| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Politix |
| Does Bush use allies more than Truman did? Actually, yes. |
| 2006-06-19 |
| When he delivered the West Point commencement address last month, President Bush compared his efforts to stand up to terrorists to Harry Truman's efforts to stand up to communists in the early years of the cold war. Liberal pundits were outraged. How dare this Republican cite a sainted Democrat as his inspiration? Commentators such as Peter Beinart, the former New Republic editor, suggested that Bush should instead learn from Truman about the need to recognize the limits of American strength, eschew grandiose rhetoric and unilateral action, and encase American power in a "web" of multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and NATO. This is a refrain that has been heard since 2001, and it is worth correcting the historical record before this mythology becomes accepted as fact. The reality is that Bush is far more multilateral, and Truman was much less so than commonly assumed. For all of Bush's diplomatic stumbles, he has won the assistance of many allies in Iraq, the Horn of Africa, and beyond. Much of the military effort in Afghanistan is being turned over to NATO, which, at Bush's urging, has gotten involved in a conflict outside Europe for the first time. Bush also has been active in pushing free trade, just as Truman did, through treaties such as the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Bush has increased foreign aid. And in his approach to the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, Bush has been scrupulously multilateralist. Not successful but hardly unilateralist. Truman, for his part, was less multilateralist than some of his admirers claim. True, he did preside over the founding of the UN, and he sometimes expressed grandiloquent hopes for this "parliament of man." But in practice his viewpoint was closer to that of his hardheaded secretary of State, Dean Acheson, who believed that the UN Charter was "impracticable" and who scoffed at the idea that "the way to solve this or that problem is to leave it to the United Nations." Acheson did make effective use of the UN in 1950, when he secured a resolution authorizing an armed response to North Korea's invasion of South Korea, but only because the Soviet delegate was boycotting the Security Council. In any case, Truman had already committed air and naval forces to combat. As he wrote to Acheson, a UN failure to act would not have altered his plans - "we would have had to go into Korea alone." Truman was equally clearheaded about the UN's limitations in the British cutoff of aid to Greece and Turkey in 1947, which left those countries exposed to communist aggression. Truman told Congress: "The situation is an urgent one requiring immediate action, and the United Nations and its related organizations are not in a position to extend help of the kind that is required." So the US offered $400 million on its own. The same pattern is evident throughout Truman's presidency. The decision to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki? A unilateral US initiative. The Marshall Plan to aid European recovery? Ditto. The 1948-49 airlift to break the Soviet blockade of Berlin? More unilateralism. Even when Truman seemed to be the most multilateralist, there was usually more to the case than met the eye. Consider the Baruch Plan - which he floated in 1946 - to turn over all nuclear facilities and materiel around the world to international control. This seemed like an incredibly generous offer because the US was the only atomic power. But it contained "poison pill" provisions - mandating, for instance, "immediate and certain punishment" of violations, not subject to a Security Council veto - that astute observers realized would make it unacceptable to Josef Stalin. Truman never seriously considered unilaterally giving up the US atomic arsenal, as liberals such as Henry Wallace urged. This is not meant to denigrate Truman's diplomatic initiatives. The creation of NATO in 1949 was particularly important. But not nearly as important as the decision to keep US troops in Europe, even before NATO existed. Multilateral camouflage like NATO can make the exercise of US power more palatable, and it should be employed wherever practicable. But, whether in the late 1940s or today, progress on tough problems requires American action, alone if need be. That's something that Bush understands as well as Truman did - and that too many liberals still haven't come to terms with. Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. © 2006 Los Angeles Times Syndicate. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #5 Well, at least I learned the origin of "Tranzi". |
| Posted by: Bobby 2006-06-19 17:14 |
| #4 |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2006-06-19 17:01 |
