Jeb Bush vows to be his ‘own man’ if he is elected president

Jeb Bush, a leading contender to be the Republican Party's presidential candidate in 2016, has sought to distance himself from the unpopular foreign policy decisions during the presidencies of his father and brother, remarking in a keynote speech: "I am my own man."

The former Florida governor delivered the first major foreign policy speech of his embryonic presidential campaign, setting out a doctrine of “liberty diplomacy” to press for American values around the world.

Tackling what will likely be a major issue in his expected presidential bid, Mr Bush said he loved his father and brother and, while acknowledging the mistakes of his brother George in Iraq, he admired the "difficult decisions" they both had to make in office. "But I am my own man and my views are shaped by my own thinking and my own experiences," he said.

“Each president learns from those who came before, their principles, their adjustments. One thing we know is this: every president inherits a changing world and changing circumstances.”

Underlining the different times when his father and brother served, Mr Bush said that during the 1991 Gulf War, “hardly anyone knew that the internet existed or who al-Qaeda was” and in 2003, at “the beginning of the liberation of Iraq, neither Twitter nor Isis existed”. “New circumstances require new approaches,” he told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, an independent think-tank.

Mr Bush acknowledged that “there were mistakes made in Iraq for sure” but he praised his brother for the “heroic” increase in troop numbers in 2006, known as the “surge,” that helped to stabilise Iraq.

While Mr Bush is seeking to differentiate himself from the 41st and 43rd presidents, his choice of foreign policy advisers, including several prominent figures from administrations of his brother and father, will leave the impression that he will adopt similar foreign policy positions.

The Washington Post reported that 19 of the 21 people advising him on foreign policy, including former secretaries of state George Shultz and James Baker, worked in the administrations of his brother and his father (including his vice-presidency to Ronald Reagan).

The advisers include neoconservative hawks from George W Bush's administration, ex-deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz, who designed his strategy in Iraq, and John Negroponte, the former US ambassador to the UN and Iraq.

Setting out a more forceful, interventionist US foreign policy, Mr Bush said the US should “say what we mean and mean what we say”.

Mr Bush used his appearance on Barack Obama's home turf in Illinois to lash the president's foreign policy decisions, berating his administration for the 2013 climbdown on Syria and his calculation of Russia as a "regional power" and the Islamic State militants as "junior varsity" players. "This administration talks but the words fade. They draw red lines and then they erase them. With grandiosity, they announce 'resets' and then disengage," he said.

Claiming that the group had “a fighting force of more than 200,000 battle-tested men,” Mr Bush said the US should adopt a global strategy to “take them out”.

He attacked Mr Obama on opening up economic ties with Cuba, for permitting Iran to develop a nuclear programme and on the president's criticism of the upcoming address of Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu to the US congress.

Riffing on Mr Reagan’s foreign policy of “peace through strength”, Mr Bush set out his vision of American foreign policy, saying: “Weakness invites war, strength encourages peace.”

Singling out the UK for praise in tackling social welfare spending, Mr Bush warned there would be "a hollowed core" in Europe unless there were similar reforms and strategies to stimulate economic growth.