By Tom Plate

One thing is clear about many Bush administration people. They have attitude, a lot of it. And they make little secret of it: They don't much care about what other nations think of their policies.

This is not always such a bad thing, especially when arrogance is backed by enormous military and economic clout and there are true evil villains out there. As the 15th-century sage of Florence, Niccolo Machiavelli, famously noted in "The Prince," his primer of hard-nosed political leadership, it's better for a nation to be both loved and feared. But he noted: "It is much safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking."

That's the Bush approach in a nutshell. And sometimes it works. Certainly, the growing fear of hostile intent was a factor in helping induce Moammar Gadhafi to plead no contest in the court of world opinion and announce that Libya, hobbled badly by years of U.S. economic sanctions and possibly fearing Saddam Hussein's fate, would dismantle its weapons of mass destruction programs. Chalk one up for the good guys.

It surely was also no mere coincidence that just days later, the otherwise reclusive Stalinist government in North Korea announced it was inviting a delegation of private U.S. citizens to its Yongbyon nuclear weapons complex, from which U.N. inspectors had been rudely expelled more than a year ago. Presumably North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il figured, if Gadhafi is fearful, maybe he should be, too.

He should. For the Bush people calculate that no matter what they do, they are unlikely to be loved in Pyongyang, so they might as well be feared. Thus, the United States is becoming the feared but unloved Prince of contemporary world politics. And, in this mien, the Bush administration is scarcely uncomfortable. Indeed, Machiavelli might approve. After all, he wrote: "Men are less hesitant about harming someone who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared."

Asia, by and large, generally accepts that the Prince of the present is the United States, and that under Bush, at least, it is to be more feared than loved. But Asia also generally accepts that the Prince of the future, at least in its region, will probably be China.

What kind of future Prince will China be? Only feared — or loved as well?

Watching China now is fascinating precisely because its new identity is still a work in progress. At home, it is throwing out collectivist orthodoxies like embarrassing old photographs; in its international relations, it is playing the good-guy role at every opportunity. In Asia, Chinese diplomacy is becoming more active and nuanced. It is muffling its bark over territorial disputes with its neighbors, launching charm offensives to take the edge off the risible sting of its successful regionwide export-sales campaigns, especially in Southeast Asia, and, of course, has been pitching in to help mediate the serious friction between North Korea and the United States.

On the basis of this fragmentary and preliminary evidence, the emerging giant shows every indication that it may desire to become a nation that is loved as well as feared.

That's not necessarily bad for the West, to be sure. As part of its love/fear approach, Beijing diplomacy might well choose to upgrade its long-docile profile at the United Nations to help restore the dwindling collegiality among members. Up to now, China, one of the five veto permanent members, has either kept its head down in New York or at most played the harmless neutral game.

China could and should do more, for this vital organization is currently shackled by the mutual hostility of its most powerful member states. And without the cooperation of its greatest powers, comments former U.N. Undersecretary General Brian Urquhart in the New York Review of Books, the potency of the Security Council, the U.N.'s political driver, is unlikely to rise above pathetic.

A Security Council led in the future by a Prince that wishes to be loved as well as feared — as opposed to the current U.S. approach — could well trigger the political resurrection of the United Nations.

Tom Plate, whose column appears regularly in The Honolulu Advertiser, is a UCLA professor and founder of the nonprofit Asia Pacific Media Network. Reach him at tplate@ucla.edu.