USA TODAY | By Bill Nichols | 07/26/2001
WASHINGTON - White House critics increasingly wonder: Will President Bush find an international treaty he likes?
In just the past week, his administration:
Abandoned a United Nations draft accord that sets out ways to enforce the 1995 Biological Weapons Convention. Became the lone holdout as 178 other nations agreed to implement the 1997 Kyoto treaty to combat global warming. Forced changes in a U.N. pact to stem the illegal flow of small arms, from handguns to shoulder-launched rockets. U.S. officials signed on only after blocking two key provisions that would have restricted arms owned by civilians and sold to rebels. "The administration has, from day one, engaged in a wholesale assault on international treaties," says Ivo Daalder, a National Security Council official under President Clinton.
The moves also have sparked sharp rebukes from other nations. The Bush administration is "practically standing alone in opposition to agreements that were broadly reached by just about everyone else," says Fred Eckhard, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
The administration's rejection of the biological weapons draft accord "confirms a pattern of reckless, unilateralist behavior on arms control, as on environmental and other issues," an editorial said Thursday in the London newspaper The Guardian.
Bush's new foreign policy vision "has largely amounted to trashing existing agreements without any clear idea of what to put in their place," the newspaper said.
Administration officials deny they are pursuing a go-it-alone foreign policy. They say there is no philosophical opposition to treaties. Instead, Bush and senior advisers say international conventions are worth joining only if the benefits to the United States are clear. If not, the Bush team appears to have few fears of saying "no."
"I think over time, people will see that we are not unilateralists, we are deeply engaged," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday in Vietnam. "From time to time, one (treaty) comes along, or more come along, where we do not believe it serves our interest."
John Bolton, a blunt-speaking undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, put it this way before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week: "We are short on Pollyannas in the Bush administration. We're a pretty hardheaded, realistic group of people."
Administration officials note that a number of treaties they have problems with were viewed with suspicion by the Clinton administration, too.
For example, President Clinton signed the Kyoto treaty, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by industrial countries. But he made no effort to win ratification by the Senate.
Another treaty Bush is reviewing, and is expected to reject, the 1997 Land Mine Ban Treaty, also troubled his predecessor. Clinton said the United States would join the treaty by 2006, but only if "suitable alternatives" to anti-personnel land mines are developed.
Still, Bush critics see a pattern of disregard for international organizations. "The Bush administration is consistently rejecting and undermining multilateral treaties that increase international security," says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers. "The problem with this is that they have not put forward alternatives."
On the Kyoto accord, Bush has promised new ideas to combat global warming but has yet to offer specifics.
Nor has the administration provided new ideas on how to implement the Biological Warfare Convention to its satisfaction.
Bush officials reject outright the 1997 treaty creating the International Criminal Court, the first permanent international tribunal to prosecute war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.
Clinton signed on to the court treaty three weeks before leaving office. But the Bush team says it will not seek Senate ratification, and even has asked the United Nations how to remove the United States' signature from the treaty document. Bush's concern: The court could put U.S. troops in the field at risk.
On arms control, the administration is putting its entire focus on new talks with Russia aimed at reducing nuclear arms in both countries while allowing testing and deployment of a U.S. missile defense system.
In shifting nuclear arms control policy, Bush is moving away from some long-standing treaties:
The administration intends to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union on the grounds that it prevents effective testing of a missile-defense system. Bush aides say they have no plans to seek Senate ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits all nuclear test explosions. The Senate rejected the treaty in 1999, but Bush has promised to abide by a voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing. Bush has no plans to ask the Senate to ratify changes to the 1993 START II nuclear disarmament treaty, a condition Russia has set for ratifying the treaty and putting it into force. The chief U.S. author of that accord: Bush's father. START II would require Washington and Moscow to reduce their arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons from 6,000 to a range of 3,000 to 3,500 by 2007.
The Bush team says it hopes to accomplish even greater reductions through new discussions with Moscow.
Richard Haass, the State Department's director of policy planning, describes the administration's policy as "a la carte multilateralism. ... We'll look at each agreement and make a decision, rather than come out with a broad-based approach."
Daalder, the former Clinton administration official, argues that a broad approach is emerging: "Are treaties seen by this administration as a means to organize international affairs in a positive manner? In general, the record shows the answer is no."USA TODAY:
