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December 20, 2001
A notable passage appeared in President Bush's Sept. 20 speech to a Joint Session of Congress: "This is not just America's fight. And what is at stake is not just America's freedom. This is the world's fight. This is civilization's fight."
On Nov. 10, in an address to the United Nations General Assembly, Bush continued to stress this theme of collective engagement. "We resolved that the aggressions and ambitions of the wicked must be opposed early, decisively and collectively, before they threaten us all," he said. "The civilized world is now responding. The United Nations has risen to this responsibility. Before the sun had set [on Sept. 12], these attacks on the world stood condemned by the world."
Bush's speechwriters certainly had some evidence to back up their claims. The day after the attacks, NATO had invoked Article 5 of its basic treaty, which affirms that an attack on one member is an attack on all. By the time bombs began falling on Afghanistan, the U.S. had assembled an impressive coalition of countries to carry on the war. Congress even paid a substantial portion of the dues the U.S. had long owed the United Nations.
Prominent liberals, seeking sunshine in the dark sky of October, pointed to these "collective" actions as evidence that the Bush administration had finally realized that unilateralism would not work in the 21st century. The age of international cooperation and multilateral arrangements is upon us, they proclaimed.
But since then, every passing day proves that President Bush and his advisors haven't become the overnight multilateralists that liberals and others took them for. Instead, the U.S. government has been developing a one-sided, coercive, almost imperial kind of multilateralism. Bush articulated it most directly with his famous threat: "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
This attitude has dominated the Afghanistan War, where instead of joint decision-making or cooperation, the U.S. took almost complete control of the military operations. Other countries and entities, including the United Nations, have been asked to help with post-conflict reconstruction, but told not to interfere with the conduct or goals of the war itself. When U.S. allies warned that extending the war to Iraq or elsewhere might break the coalition, Washington's official line was, "The mission will define the coalition, not the coalition the mission." In other words, the multilateralist element of the campaign is only marginal, and easily cast aside.
Then, the Bush administration blithely dismissed the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, a principal basis of arms control and stability for the last three decades. This unilateral withdrawal from the ABM treaty worries Russia, China and the nations of Europe because it will allow the U.S. to construct a missile defense shield, and possibly go on to weaponize space.
If successful, this revived and enlarged "Star Wars" project would all but put the U.S. in charge of global security, thereby making all other states vulnerable.
The dismissal of the ABM Treaty may be the most visible sign of the Bush administration's unilateralist foreign policy, but it is not alone. For example, at the recent Biological Weapons Convention in Geneva, another dimension of Bush's unilateralist approach became clear -- what might be called the "market-plus-militarism" formula. This dogma aligns business and government forces against any form of international regulation. In Geneva, this meant that the Bush camp did more to protect U.S. pharmecutical patents than it did to move forward on such tasks as biological weapon program inspections.
Taken together, these recent foriegn policy actions show that the Bush leadership did not abandon its signature unilateralism after the World Trade Center attacks. It only altered its rhetoric to create an impression of multilateralism, while plunging ahead with the most controversial of its unilateralist moves.
Prior to Sept. 11, President Bush had made clear the United States would become much more selective in its approach to "nation building" and "intervening abroad." He pledged during and after his presidential campaign that the U.S. government would no longer jeopardize its material and strategic interests by bargaining with other countries over common problems.
That pledge was as much a matter of style as substance. In its first few months in power, the Bush administration went out of its way to repudiate the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court, the protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention, and the proposed Treaty on Trade in Small Arms. The administration probably could have won its desired policy results through a more muted, less provocative appproach. But its stridency was meant to signal a unilateral rejection of global humanitarianism, which the administration regarded as inconsistent with American interests in a post-cold war world.
This resistance to international cooperation is not exactly isolationism, but rather a kind of selective multilateralism -- a systematic effort to redefine the U.S.'s relationship to the world. After all, multilateralism of the World Trade Organization variety is endorsed, as is a continued reliance on the International Monetary Fund to bail out distressed economies around the world (although this endorsement is now given more reluctantly than in the past, given Wall Street's skepticism about IMF efforts to cushion the financial failures of third world countries).
Here it becomes useful to distinguish between four types of multilateralism:
First, there is soft multilateralism -- essentially, the U.N. system of treaties that address global problems within a negotiated framework.
Second, there is coercive multilateralism -- one state forcing another to join an international coalition, like the U.S. strongarming other nations to take part in its post-Sept. 11 struggle against global terror.
Third, there is neoliberal multilateralism -- the expansion of global trade and investment through institutions like the WTO, IMF and World Bank.
Fourth, there is civic multilateralism -- innovative collaborations between civil society and moderate governments to produce global reforms, such as the Anti-Personnel Landmines Treaty and the Rome Treaty to establish an International Criminal Court.
The Bush administration has generally been opposed to soft and civic multilateralism, and quite adept at making opportune use of coercive multilateralism and selective use of neoliberal multilateralism. Those leaning have only been reinforced by the events of 9/11, as hardline security concerns eclipse soft and civic multilateralism. But it is a mistake to portray the Bush leadership as unalterably opposed to multilateralism; it will wear the cloak of multilateralism when it seems to fit.
The most common media assessment on the terrorist attacks was: "Sept. 11 changed everything, forever." My assessment of the Bush administration's foreign policy is best captured by the reverse sentiment: "Sept. 11 has not changed anything except the cosmetics of diplomacy." Before Sept. 11, the U.S. government was not dogmatically opposed to a multilateralism consistent with its unilateralist foreign policy goals, and since Sept. 11 it has not changed those views.
Bush's rejection of the ABM Treaty is particularly significant because it not only displeases almost all of America's allies, but introduces a discordant note into the coalition against global terror at a particularly sensitive moment. If the United States repudiates a basic treaty at a time and place of its own choosing, what will stop other countries from doing the same? And what will stop the United States from backing out of other treaty commitments whenever they become inconvenient? Missile defense is bad if it fails (a huge waste of resources) and worse if it succeeds (since it could lead to a menacing new form of arms). But regardless of its efficacy, it is potentially devastating to the multilateral ethos that has become so fragile between the U.S. and even its most trusted allies.
Thinking ahead, if the war on terrorism is taken to other countries after the Afghan campaign, it may not only break the post-Sept. 11 anti-terror coalition, but also may encourage a major realignment in world politics. It might reinforce the reputation of the U.S. as a rogue superpower intent on global domination and oblivious to common global problems such as climate change.
Since Sept. 11, the chance for productive global cooperation has faced two major threats: one is posed by Osama bin Laden, the other, by George W. Bush. Most of us would prefer a third choice: a system of humane governance in which multilateral treaties and solutions, along with human rights, are paramount.
Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton
University, is the author of Religion and Humane Global Governance.
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