Bush's ambivalence
Callahan, David
REPORT ON THE UNITED NATIONS BUSH'S AMBIVALENCE SOVEREIGNTY OR COOPERATION? Not long ago, the United Nations served as Exhibit A for Republican presidents anxious to discredit "idealistic"...
...We are the only nation on this earth that could assemble the forces of peace...
...Among the nations of the world, only the United States of America has both the moral standing and the means to back it up," the president told Congress...
...The end of the cold war unlocked the potential of an institution which has stood essentially moribund from its earliest days...
...Ronald Reagan waged outright war on the institution, cutting Washington's UN contribution and often flouting international law...
...Washington did...
...In 1987, candidate Bush called the UN "another light that failed...
...For hardened skeptics of the UN—and their numbers are still legion—the summit in New York can be easily summarized: a group of world leaders made predictable speeches in a forum that has long prompted prolixity and false promises...
...vital interests are not at stake...
...Richard Nixon considered the UN a marginal entity—so unimportant that in 1970 he appointed a former Texas congressman with no foreign policy experience, George Bush, as UN ambassador...
...It is a truly radical document...
...security and prosperity are best assured, in the long run, within a genuine partnership of nations...
...Whether deliberately or not, the Bush administration has helped generate a tremendous momentum in favor of cooperation and international law...
...To be sure, one could list a dozen reasons why the UN summit will amount to nothing...
...power is indispensable for keeping order in a world with a high potential for chaos...
...policy toward the United Nations...
...Ghali is to present his conclusions by July...
...Under Article 43, it has the power to organize and deploy armed forces drawn from member states...
...More important, if a UN army stood ready to defend any nation against aggression, then all nations would be able to devote fewer resources to national defense...
...To be equitable, as the UN Charter envisions, collective security responsibilities cannot be chiefly the burden of the United States, especially given its economic problems...
...During the Persian Gulf crisis, Bush did experience a sudden conversion regarding the United Nations, but the perception lingered afterwards that this shift was purely tactical...
...new violence flared in Algeria...
...It operated with UN support yet called all the shots...
...One cannot but be skeptical...
...impulse toward unilateral action—displayed in the invasions of Grenada and Panama and the 1986 air strike on Libya—is almost certain to clash, at some now unforeseen time and place, with the principles of the UN Charter...
...Yet now, with no mortal enemies on the horizon, the United States can move boldly to redefine world politics...
...Listening to Bush's promises to the UN is a bit like watching an inveterate adulterer take yet another wedding vow...
...Two years later, as president, he ignored its procedures by unilaterally invading Panama...
...More concretely, the president embraced an initiative that instructs the UN secretary general...
...In time, these newly revived principles could profoundly alter world politics, with the result that U.S...
...Indeed, even as Security Council members proclaimed a new world order in New York, evidence of old world disorder was in no short supply: China, it was revealed on January 31, was selling deadly advanced missile technology to Syria and Pakistan...
...It is easy, as well, to identify the shortterm political motives of the supposedly high-minded leaders who gathered in New York...
...He was right on target when he said in September 1990 that "we are now in sight of a United Nations that performs as envisioned by its founders...
...They then commissioned a study which will no doubt be ignored once completed...
...the Bush administration did...
...The Security Council lies at the center of this vision, charged with "primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security...
...primacy, it is hard to see exactly where the United Nations fits in...
...A few months later, with the bombing of Iraq underway, Bush echoed this theme...
...The collapse of Soviet power notwithstanding, these plans call for reducing U.S...
...Like a lapsed worshipper rediscovering a holy text, Bush hailed the "sacred principles enshrined in the UN Charter...
...This model, however, bears little resemblance to what the UN founders had in mind...
...It should go without saying that unilateral military operations stand at odds with a charter which stresses "the pacific settlement of disputes" and spells out elaborate procedures for collective action...
...officials repeatedly stressed, hinged on U.S...
...The rationale for such small cuts is that sustained U.S...
