Monday, Oct.

15, 2001

Son Of The New World Order

By Michael Elliott

For a family whose patriarch once spoke of it dismissively, the Bushes have developed a
thing for vision. In September 1990, a few weeks after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait,
President George H.W. Bush told Congress that "out of these troubled times, our
objective--a new world order--can emerge." For the next year or so, he trotted out that
phrase times without number. The new world order, he said at one point, implied "new
ways of working with other nations...peaceful settlement of disputes, solidarity against
aggression...and just treatment of all peoples."

George W. Bush has his own version of the vision, though some might say it's even
gauzier than Dad's. When meeting with reporters in the Oval Office on Sept. 13, the
President said, "Through the tears and sadness, I see an opportunity." Since then, he has
continually used the line--both in public and in private talks with other leaders--as an
introduction to his thinking. On Oct. 4, at the State Department, Bush noted the chance
"to make the world a better place for generations to come" and to "spread goodwill
around the world."

Who wouldn't like that? But the President's advisers know there is a huge gap between
his fond wishes and their possible fulfillment. Some of them have a memory. By the time
of the 1992 election, "the new world order" had become mere evidence of the hubris of a
President who seemed awed by the scanner at a supermarket checkout. "We had this
problem in the early '90s," said a State Department official last week. "You know--'It's a
new world, we can do everything.' Our rhetoric was way ahead of where it should be."

Fair enough; ungrounded rhetoric does little good. But if the Administration is really
determined to win the war against terrorism, vision isn't optional. In the next few months,
as the U.S. takes military action against Afghanistan and perhaps other states in the
Islamic world, it's easy to see what might be done to help a shooting war's victims--food
aid, support for refugees, immediate economic assistance.

But such goodwill measures won't achieve Bush's avowed goal, the elimination of
terrorism. Nothing can deliver that, for there have always been political and religious
fanatics in the world and always will be. A more grounded vision--less rhetorically
satisfying but perhaps attainable--would be to drastically reduce the support that terrorists
receive from the general population, for whom resentment of the U.S. and its friends
becomes a reason to excuse those who translate ill will into violent rage.

In reaching for that goal, the U.S. has to take into account a number of factors. They
include:

--The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Since the end of the Gulf War, India
and Pakistan have tested nuclear bombs, Iran has continually sought to acquire nuclear
technology, and Iraq would dearly love to.

--Deadlock in the Middle East peace process and a year of near war between armed
Palestinian groups and Israel.

--The continuation of repressive autocracies, often dynastic, in the Middle East--

including countries that Washington regards as its "moderate" friends--that seal off safety
valves for political dissent.

--A population explosion and growing urbanization of the Islamic world. In 1975, for
example, there were about 10 million more Pakistanis than Mexicans; by 2015 there will
be 85 million more. Cities like Karachi, with 10 million people, have become breeding
grounds for political extremism.

--Poor economic performance in the Middle East. Not one of its nations has seen
anything remotely approaching the record of the East Asian economies since 1960. A
careful report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy this year concluded, "The
Middle East is losing the globalization race; its share of world trade is dropping just as
[economic] growth rates are falling throughout the region."

--The consequences of two decades of mass immigration from the poor world to the rich
one. The investigation into the Sept. 11 atrocities and others of its kind has revealed (to
put it mildly) networks of sympathy for terrorists among immigrant communities in the
U.S., Britain, Germany, France, Spain and Canada.

--The globalization of Islamic extremism. In the past 10 years, countries outside the
Middle East that have had some brush with violent Islamic groups include those
mentioned above and also Bosnia, Russia, Georgia, India, China, Argentina, Uzbekistan,
the Philippines and Indonesia. Until Sept. 11, the nations that had been most hurt by a
single terrorist incident were not Israel or the U.S. but Kenya and Tanzania, whose
citizens suffered hundreds of casualties when American embassies there were bombed in
1998.

The wider significance of Sept. 11 is that it made evident the global nature of the threat
from Islamic extremism. Therein lies Washington's opportunity, one that it has exploited
by its careful handling of the crisis so far. "If bin Laden counted on the Bush
Administration to hit back blindly in a fit of mad fury," says a senior French diplomat,
"he lost his bet. The Administration has earned itself a great, great deal of respect with
European leaders." Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair has been, if anything, more
royalist than the king, rattling sabers more noisily than Bush, and pledging (talk about
vision) that the memorial to those who died four weeks ago should include "justice and
prosperity for the poor and dispossessed."

Perhaps more important, Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, has thrown in his lot with
Washington and London. (When Bush called the Russian President to commiserate on the
crash of an airliner over the Black Sea last week, Blair was eating in Putin's quarters. The
British leader had a chat with Bush too, signing off with "I'll give you back Vladimir.")
Not only has Russia withdrawn its old objections to American military operations from
former Soviet lands like Uzbekistan, but Putin has also signaled that he is prepared to
reconsider his root-and-branch opposition to the expansion of NATO. For now he wants
to be one of us.

But getting Vlad and Tony on board is the easy bit. For the Administration to build a
long-term strategy, it needs to engage with parts of the world where a stew of poverty,
religious extremism and resentment against Western political and cultural imperialism
nourishes support for terrorism. One problem: whatever its tactical skill since Sept. 11,
the Bush Administration is not overstocked with strategic thinkers. Bush is new to the
job. Give him his due as a quick study, but it remains the case that he has never set foot in
a nation where Islam is the predominant religion. Vice President Dick Cheney and
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice are consummate bureaucrats, in the best
sense. Secretary of State Colin Powell has knocked the socks off foreign leaders; still, as
a senior Republican statesman says, Powell "doesn't have the background always to put
things in a historical perspective."

One thing Powell surely knows: if you prick Israel, it will bleed. So the Secretary cannot
have been surprised at the reaction to the carefully timed revelation that he had intended
to give a speech to the canceled session of the U.N. General Assembly in which he would
back the creation of a Palestinian state. (The day the story broke, Bush said, "The idea of
a Palestinian state has always been part of a vision...") A furious Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon likened the American action to that of Britain in 1938. "Do not try to appease the
Arabs at our expense," said Sharon. "Israel will not be Czechoslovakia." The next day,
Ari Fleischer, Bush's press secretary, publicly denounced Sharon's comments as
"unacceptable," and Powell twice dressed down the Prime Minister by phone. By the end
of the week, both sides said they were trying to de-escalate the dispute. But in Israel, the
sense in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11 that the attacks would bring the two
countries closer together is long gone. Instead, analysts are remembering that seven
months after the Gulf War, the first Bush Administration frog-marched its unwilling
Israeli friends to peace talks in Madrid.

Even if some replay of 1991 is in the minds of Bush and Powell, however, it would not
amount to a comprehensive strategy against terrorism. Algerian Islamic extremists did not
slit the throats of thousands nor did Filipino radicals chop off the heads of their hostages
because of anything Israel has done. Something in the religious, demographic, economic
and social climate of the Islamic nations nurtures and protects the prosecution of political
ends by violent means. It would be a brave new world that saw an end to such violence. If
the Bush Administration knows how to get there, it hasn't told the rest of us.

--With reporting by James Carney, John F. Dickerson and Massimo

Calabresi/Washington, Bruce Crumley/Paris and Matt Rees/Jerusalem

With reporting by James Carney, John F. Dickerson and Massimo Calabresi/Washington,

Bruce Crumley/Paris and Matt Rees/Jerusalem

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