World View : Old Ways Falling but ‘New World Order’ Is Still Murky : Bush’s vision for global partnership has yet to catch on. The policy, critics say, is inconsistent and favors the United States.

President Bush heralded it as the shape of things to come. Soviet leaders have adopted it. Think tanks and academics on six continents are churning out papers about it.

And worldwide, the phrase has raised expectations that behind the uncertainty and disorder produced by an astonishing pace of global change are a vision and a set of principles directing its course.

But almost a year after it became a catch phrase to describe the post-Cold War era, the “new world order” is adrift.

Since the denouement in the Persian Gulf, the urgency has fizzled. The Bush Administration has retreated from pronouncing guidelines comparable to the 1947 Truman Doctrine that shaped four decades of Cold War--or even referring to the “new world order” in major foreign policy speeches.

“I told you more than I know about it,” joked National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft in an interview at the White House. Scowcroft crafted the phrase during an afternoon of fishing with Bush in the opening weeks of the Gulf crisis.

He then added seriously: “I think you’re putting too much specificity into it. It is not a specific road map with intersections and left turns and right turns and ups and downs and so on.

“It is the notion of a new opportunity that’s opening up with the ending of the East-West confrontation and how . . . the United States and its allies and friends can take advantage of it to improve the way the international order works.

“We’ve a chance to implement some of our ideals that we didn’t before. But it’s a general kind of thing . . . not specific rules. . . . (It’s) a descriptive phrase of what might be possible in dealing with crises, absent the East-West confrontation, which has frozen for 40 years the way crises have to be dealt with.”

Yet, on issues of collective security, democracy, arms proliferation and self-determination, the formulation of the new order’s ground rules is largely reactive to unfolding events--and crises--rather than proactive in shaping their direction, foreign policy analysts and even U.S. allies contend.

“In general, one can only be impressed negatively by the grand vision that was displayed in assembling the coalition and immobilizing Iraqi aggression when it is compared with the lack of vision that has been demonstrated in the post-crisis period,” said Augustus Richard Norton, a fellow at New York’s International Peace Academy.

“What’s lacking now precisely is a vision or the big horizon,” Norton added. “We’re caught in an incremental game. We’re involved with textual questions instead of big principles.”

The lack of coordinated strategic planning--by the United States, its allies or even its former enemies--means the new order may emerge by accident rather than design.

“I think these people (in the Bush Administration) are doing a very bad job,” reflected Paul H. Nitze, the octogenarian foreign-affairs guru who was an architect of the Truman Doctrine. “They don’t have a sense of strategy. They can’t go beyond the phrase. . . . There is going to be a new world order, whether we do anything about it or not.”

The concept has even generated tension within the Administration. “We never used ‘new world order’ at the State Department. It’s a buzzword for nothing,” said a miffed U.S. official involved in strategic planning. “I don’t feel a necessity to explain it. I don’t know what it is.”

Administration officials point to Bush’s address to the U.N. General Assembly last October as the definitive outline of his new world order. He described its cornerstone as “a new partnership of nations . . . based on consultation, cooperation, and collective action . . . supported by an equitable sharing of both cost and commitment.”

Yet, since the Gulf War ended, the partnership has been acknowledged only after the fact--or ignored.

When 200,000 Kurds fled northern Iraq, U.S. forces unilaterally launched Operation Provide Comfort with encouragement from European members of the larger Gulf coalition. A month later, the United Nations was brought in--and asked to take over.

On subsequent Arab-Israeli peace efforts, the Administration has proposed that the United Nations have only a single observer at talks despite Arab requests for full U.N. sponsorship.

And in Ethiopia, U.S. envoys unilaterally mediated a formal end to the 30-year civil war, Africa’s longest conflict, and, with Israel, the exodus from Addis Ababa of 14,000 Ethiopian Jews, sometimes called Falashas.

“Had we taken it to the U.N. Security Council, had we had a debate, had we sent out a fact-finding mission and so on, the Falashas may or may not have gotten out, there may or may not have been a civil war over Addis and so on,” Scowcroft said.

That stance means, however, that using the partnership is “selective,” a senior Administration official conceded. “It depends on the issue.”

Scowcroft explained: “There are some issues that are more suited for collective security. And I don’t like that term. I would rather look at it as the mobilizing of the international community against the violation of certain principles.”

