President G. W. Bush’s decision to forcibly remove Saddam Hussein without UN approval has been characterized by many – especially in Europe – as an “assault on international institutions” wherein America is apparently far more dangerous than the Ba’athist dictatorship ever was. Thus we are witnessing a “robust rebirth of American unilateralism” that is a significant reversal of the “internationalist commitment” that every president embraced since the end of WWII (Chace ¶1).

The source of such charges merit exploration. Specifically, what is the Bush administration’s rationale for making the foreign policy choices that have engendered these charges of unilateralism? Are there any motivations behind Bush’s detractors that should be considered? Who are the main parties involved? What issues have led to a rift amongst such close allies?

Bard College’s government professor James Chace explains that the Bush administration began early on to eschew the wisdom of policies favored by international institutions, thus severing the bonds between the United States and “a larger international community.” Bush summarily “rejected” the Kyoto [air pollution] Protocol, “withdrew” from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, “scuttled” the Land Mine Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and “refused” to subordinate American justice to the International Criminal Court (Chace ¶4).

Notably, Dr. Chace did not discuss the administration’s rationale for its positions on these issues.

Unwisely, writes Dr. Chace, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld characterized France and Germany as exemplars of “old Europe” thinking for opposing non-UN sanctioned force against Saddam. Concomitantly he referred to pending EU members such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic as “new Europe” when they signaled possible support. Thus, according to Dr. Chace, Rumsfeld “may well have succeeded in exacerbating tensions” and precipitating a policy divide on the Continent (Chace ¶5).

In terms of these tensions, Dr. Chace excoriates the Bush administration’s “bullying language leveled at America’s allies” concerning Iraq (Chace ¶1). Note: no quoted examples of such statements were cited. However, during an EU summit on February 17, 2003, French President Jacques Chirac did have an unambiguous reaction to the aforementioned eastern European support [viz. Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Croatia and Albania]. When these countries signed statements “demanding that Saddam Hussein comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1441” [concerning compliance with WMD inspections] Chirac said that they were being “childish and dangerous… [for] aligning themselves too quickly with the Americans” and “missed a good opportunity to keep silent.” Forestalling any misinterpretation of his position, Chirac added, “if they wanted to diminish their chances of joining the EU, they couldn't have chosen a better way” (Evans-Pritchard ¶1-6).

Clearly there is a difference in American and European attitude with respect to national sovereignty with respect to international institutions. There must be a source of this trans-Atlantic bifurcation rooted in history. The American outlook will be explored first.

Cornell history professor Walter LaFeber argues that there is a long-standing American mindset that he calls “exceptionalism” wherein the U.S. should be understood “within its own context” because it is completely unique in its creation and development. In concert is the “contradictory” notion that American values are universal and as such should be considered for the good of all mankind – i.e. “universalism” (LaFeber 26). Another possibility is that America was founded upon universal principles.

Dr. LaFeber lists [without defining] such concepts as “democracy, religious pluralism…modernization, migration, environmental change, capitalism, technology and freedom” as being what he denotes as archetypically American “exceptionalist beliefs.” Some of these concepts clearly originated before 1776 and did so outside of the Western hemisphere. Lumped along with these are “racial hierarchy…slavery…empire and colonialism” (LaFeber 26). It is certainly arguable that the latter group of  cultural phenomena were in fact anachronistic carry-overs from the Old World that were clearly incompatible with the others – some to the extent that they made a Civil War inevitable.  

What is referred to by some as American ‘isolationism’ should be “more accurately termed unilateralism” because in practice, economic interdependencies existed there since before the founding of the Republic. The professor characterizes unilateralism then, as a practical mechanism to “bridge the huge gap” between “exceptionalism” and “universalism.” This is done by using force to make its exceptional “values comfortably universal” [presumably by imposing them on other sovereign nations]. Such force-driven universalism was confined largely to the Western hemisphere until the late nineteenth century when American commercial interests began to ‘covet’ “colonies and protectorates” held by the European powers such as the Spanish-held Philippines (LaFeber 26-28).

