The New Conservatism And The Bush Administration Diplomacy

The relations between neoconservatism and Bush administration's foreign policy have been discussed too much since George W. Bush took his office. Though a lot of articles tended to give a detailed description of neoconservatism and its effect on Bush's foreign policy, it is still hard to say we have figured out the real degree of neoconservatism influence on Bush's foreign policy and can indicate the causal relations between them. Therefore, this dissertation will pay its attention to the specific foreign polices adopted by Bush administration in order to seek the answer of my research question- under what conditions the Bush administration will adopt neoconservatism type foreing policy- and make clear the true relations between them. As for the research method, after considering the existing approaches of foreign policy analysis, I chose the approach of comparative analysis. Bush's foreign policy on Iraq and his policy on the second nuclear crisis of Korea peninsula are picked out to be compared. With the comparison of several related variables, the research question will be answered and the relations between neoconservatism and Bush's foreign policy will be concluded: instead of saying Bush's foreign policy is manipulated by the neoconservatives, we had better say Bush administration understands what kind of tone should be taken under certain circumstance. On foreign policy, they are, in fact, very flexible and opportunistic.