Victor Davis Hanson is perplexed by the constant charge that Bush Administration unilateralism is a major cause of terrorism and anti-Americanism, given the rather poor track record of multilateralism.
Our supposed post-9/11 unilateralism is summed up by something like this: chances lost; sympathy wasted; opportunities let slip; dialogue spurned; etc.
That is, after eight careful years of Clintonian multilateralism–characterized by deference to the U.N., consultation with the EU, and various apologies to aggrieved countries from Greece to South Africa–the United States was once again (say, by 2000?), ever so slowly, beginning to be liked in the world. Indeed, we were on the collective bus, so to speak, and supported the foundations for a new global framework that would give us racial bliss at Durban, environmental salvation at Kyoto, and international justice at The Hague.
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September 11 proved that all we had been doing the last eight years–a cruise missile here, a federal indictment there–was taking aspirin and bed rest for a metastasizing malignant tumor. Luck, not diplomacy or deterrence, prevented other killings besides the litany in Saudi Arabia, Africa, and Yemen. The February 1993 first bombing of the World Trade Center parking basement could have killed thousands and taken down the building nine years before its demise, while the Y2K plot to blow up civilians at the Los Angeles Airport was aborted through a freak inspection, not sustained U.S. vigilance.
So how good were the good old multilateral days? The ticking bomb of the Middle East blew up with the Intifada. Although the much-praised Oslo accords of 1993 were heralded as another triumph of collective wisdom, few at the time voiced concern that we were taking the stake out of defeated terrorists and a criminal head of state, and unleashing them to fly into what was a relatively prosperous West Bank that, as it inched toward autonomy, had greater rates of economic growth and freedom than most Arab states.
To say that 9/11 is the fault of the Clinton Administration is, of course, absurd. But no more so than saying that the anti-Americanism seen in the Middle East today is Bush’s fault. The fact is that the United States, by virtue of being who we are, is simply going to be the target for the enraged peoples of the world. Our culture is young, brash, secular, and successful. We’re the world’s only superpower, simultaneously the most powerful military, economic, and cultural force on the planet. That makes us the natural object of resentment.
