Talk:Foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration
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[edit] Foreign Policy and other Criticisms
For the George W. Bush entry, I added Treaty Withdrawals to the Foreign Policy section, and mostly just listed the main points here, because only a few treaties are mentioned. It's really late at night and I don't want to dig through textbooks and class notes, but there is a lot to be said briefly in this and that section. Thus, I edited the very end of this article, the Foreign aid component.
Would people with political science / international relations knowledge and referencing please help me to reform parts of these 2 articles, and make any other notes of what might need expanding upon. Thanks. ---Soorej 2:48, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
TimShell has argued on the Talk:Domestic_policy_of_the_George_W._Bush_administration page that international trade polcies, currently in the economic subsection of the domestic policy section, belong in the foreign policy section. Would people be accepting of making a new section for international trade here? Kevin Baas | talk 15:07, 2004 Sep 12 (UTC)
POV Commentary
The article reads: Bush's decision to impose a tariff on imported steel, and to withdraw from global initiatives such as the Kyoto Protocol, the ABM Treaty, and an international land mine treaty, has been argued as evidence that he and his administration have a policy of acting unilaterally in international affairs.
According to the Constitution, no treaty not ratified by the US Senate has the force of law, so it is impossible to "withdraw" from the Kyoto protocol regardless of the Clinton Administration's apparent desire to have the treaty ratified. It was signed by the executive at the time, but never ratified, so "withdrawal" really isn't an accurate description. It was never in force.
To characterize not adhering to a signed, but unratified treaty as engaging in "unilateral action" feels pretty editorial. A better discussion of the ABM treaty, Kyoto and the land mine treaty leaving the reader to come to his own conclusions might be more appropriate.
- The point of "unilateral" is that he acts as if noone else exists; he ignores the objection, argumentation, reasoning, grievances, etc. of other nations. He even completly disregards their decisions; their legal resolutions. He is simply uncooperative to the extent of no cooperation at all. This is the reason for the term "unilateral" - it's actually much softer on bush than the much more taboo word "uncooperative", which in many ways is more appropriate. Using the word "unilateral" is being nice. He is certainly "acting alone". Is that not what unilateral action means?
- (Oh, and FWIW, regarding clinton environmental initiatives and bush: bush indefinetly halted _ALL_ of clinton's environmental initiatives immediately upon taking office -Bush is the first president in u.s. history to do this.)
- I think "withdrawal" is pretty clear, given, as you discribed, as we were interested, and now we are withdrawing. If it was ratified, it could not be "withdrawn" from - either it would expire or a new law would supercede it. Kevin Baas | talk 13:58, 2004 Sep 29 (UTC)
- On the contrary, once a treaty is ratified, a state can withdraw from it. Case in point, the N. Korean withdrawal from the NPT. This depends on the text of the treaties, but it can be done. The US did not withdraw from the treaties listed--congress did not ratify them and Bush did not give them his support. Withdrawal is not an accurate term here. It needs to be clarified that the US congress refused to ratify them with no objections from the executive. The term unilateral is a term that pundits love to throw around these days to make the US look bad, as exemplified by the pretty obviously anti-Bush ranting 3 comments up from me. "Unilateral" has no implications whatsoever about the feelings or grievences of other countries. Moreover, in an international context, who cares about the legal resolution of other nations. No nation rules the world, hence acting against another nation's laws doesn't mean we're "unilateral"--last time I checked, congress made my laws, not Ghana. If you want to debate the "unilateral" decision to withdraw from a treaty, we can. What other kind of decision can be made? Shall we make a multilateral decision to not ratify a treaty--how would that work? The word is redundant here. Moreover, to imply that the refusal of CONGRESS to ratify treaties gives Bush a "unilateral" foreign policy is ridiculous. Here you should cite actions taken by the executive without the support or consultation of foreign nations. They are two totally separate things. I think that some of you need to do a bit of reading on international relations and law before you make Wikipedia a place to rant about your political leanings--it makes it a much less reputable resource.
I think there should be something here about relations with Canada
SD6-Agent 23:54, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Intro
Is there any way that the intro can be cut to a few hundred words? As it is, one has to scroll down a ways to get to the table of contents. Rkevins82 00:02, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Madaline Albright commentary
This is pretty good, from the previous administration's last Secretary of State. --James S. 00:52, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Hamas and Hezbollah
These groups should be mentioned in the article if it is to be legitimate. From the ones I have seen Bush's subpages are still "immature". They are intended to go into more depth than his main page but some do not mention things covered in decent detail in the main article. His main article and articles about related events and issues beyond that concern Bush tend to be more complete. Minutiaman 22:32, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
- The 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict is not mentioned at all which is a major oversight. Arniep 16:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Bit of a weasel word on Iran
Please see if we can state sources, like "many experts, including Lorem Ipsum, believe that Iran is ..." Thanks, 66.215.99.224 00:28, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
