For almost three years now, the world has been given quite a different view of the United States than the one to which it had been accustomed. It has seen global leadership abandoned and replaced with what now is known as American unilateralism - the Bush administration's disdain for international agreements and sometimes for diplomacy itself. The unilateralism has been a virtual addiction - a truculent constant in a presidency otherwise marked by inconstancy.
The change began in the first few weeks after President Bush took office. After an election campaign during which he preached that we should learn humility in dealing with other nations, he rather arrogantly pulled the United States out of the Kyoto treaty on climate change - a protocol we had signed but not yet ratified. This new self-centered policy found its ultimate - though hardly final - expression when Bush told the U.N. Security Council that the United States was going to invade Iraq, with or without the council's approval.
It was also in the early days of his administration that Bush announced we would scrap the anti- ballistic missile treaty with Russia. In fairness, it must be noted that withdrawal from the ABM treaty was implicit in Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense program. But research on our interceptor missile had not reached the stage where it would violate the treaty. Whatever the merits of the case, when Bush revoked the treaty, he both frightened and angered other nations, including some of our closest allies, who fear an ABM arms race and a new global instability when and if our anti-missile missile proves successful.
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http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%7E29003%7E1780424,00.html
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