former Soviet territories were dear to Moscow — and moreover, shared their borders with Russia. And NATO, it should be recalled, is the most important international coalition formed with a fundamental purpose: opposition to the Soviet Union (today’s Russia).

Four months later, in August 2008, Russia invaded Georgia. It was the first war of the 21st century in Europe. The risk of a second one now appears, over Ukraine’s admission into NATO.

Meanwhile, in the Far East

These military adventures in the Middle East soon squandered important budget surpluses accumulated under Bill Clinton, then dragged the country into a spiral of excessive public debt without precedence in American history, the repercussions of which constitute one of the important sources of the problem of inflation today.

And at the same time, the Bush administration opened the doors of the U.S. economy … to China, persuaded that by permitting the Middle Kingdom to participate in the world economy, it would adopt Western democratic customs and values. All based on the principle that democracies that do business with one another don’t attack one another, which was going to reinforce American security as a result.

From his first year in office, Bush pressed for the admission of China into the World Trade Organization and for the “regularization” of U.S.-China trade. In so doing, the Americans then subsidized, directly or not, consciously or not, the development of the most important threat to their security — and to the Western liberal democratic order — since the fall of the Soviet Union.

And by dint of brushing Russia aside, the Bush’s presidency pushed Russia into the arms of this threat.

In the months following Bush’s departure, Donald Trump, then an ordinary citizen dreaming of launching his own presidential campaign, declared that the Chinese “believe that we’re the stupidest sons of bitches” in the world.* It is a theme he was not going to drop. That does not sound like the distinguished words of a great historian … but it is nonetheless an assessment that should not take two centuries to recognize.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.