[Editorial] The U.S. rejects unilateralism

In the November 7 midterm elections, U.S. voters put a stop to the direction of government set by president George W. Bush and the Republican Party, which have ruled the United States for the past six years. The Democratic Party reclaimed its position as the majority party in the House of Representatives for the first time in 12 years, and perhaps gained control of the Senate, as well.

But more than being a victory for the Democrats, the election results were clearly a defeat for Bush and the Republicans. Inasmuch as the war in Iraq was a key issue of the election, the results can be interpreted as a clear rejection by U.S. voters of Bush’s foreign policy, which tried to build an order of unilateral world dominance through confrontation and intimidation.

Bush’s biggest political blunder was using the fear U.S. citizens experienced after the terrorism of September 11, 2001 to turn the U.S. too far to the right. He allowed neocons, best represented by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to have their way with affairs of state and the U.S. ignored moderate voices on the international stage. The war on terror was supposed to make the U.S. and the world safer, but now no one can deny that it has instead made the world more insecure. Destroying weapons of mass destruction and bringing democracy to a country that lacked it were the justifications given for invading Iraq, but the war has since become the U.S.’s quagmire. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died since the U.S. invasion, and religious strife threatens to tear the country apart.

The Bush administration also has responsibility to bear for weakening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and increasing the danger of a nuclear confrontation. Instead of resolving problems through dialogue and negotiation, its policy of pressure and confrontation has resulted in North Korea’s nuclear test and Iran’s nuclear program. As a result of its thoroughly coercive policy, no place is secure from terrorism - not the U.S. and Europe, which have experienced terrorist attacks, and neither Asia nor the Middle East, either.

U.S. citizens have now made it clear they believe the continuing chain of insecurity has to be severed. Bush needs to humbly accept this demand, because as the world’s only superpower, the U.S. has the greatest responsibility to bear for world peace and security, so the world will only be more secure when America stops being an exporter of fear and hate and becomes the defender of peace and coexistence.

The six-party talks that are about to begin again will be a test of whether U.S. foreign policy is truly going through any changes. North Korea tested a nuclear explosive device, but it continues to call for a non-nuclear Korean peninsula. The U.S. needs to do all that it can to make Pyongyang’s calls for denuclearization a reality, and one of the ways it needs to do that is to engage it in substantial bilateral talks.

The results of the election will also influence ongoing free-trade negotiations between the U.S. and South Korea. Democrats have tended to be strongly protectionist about U.S. commerce, so now that they are the majority in Congress, negotiations that were already difficult are probably going to become even harder. Considering that Korean society lacks a shared belief that the current negotiations are going in a direction that is truly in the country’s national interest, there should be no reason for the government to be overly obsessed with the singular goal of arriving at an agreement. Seoul needs to approach the issue with the mindset that, if need be, the process can be started all over again.

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