Yesterday, a Washington Post article noted that Bush is beginning to reach out to one-time allies, but only on his terms.
Bush bonds with leaders who see the world as he does, who in his view “get” the war on terrorism, who talk simply and straightforwardly and do not break any private commitments and understandings, officials said. Leaders who are willing to accept his point of view may be able to modify it somewhat, or gain something in return, but those looking for real negotiations or give-and-take are liable to come away disappointed, officials and diplomats say.
Today, we see (via Salon’s Geraldine Sealey) a CBS News report explaining that Bush isn’t exactly making new friends and influencing people at the United Nations.
Publicly, [diplomacy is] working. The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution supporting the handover of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government on Tuesday, as world leaders met in Georgia at the G-8 summit of leading industrialized nations.
But in the corridors of the United Nations, people are skeptical, if not downright displeased, with current U.S. efforts to revive relations.
CBS even had the courage to state the obvious: that Bush is “possibly the most unilateral of modern presidents” who has “estranged much of the world.”
While John Kerry caught flack for saying he’s generated political support from a variety of world leaders, CBS walked around the U.N. for just one day and found plenty of international diplomats who were more than willing to substantiate Kerry’s remark.
Although they will not say it for attribution, those randomly interviewed want Americans to deny Mr. Bush four more years in office. They expect a rekindling of diplomacy, of statesmanship, if Sen. John Kerry becomes president. They have lost all trust in the Bush administration.
“This administration has totally disregarded many longstanding rules and approaches to international affairs and therefore the administration has given its back to its own allies, particularly in Europe,” said one senior European U.N. envoy.
[…]
In a dozen interviews, with diplomatic officials ranging from ambassadors to secretaries, most see Mr. Bush’s efforts as too little, too late.
Diplomats also explained that the world trusted Clinton, but Bush has run out of credibility and is hurting the U.S. in the process.
“There is a distaste and a disbelief in what comes from Washington, and because of this White House, it is thought to be what comes out of this country. It is a belief that they practice consultation without intent to use it,” said an ambassador from North African nation. “But because we had a president we could trust who was a Democrat and now we have a president who we can’t, and he’s a Republican, there is a tendency to trust Democrats.”
Many of those interviewed came from the vantage point that “once you have lost trust, you cannot regain it,” as one Central American, who was eating lunch with her mother, a diplomat, put it.
[…]
“We expect a new administration, if elected, to show Americans are upset. In three years, this presidential administration has lost all its credibility, even with the American public,” said am official who works in the U.N. Secretariat. “All of the pretext that they used to go into Iraq is public knowledge now that it was all lies.
“You can’t have a foreign policy based on lies,” he continued. “I don’t know what Kerry will do and he has basically said that world leaders will appreciate that coming and I think that’s true because what George Bush has done is destroyed diplomacy. He has established the rule of force, of military, instead of dealing diplomatically and peacefully.”
I wonder what the GOP response is to these kinds of reports. If a Dem president was shown to have sown the seeds of international hostility and distrust, I suspect they’d say it’s time for a change in American leadership to help repair severed ties. Obviously, this is a Republican president who has pushed our allies past the breaking point. How does the GOP recommend we fix this? Do they even care to?