PRESIDENT BUSH has identified the nexus of terrorism and nuclear weapons as "the single largest threat to American national security." Indeed, he has said that the United States is currently engaged in World War III and put a bust of Winston Churchill in his office.
The question he should ask himself is: What would Churchill do facing a grave threat to his society and way of life? How closely do the president's actions mirror his model? An American Churchill confronting a threat of such monumental proportions would make defeating this challenge the organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy.
Churchill was a life-long anti-communist, and had few illusions about the Stalin regime. To defeat Nazi Germany, however, Churchill was prepared to enter into an alliance with the Soviet Union and to accept that the USSR would incorporate some additional territories. In fact, Britain even declared war against democratic Finland because the country cooperated with Berlin, even though Finland entered the war against the Soviet Union only in an attempt to reclaim territory occupied by Moscow.
No Churchillian willingness to establish a hierarchy of priorities is evident in the Bush Administration's current foreign policy, particularly once democracy promotion officially replaced the fight against terror as the number one U.S. objective in the world.
