Opinion: It's Still George Bush's World

(March 5) -- This week's parliamentary election in Iraq -- the second since the fall of Saddam Hussein -- was the latest sign that America's ill-fated intervention in Iraq reached a critical turning point, and that perhaps the most controversial legacy of President George W. Bush's foreign policy stewardship has at long last come to an end.

If only it would be so easy for the Obama administration to fully turn the page on the Bush years.

Even more than a year after his inauguration, President Barack Obama's foreign policy agenda is still largely devoted to fixing the messes he inherited from Bush. And that's likely to continue to be the case for quite some time to come, unless Obama makes a more fundamental break with the failed policies of his predecessor.

Consider:

Iran: During the Bush years, little progress was made in dealing with Iran's burgeoning nuclear weapons program. Not only is the problem getting worse, but it is also sucking up diplomatic and political energy with key partners in Europe as well as Russia and China. Indeed, repairing relations with these powers has taken up a disproportionate amount of Obama's time as president.

Multilateral issues: Eight years of inaction on climate change and other multilateral issues has left the world suspicious of U.S. intentions, making agreement that much harder to achieve.

Israel: The same can be said of the Middle East peace process, where Bush's decision to focus on the Palestinian election brought Hamas to power, contributing to a rightward turn in Israeli politics that has made political reconciliation seemingly impossible.

Budget: Obama inherited a bloated defense budget and a fiscal situation that has spiraled out of control. The situation is even more difficult among civilian agencies, particularly the State Department and USAID, which have seen their influence diminish as their resources and morale have declined.

Intelligence: Worst of all is the damage to the intelligence community, which became deeply politicized in the Bush years and saw its key focus in the war on terrorism shift from analysis and intelligence gathering to interrogation. Obama will need to spend serious political capital to turn these agencies around.

And all of this is to say nothing of the entanglements with Afghanistan and Gitmo, the former of which risks entangling Obama's presidency in a long-term commitment that will take much-needed energy and resources away from other serious challenges.

But the hardest nut to crack may be the perception of the U.S. around the world. There was, after President Obama's inauguration, a sense that the country had closed the book on a damaging chapter in its foreign policy history and was engaging with the world anew. Obama's Nobel Peace Prize showed just how deeply many around the world yearn for active and engaged American leadership.

But the efforts of the Nobel Committee notwithstanding, Americans may not fully appreciate the damage wrought by the Bush years in how America is perceived as well as its diminished moral authority and political suasion. These problems can't be fixed overnight and may have permanently affected U.S. interests, capabilities and power around the globe.

Moreover, the obsessive focus of the Bush years on terrorism not only masked the rise of rival states and the growing importance of a number of transnational issues, but it shielded the United States from its own decline in relative power and influence.

What can Obama do to repair this damage?

He needs to focus on creating a new global architecture for dealing with challenges that are increasingly transnational in nature; on rebuilding civilian agencies to extend U.S. influence and engagement; and on reorienting the country's foreign policy and national security decision-making toward non-military approaches to international affairs. But above all, he needs to take a long, hard look at how the U.S. defines its global interests and perhaps recognize that America can no longer afford to be engaged so robustly in every global challenge.

Because of the mess that he inherited, none of this will be easy. But if Obama was serious during the 2008 presidential campaign about "changing the mindset" of American foreign policy, these are just some of the steps that he has to take.

Obama can either remain a captive of Bush's legacy, or he can use the opportunity to lay out a new course and vision for the nation's foreign policy. Only then will he and the country finally get out of George W. Bush's world.