John O'Sullivan
Editor of the highly regarded foreign policy magazine The National Interest, John O’Sullivan is a forceful and eloquent advocate of continuing strong American ties with Europe. In 1996, he founded The New Atlantic Initiative, an organization devoted to Euro-U.S. unity that now makes its home at the American Enterprise Institute. From 1988 to 1997, O’Sullivan was at the helm of National Review, the voice of American conservatism founded by William F. Buckley, Jr.
During his early journalistic career, O’Sullivan wrote editorials and covered parliament at London’s Daily Telegraph, where he learned the trade in the company of veteran newspapermen. His work as a writer and editor brought him to the U.S., where he also served as editor at Policy Review, the New York Post editorial page, and United Press International. From 1987 to 1988 O’Sullivan was back in England, as special adviser to the Iron Lady herself, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
TAE senior editors Karina Rollins and Daniel Kennelly met with O’Sullivan at his office in Washington, D.C.
TAE: What is the issue this election cycle? And do most Americans recognize it as such?
JOHN O’SULLIVAN: The biggest single question is going to be Iraq and the war on terrorism. They are basically the same thing, although not everyone agrees with that. The economy will be a factor as it always is, but it’s not the pre-eminent one—partly because it is pretty good without being absolutely sensational. It’s not likely to result in any losses for Bush, but it’s not likely to win him massive new ground either, and there is sufficient controversy over the state of the economy and the success of the tax cuts that it’s not a clear winning issue.
TAE: Has his performance in the war on terror merited a re-election? How about his performance overall?
O’SULLIVAN: On his overall performance, I’d have to be quite critical, but I’m more favorable about his handling of the war on terror. He responded to the initial attack very effectively—he steadied the situation; he also outlined very clearly both the problem and a solution to it, the Bush Doctrine, which I support—with one important qualification—and he then took very strong action, smashing the Taliban and then, more controversially, invading Iraq.
TAE: What is the qualification in your support for the Bush Doctrine?
O’SULLIVAN: Both he and the administration can be criticized for not giving the Europeans generous credit from day one. Quite a lot of the angst in recent years would have been avoided if in Afghanistan, for example, the administration and spokesmen had paid more tribute to the contributions of allies. Quite a lot was done by Europeans, and yet one had the impression that the war against the Taliban was conducted by the Northern Alliance and America alone.
I understand that every nation trumpets the successes of its own troops. That’s normal. But if you’re the leader of an alliance, you really have a prudential obligation to talk up the achievements and contributions of your allies, even when they’re modest. That failure has, to some extent, poisoned relations since then.
But let me add a qualification to that qualification. When I say “pay greater attention to the allies,” I do not just mean being nice to Europeans. I mean actually getting involved in alliance management within Europe much more toughly than America has done. You can’t rely on the British, East Europeans, or the Italians to do your dirty work for you in European politics. They’ve got their own interests to look after, even when they’re on your side. But America has a real interest in preventing the development of the common European policy that would inevitably be hostile to Washington.
TAE: Restoring our soured relations with Europe has been a centerpiece of the foreign policy wing of John Kerry’s campaign. Do you think that platform is credible coming from him?
O’SULLIVAN: My problem with Kerry is not that he is involving himself more than Bush did in alliance politics with Europe, but that he’s doing so on the wrong side. He seems to think that Europe is France and Germany. He, and the Democrats in general, have talked about European countries in the Iraq coalition as countries you can buy on eBay. Is that true for the Poles, the Italians, for the Brits? He’s effectively telling those countries which have thrown in their lot with the United States that they have made a mistake. Now, that may suit him temporarily in electoral terms, but if he is elected, he’ll find that damages him. In some future crisis he’s going to want to have allies who believe in the right of America to use pre-emptive force against dangerous enemies. At the moment he’s backing people who don’t believe America should have that right.
TAE: Where has Bush failed?
O’SULLIVAN: A few years ago I outlined in TAE three tests of success for President Bush. [See “United We Should Stand” in our Dec. 2002 issue.] The first was that he should slow or reverse the advance of the regulatory state. He hasn’t done that. Regulations, spending, and new projects have poured out of Washington. The second was that he should realize that the at-tempt to create a single European power was disadvantageous to the United States and that he should try to block it. While his administration has ceased to support it, it has still not recognized how big a risk it is, so I have to give Bush and his people a failing grade on that one too. Finally, I said that one of the great dangers facing the U.S.—which has since been amplified by Samuel Huntington in his important book Who Are We?—was balkanization, the gradual transformation of the U.S. into many nations squabbling under some kind of Constitutional umbrella. Bush was given a great opportunity on September 11 to work against that, but he missed it. He was even aggressively bad on this point, proposing an immigration reform that is the nearest thing to open borders ever seriously proposed.
