[Peace-discuss] the diplomatic costs of American arrogance

[ppatton at uiuc.edu]

Will Bush Soften Rhetoric or Grow more Shrill?

by James Carroll
 

Diplomacy consists in the capacity to see things from the
point of view of the other party. The triumphs and failures of
US diplomacy across two generations define this truth,
especially in relationship to Moscow. George W. Bush has begun
his second term by declaring himself a proselytizer for
American-style "freedom," and one wonders how this ambition
falls on the ears of those on the far side of Europe?
Especially so when practically the first headline Bush's new
secretary of state drew was "Rice chides Russia." What does it
mean that the first signal that Condoleezza Rice has sent to
Vladimir Putin is a kind of scold?

Secretary Rice is famously an expert on Russia, but does she
know the history of the tone of voice? Scholars debate the
origins of the Cold War, but there is no question that the
World War II alliance between Moscow and Washington first ran
off the track within days of the death of Franklin Roosevelt,
when Harry S. Truman gave, as he put it, "a straight one-two
to the jaw" of Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. "I
have never been talked to like that in my life," Molotov
complained. "Carry out your agreements," Truman replied, "and
you won't be talked to like that."

Looked at from Moscow's point of view -- from the point of
view, that is, of an ally whose "agreements kept" were
embodied in the astronomical number of casualties it was even
then suffering in the war against Hitler -- Truman's scolding
represented a breach from which there would be no recovering.
John F. Kennedy came into office as a tribune of "freedom,"
too. Bush's second inaugural address seemed a deliberate, if
partial, echo of Kennedy's inaugural. But the great diplomatic
triumph of the Kennedy administration came only when the young
president changed his tone of voice entirely in a speech at
American University in June 1963. Instead of an American moral
superiority based on "freedom," Kennedy acknowledged his own
nation's part in "a vicious dangerous cycle." Traditional
American finger-wagging was gone. Instead, Kennedy spoke from
the heart of "our most basic common link.. . . We all cherish
our children's future. And we are all mortal."

Within days of this speech, Moscow and Washington accomplished
the long unachieved Partial Test Ban Treaty, and the Cold War
took its most fateful turn toward peace. As George W. Bush
would after him, Ronald Reagan built his first term around a
rhetoric of "evil," and relations between Washington and
Moscow went back into the freezer. But something new happened
with Reagan's second term. The shift was clear in a new tone
of voice coming from Washington and heard quite clearly by new
Soviet leadership. "It was evil," Reagan would say, referring
to the Soviet Union and then to Mikhail Gorbachev, "until he
-- until this one man made all the difference."

The breakthrough in relations that Gorbachev and Reagan
achieved together, and that enabled the Soviet Union's
peaceful demise, was built on the mutual abandonment of the
scolding voice. America's triumphal assumption that it had
"won" the Cold War defined the diplomacy of George H.W. Bush.

After World War II, the Soviet Union's massive sacrifices
suffered at the hands of Hitler went unappreciated in the
West, and after the Cold War, the savage economic and cultural
dislocations that Russia willingly underwent as the price for
a peaceful dismantling of its side of the conflict went
unappreciated again. With Bill Clinton, the United States
glibly declared itself the "indispensable nation" while
dispensing -- for example, on the question of NATO expansion
-- with any need to see Moscow's point of view. The arms
control regime, including what Russia regarded as the
sacrosanct ABM Treaty, was abandoned by Washington, and
promised aid for post-Soviet economic recovery and especially
for nuclear safety never fully materialized. Now Moscow finds
itself with its old adversary intruding into territories once
firmly inside a Russian sphere of influence; its old adversary
embarked on open-ended military campaigns in the name of
"freedom" defined as a rebuke to Russian realities; its old
adversary in pursuit of a next generation of nuclear and
space-based weapons systems; its old adversary presuming to
"chide."

Bush will meet this month with Putin at a summit in the Slovak
capital of Bratislava. It could be a pivotal moment, like
those in the past, but will the shift be for good or for ill?
Will Bush, from the pinnacle of his moral and martial
dominance, have any idea of how things look -- or sound --
from the other side?
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Dr. Paul Patton
spring semster 2005
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Biology, Williams College
Williamstown, MA
phone: (413)-597-3518

Research Scientist
Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois 61801
work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
home phone: (217)-344-5812
homepage: http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ppatton/www/index.html

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
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