...10: 13 March 1992 Commonweal...
...In a world order governed by the charter, no single nation would have to keep the peace alone, or practically alone as the United States did in the Gulf...
...As a consequence, Operation Desert Shield/Storm can hardly be considered an ideal example of collective security in action...
...Long after the Gulf War ended, President Bush said that "the coalition effort established a model for the collective settlement of disputes...
...And the Security Council did not run the war in the Gulf...
...secretary of state flying 100,000 miles over the many long months to build the necessary coalition for an enforcement action," observes David Scheffer of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace...
...The traditional U.S...
...During the cold war such experimentation would have been risky, if not impossible...
...Is the Bush administration really prepared to live by the stricCommonweal 13 March 1992: 9 tures of the UN Charter...
...And Bush himself later acknowledged that he might have moved against Iraq even if the UN had not backed such action...
...During the Gulf crisis and war, the Bush administration had the best of both worlds...
...military forces by only 25 percent by 1995...
...Bush didn't even mention the UN in his original announcement on August 8 that the U.S...
...Yet all of these doubts notwithstanding, there is a real significance in recent developments regarding U.S...
...a UN peace plan was dealt a major setback in Yugoslavia...
...Observers were quick to note the carrots and sticks that the administration had used to line up anti-Iraq votes in the Security Council...
...Collective security cannot be dependent upon a U.S...
...and in Haiti, leaders of a military coup against a democratic government continued their defiance of international sanctions...
...But before that potential can be realized, the president—and the U.S...
...One need only reread the charter to appreciate the foreign policy train wreck which lies ahead...
...was deploying troops to Saudi Arabia...
...Given the administration's enthusiasm for U.S...
...It is thus not hard to see where the current road leads...
...The Security Council did not take the lead in opposing Iraq...
...Boutro Ghali, to find new ways to put those principles into practice...
...it must place its trust in the politics of cooperation and the rule of law as it has never done before...
...foreign policy establishment generally—clearly have a long way to go...
...foreign policy goals...
...In a sense, Washington must take a leap of faith...
...Despite Bush's declaration of a "new world order" during the Gulf crisis, there is little to suggest a real change of thinking...
...Not long ago, the United Nations served as Exhibit A for Republican presidents anxious to discredit "idealistic" approaches to world affairs...
...Such a convergence may prove rare in the future, and Washington is sure to find, as it often has, that the international community does not endorse some U.S...
...It must believe that both U.S...
...President Bush must be praised for his new attentiveness to the UN...
...What, then, is one to make of the president's performance at the UN summit held in New York during the last days of January...
...foreign policy could be constrained in a manner not at all to the liking of conservative internationalists...
...To be effective, operating automatically in the face of all transgressions, a collective security model must be able to function when U.S...
...Whether a nation exports oil to the West or bananas to India, it should be assured of assistance to counter aggression...
...America must lead and our people must understand that," Secretary of State James Baker told Congress in September 1990...
...On paper, the United Nations has a sweeping mandate to serve as a powerful arbiter of world affairs...
...Pentagon plans for the 1990s reflect the belief that America is "bound to lead...
...resolve and activism...
...Joseph Nye, Jr., a Harvard political strategist, expressed the deeper logic underpinning this view: "If the strongest state does not lead, the prospects of instability increase...
...Since assuming office, the president's foreign policy vision has been shaped by a desire to retain global primacy and the freedom of action which comes from such a position...
...Indeed, this was the vision of the UN Charter when it called for maintaining global peace "with the least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources...
...He is currently completing a book on the Persian Gulf War and the future of American foreign policy...
...Our national strategy is founded on the premise that America will continue to provide the leadership needed to preserve global peace and security," Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell told Congress in early 1991...
...DAVID CALLAHAN David Callahan is the author of Dangerous Capabilities: Paul Nitze and the Cold War (HarperCollins...
...The whole Gulf expedition, as U.S...
Vol. 119 • March 1992 • No. 5
