EDITORIAL – Learning from a debacle

The first casualty of the midterm elections in the United States was Donald Rumsfeld, who finally quit as defense secretary as American voters thumbed down the conduct of the war in Iraq. If Rumsfeld had stepped down before the elections, would it have altered the results? No one can say for sure. US President George W. Bush apparently considered the elections a referendum on Rumsfeld, seen as a key architect of the war. Now that the Republicans have lost both the Senate and the House of Representatives, Bush will pay the price for gambling on his defense chief.

Rumsfeld has resigned, but will the results of the elections lead to a significant change in US foreign policy and in the way it is waging the war on terror? The US Congress can now put the brakes on reckless preemptive strikes on sovereign nations, but the changes aren’t expected to lead to a quick withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. The best scenario at this time, analysts believe, is a phased withdrawal to compel Iraqis to take control of their country.

Will US foreign policy in our part of the world change? Bush is still calling the shots, and he continues to defend his long-term goals for Iraq, if not his strategy for getting there. But the mess in Iraq has forced him to rely more on diplomacy to deal with threats. When North Korea recently tested its first nuclear bomb, Washington was quick to emphasize that it had no intention of ordering an invasion of the reclusive country. Pyongyang eventually announced, after hints of concessions from the Americans, that it would return to six-party talks to resolve the conflict on the Korean peninsula.

Bush has been forced to seek international consensus, no matter how difficult this can often be, before America launches preemptive strikes. Now he will also have to seek the consensus of a Congress that is controlled by the Democrats. The US elections was a cautionary message to Bush that even his best intentions, recklessly pursued, could increase the threat to the safety of Americans and the world.

Will he heed that message? He might see some hope in the razor-thin margin by which the Democrats won the Senate. For the rest of his term he may want to prove that his policy against terrorism was not all that flawed after all. But the power equation in Washington has shifted. Even as Democratic leaders are vowing to cooperate with the White House, Bush will have to tread with greater caution this time in implementing his policy.