Domestically, Bush has not been a good President, except on tax cuts, but if I had a vote, I’d cast it for the President over the war on terror rather than over anything else. The stakes in Iraq are enormously high. Even those conservatives who opposed the war in the first place should realize that a U.S. withdrawal would create a super Lebanon in Iraq, which would be used as a terrorist base far more dangerous than Afghanistan.
TAE: What have been the biggest blunders by the Bush and Kerry campaigns to date?
O’SULLIVAN: Well, I think the biggest single blunder has been Bush’s immigration amnesty proposal. His approval rate started to decline seriously the very week that it was announced. Up until that point, his political base had been disappointed on domestic issues, but not really discontented. Immediately afterwards, you saw a real erosion of the base. Republican fundraisers will tell you that they got very bad vibes on that one.
As for Kerry, he’s waged quite a crafty campaign. But he may well have made a serious mistake in over-emphasizing his role in Vietnam. It made his war record disproportionately important.
TAE: How wise is it for Bush partisans to attack Kerry’s war record?
O’SULLIVAN: The people who served with Kerry, the Swift Boat veterans, are the ones attacking him. They do not seem to me to be driven by partisan feeling as much as by dislike of Kerry, by the fact that this man, who came back from Vietnam and accused American troops of being war criminals, is now presenting himself as a war hero. Even if he is a war hero, that sticks in their gullet. The fact that some Republicans agree with them and are willing to finance them, well, where would you expect money for that kind of cause to come from? Not from the Left. The Swift Boat Vets’ story so far has really been a test for the media. Here we have arguments seemingly backed up by evidence, but the media aren’t really examining it.
TAE: There has been some sharp criticism of Bush on the homeland security aspect of the war on terror.
O’SULLIVAN: There has—and with some reason. This administration is as subject to political correctness as the Clinton administration was. That’s particularly true for Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta—“underperformin’ Norman” as he’s known around the Internet. It’s absurd not to take age, ethnicity, and sex into account when looking for terrorists among airline passengers. Yes, I know, elderly women might conceivably be terrorists, but it is a lot less likely, isn’t it, than young Middle Eastern men? If it’s true that an airline that singles out more than two Arab men for examination is penalized, that is simply suicidal nonsense.
Look, my name is O’Sullivan. If I’d been stopped automatically on planes and trains and so on when the IRA was blowing things up, I would have been perfectly happy about that since it would have been directed toward saving my life. Mature people ought to be able to get over being momentarily suspected as a possible terrorist.
Asa Hutchinson at the Department of Homeland Security is someone I’d like to see go. When the INS officials in southern California rounded up a lot of illegals for deportation, he caved under pressure from employers and ethnic groups and announced there would be no more such roundups unless they were cleared with Washington first. This is conniving at law breaking.
TAE: Should Norman Mineta be fired too?
O’SULLIVAN: Oh yes, for sure.
TAE: How smart politically is John Edwards’ “Two Americas” campaign theme?
O’SULLIVAN: It’s completely misplaced. This country is extraordinarily wealthy. Its poor are wealthier than most average citizens in other nations, on a per capita basis. A very high percentage of Americans—if not an outright majority—own stocks directly. The theme of an economically divided America appeals not to the actual poor, but to wealthy, left-wing college graduates who like to strike proletarian poses.
TAE: How does being a political commentator and a Brit translate in the American political arena?
O’SULLIVAN: It’s easier for us Brits than for most immigrants because we don’t really think of America as a foreign country. I first came to America in 1949 when I was six, spent four months in Alabama and New York, and had a wonderful time. It was terrific for a little boy in 1949, to go from England where there was candy rationing to the land of chocolate cakes and ice cream. The English in America feel more or less instantly at home—but there’s a downside. Because they don’t feel the need to shift gears, there’s quite a low rate of U.S. citizenship among the Brits.
TAE: You’ve had a wide-ranging and diverse career. Which experiences do you remember most?
O'SULLIVAN: My time working as special adviser to the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was so different from everything else I have ever done. I liked her personally, and we got along very well. I also had a sense of mission, which always makes a job easier to do.
I was really fortunate to be an editorial writer and a parliamentary sketch writer—that’s someone who writes a dramatic account of the previous day’s events in the House of Commons, like reviewing a play—for the Daily Telegraph in London. I was there in the 1970s, when the editorial board had an exceptionally talented and amusing group of people. There was T. E. Utley, a genius who shaped the minds of the young conservative journalists whom he recruited. Colin Welch, the deputy editor, was just fizzing with fun and amusement of a highly intellectual kind. Andrew Alexander, a very austere, dry, witty parliamentary observer. Bill Deedes, who started working at the Morning Post in 1932 and writes a column for the Daily Telegraph today. And Frank Johnson, the most brilliant sketch writer of his generation in parliament.