Disillusioned by the standard Old World power plays during and after the Great War, President Wilson began, writes Dr. LaFeber, to conspicuously formalize unilateralism as American policy. Wilson saw that the European Allies would not embrace his universal values of freedom and self-determination – his justification for entering the war. Instead they characteristically sought to exploit the vanquished powers’ weakness to fashion geopolitical circumstances according to “their statist economic [and political] systems.” Consequently, Wilson believed that America should be prepared to “act on its own” if its exceptionalist principles were to “become universal.” Otherwise U.S. foreign policy would be “compromised by a world that was considered old in more ways than one” (LaFeber 32).  

The American people also became disillusioned in their own way with the Great War’s aftermath, but did not embrace the Wilsonian dream of making the world ‘safe for democracy.’ America instead sought to wash its hands of the outside world altogether. Consequently, the U.S. retreated inward – playing little if any part in using the “reality of its [growing] power” to real effect internationally. Hope against hope, America pursued a return to a mythical era of insulation from outside entanglements. In so doing, the “United States contributed indirectly to the inevitability of World War II twenty years later” (Palliser 28).

Most historians agree that the Versailles treaty imposed impossibly punitive economic consequences upon the vanquished powers that created any easy constituency for anyone who had sufficient audacity, ruthlessness and charisma. The Wilsonians surely could have anticipated something like this and proposed remedies, but between the wars voices like his were marginalized on the other side of the Atlantic. During the 1930s, the increasingly militaristic nations that eventually became the Axis Powers violated the treaties that were putatively designed to check future aggression.

As was the case before, the American people were more than just a bit reluctant to become involved as Japan brutally expanded its ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.’ Once Hitler took power, Germany undertook a prohibited military buildup and later began its pursuit of lebensraum at the expense of its neighbors. In either case, the former Allies did little more than complain. It took more than two years of war and Pearl Harbor to move the United States to act. As also was the case before, but even more dramatically, America’s entry was essential to the final outcome in a World War (Palliser 28).

Thus in the span of three decades – “a fraction of a second in the history of the world” – the global balance of power’s center of gravity shifted away from Western Europe to a new bipolar balance between the United States and the Soviet Union. Wilson’s dream of national self-determination was [partially] realized: nineteenth century colonialism ended and with it the vast material support system for European wealth. This in turn mitigated against any return to European military ascendancy. From then on, the United States had to provide economic support and military protection. Of this dependency, the Europeans were “acutely conscious” indeed (Palliser 28).

Speaking at one of the Harvard University-sponsored Paul-Henri Spaak series of lectures in 1985, [London’s Midland Bank vice-president] Michael Palliser recounted a post-war geostrategic dichotomy that arose between power and influence. While economic and/or military power is available as “unique prerogative of the strong,” influence remains available to weaker entities -- if cannily applied. Palliser offered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as an example of how the application of power in the absence of influence can be a tacit “confession of failure” in pursuing political objectives (Palliser 29-30).

Consciously or not, Europe has found influence to be a more realistic and desirable means to pursue its political ends. None of the post WWII European nations could reasonably expect to ever again stand alone competitively in the international arena. Thus, as far back as during the Cold War, many amongst Europe’s intelligentsia explored a means toward unified socio-politico-economic strength via international institutions.

While the Soviet Union was in the throes of dissolution in the late 1980s, [then International European Movement vice-president] Ernest Wistrich explicated the issues that impelled the Continental position vis-à-vis interdependence and national sovereignty. Illegal arms trade fed terrorism, but was also “highly profitable to suppliers” -- some of them being in the West. Illegal drugs flowed freely from the southern to the northern hemisphere. AIDS [and other communicable diseases] continued to spread virtually unchecked throughout the world (Wistrich 126).

Wistrich explained that these and other “serious problems…are multiplying and need effective action at [the] global level.” Exacerbating this is the fact that international institutions are “often too weak and divided” to effectively manage such ongoing crises. The apparent root of the problem is that the 150 “independent and sovereign states” comprising the UN lack a willingness to “subordinate individual interests to the common good.” Wistrich concludes that a sufficiently empowered supranational authority that can effectively create and enforce international law is essential to secure peace and prosperity (Wistrich 126).

