Disarming the Bush Administration

As the 2000 Presidential Campaign drew to a close, the Bush Campaign confidently promised a foreign policy that would call upon seasoned veterans of the diplomatic corps, many of them old hands that had served back as far as the Nixon/Ford Administration. Things were going to be different. No more of those ill-defined "nation building" or "peace keeping" missions in countries we'd never heard of.

The grown-ups were going to be back in charge of foreign policy.

What we've seen so far is a foreign policy that is stunningly reckless, one which may yet cause the United States, the nominal leader of the free world and sole remaining super power, to become an international pariah. The Administration's "won't take 'no' for an answer" stance on war with Iraq will damage our standing in the world community for a generation – and that's only if we somehow manage to avoid an invasion. War with Iraq could have dangerous repercussions.

The Bush Administration dug its own grave in many respects. It started by rejecting the Kyoto Accords on the global environment and by repudiating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that the United States signed nearly thirty years ago. The Administration also rejected an international ban on land mines, a pact to limit the sales of small arms in Third World countries, and the International Criminal Court.

Even a momentary flood of international sympathy for the United States after the World Trade Center attack couldn't erase the basic belief among our allies that the Bush Administration was going to go its own way. Signing treaties and cooperating across national boundaries were not a priority for the Bush Administration.

When the West Bank erupted into violence in the fall of 2001, the Bush Administration did nothing. It wasn't until the body count had reached levels too high too ignore that Secretary of State Colin Powell made a belated – and completely ineffectual – visit to the region. Since both sides knew that the Bush Administration was not going to spend political capital on finding a peaceful solution, it was time to lock and load the minute Powell's plane went wheels up from Tel Aviv.

The most telling moment in the Bush Administration's foreign policy came when the UN Human Rights Commission voted to boot the United States off the panel. The U.S. was restored to the Commission the following year, but only after the Bush Administration threatened to withhold a quarter billion dollars in funding from the perennially cash-strapped United Nations.