Mr Bush fires a missile

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Fri, 26 Aug 2005 23:13:41 -0700

[Zepps_News] Mr Bush fires a missile

 

 

 

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1557477,00.html>

 

Mr Bush fires a missile

 

Leader

Saturday August 27, 2005

The Guardian

 

Less than three weeks before world leaders are due to meet in New York

for an unprecedented summit aimed at reforming the United Nations and

preparing it to face the challenges of the 21st century more

effectively, Washington has suddenly proposed hundreds of amendments to

the working document. In effect they are telling officials to tear it up

and start again. The amendments begin ominously on page one of the

40-page document where, among a list of core values such as freedom,

equality and the rule of law, the US - in a none-too-subtle snipe at the

Kyoto protocols - wants to delete " respect for nature " . The amendments

continue in a similar vein over the remaining pages, weakening

references to the millennium development goals (agreed by 191 members of

the UN five years ago as a strategy tocombat poverty), deleting a

statement that force should be a " last resort " when dealing with

security threats, and so on.

 

Article continues

What these amendments actually say comes as no great surprise. We have

already heard them from the Bush administration many times, but they are

also a sign that hopes for a less divisive approach from Washington

during the president's second term may be misplaced. The forum in which

this is happening is also significant. Mr Bush has never really forgiven

secretary general Kofi Annan and other senior UN figures for their

failure to support his invasion of Iraq. Although no one disputes that

the UN is in need of reform, the American notion of reform looks more

like a settling of scores than an attempt to improve its workings.

 

The president's controversial appointment of John Bolton as his

ambassador at the UN - during a recess without the senate's approval -

is a case in point. The abrasive Mr Bolton once famously remarked before

his appointment: " There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is

only the international community, which can only be led by the only

remaining superpower, which is the United States. " He also observed that

the UN headquarters building in New York has 38 storeys and that " if it

lost 10 storeys, it wouldn't make a bit of difference " .

 

Mr Bolton is described by some as a multilateralist - though he seems to

favour the kind of multilateralism where the US occupies the driving

seat, such as Nato and the " coalition of the willing " in Iraq. At the

same time he has opposed other international initiatives that might

impose constraints on the US, including the international criminal court

and treaties restricting landmines, biological weapons, nuclear weapons

testing and the small arms trade.

 

He was reportedly disappointed that President Bush did not include Cuba

in the axis of evil along with Iraq, Iran and North Korea. While working

at the state department under Colin Powell, he described President Kim

Jong Il as a tyrannical dictator - which, true though it may be, is not

the sort of language to yield productive results in the world of

international diplomacy. North Korea responded in kind by calling Mr

Bolton " human scum " and a " bloodsucker " .

 

This confrontational style goes down well with the American

neoconservatives who, little more than two years ago, were arguing that

a dose of " creative destruction " in Iraq would work wonders for the

Middle East and apparently hope to try the same remedy at the UN now.

 

It is difficult to see, though, how this can be squared with the efforts

of Condoleezza Rice who, since she took over as secretary of state, has

been trying to repair diplomatic damage caused by the Iraq war, or the

appointment of former White House counsellor Karen Hughes to improve

America's faded image abroad. While Ms Rice is busy building bridges, Mr

Bolton seems equally busy blowing them up.