The Conservatism Of The Bush Administration's Foreign Policy

The conservatism has always been playing an important role to the foreign policy of the United States since the foundation of the United States. After the American midterm election in 1994, the Republican Party that represents the conservatism occupied the advantageous position in the Congress. With George·W·Bush's inauguration, the conservatism has occupied the predominant position in the foreign policy of the United States. The main principle of the conservatism is to keep real power and the hegemony positions of the United States, oppose against the radicalism and communism, and lay claim to enter reform gradually. The conservatism promotes the individualism and liberalisms, and maintains that personal freedom is sacred and inviolable. Meanwhile,it worships the capitalist system and the democratic institution of the United States. The influence that the conservatism exerts on the foreign policy of the United States mainly lies in the following aspects. The influence on the national security policy is that the conservatism still regards communism as a primary threat to the American national security. After 9.11, the Bush administration influenced deeply by the conservatism regards the terrorism as the greatest threat to the American national security. Therefore, the Bush administration draws up and carries out the long-term and stage targets of its foreign security policy: the former is to improve the American national real strength and to expand the American type of capitalist democratic system; the latter is to strike terrorism and rogue states. The influence on the foreign economic policy is that the Bush administration concentrates on expand the free trade system all over the world and lays claim to resolve the international economic problem according to the free trade. But while involving the national interest of the United States, Bush administration promotes the trade protectionist system that is advantageous to the United States. The influence on the foreign military policy is that the conservatism draws up for the Bush administration a standard according to anti-terrorism and a preemptive military principle. The Bush administration no longer sticks to the atomic strategy, and steps up to deploy the TMD and NMD regardless of the objection of other powers. There is a big influence on the Sino-American relationship. The conservatism spreads the China Threat, which made the Sino-American relationship worsen severely at the beginning of Bush's inauguration. After 9.11, although the Sino-American relationship has got amended to certain extent because both of China and the United States belong to the anti-terrorism allies, but the idea that the conservatism limits China through the issue of Taiwan made the Bush administration strengthen the support to Taiwan, which repressed the further development of the Sino-American relationship. In order to weaken China, the conservatism stirred up to limit the economic and military communication between China and the United States, which made not only the Bush administration conservative while dealing with the Sino-American relationship, but also made the trade conflicts turn more worse.