WASHINGTON: Just one week ago, conventional wisdom both here and in European capitals was that President George W. Bush’s second term would see a modest turn toward multilateralism and a new readiness to compromise on key issues with traditional US allies.
Today, however, that particular conventional wisdom is being questioned amid renewed anxiety that the unilateralist trajectory on which Bush launched the United States after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon is back on track.
The biggest single reason for the change was Monday’s nomination of John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security during the first term, to the high-profile post of US ambassador to the United Nations.
The problem, as pointed out by a number of Democrats, is that virtually everything Bolton has ever said about the UN suggests that he thinks the world, and particularly the US, would be better off without it, once opining (before 9/11) that if the UN secretariat building lost 10 stories, “it wouldn’t make a bit of difference”.
“This nomination is a poke in the eye to the world diplomatic community and a signal that the Bush administration is going to continue its unilateralist approach,” noted Joe Volk, executive secretary of a major peace group, Friends Committee for National Legislation (FCNL), one of a growing number of groups who are gearing up for a lobbying campaign to persuade senators to oppose Bolton’s confirmation.
Former Ambassador Chas Freeman described the appointment as “the equivalent of dropping a neutron bomb on the organization”.
But whatever the nomination said about Bush’s attitude toward the UN, it also demonstrated that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is supposed to serve as his superior if he is confirmed by the Senate, will likely play a much less powerful role in Bush’s second term than had been thought, particularly in the wake of her two tours — one with the president — of Europe last month.
Knowing how much Bolton had undermined former Secretary of State Colin Powell during the first term, Rice resisted pressure from Bolton, his Congressional backers and Vice President Dick Cheney by refusing to appoint him as her deputy secretary of state — choosing instead arch-realist Robert Zoellick — in what was seen as a kind of declaration of independence from the hawks perched in Cheney’s office and around Defence Secretary Rumsfeld.
That defiance, followed by her triumphal tours of Europe where she repeatedly promised closer consultation, was widely considered a sign that the “realists,” previously led by Powell, had a new champion at Foggy Bottom and one who also enjoyed a much closer personal relationship with the president than her predecessor.
But the nomination of Bolton — who really served as Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s cat’s paw at the State Department under Powell — has profoundly challenged the notion that Rice can stand up to them.
The fact that her strongest argument in favour of Bolton when she was challenged by senators privately on the decision to send him to the UN was that his tenure there may persuade him to modify his hardline views, just as former anti-communist President Richard Nixon decided to launch a strategic relationship with China in the early 1970s, confirmed to many here that Bolton was being forced down her throat.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service
