[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 177 (Wednesday, December 19, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Page S13694]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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    CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER ON PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP IN FOREIGN POLICY

 Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I commend to my colleagues a recent 
column by Charles Krauthammer entitled ``Unilateral? Yes, Indeed.'' It 
ran in the December 14 issue of the Washington Post.
  Once again, Krauthammer has done a fine job of articulating 
sentiments shared by many of us regarding the President's conduct of 
foreign policy. The essence of the issue can be summarized in one word: 
leadership. Since the start of his presidency, George W. Bush has been 
the target of innumerable criticisms emanating from his approach to the 
conduct of foreign policy. Greatly exaggerated fears of isolationism 
have been voiced by the president's critics, both at home and abroad. 
With the conduct of the war against terrorism and the decision to 
withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, however, the President 
has demonstrated not isolationism, but leadership. Leadership, as 
defined by the willingness to make unpopular decisions and accept the 
consequences out of a conviction that the decisions in question are in 
the best interests of the United States.
  Pre-war concerns that the entire Muslim world would rise up against 
us if we went after Al Qaeda and its Taleban protectors have proven 
unfounded. Worst-case scenarios surrounding the President's decision to 
withdraw from the ABM Treaty have similarly failed to materialize. 
There are consequences to both decisions, but they were the right 
decisions and the consequences are far less than the benefits accruing 
to the United States from their having been implemented.
  I urge my colleagues to take a minute to read the article by Charles 
Krauthammer. It articulates better than could I the importance of 
leadership in international affairs, and I highly recommend it.
  I ask that the article be printed in the Record.
  The article follows.

               [From the Washington Post, Dec. 14, 2001]

                        Unilateral? Yes, Indeed

                        (By Charles Krauthammer)

       Last month's Putin-Bush summit at Crawford was deemed an 
     arms control failure because the rumored deal--Russia agrees 
     to let us partially test, but not deploy, defenses that 
     violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty--never came 
     off.
       In fact, it was a triumph. Like Reagan at the famous 1986 
     Reykjavik summit, at which he would not give up the Strategic 
     Defense Initiative to Gorbachev, Bush was not about to allow 
     Putin to lock the United States into any deal that would 
     prevent us from building ABM defenses.
       Bush proved that yesterday when he dropped the bombshell 
     and unilaterally withdrew the United States from the treaty, 
     and thus from all its absurd restrictions on ABM technology.
       This is deeply significant, not just because it marks a 
     return to strategic sanity, formally recognizing that the 
     ballistic missile will be to the 21st century what the tank 
     and the bomber were to the 20th, but because it unashamedly 
     reasserts the major theme of the Bush foreign policy: 
     unilateralism.
       After Sept. 11, the critics (the usual troika: liberal 
     media, foreign policy establishment, Democratic ex-officials) 
     were clucking about how the Bush administration has beaten a 
     hasty retreat from reckless unilateralism. President Bush 
     ``is strongly supported by the American people,'' explained 
     former Senate leader George Mitchell, ``in part because he 
     has simply discarded almost everything he said on foreign 
     policy prior to Sept. 11.''
       Bush had wanted to go it alone in the world, said the 
     critics. But he dare not. ``It's hard to see the President 
     restoring the unilateralist tinge that colored so many of his 
     early foreign policy choices,'' wrote columnist E. J. Dionne 
     just two months ago. ``Winning the battle against terror 
     required an end to unilateralism.''
       We need friends, they said. We need allies. We need 
     coalition partners. We cannot alienate them again and again. 
     We cannot have a president who kills the Kyoto Protocol on 
     greenhouse gases, summarily rejects the ``enforcement 
     provisions'' of the bioweapons treaty, trashes the ABM 
     Treaty--and expect to build the coalition we need to fight 
     the war on terrorism.
       We cannot? We did.
       Three months is all it took to make nonsense of these 
     multilateralist protests. Coalition? The whole idea that the 
     Afghan war is being fought by a ``coalition'' is comical. 
     What exactly has Egypt contributed? France sent troops into 
     Mazar-e Sharif after the fighting had stopped, noted that 
     renowned military analyst Jay Leno. (``Their mission?'' asked 
     Leno. ``To teach the Taliban how to surrender.'') There is a 
     coalition office somewhere in Islamabad. Can anyone even name 
     the coalition spokesman who makes announcements about the 
     war?
       The ``coalition'' consists of little more than U.S. 
     aircraft, U.S. special forces, and Afghan friends-of-the-
     moments on the ground. Like the Gulf War, the Afghan war is 
     unilateralism dressed up as multilateralism. We made it plain 
     that even if no one followed us, we would go it alone. 
     Surprise: Others followed.
       A unilateralist does not object to people joining our 
     fight. He only objects when the multilateralists, like 
     Clinton in Kosovo, give 18 countries veto power over bombing 
     targets.
       The Afghan war is not a war run by committee. We made tough 
     bilateral deals with useful neighbors. Pakistan, Uzbekistan, 
     Tajikistan, Russia. The Brits and the Australians added a 
     sprinkling of guys on the ground risking their lives, and we 
     will always be grateful for their solidarity. But everyone 
     knows whose war it is.
       The result? The Taliban are destroyed. Al Qaeda is on the 
     run. Pakistan has made a historic pro-American strategic 
     pivot, as have the former Soviet republics, even Russia 
     itself. The Europeans are cooperating on prosecutions. Even 
     the Arab states have muted their anti-American and anti-
     Israeli rhetoric, with the Egyptian foreign minister 
     traveling to Jerusalem for the first time in three years.
       Not because they love us. Not because we have embraced 
     multilateralism. But because we have demonstrated astonishing 
     military power and the will to defend vital American 
     interests, unilaterally if necessary.
       Where is the great Bush retreat from unilateralism? The ABM 
     Treaty is dead. Kyoto is dead. The new provisions of the 
     totally useless biological weapons treaty are even deader: 
     Just six days before pulling out of the ABM Treaty, the 
     administration broke up six years of absurd word-mongering 
     over a bio treaty so worthless that Iraq is a signatory in 
     good standing.
       And the world has not risen up against us--no more than did 
     the ``Arab street'' (over the Afghan war), as another set of 
     foreign policy experts were warning just weeks ago.
       The essence of unilateralism is that we do not allow 
     others, no matter how well-meaning, to deter us from pursuing 
     the fundamental security interests of the United States and 
     the free world. It is the driving motif of the Bush foreign 
     policy. And that is the reason it has been so 
     successful.

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