Bush’s global “freedom” also means Blair’s global welfare state

An important article by James Pinkerton about the real direction of Bush’s politics of “freedom.” No summary by me is needed. Here are the key passages:

George W. Bush and Tony Blair are out to change the world. If they have their way, the future will be more democratic but also more big-spending statist—including, inevitably, here in the US.

The President has announced that his ultimate goal is “ending tyranny” around the world. But the Prime Minister, reflecting his own leftist views, insists that the world’s peoples can’t be truly free unless they also enjoy material minimums. So the emerging division of labor between the two leaders becomes clear: Bush will be in charge of the tough talk and the tough action—nailing not only Saddam Hussein, but also, hopefully, other nogoodniks, including Osama Bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. And for his part, Blair will back up Bush on foreign policy, even as he, Blair, prods Bush to spend more and regulate more—a lot more. Blair hopes that this Anglo-American alliance will end to poverty in Africa, as well as global warming. But it’s more likely that political effects aside, this joint crusade for “planet change” prove to be an economically disastrous global boondoggle.

… And for his part, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Blair called for a “quantum leap forward” in African aid …

Thus we see the working alliance between the Labour leader and the Republican leader. Every time the US president declares himself to be vitally concerned about delivering democracy to the peoples of the world, Blair will remind him that Uncle Sam must care about the nutrition, health, and economic development of those same people. To put it bluntly, paternalism is a seamless web. Of course, Bush supporters will argue that bringing democracy will bring about prosperity and self-reliance. And they might be right, although the past record of externally induced democratic and economic transformation is spotty. But as we wait for the hoped-for positive results from US arms and aid, America will not be able to wriggle off the costly hook.

So that’s the bottom line: in the process of building an enduring Wilsonian coalition to support strenuous internationalism, Bush will likely end up moving left on domestic policy, just as Wilson did.

… in the absence of effective criticism from the right or the left, Bush will likely join Blair in the creation of a new warfare-welfare paradigm across the globe. The US will provide the grand ideology of freedom, enforced by a costly Pentagon, while the UK will further coax Americans to pay for the world’s wellbeing. This new course for the 21st century will certainly be expensive, it will probably prove heartbreaking, it might possibly evince moral clarity—and it will definitely not be conservative.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 02, 2005 06:03 PM | Send