[Peace-discuss] This Superpower Can't Go It Alone

[patton paul]

This Superpower Can't Go It Alone

February 25, 2003

Against his own instincts, against the wishes of his most fervent
supporters, President George W. Bush took the case for a second anti-Iraq
resolution to the United Nations Security Council yesterday.

Why? Because he had to.

America is the planet's lone superpower, but it still must exist within a
web of political and economic relationships. In other words, for all its
military might, the United States still can't afford to operate alone.

To be sure, Bush has long made his view clear. As he said last April 5, "I
made up my mind that Hussein needs to go."

Yet even the Lone Star State president felt compelled to take the case to
the United Nations last fall. That decision set off alarms among Bush's
conservative base.

A new round of U.N. inspections was a "trap," warned William Kristol of
The Weekly Standard. Even Bush's own vice president, Dick Cheney, had gone
on record with skepticism toward Saddam Hussein's possible cooperation,
declaring on Aug. 26: "A return of inspectors would provide no assurance
whatsoever of his compliance with UN resolutions. On the contrary, there
is a great danger that it would provide false comfort that Saddam was
somehow 'back in his box.'"

Today, a majority of the Security Council seems to agree that Iraq is
boxed in. And Turkey, Iraq's neighbor, which might be expected to be
begging the United States to save it from Saddam Hussein's menace, instead
seized the opportunity to extort billions from the United States.

Meanwhile, as the haggling stretched out, right- wing exasperation with
the UN has deepened. Last month The Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer
wrote a column titled, "UN R.I.P." And The Wall Street Journal
editorialized, bluntly and somewhat anti- Bushly, "Dick Cheney was right."

And yet the U.S. joined with Great Britain and Spain in submitting a
second resolution to the UN.

How come? Because the political "market" spoke, in the form of opinion
polls around the world. Support in Britain for an invasion of Iraq, absent
a second resolution, stands at 9 percent. In Spain, 85 percent of the
population is opposed to war. The leaders of those two countries, Tony
Blair and Jo Maria Aznar, might each be eligible for a "Profile in
Courage" award, but they will be of little use to Bush if they are out of
office.

The United States might feel immune from the pressures of the rest of the
world, but other countries aren't so insulated. Yesterday, few Americans
noticed when Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, chairman of the
summit of "non-aligned" countries - 116 nations representing more than
half the world's population - declared that the United States has
launched "a war to dominate the world." But other nations have no choice
but to pay heed to Third World rumblings. Spain, for example, is
separated by the eight-mile-wide Strait of Gibraltar from Muslim Morocco
and the rest of Islamic North Africa.

Hence Bush did Aznar and Blair the favor of seeking a second resolution.
That is, even though his own course has been clear for a year, his allies
needed political "cover," allowing them to argue that they did everything
they could to make the UN process work. Indeed, it's possible that Bush &
Co. will win a second resolution; as the Turkish experience proved, Uncle
Sam will spend what it takes to get to war.

The subject of money, of course, leads to the second force bearing down
directly on Bush: the economy, stupid. The president has barnstormed the
country for months now, successfully whipping up martial support from
voters. But investors see things differently. Every time the prospect of
war goes up, the stock market goes down. Bush's proposed tax cuts may be
good for the economy, but they could be outweighed by concerns about a
protracted war, a messy occupation, or trouble elsewhere in the world.

As a survey released Sunday by Manpower, the Milwaukee-based employment
company, noted, job hiring has declined for the first time in over a
year: "Results are clearly showing a dominating sense of uncertainty."

So what's Bush to do? He needs swift victory abroad, and then a long calm
at home. But the world is interactive, militarily and economically.
Americans may find that a war, once started, doesn't end as quickly and
cleanly as their commander-in-chief might like.

James P. Pinkerton's e-mail address

is pinkerto at ix.netcom.com.
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