Bush Was No Unilateralist

Paula Dobriansky is too much the diplomat to ever "bristle" at a question. But the word "unilateralism" elicits something close to that response. Sitting in her comfortable office, located in a drab wing of the drab State Department, I ask the undersecretary for democracy and global affairs just what she thinks of the conventional judgment that the Bush administration has practiced a "go it alone" foreign policy.

"If you look at every issue here, every issue I deal with, I can tell you our method has not been to take the U.S. experience and merely transplant it on the soil of another country," she says firmly. "Every issue here has had a rather vibrant, multilateral component to it. And you can see the results."

And then there are the democracy initiatives. With U.S. leadership, in 2005 the United Nations created the Democracy Fund, designed to finance projects that build democratic institutions. More than 35 countries have contributed some $100 million to the fund, which has already green-lighted 85 projects. In 2002, the Bush State Department created the Middle East Partnership Initiative. It is now funding more than 350 initiatives in 15 countries, focusing on everything from press rights in Algeria to legal rights for Yemeni women... [snip]

She is quick to note that much of this has been driven by President Bush himself. She singles out Africa, where Mr. Bush has more than quadrupled health funding. "I used to have that portfolio," she says. "But the president has devoted such personal time to issues such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria that the State Department created a whole new department, the U.S. Global Aids Coordinator." [snip]

It might also be the case that the Bush administration doesn't get credit for leadership on key issues for the reason that the results aren't always to the liking of the liberal intelligentsia. When Mr. Bush first took office in 2001, he met howls for his decision not to submit the Kyoto Protocol for ratification. That event helped create the storyline of Bush unilateralism...

[ah well, he's an apostate - that explains it]

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