Europe has led the way in this regard, according to Wistrich. The European Community’s edicts “not only take precedence over national laws but,” are integrated into each member country’s legal system. Further, each respective judiciary is obligated to enforce EC legislation as well. Ceding “elements of…national sovereignty” to the [EC] has facilitated “common legislation” enactment and has “ensure[d] its observance.” Wistrich concedes that the rest of the world’s nations may need more time before they [sensibly] “emulate Europe’s example,” but the EC is motivated “to help advance” the cause of supranational authority in the interest of all humanity (Wistrich 126).  

Why is Europe so interested in “proselytizing its own methods and structure” in terms of international relations and national sovereignty? Certainly for those within the Continent, “interdependence generated by integration” makes conflict – especially war – simply “unthinkable… [and] no longer practicable.” These European needs for peace and international cooperation extend beyond the region, however. Europe is “the world’s largest trader… [and] biggest importer of food and raw materials.” Europe’s economic well-being therefore is highly dependent upon worldwide natural resource conservation, stable trade routes and growing accessible markets for its goods (Wistrich 126-127).

Europeans also invest international institutions with the potential to properly address their security concerns.

The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union heralded a welcome end to Cold War tensions, but a new instability also ensued. Continental Europe in general – and France in particular -- had long nourished a “vision of an EC-centered Europe rather than uneasy reliance on Anglo-Saxon power” for security. Further, explains Princeton Public and International Affairs Assistant Dean Robert L. Hutchings, the French saw an opportunity to extend influence within the Continent while [its traditional rival] Germany was weak [during east-west reunification] (Hutchings 273).

Thus France pursued building “free-standing security institutions” that would be conspicuously independent of the [perceived] Anglo-American dominated NATO. True enough, there was a demonstration of Euro-American cooperation during the 1991 Gulf War. To some on the Continent, the fact that U.S. troops and materiel formed the bulk of the deployed forces only “made vivid European dependence on American power” (Hutchings 274).

This in turn provided further impetus to seek differences in foreign policy objectives. It did not, however, inspire the Continent to undertake any significant military buildup of its own -- instead a force reduction proceeded “at a rapid clip.” Thus witnessed the European powers’ increasing desire to employ independent security policies while they shrank the numbers of pieces in their own military toolboxes [in terms of troop strength and hardware] (Hutchings 273).

There are some divergences in perspective between the elites and the general populations in Europe and the United States, but recently gathered polling data has revealed significant differences across the Atlantic concerning foreign policy and threat response that transcend class. There is, according to German Marshall Fund President Craig Kennedy and Chicago Council on Foreign Relations President Marshall M. Bouton,  a “shared understanding” of the dangers that threaten the West, but Americans and Europeans “disagree on their severity.” There is also disagreement on how “global leadership” should be shared. Feeling like “junior partners,” Most Europeans would like to consolidate their power with the aim of counterbalancing America (Kennedy/Bouton ¶16-20).

However, even though in aggregate Europe has a larger population and economy than does the U.S., polled Europeans are not willing to proportionally match military spending with the United States. Instead Europe would prefer to spend its portion on “reconstruction, peacekeeping” and humanitarian relief. Further, Europeans indicated that they would rather America continue to “do the heavy lifting on military matters,” in a geostrategic division of labor that is directed by international institutions [more strongly subject to European influence]. If America refuses to cooperate with such a scenario however, Europe is left with only the carrot to dangle while deprived of the ability to determine when, where and how the stick will be used (Kennedy/Bouton ¶23-25).

Soon after the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, U.S. forces began to attack al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan and forcibly remove its Taliban host. Pakistan, having formerly supported the Taliban paid heed to Bush’s admonition in a speech nine days later: “every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” (Bush 9/20/2001 ¶30). General Pervaiz Musharraf took a considered -- and risky -- decision, allowing U.S. military aircraft to use Pakistani airspace and has been active in the war against terrorism ever since.

Saddam became increasingly belligerent beforehand, however. In January of 2001, Iraq “launched more attacks against allied planes patrolling the ‘no-fly zones’ in the month of January of 2001 than it did in the whole of the year 2000.” Thus began a series of widely criticized coalition air strikes targeting Iraqi anti-aircraft facilities (McIntyre/Arraf ¶15, 16). In December of that year, it became known that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had “previously met Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague” (Harnden ¶10). Thus Iraq became of increasing interest to the Bush administration.

