#5
Baltimore Sun
December 13, 2001
Unilateral approach revisited
Bush reverts to style used before Sept. 11
By Mark Matthews
Sun National Staff

WASHINGTON - As it scrambled to mount a global anti-terror coalition in the tense aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration seemed to be a sudden convert to the religion of international cooperation. But not anymore.

Flush with military success in Afghanistan, the White House has taken a series of steps that mark a return to what critics in the United States and Europe call its "unilateralist," go-it-alone approach to world affairs.

The most significant step is President Bush's decision, which might be officially announced today, to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow. The treaty bars the development of a system to defend the United States against missile attack, a system that is one of Bush's most important foreign policy goals.

As recently as last month, even as Bush continued to call the ABM pact a "relic of the Cold War," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell hinted that he was trying to reach an accommodation with Moscow that would allow robust testing but avoid pulling out of the treaty.

Russia has proved to be a valuable ally in crushing the Taliban and al-Qaida terrorist network in Afghanistan, allowing use of its airspace and bases in nations that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. This marked a reversal not only of its decades-long hostility to the West under the communist Soviet regime but also of Russia's post-Soviet drive to maintain a shrinking sphere of influence.

Despite an increasingly close relationship with Bush, however, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin has consistently refused to acquiesce in abandoning the ABM treaty, which he has called a key foundation block of international security.

In meetings last week with arms-control specialists in Washington, high-ranking Russian military officers said a U.S. withdrawal from the treaty would not seriously damage the new relationship.

But the Russians "also warned that their likely response would be to withdraw from other arms-control agreements," including pacts that limit the number of long-range nuclear weapons, eliminate medium-range nuclear missiles and conventional forces in Europe, according to Wade Boese of the Arms Control Association.

Bioweapons discussion

Bush's decision was the second setback in a week for international arms-control advocates. On Friday, administration officials maneuvered to break off discussion at an international conference aimed at enforcing a worldwide ban on biological weapons, causing the convention to collapse.

U.S. officials argued that had it not acted, the convention might have approved enforcement measures that were ineffective. In July, the United States, acting alone, opposed enforcement measures that were the result of years of negotiation, but it was trying at last week's conference to get a number of its own proposals adopted by other countries.

Both the ABM Treaty and the so-called enforcement protocol for bio-weapons are widely supported by America's European allies, who this year were openly critical of what they view as the Bush administration's disdain for international agreements and institutions such as the United Nations.

Europeans were cheered by Bush's early reaction to the Sept. 11 terror attacks, when he instructed Powell to assemble a broad coalition to fight al-Qaida and welcomed European offers of support for the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan.

But leaders of several European countries, including Britain, France and Germany, were later chagrined to find the United States conducting the war virtually on its own while their forces sat on the sidelines.

No peacekeeping role

Meanwhile, the United States has refused to participate in a subsequent and less visible peacekeeping role, calling on the allies to share the burden. At the same time, it wants the allies to share the cost of rebuilding Pakistan.

The Pentagon says it has been difficult for its commanders to find appropriate roles for the allies, whose armed forces have fallen behind the United States technologically. During the war over Kosovo in 1999, U.S. commanders grew impatient with a cumbersome allied decision-making process.

"What we have seen in the last two months is an implementation of the Rice doctrine," said Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution, referring to proposals during the 2000 campaign by Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser. Rice spoke at the time of a division of labor in which the United States fought the wars and Europeans followed up with peacekeeping.

In the Middle East, the United States has also veered away from a "multilateralist" approach adopted in the aftermath of Sept. 11 as it tried to assuage Arab critics of its anti-terror campaign. Angered by Yasser Arafat's reluctance to crack down on Palestinian terrorists who in the past two weeks have killed more than 40 Israelis, the administration dropped the "even-handed" tone favored by its Arab allies and made counter-terrorism the centerpiece of its Mideast policy.

Most or all of these moves are widely viewed as internal administration victories by hard-liners, most often identified with the Pentagon leadership, who are deeply wary of international agreements that constrain American freedom of action in the world and impatient with the sticky process of gaining a consensus among allies.

They are also perceived as defeats for Powell and State Department officials, who have tried to restrain the administration's "unilateralist" tendencies and work more cooperatively with other countries.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, an opponent of the ABM treaty, has gained new influence in the administration because of the U.S. military success in Afghanistan, says Catherine Kelleher, an international policy specialist at the Naval War College.

China factor

The ABM treaty decision will have reverberations beyond the U.S.-Russia relationship and dismay in Europe. With China, which in the foreseeable future is less likely than Russia to be able to penetrate an American missile-defense system, it could prove to be a double-edged sword.

China is likely to use Bush's ABM decision as an excuse for a military buildup it was planning anyway, according to James R. Lilley, a former U.S. ambassador to Beijing. But development of a missile-defense system gives the United States a bargaining chip to use in getting China to curb its development of missiles, he said.

Administration critics and some Europeans see the American go-it-alone trend as possibly counterproductive in the war on terrorism and other struggles that require international support for the United States.

"We don't want to fight wars ourselves. It's not politically doable over the long term," says Daalder.

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