| #3 But in fact the UN has proved useful in a hundred areas. There are hundreds of areas where we rely on the technical agencies, some UN created, many preceding the UN, from the FAO, to WHO, to Postal and telecom orgs, to aviation, etc. And even on security we rely on UNSC approved missions in many parts of the world. For jollies, go look at the UNSC website and look at the actual day to day agenda of the UNSC, and its work in places like Cyprus, Congo, Cambodia, etc. Places where even John Bolton wouldnt want them out. Yes, we should use the UN where its good, and oppose it where its bad. But the question remains, should we attempt to strenghten the UN as an institution, weaken it, or be indifferent to its strength apart from individual issues? (and calling for substituting a league of democracies for the UN isnt an answer - A. plenty of democracies wont go along with that B. for many purposes the UN works BECAUSE it includes all soveriegn states, and not just some ) Now Truman and his Dept of State worked to build the UN as an institution. Some in the admin seem to have consciously tried to reduce the influence of the UN. Rice seems more along the indifferent camp, but I could be wrong. And what applies to the UN, applies even more strongly to NATO. Some of our NATO allies dont back us up on everything we want to do in the ME (of course weve done the same to them - remember Suez?) But NATO is still important, from our policy in the Baltics, to Afghanistan. And no, disparaging "old Europe" doesnt get us anywhere. and there are more international institutions - there are the international lending agencied, which the left loves to hate, but which were key parts of the post war order, there are other regional groupings, some of which we are part of, and some of which we work with. Take the EU. The impact of the EU in consolidating democracy in eastern europe, and even tempting countries like Ukraine and Georgia toward the West, is FAR MORE IMPORTANT than the fact that EU reps make wimpy sounds about the ME. But some folks have a pavlovian reaction to the EU (tranzi - atheists socialists) that doesnt respond to what the EU actually does as an organization, which is largely helpful to the US. Pomo-tranzi - the words themselves are cant. Post modernism is a set of cultural and literary theories that have only an indirect relationship to politics - transnationalism is a joke - in Europe the retreat from nationalism is largely a pragmatic reaction to the failures of the nation state in the particular context of 20th c eastern european history - its not generalizable beyond Europe, and even in europe the EU is used for national purposes, and not just by France. Im sorry you run into lefty pundits who think the nation state is doomed by the EU, or who think Israel should disappear cause nations are obsolete - thats internet rot, not what serious political reality. But Tranzipomism is good for whipping up some folks, I suppose. Kinda like Zionist-imperialism, and with just as loose a relationship to reality. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2006-06-19 16:59 |
| #2 LH, we should also note that at least some of Truman's more unilateral decisions were made during an all-out war. He didn't ask anyone's permission and wasn't about to. As to the UN, count me as one of the disparaging voices. It's sad: I'd like the UN to succeed as an international forum to keep the worst excesses of humankind in check. But it doesn't and won't work, and for a simple reason: the day it admitted thug governments into good standing (e.g., Stalin), it surrendered control of the agenda. Democratic governments can't meet thug-governments half-way in any diplomatic exchange; it's always more like 90-10 in favor of the thugs, because the democratic peoples are used to compromise, and thugs aren't. So the U.N. can't work the way it's structured. Ditto NATO on a smaller scale, and the reason is, again, the recalcitrance of two members: France and Belgium. By loudly saying 'Non!', they prevent NATO from reaching reasonable agreements. It's the 90-10 argument again. That happens a few times (and it has), and the rest of us decide, 'to hell with them'. The only way for democracies to succeed (roust the thugs and prevent genocides around the world) is to tolerate international institutions, use them when they're useful, go around them when they're not, and take a firm stand on principles. Bush has done this better than most, and that's why he's so hated by the pomo-tranzi types. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2006-06-19 15:14 |
| #1 To some extent boot is right, Truman was NOT exclusively multilateralist. But that, I think, misses the point. Truman did not see multilateral institutions as 'cover' but made the building of multilateral institutions a key aspect of his foreign policy. Its the difference between "multilateral when we can, unilateral when we must" and "unilateral when we can, and multilateral when we must" Though Condi Rice is closer to the Truman model than some other folks. But certainly you can see folks here who bitterly hate the UN, and disparage NATO, and basically ANY multilateral institution that doesnt always do what we want. Such folks existed in Trumans time - they DIDNT like Truman, in those days. Look at three different perspectives on the France and Iraq to see what I mean. Kerry says we shouldnt have gone in, if France was against. Boot can make the case that Truman didnt share THAT approach. Some others have said it was right to go in anyway, but we should acknowledge that France had its own interests on that issue, and that the UNSC is still a useful body, and France a useful ally. While others have decided that made France an enemy, and the entire UN apparatus useless, or worse than useless. I dont think this later is the "Truman approach" |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2006-06-19 14:59 |