Diplomatic Genius

Fire of Liberty

Here's a great piece in The New York Observer by Richard Brookhiser on President Bush's recent trip to Latvia, Russia, and Georgia. As Brookhiser notes, the various critics are mystified at the various successes that President Bush has achieved via his non-traditional diplomacy. They can't understand why the President can visit Latvia and speak about democracy and the yuck it up with ole Vlad in Russia the next day. I'd say that Brookhiser's laid out a good description of Bush's foreign/diplomatic policy in the following paragraph:

A more important reason for Mr. Bush’s Latvian stopover is ideological. This President is committed to democracy, and liberals who have long loved such rhetoric, as well as conservatives who have long distrusted it, are beginning to realize the fact. Mr. Bush believes the ultimate answer to the Islamist menace is draining the swamps of dictatorship, impotence and self-hatred masked as hatred in the Middle East. He also believes that the way to keep the post-Soviet world on keel is to encourage democratic and anti-imperial tendencies in its component parts. He uses both violence and patience; he has fought two wars, and he is willing to hold a Saudi’s hand. But he seems truly relentless in his approach.

It's amazing what a conservative Texas boy from Harvard Business School can achieve. That just goes to show you that the "diplomatic experts" don't always know what they're talking about.