America the horrible is now turning into a pariah

By Polly Toynbee

LONDON: In his own inimitable words, let no one "misunderestimate" George W. Bush. He is the most rightwing president in living memory. If this is compassionate conservatism, what does the other sort look like? In less than 100 days he has turned America into a pariah, made enemies of the entire world, his only friends the dirty polluters of the oil industry who put him there. His foreign non-policy is a calamity, brilliantly uniting Russia and China with gratuitous offense and threat.

The Republican leader of the senate environment committee's last-minute cancellation of an urgent global warming meeting with the EU environment commissioner on Monday was like a cold war tactical snub from the Khrushchev era. Europe gets the message, so did an outraged Japan.

The rest of the world draws instinctively together in its repudiation of the Bush Jnr White House. Through this strange global vandalism, the leader of the free world has become the rogue. Ungracious in victory, absolute power corrupting absolutely, the only super-power is morphing into an evil empire of its own.

Where to begin on America the horrible? Start with it tearing up the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty to install a national missile defense system, recreating a new cold war with China as No. 1 enemy. North Korean "sunshine" detente is over. NDM only gives the United States an illusion of invulnerability in a world it makes more dangerous.

World trade negotiations were wrecked by U.S. self-interest. Not a cent has been paid of the U.S. promised US$600 million for third world debt-relief. While U.S. wealth soared in the last decade, only 20 percent of its citizens gained but his budget includes a $1.6 trillion tax cut, most for the richest.

The toxic Texan (he left behind the filthiest state) denies global warming and urges oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Arctic Refuge. He even abolished regulations limiting arsenic in drinking water and cut black-lung benefits. This richest nation on earth will never lead a redistributive global politics while so unconcerned about third world poverty among its own. No, there is no lack of material for a thoroughly satisfying rant.

It was at a press conference an insulting half an hour before meeting German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder that Bush spoke his heart on the Kyoto climate change treaty. Those words will become a classic clip, pursuing him through eternity. It was the way he thumped the podium and smirked as he said it, (even this was inarticulate): "We will not do anything that harms our economy, because first things first are the people who live in America." There we have it. Screw the world, Americans always come first.

In the past presidents always gave Americans a self-image that was noble, a global purpose in the vanguard of democracy, spiritually still a young revolutionary state, with quotes aplenty. That raw energy and self-belief has always thrilled and mesmerized outsiders.

Whatever hot debates about America's true intentions (selfishness lurks beneath altruism in all international horse- trading), the country always had a fine story to tell itself about its mission. Late and reluctant into two world wars, the star-spangled cavalry did arrive at last. Delinquent or deluded in Vietnam, there was a fight to be had for freedom against Ho Chi Minh's communist invaders, a good story to be told.

In Kosovo the zero-body bag cowardice of fighting from too high to hit the targets was matched by the nobility of fighting at all in a place so far from Kalamazoo. American huddled masses yearning to breathe free always needed the Hollywood version of their politics and quite rightly so. Who can bear to be bad? So the brazen nudity of Bush's words must have shocked millions of Americans from coast to coast -- and in that is the best hope of better to come.

The global response was instant and visceral. Blistering editorials poured out of the press from Brazil to Belgium, Tokyo to Turin. Politicians were barely more controlled. Some 45 editorials across American newspapers condemned their president. Our own John Prescott said: "The United States cannot sit in glorious isolation ... It must know it cannot pollute the world while free-riding on action by everyone else." What next? Attack!

Boycott Gallo wines, McDonald's, Texaco and Exxon-Mobil. Why not? It may satisfy revenge, it may even deliver a jolt or two, but as official policy this is as unlikely to change hearts and minds in the evil empire as futile gesturing was against the USSR in cold war days.

One way or another the United States has to be persuaded to take global warming seriously. The fierce argument among Kyoto signatories is how to do it. The United States agreed (but never ratified) cutting emissions by 7 percent from its 1990 levels, by 2010. Due to Clinton's self-destruction and his "third way" ducking of anything difficult when faced with republican obstruction, that commitment is now effectively impossible.

The U.S. boom means it would now take a 30 percent cut to hit the target. Cheap fuel is designed into America's unimaginably vast prairies of suburbia without buses or town centers. True, the fashion for four-wheel drive monsters has eaten up all technological gains in fuel efficiency.

True, that $1.6 trillion tax cut should go on public transport and clean energy, but only a cultural revolution could deliver a one third reduction now.

Since a quarter of the world's carbon output is here, letting America progress at a slower pace makes sense. Blame is satisfying, but survival depends on results.

It was the detail of this debate that made Prescott storm out of the stalled Hague negotiations in November. He said realism required letting the U.S. cheat a bit by buying spare emissions from Russia and planting forests. Greens said their calculations showed this meant th e U.S. need make no other effort at all to change its ways.

But getting Americans to accept the idea of fundamental change is the crucial first step. The world needs a 60 percent cut within 50-100 years and the crunch will come. If Kyoto progresses to ratification by all the other countries, the hope is that the United States will want to join a carbon emissions trading bloc.

The threat of trade tariffs against U.S. goods to balance their unfair lack of pollution control was posed by the EU environment commissioner: "Why should the U.S. play by other rules than European companies?"

With all eyes fixed on U.S. public opinion, some polls find 75 percent "very concerned", but Californian black-outs make energy shortages hotter news. Democrats and some Republicans think Bush has made a bad political mistake: his mangled words will have to be eaten soon.

For the rest of the world, how much threat and fury, how much backroom dealing it will take to reel the rogue state back in, is a delicate calculation: there must be no further splits.

Good, bad or ugly, saving the world without America may not be impossible, just exceedingly unlikely.

-- Guardian News Service