It is one of the ironies of US foreign policy that presidents like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who sought to advance with care, generally weighing up all the different national arguments, trying to take on board as many points of view are seen as failures. In contrast, less thoughtful and coherent administrations, such as the Reagan and present Bush White Houses, may seem, by their own measure at least, to have prospered in foreign affairs, despite not bothering to weigh up the issues particularly carefully.
George W. Bush went ahead with his Afghanistan invasion, despite the warnings that this was a battle that could become a quagmire for US military ambitions. The US-led anti-Taleban front succeeded thanks to Washington’s blend of threats and gold, which kept all the rival Afghan warlords on side for the duration of the conflict. Even though the end game in the harsh mountains of eastern Afghanistan is proving as hard as many predicted, Bush no doubt feels that he has been proven right. The big stick worked. All the subtleties his critics were talking about turned out to be so much baloney. Thus he is lining up to do the same thing to Iraq, whether the international community, as represented by the United Nations, likes it or not.
Yet this machismo US foreign policy distresses and sometimes insults friends as well as enemies. South Korea owes its freedom to the United Nations’ intervention in the 1950s. The United States, whose Gen. Douglas MacArthur commanded the UN forces, stayed on afterward to ensure the country’s safety from the communist North. The agreement under which the US maintains a garrison of 37,000 troops in South Korea is known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). It includes the provision that US service personnel are answerable to US military, not South Korean civilian courts.
Unfortunately this June, when two Korean school children were run over and killed by a US tank, the US military insisted that it would investigate and if necessary try the two soldiers involved. At the subsequent trial, both men were acquitted of any wrongdoing. The verdict, whatever its merits, has caused outrage among South Koreans, who have mounted protest demonstrations and a hunger strike.
A Carter or Clinton White House would have surely handled this tragedy in a far more sensitive manner than that taken by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who met South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jun in Washington last week . Rumsfeld said bluntly that he saw no reason to change the SOFA deal. At the very least, a more considerate US administration would have offered to go through a review process, even if in the end, any changes amounted to little more than window dressing. But this is not the Bush administration’s style. The simple message from Washington is that they are calling the shots and there is only a problem if Washington says there is a problem. End of story.
From the moment that he scrapped US commitment to reduce global warming in the early days of his presidency, George W. Bush has made it clear that his is an administration uninterested in wasting time listening to anyone else.
Unfortunately this is the way to treat enemies, not friends.
