During the George W Bush years, two great currents of thinking about United States foreign policy - progressive and realist - have shared a critique of a third - neo-conservative. Both liberal internationalists and proponents of hard-nosed Realpolitik have rejected a US foreign policy that aims to achieve indefinite US global hegemony - but from quite different perspectives. Indeed, most realists have been as contemptuous of the liberal-internationalist alternative as of neo-conservatism.

Recently, some thoughtful observers of foreign policy have proposed that progressives and realists move beyond a shared critique of neo-conservatism in the direction of a commonly-held philosophy. Robert Wright has proposed that this be called "progressive realism", while the British writer Anatol Lieven and the American conservative foreign-policy analyst, John Hulsman (both openDemocracy contributors), have called for "ethical realism". (The need for apologetic adjectives implies - correctly, in my view - that there is something wrong with unmodified realism).

The George W Bush administration proclaimed the invasion of Iraq as part of the United States's effort to bring to the middle east the benefits of democracy. It is not a mere coincidence that this is not exactly the golden age of democracy in America itself.

Since the day when the Athenians massacred the inhabitants of Melos, imperial ventures have often incurred a cost at home that the adventurers never for one moment imagined they would have to pay.

The decision to slaughter the entire male population of the island has been pinpointed ever since by historians as the moment when the city that was the cradle of democracy abandoned its best traditions and pursued its perceived self-interest at all hazards to its reputation and its ideals.

At his press conference on 12 July 2007, President George W Bush gave no indication that he is willing to change his Iraq policy. Indeed, his stolid determination prompted many observers to characterise Bush as "out of touch" or "in denial". Yet, those who've studied this presidency understand that Bush's insistence that progress is being made in Iraq is part and parcel of his endgame strategy: the war won't be lost on his watch.

While it's often noted that Bush is not a student of history, what's usually ignored is the number of Bush confidantes who worked for Richard Nixon. Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, among others, still harbour resentment about Nixon being forced from office. They've studied that ignominious event and concluded Nixon first lost control of his presidency during the war in Vietnam; as a result, they've formulated a set of four rules for Bush's handling of Iraq based upon lessons learned from the Nixon-era Vietnam experience.
Bob Burnett is a writer based in Berkeley, California. He can be reached here

Also by Bob Burnett in openDemocracy:

"A liberal foreign policy for the US: ten maxims"
(27 February 2007)

"America's choice: imperial vs constitutional rule" (10 May 2007)

"The road not taken: the Iraq Study Group" (21 May 2007)

"Alberto Gonzales's cookery lesson"
(30 May 2007)

"Bush's failed freedom agenda"
(25 June 2007)
Forty years on, four rules

Seventeen months before polling day for the 2008 presidential election in the United States, the scene is more chaotic and harder to predict than for many decades. The result, at this early stage, is impossible to predict with any confidence. The George W Bush administration is extraordinarily unpopular, but it does not follow that the Democrats are sure of victory in 2008. Here are three reasons, other than the normal twists of the political world, for that statement:

▪ For years many political scientists have dreamed of a "national primary". In seven months' time, America will be closer to that than ever before. At least twenty states, and perhaps many more, will hold primary elections or caucuses on 5 February 2008. That means the parties' choice of presidential candidates, usually not final until the summer of an election-year, will be virtually decided before the spring.

On 30 April 2004, torture became an international issue when the New Yorker and CBS News published images from the Abu Ghraib military prison near Baghdad. A little more than two months later, the US Supreme Court repudiated the Bush administration's argument that counter-terrorism detention operations stood beyond the rule of law (see also here). As evidence mounted that Abu Ghraib was no outlier, but a symptom of larger patterns of human-rights violations, presidential hopeful Senator John McCain introduced legislation to clarify and re-entrench legal barriers against abuse. A hopeful glimmering of change could be glimpsed. But did anything change?

The Iraq Study Group (ISG) report proposed a way out of the Iraq quagmire in December 2006. Sadly, President Bush chose not to accept the vast majority of the recommendations of a distinguished bipartisan committee led by James A Baker and Lee Hamilton. Instead, his administration adopted just one of its elements, and incorporated it into a new military strategy based on a regular increase (or "surge") in the number of United States troops over a six-month period.