More dramatic external ambitions of the US were informally buried by the Bush presidency during the middle of 2006, according to a new report by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
"Of course, the strategic language at the highest level still paid tribute to the ideal of the universal spread of democracy and ending tyranny," IISS chief executive John Chipman said.
"But the diplomatic practice, now largely controlled by the US secretary of state, delivered much greater homage to the need to solve problems and deal with the world on the terms America found it, rather than on the terms the US might wish to create," he said.
More dramatic external ambitions of the US were informally buried by the Bush presidency during the middle of 2006, according to a new report by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
"Of course, the strategic language at the highest level still paid tribute to the ideal of the universal spread of democracy and ending tyranny," IISS chief executive John Chipman said.
"But the diplomatic practice, now largely controlled by the US secretary of state, delivered much greater homage to the need to solve problems and deal with the world on the terms America found it, rather than on the terms the US might wish to create," he said.
Launching Strategic Survey 2006 Tuesday, Chipman attributed the change in US foreign policy to the 'political, military and diplomatic imbroglio', which sapped the 'entrepreneurial flair' of Bush's previous foreign policy.
"Creating a 'market need' for democracy and then selling it to as many who could be persuaded to 'buy' was an impractical way to maintain and build alliances for the co-called 'war on terror'," he said.
The report by the right-wing institute spoke of the way that the US is 'curiously indifferent' to how its double standards are perceived throughout the world.
The effect by Washington, it said, was to create a sense that instead of cooperating to address shared problems of a globalized world, it was pursuing 'an isolated track that appeared, by turns, ineffective, irrelevant and objectionable'.
"Its unilateralism had put in question the legitimacy of its actions. It was seen to have over-reached itself. It was losing friends even among its natural allies, for example in Latin America," the annual survey said.
"America's lost prestige and damaged credibility have been disconcerting for those who want to see it as a benign guarantor of security in many parts of the world," it said.
Chipman said that the end of the entrepreneurial phase of US foreign policy meant a return to a 'more classic strategic dictionary'.
"If 'regime change' cannot be the answer to all strategic disquiet and, badly managed, can lead to more instability, then it follows that the principles of deterrence and containment will need to be applied with more care," he said.
The report said that in practice, the US had 'taken steps to adjust its foreign policy to the palpable decline in US power and prestige'.
"The final two years of any administration are constrained by a certain 'lame-duck' status, as attention focuses on the coming campaign to replace it," it also said.
Strategic Survey believed that in the final two year, there was "reason to expect a built more 'humility' in the exercise of a superpower's might that Bush promised when he first ran for president in the year 2000."
"The United States may not for some time -- perhaps not ever -- be able to reassume the same unquestionable dominance that it enjoyed in the years after the Cold War," it also said.
