The Limits of Pragmatism in American Foreign Policy: Unsolicited Advice to the Bush Administration on Relations With International Nongovernmental Organizations

The attitude of the Bush administration with respect to the vast array of international nongovernmental organizations ( NGOs ) that now populate the international scene is, of course, in a process of development. Yet while the Bush administration has identified international issues that raise serious questions of American sovereignty, it does not appear to have understood the importance of international NGOs as international actors carrying forward these issues with one political agenda or another-not merely as followers or supporters, but as the driving force with respect to many important questions. The overtly realist orientation of the Bush foreign policy team (at least as it exists at this point, being under considerable pressure to moderate itself) may unfortunately be fundamentally, indeed dangerously, ill-suited to understand that in today\u27s world, in matters from human rights to the environment to population policy to adventures in humanitarian intervention, the leadership and driving force behind policy often comes from international NGOs. [CONT