After listening
to George W. Bush address the United Nations
General Assembly
on Nov. 10, the question is whether the Presidential
suit is half-empty
or half-full. Has Mr. Bush fully grasped the need to
move beyond
the unilateralist attitudes of his party, or is he merely
mouthing platitudes
that serve the needs of wartime?
The tone of the
Bush speech was certainly encouraging, giving
voice to sentiments
that are rarely heard among conservative
Republicans.
It was refreshing to hear this once-parochial
President say
that "we"—presumably meaning the international
community—"must
press on with our agenda for peace and
prosperity in
every land," making specific references to
development,
trade and investment in the global effort to
contain the
AIDS pandemic. "In our struggle against hateful
groups that
exploit poverty and despair, we must offer an
alternative
of opportunity and hope," he said, without
expanding upon
what that alternative might be.
Mr. Bush even
spoke of Kofi Annan, recently slandered by Osama bin Laden, as
"our Secretary
General"—a tiny phrase that nevertheless must have irked isolationist
Republicans
who regard the United Nations as an affront to American sovereignty.
Only months
ago, those isolationists were again proposing to withdraw U.S. support
from the U.N.,
a species of idiocy silenced within two weeks after Sept. 11, when
Congress suddenly
agreed instead to pay more than $800 million in back dues, with
$840 million
more to come by year’s end.
Like his father
before him, Mr. Bush has discovered that those foreigners in Turtle
Bay have their
uses, notably in the two resolutions swiftly and unanimously passed
by the Security
Council authorizing allied military operations under Chapter 7 of the
U.N. Charter.
He could scarcely have asked for a broader endorsement. And Mr.
Annan’s reappointment
of an able Algerian diplomat as special envoy for
Afghanistan
provided an important opening to certain key parties, such as the
government of
Iran, with which the United States at present has no official contact.
As a new convert
to the doctrine of "nation-building" that he derided during his
campaign last
year, Mr. Bush also seems to understand the potential role of the
U.N. His promise
to work with international organizations to "reconstruct" a
postwar Afghanistan
was a significant departure from his administration’s previous
posture, as
was his clear declaration of renewed resolve to foster a settlement
between Israel
and the Palestinians.
Yet if Mr. Bush
has truly turned a new page in his worldview, his weekend speech
left that page
mostly blank. He said precious little about AIDS and poverty, and not
a word about
other contentious issues such as global warming, nuclear proliferation
or debt reduction.
Instead, he departed from his main topic to lecture the delegates
about the election
of certain rogue states to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights,
as though nothing
in the world matters nearly as much as anything that irritates the
White House.
In those respects,
Mr. Bush’s appearance on the U.N. podium was a squandered
opportunity.
He rightly urged world leaders to attend to the threat posed by
terrorists who
may someday possess weapons of mass destruction, if they don’t
already. He
eloquently expressed the indignation felt by all decent people who
witnessed the
atrocities perpetrated by civilization’s common enemies. And he
implicitly asked
the world to accept American leadership against those enemies.
What he failed
to do was to offer any reciprocal attention to the profound concerns
of peoples and
countries who have felt neglected, even spurned, by American
policymakers.
That halting approach was adequate to the moment, but eventually
Mr. Bush will
have to do much better.
There are reasons
to believe that he may, and reasons to fear that he will not. His
negotiations
this week with Russian President Vladimir Putin are promising,
particularly
if they lead to real reductions in nuclear armaments without voiding the
Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty. But he still seems obsessed with the chimera of missile
defense at the
expense of more important measures against terror, including
underfunded
programs to safeguard Russian nuclear materials and the endangered
chemical and
biological weapons treaty.
Coming from a
politician reared in the stifling atmosphere of Texas Republicanism,
even the most
tentative nod toward a larger horizon represents progress. As a young
man, George
W. watched his father contend with the most bitterly paranoid currents
of isolationism,
and he has demonstrated his own determination not to alienate his
party’s right-wing
fringe. Still, if he believes his own rhetoric about humanity’s
responsibility
to oppose fascist aggression "decisively and collectively," he will have
to articulate
a broader vision of America’s commitment to the rest of the people
who share this
planet.
"This struggle
is a defining moment for the United Nations itself," Mr. Bush told his
audience there.
In fact, it is also a defining moment for him and his administration,
as well as for
our country. A military victory is only the very beginning.
You may reach Joe Conason via email at: jconason@observer.com.