United Patients

Many are deeply skeptical of President Bush's nomination of John Bolton as America's United Nations ambassador. They have good reason to worry, which means that a U.N. official seemingly intent on shooting the organization in the foot (another U.N. official...) had to open his mouth and make Bolton look ideal. In this instance, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's chief of staff, Mark Malloch Brown, chose to say something silly:

Democracy has a lot longer roots and a lot more friends than just the current campaign of President Bush.

Thank you, Mr. Obvious. England and Australia are also particularly active on championing representative governments, and are not afraid to work with the United States not only diplomatically but, when appropriate, militarily as well. That said, President Bush is the first American leader to make actually being a powerful friend--rather than simply talking like one--a key to both national security and foreign policy. He may deserve some praise for that. An excerpt from P.J. O'Rourke's upcoming "Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism" touches on Bush's reasoning...

Americans would like to ignore foreign policy. Our previous attempts at isolationism were successful. Unfortunately, they were successful for Hitler's Germany and Tojo's Japan. Evil is an outreach program. A solitary bad person sitting alone, harboring genocidal thoughts, and wishing he ruled the world is not a problem unless he lives next to us in the trailer park. In the big geopolitical trailer park that is the world today, he does.

America has to act. But, when America acts, other na­tions accuse us of being “hegemonistic,” of engaging in “unilateralism,” of behaving as if we’re the only nation on earth that counts.

We are. Russia used to be a superpower but resigned "to spend more time with the family." China is supposed to be mighty, but the Chinese leadership quakes when a couple of hundred Falun Gong members do tai chi for Jesus. The European Union looks impressive on paper, with a greater population and a larger economy than America's. But the military spending of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy combined does not equal one third of the U.S. defense budget. The United States spends more on defense than the aforementioned countries—plus Russia plus China plus the next six top defense-spending nations. Any multilateral mili­tary or diplomatic effort that includes the United States is a crew team with Arnold Schwarzenegger as coxswain and Nadia Comaneci on the oars. When other countries demand a role in the exercise of global power, America can ask another fun­damental American question: "You and what army?"

...Fascists do bad things just to be bad. "I'm the baddest dude in Baghdad," Saddam Hussein was saying, "the baddest cat in the Middle East. I'm way bad." This was way stupid. But fascists are stupid. Consider Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. He didn't have any. How stupid does that make Saddam? All he had to do was say to UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, "Look where you want. Look beneath the couch cushions. Look under my bed. Look in the special spider hole I'm keeping for emergencies." And Saddam Hussein could have gone on dictatoring away until Donald Rumsfeld is elected head of the World Council of Churches.

Instead, we blew the place to bits. And a mess was left behind. But it's a mess without a military to fight aggres­sive wars; a mess without the facilities to develop dangerous weapons; a mess that cannot systematically kill, torture, and oppress millions of its citizens. It's a mess with a message--don't mess with us.

Regardless of whether one considers the policy wise, unwise, or mediocre, its foundation has nothing to do with Bush inventing democracy--again, who thinks he did?--and everything to do with supporting it. If you care so much about democracy, Bush challenges, then try to act a little more like you mean it.

The conference gets stranger. Not satisfied with watching Malloch Brown lash out against suggestions Bush never made, Chilean Vice-President Jose Miguel Insulza tossed in a cliché:

We must also remember that democracy develops from within the people.

We must also remember that some people needed a lot of help developing a viable democracy (read: a representative constitutional republic) over the years... frequently through having the first step imposed by outside forces... most successfully by the United States and Friends.

He also warns of "a hidden agenda" if a single country promotes democracy. Assuming, for the sake of his argument, that more nations do not add more hidden agendas, this still raises the question of why the multinational United Nations is not therefore working harder at promoting democracy. We see counsels and committees, but concrete actions are few and far between. Until world leaders get busy, it is difficult for many Americans to take international complaints about Bush's actions seriously. If you can do a better job, guys, then now is a fine time to start.