If you didn't disagree with his policy, you wouldn't be complaining about this "isolation".
First off, I'm not complaining, I'm observing.
Before 911: From the left James Hall said:
The Bush administration moved full speed ahead on a unilateralist agenda, threatening to withdraw peacekeeping troops from Macedonia, killing a Kyoto climate treaty that didn't suit them, dropping mediated talks in Israel and Northern Ireland, announcing a plan to build a wall of missiles around America while simply canceling any treaties that might get in the way. The administration's now concerned because the world booted America off of important UN committees, Kyoto supporters are boycotting American companies worldwide, the Middle East is on the point of an oil-disrupting war, and Europe is threatening to go its own way, no longer concerned with licking the boot heels of a disinterested American giant.
Pull the US out of the world's affairs and someone else moves in--in this case America's enemies, who are more than happy to do things abroad to discomfit us at home. Bush was supposed to do something to stop the expansion of this vacuum with his European trip this past week, but the only European leader he seemed to get along with was ex-KGB tyrant Vladimir Putin.
Perhaps that's because Putin seems happy to watch the US withdraw from its hard-fought and carefully nurtured relationships with the rest of the world. Putin was pleased to let the US declare its intention to abandon the ABM Treaty; Russia, he then announced, would abandon the START II treaty signed by Bush's father and begin putting multiple warheads back on its missiles, increasing its original target goal of warheads from 1,500 back to 3,500. That got him an invitation to George W's ranch for some beef chili and chicken enchiladas.
Bush and his fellow isolationists/unilaterialists may learn that not all foreign conflicts can be resolved at the Bush ranch or around the White House dinner table. Arms control issues that have evolved over 57 years won't be resolved in a few months, and certainly not by unilateral action on our part. If America decides to act on its own and in its own self-interest, so will Europe, Russia, and China, and the results won't be to our liking.
America's best interests start with the realization that we are a part of a shrinking world, inextricably tied to it through economic, social, and political ties. |
