Going It Alone? It Depends
It is often said that President Bush, learning from the failed unilateralism of his first-term foreign policy, has adopted a more multilateral approach in the second. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has cooperated with allies in ways that administration hard-liners blocked her predecessor, Colin Powell, from pursuing. On the biggest global challenges, she has forged coalitions and sought to work through international organizations.
So what results has this "multilateralism" delivered so far? If by results you mean actual, positive accomplishments -- as opposed to meetings held, demarches delivered and the like -- you'd have to say: in Iran, none; in North Korea, none; in Burma, none; in Darfur, none.
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As its multilateralist critics urged, the second-term administration gave full backing to the "E.U. Three" -- Britain, France and Germany -- in their negotiations with Iran. Results? Iran is not only roaring ahead with its nuclear program but also openly promising to proliferate the nuclear technology it develops to other dangerous regimes.
On North Korea, the administration joined with new vigor in the "six-party talks" -- the six being China, Japan, Russia, the two Koreas and the United States. North Korea's nuclear weapons program is also, as far as anyone knows, roaring ahead.
In Burma, the administration has urged the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the United Nations and others to press for reform. Results? In just the past two months an accelerated ethnic cleansing campaign has displaced 11,000 more civilians. And in Darfur, the United States has actively supported diplomacy and African Union peacekeepers. The genocide continues.
Of course, these are midterm reports, not final grades; in some of these cases, the multilateral approach may yet bear fruit. Further, the disappointing results in part reflect the administration's earlier haughtiness and disdain for allies; damage from such policies isn't quickly forgotten or repaired.
Yet, given the frequency with which phrases such as "rebuilding alliances" are likely to pop up in coming political campaigns, it might be useful to examine the frustrations of recent allied efforts.
The predicate for the multilateral approach often is that other nations, with a bit of persuasion and a touch of prodding, will see how their interests converge with ours. Surely, U.S. officials say again and again, Russia cannot want the mad mullahs to its south to have the bomb! Surely China would be nervous to have nukes in the hands of the incorrigible Kim Jong Il. Surely France must be uneasy to have thousands of Darfur's civilians raped and killed so near its military bases in Chad.
Yet France turns out to be not all that perturbed -- not enough to act, in any case. China seems more comfortable with a Stalinist nuclear-armed neighbor than with the risks of whatever the alternative might be. Both China and Russia may care more about their access to Iranian oil and commerce than about stopping a weapons program they figure will not, in any case, be aimed at them. (We may see, this week, when the Security Council meets.)
Moreover, European governments are weak and focused inward; authoritarian regimes in Russia and China do not share U.S. priorities. And even when interests converge, nations will be reluctant to sacrifice short-term advantage for nebulous or uncertain long-term gain. Economic sanctions would cause immediate pain to some number of people and companies in every country now trading with Iran; the pain of a nuclear-armed Iran is more theoretical and more diffused.
So without U.S. leadership in a place such as Darfur, the likeliest outcome is that nothing happens. That may explain why many of those who criticized the administration for insufficient support of European diplomacy with Iran now criticize the administration for not talking directly with the Iranian regime. Unilaterally, as it were.
So multilateralism is hardly a panacea. Yet in some cases (Afghanistan, for example), it works; in many cases, there is no alternative. In Darfur, just to take one of the most distressing, multilateralism is failing; but unilateral U.S. intervention could be disastrous.
And in the not unlikely event that multilateralism fails to prevent North Korea or Iran from becoming nuclear states in the medium term, it will be all the more essential in the long term to contain the danger they will pose.
