Ian Boyne, Contributor
THOSE WORDS of the United States President, uttered when he was a candidate for the Presidency, must have come to haunt him as he spoke at the United Nations last Tuesday.
When he addressed the Umited Nations General Assembly last year September, his tone was remarkably different from the chastened, conciliatory one which he struck last week. George Bush and his band of unilateralists led by Donald Rumsfeld and including Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and Richard Perle, had spent the better part of the ensuing year snubbing the United Nations and proclaiming its irrelevance. They felt that they not only had hegemonic power but universal morality on its side and with that combination multilateral action was dispensable.
Defence Secretary Rumsfeld had declared defiantly, "It is less important to have unanimity than it is to be making the right decision and doing the right thing, even though at the outset it may seem lonesome." His boss George Bush had also said arrogantly in the face of mounting worldwide pressure against his Iraqi war plans and stern resistance from European allies: "At some point we may be the only ones left. That's okay with me. We are America."
But last week that self-righteous talk was considerably tempered in light of the enormous political and economic cost of his Iraqi expedition and growing scepticism over his justification of the war. In a speech that would be laughable were it not so tragic, Bush said his infamous "coalition of nations" really acted "to defend the credibility of the United Nations".
US NEEDS THE UN
Bush went on to say that "Every young democracy needs the help of friends. Now the nation of Iraq needs and deserves our aid and all nations of goodwill should step forward and provide this support." The United Nations was told in no uncertain terms that it is important after all, and that the great and invincible United States can't go it alone.
"As an original signer of the UN Charter, the United States of America is committed to the United Nations. The founding documents of the United Nations and the documents of America stand in the same tradition." Wow!
The historians and geopolitical experts, keenly aware of the propaganda campaign against the United Nations over the years, would certainly take note of the Bush September 23 speech. A September to remember, indeed.
But not surprising to Simon Tisdall, writing in the influential Guardian newspaper on September 22, a day before. "Although Bush is loath to admit it, the US badly needs international assistance, troops and money to prevent its Iraqi occupation from becoming an inescapable quagmire. In other words the UN has turned out to be anything but 'irrelevant'."
Tisdall says it is not that Bush has seen the error of his ways. "If Bush has changed his tune it is not because he has developed a new-found respect for the UN and those who opposed his war. It is because the cost of Iraq, in terms of American lives and American tax dollars, is beginning to have a seriously negative impact on his re-election hopes. It is because ordinary Americans are critical of his go-it-alone approach."
One does not have to be an international relations expert to see that George Bush is getting desperate, as his miscalculations are becoming more evident by the day.
His clear statement two weeks ago that Saddam Hussein had no connection with the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, after he and his Administration fanned those speculations to whip the hysteria for war was deeply damaging to his cause.
The revelations of the unsubstantiated sentence in his State of the Union Address about Iraq as well as the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD), whose existence was trumpeted as the major reason for the haste to act against Saddam Hussein, have pushed more people to doubt his reasons for going to war.
His war partner, Tony Blair of Britain, had a crushing blow this past week, too, with the publication of a British poll which showed a majority of the British people now saying that the war in Iraq was unjustified. This is coming from a 63 per cent support for the war in April.
ISOLATIONISM VS MULTILATERALISM
The matters which have come to light since the pyrrhic victory in Iraq have shattered the credibility of Tony Blair, George Bush and the hawks in Washington and have strengthened the hand of the anti-war activists and multi-lateralists. French President Jacques Chirac was in fine and fighting form on Tuesday in his UN address:
"In an open world no one can live in isolation. No one can act in the name of everyone. No one can accept the anarchy of a society without rules. There is no alternative to the United Nations."
Not one soul doubted who that lecture was for. And Chirac could speak boldly on Tuesday as he stood on the ashes of the credibility of George Bush and his fellow European leader, the wayward Tony Blair. Continuing to press for a quick turn over of autonomy to the Iraqi people, the French President said:
"... The transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, who must have sole responsibility for their destiny, is essential for stability and reconstruction. It is up to the United Nations to lend its legitimacy to that process."
The United Nations is, indeed, back and George Bush is eating crow.
It did not have to come to this. If only the unilateralists and the hegemonists had listened to reason and to some of their best scholars and foreign policy experts. In fact, right after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, one well-known person said: "This most recent surprise attack should erase the concept in some quarters that the United States can somehow go it alone in the fight against terrorism, or in anything else for that matter." That person was none other than the 41st President of the United States, George H.W. Bush, father of the 43rd President, George W. Bush.