An irrepressible conflict developed between Bush administration supporters and UN advocates over whether Saddam could be contained. Georgetown University government and foreign service professor Robert J. Lieber asserts that “the future of that venerable cold-war doctrine… has been on the line in the debate over Iraq” (Lieber ¶3, 4).

There had been no weapons inspections since the inspectors were expelled in 1998, but the UN and Saddam showed renewed interest in resuming the inspections regime when senior American officials – including the president himself -- began to show signs of “preparing to use force against Iraq” after 9/11. The debate over containment intensified as well (Lieber ¶20).

Those in favor of continued containment argued that Saddam was “neither mindlessly aggressive nor particularly reckless” – he had “started ‘only’ two wars” in the last three decades. Counting the casualties on both sides in those wars, the purges, the killing of Shi’a and Kurds, conservative estimates put the number of deaths attributable to Saddam between 500,000 and one million people (Lieber ¶8, 30).

Thus even if Saddam had WMD, he could be deterred from using them with judicious diplomacy. However, argues Dr. Lieber, the large and “long-term massive military presence” that would be necessary to facilitate unfettered inspections was not “conceivable” under a UN rubric without a substantial American military commitment. Further, a Saddam in possession of nuclear weapons would not so much be containable from the outside as it would serve to deter powers like the “United States from interfering with his ambitions.” Information gathered by “British, German, Israeli… French” and American intelligence services as well as defectors indicated Saddam’s “implacable intentions” to acquire nuclear weapons. It would have taken “several years” to develop them on his own, but this objective could have been achieved within a “matter of months” if the necessary “grapefruit-sized” amount of fissile material was stolen or bought from the likes of North Korea or the “former Soviet Union.” Another indication of Saddam’s determination to acquire WMD was the fact that he was willing to forgo “as much as $180 billion in oil revenue rather than comply with his disarmament obligations” (Lieber ¶11, 23-28).

Dr. Lieber explains that while the inspections were allowed, they were at first successful – “large stocks of chemical warheads… were revealed… and duly destroyed.” However, “deception and noncompliance” soon became a pattern, with such tactics as inspectors denied access to certain requested facilities or delayed until boxes and personnel could be trucked away (Lieber ¶15).

Meanwhile, Saddam had “launched a massive propaganda campaign” that blamed the food shortages, poverty and inadequate medical care on the sanctions regime. It has been largely successful. Many in the region and a significant number in the West made no mention of Saddam’s palaces and the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by the Ba’athist cronies and instead tarred America with the blame for the suffering. Thus, “Iraq’s apologists on the Security Council, especially France and Russia” increasingly agitated to have the sanctions lifted (Lieber ¶15-17).

Certainly Saddam had nothing to fear, according to Dr. Lieber, from a weapons inspection regime resumption led by the likes of Hans Blix. He had headed the International Atomic Energy Agency during the late 1980s into the 90s. Blix repeatedly and persistently “certified that Iraq was in full compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty” until a “huge nuclear site” was discovered by UNSCOM in 1991. Nonetheless, Blix did issue a report to the UN in January 2003 that “6,500 chemical bombs, stocks of VX nerve gas agents and anthrax, 3,000 tons of precursor chemicals, 360 tons of bulk agents for chemical weapons and thousands of munitions for delivering such agents” were ‘unaccounted for’ (Lieber ¶18-20).  

Dr. Lieber disputes any comparable rationality of Saddam to the Cold War Soviet Union. Saddam has repeatedly shown that he is a “heedless gambler” who has “launched wars of aggression,” indiscriminately used chemical weapons in the battlefield – in “every major battle” against Iran -- and against his own people. The fact that he did not use them against coalition forces after being warned in 1991 is sometimes cited as an example of self-restraint. Two other warnings – not to support “terrorist acts” and/or torch the Kuwaiti oil fields were ignored, however (Lieber ¶28-31).

