It is sometimes difficult for a son to listen to a father's advice, but President George W. Bush should take what his dad recently said very seriously. Speaking at the inauguration of Tufts University's Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies, specializing in the Middle East, former President George H.W. Bush emphasized the importance of maintaining good multilateral relationships for the U.S. In a not-so-subtle message to his son, Bush Sr. said the gaping differences between the U.S. and its European allies that have opened up over Iraq can and should be repaired once the fighting ends. It's sound postwar advice.
Looking back at his own successful efforts at repairing the damage between the U.S. and Jordan after the first Gulf War, when Jordan sided with Iraq, the former president said: "I think there's a message in that for those who today say 'How can we ever get talking when you have such acrimony and such bad feeling?"' His answer is clear. "You've got to reach out to the other person. You've got to convince them that long-term friendship should trump short-term adversity."
If the imbroglio over Iraq teaches anything, it is that U.S. foreign policy cannot be based on a unilateralism that shows disdain for its friends and allies. France may be blocking the U.S. at the U.N., in part, to reclaim old glories on the world scene. But close friends of America, such as Mexico and Turkey, aren't playing power politics in their resistance to the U.S. They feel ignored and even insulted by the Bush Administration. In the postwar period, the White House should make every effort to rebuild its multilateral ties around the world.
But the world must also begin to rebuild its ties to the U.S. Anti-Americanism is not a viable foreign policy for France or Russia. Simply blocking the U.S. around the globe is a pathetic diplomacy based on passive-aggressiveness. France should stand for something in its own right, and it's time for it to reconstitute a foreign policy that distinguishes it around the world. Being the "non-American" is not enough.
To begin rebuilding trust, the world also needs multilateral institutions that work to keep the peace in a era of terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, failing states, and threatening dictatorships. The U.N. isn't competent enough to do that job today. The grand mufti of Bosnia recently reminded a European audience in Davos, Switzerland, that 10,000 Muslims died in his country because the U.N. failed to act for two years. Only when the U.S. intervened, he said, were his people protected. In Bosnia, Kosovo, and Rwanda, long before Iraq, the Security Council has shown itself too paralyzed to be effective.
Clearly, Security Council rules must be changed to end the crippling power of veto. And the ranks of permanent members must be expanded to include India, Japan, and perhaps others. It's time for the Bush Administration to lead a new effort to bring the U.N., a post-World War II creation of the mid-20th century, into the post-Cold War 21st century. That's a goal that could make a multilateralist father proud of his son.
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