By making it clear that he does not feel bound by either existing treaties or international opinion, President Bush is showing greater disrespect for the rule of law than any of the demonstrators expected in Genoa, Italy this weekend.
July 19, 2001
By Dan Plesch
LONDON -- The demonstrators outside this weekend1s G-8 meetings in Genoa, Italy, may appear unruly, but in fact the true anarchist will in inside the conference halls, advocating a policy of global nuclear anarchy with a manly hug and a Texas grin.
President Bush and others in his administration have made it clear that they oppose the idea of controlling and limiting the spread of nuclear weapons through treaties. By pursuing such policies as national missile-defense system, even though they are destined to violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the administration is making it clear that they are they true anarchists when it comes to respecting international laws.
At first glance, calling a Republican president an anarchist may seem extreme and even counter-intuitive. After all, conservatives are known as upholders of the law. In fact, most observers fault the administration for taking a unilateralist approach to international affairs, rather than seeking bilateral or multilateral agreements.
But the term "unilateralist" doesn't get across the truly radical nature of what the president is attempting to do by saying the United States will always act in what it perceives as its own best interests, even if that behavior runs counter to existing treaties or to international laws.
In sharp contrast to his predecessors, Bush appears more interested in abrogating existing agreements than in pursing news ones. The long list of arms-control accords that he seems willing to have the United States to walk away from or is refusing to pursue include the ABM Treaty, a new START agreement with Russia, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the biological-weapons verification protocol.
More than 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons remain in the hands of the United States and Russia. Their use and deployment have been successfully controlled by agreements pursued by former Republican Presidents Nixon and Reagan. Those who call for doing away with such agreements argue that any arms limitation is unenforceable and that the United States is so strong that it has no interest in any agreement that imposes limits on itself.
The first argument is akin to saying that murder should not be considered a crime because some killers get away. The second is a more worrying display of arrogance that reduces U.S. foreign policy to little more than the law of the jungle. It is a position that is particularly troubling for U.S. allies.
Americans are rightly admired for leading the world in helping to build democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law. But right now, they are in danger of losing that position of moral leadership by walking away from international laws and obligations that have done so much to keep the world safe in the past.
Now is not the time to start acting like an old-fashioned empire. Now is time to start calling Buish national missile defense policy what it truly is: anarchism.
Dan Plesch is the director of the British American Security
Information Council, an arms control advocacy group with offices
in Washington and London. (Copyright 2001, Global Beat Syndicate,
418 Lafayette Street, Suite 554, New York, NY 10003 http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate).