Posted on: Sunday, September 7, 2003

EDITORIAL
Bush foreign policy: major rethinking afoot

Call them midcourse corrections, policy reversals or dogma giving way to reality, the quality and quantity of the recent changes in President Bush's approach to Iraq, North Korea and some other problem areas are little short of astonishing. Some examples:

• In a significant shift in the recent multiparty talks in Beijing, Bush authorized American negotiators to offer a range of steps to aid North Korea, from gradually easing sanctions to eventual peace treaty, The New York Times reported.

Previously, the American position was that Pyongyang must abandon its nuclear programs entirely before any discussion of aid or security guarantees could begin.

Unhappily, according to Russian officials who attended the talks, the North Koreans weren't aware of the policy change because they weren't listening to a presentation by James Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian Affairs. They were too busy composing their angry reply to what they expected him to say.

But observers think the North Koreans are likely to return to a second round of talks, despite their usual bluster, once they read the new American position.

This must be seen as a positive development, as many observers, including the Russians, Chinese, Japanese and South Koreas who were at the talks, feared American inflexibility had badly increased the chances of a catastrophic war.

• Having easily won the invasion part of the Iraq war, the White House appears to have begun to come to terms with an occupation that is far more dangerous, and far more costly, than it had predicted.

The changes that this realization is bringing are legion, including new approaches to countries that used to be known as "old Europe" and "chocolate-makers" and an organization, the United Nations, which had demonstrated its "irrelevance," because they had refused to sign on to the American campaign in Iraq.

The United States has presented a draft resolution to the Security Council inviting wider military participation and financial support under U.N. mandate.

The American economic recovery appears to be suffering from the war. Deficit spending is far beyond what the White House expected, perhaps in part due to miscalculation of the effects of two rounds of tax cuts, but certainly because it had seriously underestimated the cost of getting Iraq on its feet. Members of Congress, returning from recess to face an election season, will not be patient.

The Pentagon has implicitly acknowledged its mistake in dismantling the Iraqi army immediately following the invasion, and has now begun recruiting troops below the rank of lieutenant colonel to train as police. Many of these soldiers (the ones, at any rate, who aren't now participating in anti-U.S. guerrilla warfare) are angry that their reward for refusing to fight on behalf of Saddam Hussein was to be stripped of their positions and incomes.

• The Bush administration, which had come to office calling China a "strategic competitor," is now relying on Beijing to cajole North Korea into better behavior. Even more startling, Bush sent Treasury Secretary John Snow to try to talk the Chinese into a huge revaluation of its currency. Its huge tax cuts and appointment of a "jobs czar" having failed to put jobs into America's weak recovery, he hoped China might be willing to give up its huge bilateral trade surplus to help him out.

We must hope Bush offers more details in his address to the nation today.