In a brilliantly argued essay in the September/October 2002 issue of the most influential foreign policy journal, Foreign Affairs, Georgetown University Professor G. John Ikenberry ('America's Imperial Ambition') provides some closely-reasoned arguments against the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption and unilateralism.
"A third problem with an imperial grand strategy is that it cannot generate the co-operation needed to solve practical problems at the heart of the US foreign policy agenda. In the fight against terrorism the US needs co-operation from European and Asian countries in intelligence, law enforcement and logistics. Outside the security sphere, realising US objectives depends even more on a continuous stream of amicable working relations with major states around the world. But it is impossible to expect would be-partners to acquiesce to America's self-appointed global security protectorate and then pursue business as usual in other domains."
Drawing historical parallels of the demise of other empires, Ikenberry warns: "Their imperial orders were all brought down when other countries decided they were not prepared to live in a world dominated by an overweening coercive state. A hard-line imperial grand strategy runs the risk that history will repeat itself."
The highly-respected Council on Foreign Relations in major paper which sets out the three major contending schools in the U.S. foreign policy establishment, A New National Security Strategy in an Age of Terrorists, Tyrants and Weapons of Mass Destruction, lists a number of advantages for the multilateralist approach as opposed to the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Wolfowitz favoured unilateralist approach: "Multilateralism makes co-operation more likely in the war on terrorism and other international challenges that cannot be met alone, such as the proliferation of WMD, trans-national crime, narcotics trafficking, global financial instability, infectious diseases, poverty, lawlessness and environmental degradation."
The paper says that the multilateral approach is more in concert with global values as unilateralism plays by the same rules as the rogue states. The multilateral, co-operative approach also, says the paper, "reduces the risk that America's unsurpassed militant and economic power and cultural sway will produce resentment that results in countervailing coalitions among nation-states and new recruits for terrorists."
'REDEMPTION THROUGH PRE-EMPTION'
But you have to read the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, to get one of the most compelling and blistering set of critiques of the Bush Administration. In a series of articles looking at 'Bush At Midterm', the Bush Administration is exposed as being a colossal failure in terms of diplomacy.
The first essay is by Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright who quips that for the Bush Administration "reliance on alliance has been replaced by redemption through pre-emption."
Albright outlines just how the U.S. has lost support among its allies in Europe, Asia and the developing world.
Ronald Asmus, a senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, in an essay on 'Rebuilding the Atlantic Alliance' said, toppling Saddam's regime was a legitimate and necessary goal. "But rarely in American diplomacy has the right goal been pursued so poorly." How could the Bush Administration have so botched the relationship with Europe which for the first time invoked article five in the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO) treaty which talks of collective security in the attack against Afghanistan, after September 11 attacks?
Even Arab countries supported the attack against Afghanistan in the quest to root out Al Qaida and bin Laden. So it is not that Europe is simply averse to war or that there are psychological or historical reasons which make co-operation with the United States impossible. The U.S. had that co-operation when the war against terrorism started.
DIPLOMATIC INEPTITUDE
It is the spectacular diplomatic ineptitude of the U.S. Administration coupled with its grating arrogance and self-righteousness, particularly that of its obnoxious Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, which have fractured the Atlantic Alliance. But the gem in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs is the essay by Visiting Professor of International Relations at the famed London School of Economics, James P. Rubin, 'Stumbling Into War'. Rubin calls the Bush adventure into Iraq a "stunning diplomatic defeat."
He demonstrates how the U.S. miscalculated Saddam's moves, more particularly his partial compliance with weapons inspection and the UN process.
The US ended up appearing to everyone that it was intent on war no matter what Saddam did or even how much he complied.
Saddam outmanoeuvred Bush diplomatically and in the end won the diplomatic war. Bush is still counting his losses militarily, economically and diplomatically.
"Rumsfeld's frequent public appearances harmed rather than helped his country's case in the court of world opinion. His blunt language has won him a few laughs in domestic settings but his every gaffe and insult was greeted with disgust throughout Europe. Exercising power without careful diplomacy has left the U.S. reputation in tatters," says Rubin.
Joseph Nye, the well-known Dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and author of the acclaimed The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower can't go it alone puts it well in his essay in the July/August 2003 issue of Foreign Affairs ('US Power and Strategy After Iraq'): "The paradox of American power is that world politics is changing in a way that makes it impossible for the strongest world power since Rome to achieve some of its more crucial international goals alone.
"By devaluating soft power and institutions the new unilateralist coalition of Jacksonians and neo-Wilsonians is depriving Washington of some of its most important instruments for the implementation of a new national security strategy."
But are those with the real power in Washington listening?
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can send your comments to ianboyne1@yahoo.com
