By Jon DeVries

Guest Writer

With a little over a year elapsed since his election, George W. Bush has undergone a remarkable change in terms of his foreign policy. The accusations during his presidential campaign that he lacked sufficient knowledge of, or ability to work with, the world outside America's borders have been decisively disproved. Not only has Bush managed to locate several relatively small nations on the world map, he has managed to topple the government of one and saber-rattle several others. He's begun to return to a Cold War style policy, one filled with global military expeditions, lavish defense budgets, and direct involvement in the affairs of other states. The American Cold War hegemony can be seen as a kind of empire and, in a way, Bush is rebuilding that empire. It's a move, though, that may not be incredibly beneficial for the nation.

All of this is being done as part of the war on terrorism, launched as a response to the events of Sept. 11. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, if we take Osama bin Laden at his word, were a reaction to American involvement in the Middle East and its continued support of Israel. There is, of course, enough reason to doubt that bin Laden honestly cared enough about the plight of Palestinians or the influence the United States wielded in the Middle East. Bin Laden had no problem with being covertly supported by the United States while he was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Bin Laden, and others like him, usually build their authority and their followings by finding some great enemy to fight against. With the end of the Afghan war and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, resulting in its ineligibility for ``Great Satan'' status, bin Laden needed to find a new enemy. He found one in the United States.

The strange thing is that the imperialist behavior of the United States, that supposedly provided the justification for Sept. 11, was in the process of being curtailed by Bush. Bush arrived in the White House with a much more isolationist stance than any of his recent predecessors. The United States would withdraw from United Nations commitments and several international treaties. Defense policy would focus on continental America, through the withdrawal of overseas military and the construction of a missile defense shield. Perhaps most importantly though, Israel would be kept at arms length and told to solve its problems on its own. For the most part, the American Cold War hegemony, preserved by Bush's father and partially preserved by Clinton, would be dismantled. There may have been the odd air strike against Iraq, but for the most part Bush was letting the sun set on the American Empire.

Sept. 11 changed most of that. Bush has built an international coalition and launched a crusade against terrorism. This crusade has not abated, even with the rout of the Taliban and the destruction of the Islamic theocracy that was bin Laden's patron and his staging area. In his recent State of the Union address, Bush identified an ``Axis of Evil,'' a collection of states that are suspected of sponsoring terrorism and which may face American military strikes if they do not mend their ways. Bush has also announced plans for a huge increase in defense spending, despite the fact it will lead to the kind of deficit spending that he once adamantly opposed.

Despite his currently high popularity, the George W. Bush of the present would do well to take some advice from the George W. Bush of one year ago. Bush's new foreign policy is not only costly, but it is also starting to compromise America's standing in the international community. The majority of the world lined up behind the United States when it went after bin Laden and the Taliban. With the end of the campaign in Afghanistan, many in the coalition believed the job was done and were reserved about widening the war to other states. Bush's recent ``Axis of Evil'' speech has now given rise to open criticism that he is going too far, or that he might have alternate interests in the war on terrorism.

Bush can be credited with leading the country through a crisis and for toppling an oppressive regime that backed terrorists. However, he is putting the United States in a precarious position. An empire is too costly for America to maintain, and it is unacceptable in the eyes of the international community. Most importantly, though, it's something very liable to earn the United States a few new enemies in the world, and America already has enough of those.