(CNSNews.com) – As President Obama prepares to address the United Nations for the first time on Wednesday, the tone has been set by top administration officials who are blaming a disengaged Bush administration for cool relations between the U.S. and the international community.
In a speech previewing this week’s U.N. General Assembly sessions last Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not once cite the U.N.’s failings or its need for reform as factors in the strained relationship.
During her address at the Brookings Institution and a question time afterwards, Clinton several times criticized the previous administration’s approach to foreign policy challenges that are central to America’s interaction with the U.N.
On President Bush’s decision to let the European Union lead efforts to negotiate with Iran over its suspect nuclear activities, she said the U.S., under Bush, had “outsourced our policy and concerns about the nuclear program to others.”
“We were pacing up and down the sidelines extremely agitated, and we were just trying to figure out how to get other people to go on the field and deal with this problem,” she said. “And look where we are today – we are really nowhere.”
She contrasted this with the Obama administration’s “readiness to engage directly with Iran.”
“We know that dialogue alone doesn’t guarantee any outcome, let alone success. But we also know that our past refusal to engage yielded no progress on the nuclear issue, nor did it stem Iran’s support for terrorist groups.”
On Middle East peace efforts, Clinton compared the Bush administration’s approach unfavorably with that of her husband’s administration.
“The United States was not actively engaged in it [under Bush], as we were in the 90s,” she said in response to a question by a member of the audience. “So, do I think maybe we’ve lost some ground, or maybe it’s a little more difficult because of that? I do.”
U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice has also been criticizing past U.S. policies, directly and indirectly, while stressing that the Obama administration “has dramatically changed the tone, the substance, and the practice of our diplomacy at the United Nations.”
Speaking at the White House on Friday, Rice said the administration decided to join the U.N.’s Human Rights Council despite its flaws because “we recognize that we can’t fix it or contribute to fixing it simply by carping from the outside.” The Bush administration shunned the council.
“We stand firmly on principle and resolute on issues that matter most to us,” Rice continued. “But we’re not picking petty battles simply for the sake of being contrary. In the past, we’ve sometimes let ourselves be defined as much by what we stand against as what we stand for.”
Rice then listed some of the policy shifts made this year, including embracing the U.N. millennium development goals aimed at reducing poverty and hunger levels by 2015, “which we had previously shunned”; rescinding the “Mexico City Policy” which denied aid funds to non-governmental organizations that promote or perform abortions; and reversing earlier opposition to a 2008 U.N. statement that condemns human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity and calls for decriminalization of homosexuality.
She also implicitly criticized the previous administration by highlighting that the current one is “paying our bills” at the U.N. and has cleared arrears which accumulated between 2005 and 2008.
Member states’ contributions to U.N. operating costs are calculated from assessments based on their relative “capacity to pay.” The U.S. provides 22 percent of the regular operating budget, and 25 percent of the peacekeeping budget.
Unlike Clinton in her speech on the same day, Rice did speak about the need to reform the U.N.
In an earlier speech, at New York University last month, Rice also repeatedly knocked the previous administration, accusing it of “stiff-arming the U.N. and spurning our international partners.”
Other nations would be more willing to take on more of the burden themselves, she said, “if the U.S. leads by example, acknowledges mistakes, corrects course when necessary, forges strategies in partnership and treats others with respect.”
“We work for change from within rather than criticizing from the sidelines,” Rice said. “We stand strong in defense of America’s interests and values, but we don’t dissent just to be contrary.”
“The United States will lead in the 21st century – not with hubris, not by hectoring, but through patient diplomacy and a steadfast resolve to strengthen our common security by investing in our common humanity.”
‘Multilateralism must deliver results’
Experts are stressing the importance of U.N. reform, and warning that what Obama calls his “new era of engagement” will have to deliver tangible results to demonstrate that the investment in the U.N. is worthwhile.
“Unless the U.S. pushes hard – including being willing to withhold U.S. contributions based on evidence from previous reform efforts – U.N. reform will continue to fall short,” Heritage Foundation fellow Brett Schaefer, who focuses on international regulatory affairs, said in a memo Tuesday.
“Such shortcomings are a concern because the administration clearly seeks U.N. involvement in more issues central to U.S. interests,” he said. “Yet the organization’s ability to address these issues is compromised by the lack of reform.”
Council on Foreign Relations scholar Stewart Patrick said Obama is going to the U.N. “on a wave of global goodwill” and will have an easier time than Bush but also face a more daunting task.
While Bush “approached his annual New York trip with the enthusiasm of a root canal patient. Obama actually believes in multilateralism – and thus may have more to lose if it fails,” Patrick wrote in a briefing.
“His job is to persuade his rapt global audience that recent improvement in U.S.-U.N. relations cannot be taken for granted – and that multilateralism must deliver results that advance U.S. and global security.”
Patrick, who is senior fellow and director of the CFR’s Program on International Institutions and Global Governance, said Obama needs to place U.S.-U.N. relations on a realistic footing, in line with his own stated view that the world body is both “indispensable and imperfect.”
Other nations at the U.N. also had a part to play, he argued.
“After blasting Bush for unilateralism, it is now time for other countries to step up to the plate and help this multilaterally inclined president make the United Nations as effective as it can be.”
Fact check
On both Iran and the Middle East, Clinton’s appraisals of Bush-era policies are open to dispute.
Although Bush did allow the E.U. to take the lead on Iran in 2003-2005, the initiative was later broadened to involve the permanent Security Council members and Germany (P5+1).
There is much anticipation about a meeting scheduled for October 1 bringing together the Iranians and the P5+1, but although it is the first involving Iran and the Obama administration, the Bush administration took part in a similar meeting in July 2008, in Geneva.
At that meeting, the U.S. was represented by Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns, and the talks broke down over Tehran’s refusal to discuss uranium enrichment. Burns will again represent the U.S. at the Oct. 1 meeting.
Many Mideast observers would contest the view that Bush was “not actively engaged” in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
In 2001 he embraced the policy of an independent Palestinian state; the 2003 “roadmap” had the two-state solution as its stated goal; and at a U.S.-led peace conference in Annapolis in 2007 it was agreed that the U.S. government would “monitor and judge” the two parties’ commitment to meeting their obligations.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Israel and the Palestinian territories four times in 2005, four times in 2006, seven times in 2007 and eight times in 2008.