Zero-Sum Future by Rachman Gideon

Author:Rachman, Gideon [Rachman, Gideon]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2011-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

19

A WORLD OF TROUBLES

The United Nations headquarters is in Manhattan, but many Americans have long regarded it as hostile territory—a platform for foreign despots to take a free shot at the United States while accepting American hospitality and handouts. The lineup of speakers at the opening of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York on September 23, 2009, had the pundits on Fox News fulminating with rage and scorn. It included the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Hugo Chávez of Venezuela; and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.

But the main attraction on that September day was Barack Obama, the president of the United States, still lightly covered in stardust after his historic election the previous November. The United Nations had gotten used to being scolded and ignored by George W. Bush, but Obama was determined to woo the world body. He had appointed Susan Rice, one of his closest campaign aides, as American ambassador to the UN and had given her a place in the cabinet. In his first address to the UN General Assembly, Obama set out to charm the assembled world leaders.

The new president’s approach to the UN reflected his temperamental preference for “engagement” rather than confrontation. But it was also based on two core beliefs about the world he had inherited. First, that the Bush years had conclusively demonstrated that unilateral American action could no longer achieve the most important goals of U.S. foreign policy. President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq without a UN mandate was the ultimate test of an American policy of “ourselves alone.” The Obama team was determined not to repeat that approach, with all the costs and traumas that it had brought in its wake.

President Obama’s second insight was that many of the most troubling issues facing his administration were global in nature. No single country, acting alone, could hope to solve them. In his UN speech, he set out these problems: “Extremists sowing terror in pockets of the world. Protracted conflicts that grind on and on. Genocide and mass atrocities. More and more nations with nuclear weapons. Melting ice caps and ravaged populations. Persistent poverty and pandemic disease. I say this not to sow fear, but to state a fact; the magnitude of our challenges has yet to be met by the measure of our action.”1

Critics on both the right and the left would dispute some of the items on the president’s list. Conservatives are skeptical about climate change. Liberals express doubts about the war on terror. Yet, in certain respects, it does not matter whether all of the fears and problems listed by President Obama turn out to be justified. What matters is that most of the world’s major powers agree that these problems are real—and demand action. Every major government from Beijing to Brussels, Moscow to Delhi is committed to the idea that climate change is happening and they are all participating in the UN-sponsored negotiations to limit emissions of greenhouse gases. The United States under President Bush took the lead

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.