In the late 1990s, a group of conservatives issued a manifesto calling for a stronger, “Reaganite” American foreign policy. The 25 signatories to the founding statement of the Project for the New American Century — a new think tank urging larger defense budgets, democracy promotion and bolder American leadership — consisted of several leaders of the emerging neoconservative movement, including Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Bill Kristol.

One signer stood out for his near-total lack of foreign policy experience: Jeb Bush, then a candidate for Florida governor.


But when the same group sent a letter the following year to President Bill Clinton, calling for the ouster of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Bush’s name was absent. And as the group’s founders pressed for war with Iraq after Sept. 11, 2001, Bush played no visible role.

What that might say about Bush’s foreign policy philosophy is unclear. But as he gears up for a 2016 presidential run, Bush’s rivals and supporters alike are studying such tea leaves for insight into his worldview. As Florida governor, Bush compiled a long domestic record on issues like education and immigration. Yet at a moment when America is winding down one war and ramping up another, he remains untested and opaque when it comes to war and peace.

“It’s fair to say that Jeb’s views on foreign policy are still in some level of formation. He’s a former governor, and he doesn’t have foreign policy experience that people can easily point to,” said Ari Fleischer, a former spokesman for the George W. Bush White House.

But, Fleischer adds, there are some signs of a philosophy: “It seems as if he will come out of the more muscular peace-through-strength wing of the party,” Fleischer said.

Indeed, some of Bush’s most important allies within the GOP foreign policy establishment are closely associated with his brother, whose name is almost synonymous with a war in Iraq that most Americans call a mistake.

Jeb Bush’s allies include former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is a board member of an education foundation Bush chairs, and with whom he is personally close. And soon after leaving office in 2009, Cheney, who cares most about national security, told Fox News that he is “a big fan of Jeb’s.” Bush has also impressed one of the GOP’s wealthiest donors, the hawkish casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

Conservative foreign policy insiders say that what’s known about Bush’s views places him in the dominant interventionist wing of his party, which is still shaped by his co-signatories on the 1997 Project for the New American Century document. He has challenged the anti-interventionist views of Sen. Rand Paul and his supporters.

But those conservatives also note that while Jeb’s brother, George W., is remembered for a controversially bold foreign policy, his father, former President George H.W. Bush, charted a more pragmatic approach. The elder Bush, for instance, did not act to remove Saddam from power after expelling him from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War.

Jeb Bush is “a traditional Republican internationalist,” says Gary Schmitt, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a founder of the Project for the New American Century. “I don’t think there’s anything out of the mainstream of that part of the party.”

Still, Bush could face a unique challenge in his direct relation to the president who waged a hugely unpopular war in Iraq.

While George W. Bush’s poll numbers have risen since he left office, public opinion about his 2003 invasion of Iraq hasn’t budged. A mid-October NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 66 percent of of those surveyed believe the Iraq War was “not worth it.”

After signing the Project for the New American Century’s 1997 founding principles, Bush had no visible role as the group’s leaders pressed in subsequent years for a U.S. showdown with Saddam. (Schmitt downplayed the significance of Bush’s signature on the founding document. “I don’t know if that tells you very much,” he said.)

And during his brother’s presidency, Jeb Bush largely avoided the explosive politics of the Iraq War.

But not entirely. In April 2006, Bush joined three other governors to visit U.S. troops in Iraq, where he called progress in the country “undeniable,” even as Iraq descended into civil war.

Jeb Bush’s allies include former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. | AP Photo

Yet Bush qualified his support for the endeavor, adding: “In a mission this ambitious, and this extensive, is it possible that mistakes were made? Of course, it is. After the fact, it’s easy to harp and to criticize, and, frankly, people have the right to do it.”

His more recent public remarks on the war have been less equivocal, however.

“A lot of things in history change over time. I think people will respect the resolve that my brother showed, both in defending the country and the war in Iraq,” Bush told CNN in March 2013.

Walking a line between support for his brother, still popular among Republicans, and distancing himself from his more unpopular policies, will be one of Jeb Bush’s main challenges, says Peter Feaver, a George W. Bush White House national security aide who focused on Iraq.

“I think any Republican is going to have to figure out how to talk about the [George W.] Bush presidency — both domestic policy and foreign — in a way that does not divide the party and does not play into Democratic critiques. And also to make it clear that they’re their own person, and they are confronting the world as it is in 2016 and not merely stuck in 2002,” Feaver said.

“Jeb’s challenge is a little different because of his last name. But in some sense, he has more running room because of that — he can offer criticisms without being accused of disloyalty,” Feaver added.

For the moment, Bush has refrained from analyzing his own party and stuck to attacks on President Barack Obama. He has mocked Obama’s so-called leading from behind strategy and called for a stronger U.S. alliance with Israel and a tougher stance on Iran. All were familiar talking points in Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.

Bush sounded similar themes in a March address to a meeting of Adelson’s Republican Jewish Coalition, where he assailed Obama as passive and warned conservatives against the temptation of withdrawal from the world. Bush also met privately with Adelson and satisfied him on the issue he and his wife hold most dear.

“The Adelsons are confident that Jeb Bush is an advocate for Israel,” says a source close to the couple.

More recently, in a Dec. 2 speech to a Florida group that backs democracy in Cuba, Bush said Obama has “retrenched” abroad, with dangerous consequences.

“In this unstable and uncertain world, the United States has actually played a part in creating greater instability and greater unraveling,” Bush told the U.S. Cuba Democracy PAC.

Bush did offer one kind word for the president. “Thankfully, I think he’s seen the light in Afghanistan,” Bush said, an apparent reference to Obama’s recent extension of some U.S. combat operations there. But he added that withdrawing troops from the country “simply because it is politically expedient is the wrong thing to do.”

In the same remarks, Bush suggested that a hasty exit created the current crisis in Iraq. Some Republicans think the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant offers Bush a potent comeback against assaults on his brother’s legacy.

And they note that the most likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, will be constrained in her discussion of Iraq by her 2002 Senate vote to authorize military force against Saddam’s regime.

Even so, Democrats would be sure to hang Jeb Bush’s brother’s unpopular foreign policy legacy around his neck. In response to Bush’s December remarks in Florida, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, said Obama had restored America’s standing “after the disastrous foreign policy blunders of the George W. Bush administration.”

The same arguments may also come from within Bush’s own party, where Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is harshly critical of U.S. intervention abroad and calls the Iraq War a colossal blunder.

Some conservatives say Bush could respond by invoking the legacy of his father, who presided over the mostly peaceful collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and built a diverse international coalition behind the Gulf War.

“The optimal Jeb Bush foreign policy would be something along the same principles as his brother George, but perhaps more savvy about carrying them out, with the hard-headedness of his father,” Schmitt said.

But Jeb Bush himself rejects the idea that his brother’s legacy presents any special problem. He addressed the question on “Fox News Sunday” in March 2013.

“I don’t think there’s any Bush baggage at all,” he said.