White House Says the U.S. Is Not a Loner, Just Choosy nytimes.com
So, I was going to suggest the discussion move on to drugs and rock'n'roll , but then this article on that other topic showed up.
In his first six months in office, President Bush has
abandoned a treaty on fighting global warming,
rejected protocols enforcing a ban on germ
warfare, demanded amendments to an accord on
illegal sales of small arms, threatened to skip an
international conference on racism and vowed to
withdraw from a landmark pact limiting ballistic
missile defenses.
The reaction from Berlin to Beijing has been one of
concern that an American president who walks
away from so many treaties might be one who wants to walk away from the world — or, at the least, one
who will demand that the world live by terms dictated by America alone.
Mr. Bush's advisers deny that he is unilateralist or isolationist, or that his administration has a blanket disdain
for group action as a way of conducting world affairs. They simply view treaties as a steam-engine-age tool
whose usefulness this deep into the nuclear era will be judged one issue at a time, one negotiation at a time,
one summit meeting at a time.
And one at a time, W will say "My way or the highway". Or perhaps more accurately, Karl Rove's way. |
