The Definition of Madness

They say the definition of madness is to do the same thing over and over again whilst expecting to obtain different results.

This definition would certainly easily apply to what's jokingly known as George Bush's Foreign Policy.

I remember a time when a President wouldn't attach the importance of his office to any foreign policy until he was sure it would succeed. Nixon carefully cultivated the Chinese behind the scenes until they were ready to accept full diplomatic relations with the US, he didn't publicly demand that they do so.

So, how many times is President Bush going to try and bludgeon everyone else into sharing his world view of any given situation?

We saw him attempt this prior to the Iraq War when Rummy was despatched to insult Old Europe and force the French and Germans to back the campaign to invade another sovereign nation. It ended in naught. The French and Germans simply refused. No-one likes to be bullied and pushed around.

The result? Dominique De Villepin made a speech to the United Nations that won him a tumultuous ovation, allowing France to occupy the moral high ground. Whilst the image of the US as a global superpower was weakened when the world realised that Bush, running a trade deficit with almost every nation on the planet, couldn't even punish France or Germany for their refusal.

It's a lesson you'd think he wouldn't forget in a hurry.

And yet, now we find him pursuing the exact same policy with regard to Iran and Palestine.

First, he tries to bludgeon Iran into stopping the enrichment of uranium, which is her right under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. When she, as expected, refuses; he embarks on a path to the UN that is so misguided that one wonders if he has even thought of the endgame.

He doesn't seem to understand that Iranians are Persians and, as members of the last great Empire in Mesopotamia, that membership of the nuclear club is a matter of National Pride for the population. They feel that, as Persians - as a people who have given the world so much - that they should be allowed the same level of technological advancement that the rest of the world enjoys. It's hard to fault their logic, especially as they are insisting they want the technology and not the bomb.

Nor is Bush's hard-line stance weakening Ahmadinejad's popularity with the general population. Indeed, quite the opposite could be claimed to be happening as most Iranians agree with Ahmadinejad on this point.

So it's obvious that Bush's bludgeoning style is actually being highly counterproductive here.

Then we come to Hamas in Palestine, where surely the only clever thing to do would have been to wait and see what Hamas intended to do now that they were actually sitting in a position of authority. But no. Such a policy was too cumbersome for Bush. He immediately bludgeons the newly formed Hamas regime into a corner by demanding that they instantly recognise Israel's "right to exist", a concession that he surely realised Hamas would not be able to accede to under US pressure.

The result?

Hamas refuse, the US and EU withdraw funding to the Occupied Territories, prompting United Nations aid organisations to warn that the Gaza Strip is now on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. It is said that, if there is no significant change in the situation, Gaza will face a humanitarian crisis as bad as the one in Kosovo.

So, because Bush attempted to bludgeon Hamas into saying something he knows they don't want to say, we now have a situation in which thousands may die, and the whole of the Middle East will blame Bush.

If that's a way to reduce terrorism or anti-American feelings in the Muslim world, then I'm a ballerina.

And he's put himself in this situation because he's basically too stupid to realise that Israel don't want Hamas to recognise their "right to exist." They want to be able to keep asking them to say it - so they can continue to steal their lands without the tedium of having to negotiate with them - whilst simultaneously being able to tell the US, "We've got no-one to negotiate with."

I'm sure the Israelis aren't so insecure that they need the approval of a bunch of hairy Hamas generals. Indeed, if you pushed the Israelis they might even privately admit that no nation has an inbuilt "right to exist", for if that "right" existed we would still have Mesopotamia and Yugoslavia in this world.

So here is Bush applying all this pressure all over the place, and he has yet to work out that each time he does it, it yields the exact opposite result to the one that he desires.

And yet, he keeps on doing it. That's madness.

Tags: Bush, pressure, Hamas, Palestine, Israel, Foreign, Policy, force, negotiation, tactics, France, Germany, neo-cons, empire,