Reply #37: "I hear the air just squealing out of the bubble of American pretensions."

[understandinglife]

"America in the past has generally demonstrated capacity to be a great leader of others -- a planning nation, a strategic nation, a complex systems integrator in war and peace -- but now the obsession with doing things alone is a rejection of leadership and guarantees future weakness."

So states Steve Clemons (of The Washington Note) in a TPM guest blog introduction of Anne Penketh article in The Independent entitled With Bush's man installed, is this the end of diplomacy? on August 26, 2005.

That article contains the following observations:

An American, Franklin D Roosevelt, coined the phrase "United Nations" three years before the representatives of 50 countries met in San Francisco to found the UN in 1945. Ironically, an American, John Bolton, has just dealt a powerful blow to an organisation whose 191 members aimed to mark the UN's 60th birthday by agreeing a blueprint for UN reform.

The UN was born out of the ashes of the Second World War, inaugurating a new era of international optimism and co-operation as the economic underpinnings of the Bretton Woods system, responsible for the birth of institutions such as the World Bank, were put in place.

US support was key to the process ... How things have changed. With the arrival of the hawkish Mr Bolton to do the bidding of George Bush at the UN, relations between the US and the UN have never looked so bad.

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In the council, if the other delegates do not like what the Americans want, the US no longer hesitates to act without UN blessing.

Link:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article308270.ece

And the link to Steve Clemons comments:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_08_21.php#006348

More warnings.


Peace.