The Bush administration’s decision to talk to Iran as part of an international initiative is seen by much of the mainstream media as a ground-breaking measure. Editorial pages keep telling us that the administration has at last started to see the world in less black-and-white terms. Thanks to the growing “realist” influence of Secretary of State Rice, the pundits opine, the White House is adapting a less ideological foreign policy. It now believes in diplomacy negotiations rather than military confrontation. Gradually abandoning its unilateral approach, America under Bush’s leadership is rejoining the community of nations, acknowledging after the failures in Iraq that it is only one voice among many on our globe. The Bush administration is finally thinking in truly internationalist terms.

Not so fast, please. On the surface, the administration’s demarche toward Iran may appear to be a sea-change in Bush’s view of the U.S.’s place in the world. But it’s wrong to draw the conclusion that in his second term the president has morphed into an internationalist. There are several reasons for this.

First, we have the evidence of the past six years, which simply cannot be dismissed to make the case that Bush has been converted to internationalism. What treaty of any real historical importance has the Bush administration signed during his presidency thus far? What constructive steps has he taken to make the United States an effective player in the United Nations? (Indeed, the choice of John Bolton as ambassador to the UN was a clear message to the world that the U.S. continues to have a low regard for an international organization it helped to create.) How interested has Bush been in “internationalizing” the Israeli/Palestinian problem (or indeed most of the issues in the Middle East) to find a peaceful solution to the conflicts in that region? How effective has the U.S. been in finding an international solution to the North Korean nuclear challenge? What success has America had in working with regional organizations such as ASEAN? Has Bush really cared about foreign public opinion and public diplomacy?

The answer to these questions is largely in the negative. True, in Afghanistan the United States is working with NATO. But our growing self-inflicted international isolation in Iraq makes our cooperation with allies in another part of the world look like child’s play. Recent developments in Kabul, moreover, show how ineffective our collaborative military venture in Afghanistan is turning out to be.

Bush’s putative new internationalism, so contrary to the unilateral instincts of his administration, must be taken with a large grain of salt for a second reason: domestic politics. Far from centering his attention on a real, workable multilateral solution to the Iran problem, Bush is focusing on U.S. public opinion polls, doubtless with more concentration than he listens to staff summaries of international news. And what do the polls tell him? According to one taken in early May by CBS News/New York Times, only 11% of Americans favor “military action” against Iran while 58% prefer “diplomacy.” With other surveys showing how skeptical Americans have become about Iraq and why we sent our troops there, Bush realizes that striking Iran at this time could be a political liability.

So, just as the administration’s demonizing of Iraq with the aim of attacking it was based in large part on domestic considerations -- to make Bush appear like a fearless commander in chief in time for the Congressional elections of November 2002 -- so Bush’s new “we’re ready for a dialogue” with Iran is one of the elements in the Republican strategy -- at this time of national disillusionment with Bush’s military misadventure in Iraq -- to avoid a disaster at the polls in November 2006. In 2002, a unilateral war was good for politics at home; now, an internationally supported diplomatic process is. A new internationalism has nothing to do with this decision, however. What counts, from a Republican perspective, are the upcoming mid-term Congressional elections. They are far more important and potentially dangerous, in the view of the Grand Old Party and their leader in the White House, than Iranian nuclear weapons that will take years to produce and make deliverable. Forget about the Mullahs, go after John Murtha.

It is not out of the question that Rice’s Persian diplomatic maneuverings are a replay of Powell’s pathetic UN presentation prior to the Iraq invasion. In other words, the administration’s current feelers toward Iran are just a fig leaf that will “justify” future U.S. military action against Tehran. But such an option is unlikely to be implemented. The U.S. is already engaged in two wars it’s not winning, no matter how often our “mission accomplished” commander in chief says we will achieve victory if we stay the course. And, even if Bush wanted to bomb Iran, his military would be most reluctant to take on a third conflict far from home. The Pentagon simply doesn’t have the manpower -- and, increasingly, the will -- to fight another ill-conceived campaign in the “global war on terror” that has no exit strategy or clearly defined metrics of success. It’s a safe bet that the generals (not all of them retired) are becoming as weary of the president as they are of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

This leads us to a final reason why Bush hasn’t suddenly become Mr. Internationalist: his administration is coming to a close. Rather than seeking complicated solutions to world problems that require international cooperation, the intellectually lazy Bush -- essentially a cheerleader for policies others think up for him -- will opt for letting overseas problems ride. From its parochial viewpoint, and with less than two years to go, the White House may ok a non-war with Iran to keep the polls from reaching bottom, but it sees little political capital in grand international schemes to solve global problems, Iraq among them (a genuine effort to rescue Bush’s Iraq miscalculation would be an admission that it has failed, and Bush is not ready to concede that). Much better to focus on issues close to home like a constitutional ban on gay marriage, a subject to which Bush devoted his recent Saturday radio address. The best evidence of this what-me-worry-about-the-world attitude are the words of our chief executive himself, in reply to a question at a March press conference:

Q. Will there come a day -- and I'm not asking you when, not asking for a timetable -- will there come a day when there will be no more American forces in Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: That, of course, is an objective, and that will be decided by future Presidents and future governments of Iraq.

International problems? Let others deal with them in the future. That is at the heart of Mr. Bush’s new internationalism: not on my watch.

John Brown, a former Foreign Service officer, compiles the “Public Diplomacy Press Review” at http://www.uscpublicdiplomacy.org/pdpr/. His e-mail is johnhbrown30@hotmail.com