At any given time in journalism, there is a paper or a magazine where everybody wants to be because that’s where the talented and amusing people are. That was the Telegraph in those days. I look back and say to myself, “God, wasn’t that marvelous!” Even then Frank and I used to say to each other, This can’t possibly last.
TAE: What is your view of Clinton’s Presidency?
O’SULLIVAN: He may have been a bad man personally. He may have cheated on his wife and so on, but I’m not married to him. My main interest in him is this, What was he like as a President? And I think he was, from a conservative standpoint, surprisingly good on domestic questions. You’ve got to ask yourself: Who was happier at the end of the Clinton years—a Republican coupon clipper looking after his investments, or a liberal social worker? There’s no doubt that Republican coupon clippers were much happier. Clinton gave us balanced budgets, welfare reform, the expansion of NATO, of NAFTA, and so on. It’s true he was often forced into these things, but he had the sense to bow to political reality.
TAE: Is the Clinton bashing of the 1990s the parallel of Bush hatred today?
O’SULLIVAN: It’s different in character. Clinton hatred did become very foolish and paranoid sometimes, but most of the time it was simply the frustration of the Right with an opponent who was just too quick and clever for them.
Bush hatred is something else, something really significant. It’s much deeper—a person-alized version of American anti-Americanism. There is in this country a considerable cultural self-hatred. The adversary culture fears and hates American power. So anybody who comes along and defends America’s values self-confidently, and even pre-emptively attacks America’s enemies, is going to be regarded by this sect as an agent of the Great Satan. The same hatred was directed at Reagan. Bush is really the victim of the fact that he happens to be pro-American and that he’s taken strong action in defense of America.
TAE: Tony Blair was once described along the lines of a British Bill Clinton, but has now won high marks from conservatives for his articulate support for Bush in the Iraq war. How do you size him up?
O'SULLIVAN: Well, I think he’s been brave and consistent on the war, and also that he’s an eloquent advocate of his point of view. Why has he been so strong on the war? One reason is that he is an old-fashioned liberal internationalist, but a muscular internationalist. He thinks that if you pass a U.N. resolution, you’ve got to do something about enforcing it.
The problem from the U.S. standpoint is that Blair is also in favor of European unity, thereby creating the circumstances in which Britain will not be free to make the decisions he made this time in some future crisis, because there the Brits will be subjected to a common European foreign policy. So my feeling is that he’s a brave, decent person; in the war, excellent, in wider foreign policy issues, suspect. It is in relation to Britain that he has been a tremendous disappointment. He has done very little to actually carry through the reforms he’s talked about and he will almost certainly leave office, even if he wins the next election, as a man who is notable for winning elections and fighting the Iraq war, and for very little else. So his reputation historically really is going to depend very heavily on the ultimate outcome of the war.
TAE: Would you like to see Britain remove itself from the European Union?
O’SULLIVAN: I don’t think that’s necessary. What I would like to see—and what is in the interest of both Britain and the United States, and also our troops in Europe—is for the E.U. to develop along very different lines. Many of the policies that are now determined centrally should be returned to individual nations, and no more national powers should be ceded to Europe. In particular, we need to get rid of the common agricultural policy. It’s a disaster for Europe, a disaster for the European consumer and taxpayer, and it’s a disaster for Third World countries, which produce agricultural goods and then have to compete with subsidized European products. It makes no sense. It’s even wicked. It should be stopped.
TAE: You’re also an advocate of a closer union of English-speaking countries, the Anglosphere. Has there been any serious movement toward a formal coalition of English-speaking countries?
O’SULLIVAN: I think, along with Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, that the English-speaking countries often act as an informal coalition in world affairs because they share the same political and legal traditions, the Common Law, Magna Carta, and the same language. These cultural affinities make cooperation easier and explain why, for instance, we tend to migrate to and invest in each other’s countries more than going into third nations. Some critics think that talk of cultural affinity in foreign policy is sentimental nonsense—and so it sometimes is. But the case for the Anglosphere is not that cultural affinity makes you like a particular set of foreigners more, but that you tend to see the world the same way and, hence, to act in concert. In his book The Anglosphere Challenge, James Bennett argues that the Internet and the general improvement in communications have made common culture much more important than geography. I think he’s right and that the English-speaking powers—especially the U.S., Australia, and India—will find themselves cooperating more. Ironically, that coalition may not include England if she is swallowed up entirely in a European state.