People close to Saddam have reported that he has a tendency to put a “high priority to positive reports” and that the bearers of bad news “could pay a high price.” In one instance, Saddam personally shot his health minister for “questioning one of his actions…in full view of his bodyguards and others.” He repeatedly “proclaimed his ambition to dominate the region, threatened to ‘burn half of Israel,’” and often spoke of spoiling for a fight with the United States. If his attempt on the president’s father in 1993 had been successful, there would have been “devastating consequences” wrought upon “Saddam’s own head.” This and more, writes Dr. Lieber, is “further evidence…of the reckless and violent inclinations of the Iraqi despot” (Lieber ¶32-40, 43).

Although Osama Bin Laden has described Saddam’s Ba’athist leadership as ‘infidels,’ he and other terrorist leaders also recognized that they had a common enemy in the United States. Thus, the likes of Abu Nidal found haven in Iraq – until he apparently “committed suicide” there in 2002. A “terrorist training base” including a Boeing 707 for “realistic…hijacking” practice was in operation until recently near Baghdad. Saddam’s continued rule in Iraq also meant continued “military, political and financial support of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups (Lieber ¶41-42). A notable example of this was Saddam’s standing $25,000 payout offer for Palestinian suicide bombers’ families (CBS News ¶1).  

When President Bush released his first ‘National Strategy of the United States’ in the fall of 2002, a “document that usually passes unnoticed…incited a rash of greatly alarmed reactions at home and abroad.” A contemporary New York Times editorial described it as favoring “imperialism.” Senator Edward Kennedy interpreted it as a “denunciation of the modern state order.” International Herald Tribune compared its supposed radical destructive potential to the Communist Manifesto (Muravchik ¶1, 2).

Just what so revolutionary about Bush’s post-9/11 foreign policy strategy? Three main goals were presented:
1.    Peace should be defended “by fighting terrorists and tyrants.”
2.    Peace should be preserved “by building good relations among the great powers.”
3.    Peace should be extended “by encouraging free and open societies on every continent” (Muravchik ¶7).

The first goal should be met by taking the fight to the enemy. That also means that no distinction would be made to terrorist organizations and the governments that support them and/or host them. Saddam’s repeated UN Security Council resolution violations, his past aggression, threatening rhetoric and the prospect of a resumption of WMD use concerned the Bush administration enough to seriously consider his forcible removal before his capabilities matched his repeatedly stated belligerent intentions. Thus preemptive military action was reserved as an option -- that is what has generated so much controversy ever since (Muravchik ¶8, 15, 16).

In January 1999, one Richard Clarke explained to the Washington Post that President Clinton’s August 1998 cruise missile strike on the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in The Sudan was justified in part because of VX-tainted soil samples [later recovered] and other credible intelligence that placed “Iraqi nerve gas experts” on the scene (Loeb A02). That same year, Saddam summarily expelled weapons inspectors from Iraq.

The main objections to the policies and rationale for preemption provided in what Institute of World Politics professor Joshua Muravchik called the ‘Bush Manifesto’ were threefold:

1. The reasons for attacking were too “open-ended.” Any country or entity that the administration arbitrarily deemed threatening would be fair game.
2. Other countries may use U.S. preemption – regardless of how seemingly justified – as an excuse “as a cover for settling their own national security scores.”
3. Absent UN approval, such action would serve to create a state of international anarchy and would thus “destroy the goal of a world in which states consider themselves subject to law” (Muravchik ¶17-19).

• They “brutalize their own people and squander their national resources for the personal gain of the rulers.”
• They show “no regard for international law [and repeatedly] threaten their neighbors.”
• They exhibit more than a fleeting resolve to acquire nuclear, chemical and/or biological weapons.
• They demonstrably “sponsor terrorism around the globe.”
• They “reject basic human values” (Muravchik ¶21).

Such characteristics “readily apply,” according to Dr. Muravchik, to George W. Bush’s notorious Axis of Evil regimes, “but to few, if any, others.” There is also the concern that other nations would distortedly emulate any American preemption as an excuse to initiate their own aggression. In reality, the states that would likely pursue such a course of action already “routinely cloak their actions in spurious claims of self-defense or of other rights enshrined in [international] law” (Muravchik ¶22, 23).

Regarding the claim that the Bush administration considers international law to be “of no value” and thus pursues unilateral action flippantly – Dr. Muravchik argues that this is simply not the case. Indeed, if the world was composed of law-abiding nations, “America’s major international objectives – peace, human rights, fair commerce – would be assured.” Given the fact that there are dictatorships that routinely flout such standards, the survival of the United States in particular and freedom in general has and does depend upon the use of judiciously applied power (Muravchik ¶24).

