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Bush 'Realism' May Backfire on U.S.
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Bush 'Realism' May Backfire on U.S.
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by William Pfaff
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BOSTON - The motive remains mysterious for what seems gratuitous brutality in the Bush administration's approach not only to Russia and China, but also to South Korea and the Europeans.
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The White House says it has adopted a "new realism," and George W. Bush's press secretary has repeatedly used that word, or a variation of it, in defending what has been going on. Realism has an established meaning in the vocabulary of foreign relations. It means national policies formulated in terms of power and national interest, setting aside ideology and prejudice, trying to look at things as honestly as possible. But suspicion arises that the Bush administration may think "realism" simply means being tough with other countries, ignoring their official opinions and national interests when these don't please the United States, even when those interests may be legitimate and the opinions serious.
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Washington's cursory dismissal of South Korea's successful policy to open up communications with North Korea, its rejection of international concern over global warming and its "take it or leave it" stands on national missile defense and NATO expansion have all tended to alienate or even anger governments with whom the United States needs to work.
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A commentator at the Carnegie Endowment says the Bush people are "going to play hardball, and they want to make that very clear, very fast." Hardball that provokes hostility and avoidable opposition is not realism.
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The downside of this is illustrated in the administration's recent dealings with Russia on nuclear and proliferation issues. Mr. Bush's secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, recently called Russia "a nation of proliferators." His deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, has said "these people will do anything for money." In fact, there has been very little leakage of Russian nuclear resources and expertise. Washington's expulsion last week of 50 identified (and therefore largely neutralized) Russian intelligence people in the United States was a show-off act, not a realistic one. The Russians had made use of a walk-in FBI traitor. What else were they - realistically - supposed to have done? Turn him in to the FBI?
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However, the Moscow response to the expulsions could be loss of access for Americans working inside Russia, at sensitive nuclear sites, verifying compliance with treaties on dismantling weapons and making Russian nuclear installations secure. Susan Eisenhower, who runs the security foundation named for her grandfather, the former president, told the London Observer last week, "The Russians are very proud of the fact that there has been so little proliferation, and it is dangerous for the U.S. to undermine that." She added that this kind of administration talk, and the spy expulsions, "probably mean that the administration is not as sympathetic to the monitoring cooperation program as was the case in the past, and that is very serious indeed." Mr. Rumsfeld has made another uselessly provocative comment, this time concerning war with China. Mr. Bush has said that he intends to conduct "a respectful but firm" policy toward China. But in a White House briefing, Mr. Rumsfeld said one reason the U.S. needs arms reconfiguration is because the Far East is the most likely future theater for U.S. operations, and new-generation, long-range nuclear bombers capable of operating from U.S. bases are needed "to fight and win a nuclear war."
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The only dispute between the United States and China capable of provoking violence concerns Taiwan. The United States opposes any attempt by China to enforce its claim on Taiwan by attacking the island. But it is a long step from there to Chinese-American nuclear war.
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Mr. Rumsfeld's news seems to be that Washington is getting ready. A calmer judgment would be that he actually is giving voice to a chronically belligerent fraction of the rightist policy community in Washington, which thinks that battle for world domination between Chinese and American superpowers is next on history's agenda. This is a minority Washington opinion. As China still is a poor country, crippled by overpopulation, lacking intercontinental missiles or strategic air forces, possessing less operational nuclear capability than Britain, France or Israel, Mr. Rumsfeld's concerns are premature.
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Such statements subvert reasonable U.S.-$ Chinese relations and undermine efforts to find a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan question. They also reiterate the critical question of what the Bush administration really thinks.
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The policy advertised as realism may really be composed of ideology and demagogy. In that case, it is dangerous, first of all to the United States, because it is deeply unrealistic.
Copyright © 2001 the International Herald Tribune
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