Bush or Kerry? On foreign policy, the difference is negligible

In his bid for the Presidency, John Kerry has outlined pretty stark differences between his proposed domestic program and that of George Bush. However, as William Blum, Chris Toensing, and Stephen Zunes have pointed out, Kerry's proposed foreign policy does not offer a radical break with the Bush administration.

John Pilger hammers this point home in an article for the New Statesman that draws heavily on a piece written by Mark Hand last month. Pilger finds, to an even greater degree than the authors mentioned above, Kerry's foreign policy stance to be cut from virtually the same cloth as the "Bush doctrine":

While the rise to power of the Bush gang, the neoconservatives, belatedly preoccupied the American media, the message of their equivalents in the Democratic Party has been of little interest. Yet the similarities are compelling. Shortly before Bush's "election" in 2000, the Project for the New American Century, the neoconservative pressure group, published an ideological blueprint for "maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests". Every one of its recommendations for aggression and conquest was adopted by the administration.

One year later, the Progressive Policy Institute, an arm of the Democratic Leadership Council, published a 19-page manifesto for the "New Democrats", who include all the principal Democratic Party candidates, and especially John Kerry. This called for "the bold exercise of American power" at the heart of "a new Democratic strategy, grounded in the party's tradition of muscular internationalism". Such a strategy would "keep Americans safer than the Republicans' go-it-alone policy, which has alienated our natural allies and overstretched our resources. We aim to rebuild the moral foundation of US global leadership ..."

What is the difference from the vainglorious claptrap of Bush? Apart from euphemisms, there is none...

What the New Democrats object to is the Bush gang's outspokenness - its crude honesty, if you like - in stating its plans openly, and not from behind the usual veil or in the usual specious code of imperial liberalism and its "moral authority". New Democrats of Kerry's sort are all for the American empire; understandably, they would prefer that those words remained unsaid. "Progressive internationalism" is far more acceptable.

What Kerry and his minions are trying to do, Pilger argues, is reclaim Wilsonianism from the neocons to counter the Republican charge of being "soft on defense."

It's clear from a close reading of the PPI report that the "New Democrats" have internalized virtually all of the assumptions of Bush's "war on terrorism," leaving them in the position to periodically squabble over means and rhetoric, but not ends. The desirability of a US-dominated world system ruled by a mix of naked aggression, coercive economic policies, and bloviating diplomacy is viewed by both parties as a given.

In the end, "progressive internationalism" can be seen as a prudent policy platform that will give Kerry a shot in the November election, or as proof that the Democrats are unwilling to substantially challenge the Bushite vision of America's role in the world for the 21st century. Pick your poison.