Furthermore, the UN conspicuously lacks any military capacity that could enforce such vital issues as national sovereignty in the face of aggression and has only done so twice -- during the Korean and Gulf Wars. In both cases, American forces formed the bulk of the military contingent. There is also no inherent goodness concerning multilateralism or evil in regard to unilateralism, either, explains Dr. Muravchik. The British found itself “for a time” unilaterally fighting for survival against the multilateral Axis powers during WWII. The Czechs “stood alone” against the multilateral Warsaw Pact in 1968. Multilateral Arab forces have repeatedly tried to destroy Israel (Muravchik ¶44).

Dr. Muravchik contends that the UN has in fact been “an almost wholly feckless body” from the beginning “except on those rare occasions on which it has in effect subordinated itself to U.S. policy.” Conversely, countries like France and Russia have used the UN as a means to “pursue naked self-interest. They have used multilateralism as a way to further [their own] unilateral policies” (Muravchik ¶46).

Apparently one of these unilateral policies was maintaining the profitability of keeping Saddam in power. The United States General Accounting Office estimates that Saddam skimmed “$10.1 billion in illegal funds from the oil-for-food program between 1997 and 2002.” Further allegations cite Russian, French and Chinese entities [along with certain UN officials] receiving kickbacks from these embezzlements while “Iraqi children and old people were dying from a lack of medical care and food that the money would have provided.” UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s call for investigations into these and related allegations have reportedly received “no support” from the governments accused of being involved (Houston Chronicle ¶1).

A Romanian defector alleges that Russia was prepared to go even further and actually protect Saddam and his WMD program – and conceal any trace if deemed necessary. Ion Mihai Pacepa -- the highest-ranking intelligence officer to defect from the Soviet Bloc -- alleges that Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov “hates Israel and has always championed Arab radicalism.” While he was head of the “Soviet foreign intelligence service,” General Primakov was Saddam’s “personal friend” and helped him “play his game of hide and seek” with the weapons inspectors after the Gulf War (Pacepa ¶5).

Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia continued to sell WMD products to Saddam and counseled their concealment. Pacepa goes further to say that General Primakov was in Baghdad in March 2003 “undoubtedly cleaning up the loose ends” of Saddam’s WMD program while 200,000 American troops were poised to attack. Russia’s interest in keeping Saddam in power was not merely to protect lucrative arms sales. No longer a superpower Russia hopes, according to Pacepa, to join with Germany and France in devising a Primakov-authored “’multipolarity’ strategy of counterbalancing American leadership by elevating Russia to great-power status in Eurasia” (Pacepa ¶11, 12).

Indeed, given the politico-ideological makeup of most member nations, “peace and human rights” are more consistently upheld “by the United States than by the United Nations” (Muravchik ¶46).

Bush ran for president promising a “more restrained” [i.e. less intrusive] foreign policy – especially in terms of military deployment – than his predecessor. Like Woodrow Wilson, Bush strove to keep America out of dangerous foreign entanglements until events were forced upon these chief executives as well as the nation as a whole. September 11 impelled Bush to break with his predecessors’ apparent mindset that the “political culture of the Middle East [is] a given to which America had to adapt.” Carter paid several “fawning visits” to Syria’s Hafez al-Assad. Reagan “traded arms for hostages with Iran… Clinton hosted Yasir Arafat more often than any other foreign leader.” Post-9/11, the administration decided that U.S. national interest and peace in the region merited exploring how to “transform the Middle East” toward limited representative government (Muravchik ¶53, 54, 57).

By seeking to “neutralize the threats we face by spreading the balm of democracy,” Bush is echoing Wilson’s original objective of using American power to make the world “safe for democracy, because otherwise democracy will not be safe in the world” (Muravchik ¶51, 52).

Several Bush administration officials have expressed concern that the United Nations has been marginalizing its effectiveness by not enforcing its own resolutions. In a recent news conference, the President explained how important it was that when the UN Security Council “says something [Saddam must disarm or face ‘serious consequences’], it means something, for the sake of security in the world” (Bush 4/13/2004 ¶41).

The United Nations has abjectly failed in its mission to keep the peace and foster prosperity. Some wars have been prevented, but people still have died in the limited conflicts that have erupted since the Second World War. A far greater number of people have been killed by their own governments during that same period:
•    The People’s Republic of China – 35 million
•    Post WWII Soviet Union over 20 million [more than 40 million pre-war]
•    Khmer Rouge – 2.5 million
•    Viet Nam – 1.7 million
•    Poland – 1.6 million
•    North Korea – 1.7 million
•    Pakistan – 1.5 million (Rummel)

The UN has had little to say about this wholesale slaughter – before, during or since. Instead the government that the UN has condemned the most is the state of Israel, with 65 formal Security Council resolutions passed against the Jewish state from 1955-92 [30 of which having been vetoed by the United States] (Findley 192-194). [This figure is often cited a prima facie proof of Israel’s fundamental illegitimacy – and American unfairness [as it is in Findley's book] -- rather than the UN’s absurd hypocrisy.] Thus, while governments killed their own by the millions, Israel became the UN’s number one Pariah State.

We see then that charges of the Bush administration being ‘unilateralist’ are to be taken with considerable skepticism. The main accusers -- the Continental Europeans and their sychophants in the United States, Great Britain and elsewhere -- have an agenda that is not altogether benevolent. The internationalists/multilateralists see that they have no military teeth – individually or collectively. They are not willing to spend what is necessary to exert military power for influence/security without American help, so they expect the U.S. to make up the difference as a subordinate entity.

It is possible and perhaps desirable to pursue a goal of a supranational authority or even a singular global regime to secure peace and prosperity for all mankind. This cannot be done, however in a world where governments declare war upon their own people and foster bloodshed abroad. If the free nations of the world are to consolidate their resources to affect world peace, they must first agree to use a judicious combination of economic, diplomatic, political, social -- and yes -- military power to hasten the day when the entire global population lives in freedom.

LaFeber, Walter. “The United States and Europe in an Age of American Unilateralism” The American Century in Europe, Moore, R. Laurence and Maurizio Vaudagna, ed. Ithaca, NY: Ithaca University Press, 2003. 

Palliser, Michael. “Forty Years On: The Nature of United States Power and European Influence” Allies or Adversaries? U.S.-European Relations in the Paul-Henri Spaak Lectures Harvard University 1985-1992. Lanham MD: University Press, 1993. 

Hutchings, Robert L. American Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War. Washington DC: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1997. 

Wistrich, Ernest. After 1992: The United States of Europe. London: Routledge, 1991. 

Muravchik, Joshua. “The Bush Manifesto” Commentary, December 2002. 

Kennedy, Craig and Marshall M. Bouton. “The Real Trans-Atlantic Gap” Foreign Policy, November/December 2002. 

Leiber, Robert J. “The Folly of Containment” Commentary, April 2003. 

Chace, James. “Present at the Destruction: The Death of American Internationalism” World Policy Journal, Spring 2003. 

Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose. “Fury as Chirac Threatens New EU States.” The London Daily Telegraph. 2 Feb. 2003. 

Loeb, Vernon. “Embassy Attacks Thwarted, U.S. Says; Official Cites Gains Against Bin Laden; Clinton Seeks $10 Billion to Fight Terrorism” The Washington Post. 23 Jan. 1999. 

CBS News. “Salaries For Suicide Bombers” 3 April 2002. 

Houston Chronicle. “Oil for Food: UN Losing Credibility over Corruption Charges” 9 April 2004. 

Pacepa, Ion Mihai. “Ex-spy fingers Russians on WMD” The Washington Times. 21 Aug. 2003. 

Bush, George W. “President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference” 13 April, 2004.  

Bush, George W. “President Declares Freedom at War with Fear” 20, Sept. 2001 

Findley, Paul. Deliberate Deceptions: Facing the Facts about the U.S.-Israeli Relationship. American Educational Trust, 1995.

Rummel, R.J. Death by Government [cited figures from combined tabulated data throughout the volume]. Transaction Publishing, 1997.

Harnden, Toby. “Bush Points to Iraq as His Next Target” The London Daily Telegraph. 12 Dec. 2001.