But he admitted that those principles are, as yet, “not all that clear. That’s why to do that sort of thing . . . requires leadership. And right now, for big enterprises, the United States is the only one that can provide leadership.”

U.S. allies, however, are increasingly concerned that the new world order, in practice, means anything but a partnership.

“It raises problems,” said a leading European envoy. “Who is going to define it? Only the United States? Only for the United States? Only those with the United States? Or will it be defined jointly by many countries?”

Added another European diplomat: “I suspect it means an American world order.”

Several envoys in Washington expressed frustration over the lack of dialogue by the United States with its allies on the new order or U.S. intentions. Some complained that the new world order appears to be invoked only when it is expedient or useful for Washington in dealing with regional crises.

“A nation that requires billions from other nations to finance a war with a developing country cannot expect to impose its own order on the globe,” wrote K. Subrahmanyam, chairman of the U.N. Study Group on Nuclear Deterrence, in a special issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on the new world order.

“A new order has to involve not only the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council but also Japan, Germany and large developing nations such as India, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria and Pakistan. So far, no consultation has been initiated on the issue.”

Added New York University historian Marilyn B. Young: “The phrase has a kind of imperial ambition built into the language that should make everyone uneasy.”

A poll conducted in March by the nonpartisan Americans Talk Issues Foundation indicated that Americans are also wary of a U.S.-dominated new world order. The survey found that only 46% of Americans think their nation should take a lead militarily while 86% believe the United Nations should play an expanded role in the new world order.

The Administration does not want to be “a world policeman,” Scowcroft countered. “Even if we wanted to, nobody would want us to be. But the world or the responsible members of the international community are not self-mobilizing, and so one of the things we can do . . . is to provide the kind of leadership, the motivation, the inducement to get together.”

The new world order is supposed to be about more than just collective security. In his U.N. address, Bush also called for “a partnership whose goals are to increase democracy, increase prosperity, increase the peace and reduce arms.”

On those issues, however, the U.S. record is even spottier, U.S. analysts say.

* On democracy, the Administration’s new order is weaker than the Reagan doctrine, which promoted democracy in right-wing Chile as well as leftist Nicaragua. That may be, in part, because the phrase new world order was born out of a war to restore the Sabah dynasty in Kuwait.

But foreign policy experts say the Gulf is only a microcosm of a broader trend. Two years after revolutionary upheavals swept socialism out of Eastern Europe--and more recently out of Third World countries such as Ethiopia, Mozambique and Nicaragua--many of the last holdouts on democracy are conservative or rightist U.S. allies.

“We’re not moving in areas where there are patent opportunities to move toward political liberalization, specifically the Arab world,” said Norton.

Most notable are the Gulf monarchies. Kuwait’s imposition of martial law, the delay of elections until late 1992, deportations and the judicial harshness and lack of due process in current collaborator trials have frustrated and embarrassed the Administration. But it still refuses to publicly criticize the ruling Sabah family.

At Senate hearings this month, Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) charged: “Down in Kuwait . . . the torture and rape of Saddam (Hussein) continues under the emir.” Secretary of State James A. Baker III conceded only that Kuwait’s “may not be the optimum type of regime.”

In private, U.S. officials say the Administration does not intend to insist that any Gulf state hold elections that might jeopardize a monarch’s control. Pressure is limited to gentle, back-channel diplomacy on milder reforms.

* On arms proliferation, the Administration has been particularly erratic, foreign policy analysts contend.

Bush last month proposed an arms-control program for the Middle East to ban production of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction, to freeze sales or production of surface-to-surface missiles and to hold talks among the five major countries that supply 90% of Mideast arms--the United States, the Soviet Union, China, France and Britain.

Washington has also tried to pressure China, North Korea, Czechoslovakia and others to cease sales of arms, ranging from missiles to tanks, to the world’s most volatile region.

This month, however, U.S. officials announced plans for major new arms sales, including warplanes, attack helicopters, tanks and artillery, to five Mideast states. Although no figures were mentioned, estimates of the total value range from $18 billion to $24 billion.

The Administration claims that the sales represent “responsible” arms transfers.

“We never believed arms control can replace military strength in terms of creating stable force balances . . . that can protect our security and protect the peace,” Undersecretary of State Reginald Bartholomew said in Senate hearings. He said a total halt to arms sales “is not on.”

“It’s incredible hypocrisy,” Norton said. “Here the Americans have basically dumped on their own principles, on their own scheme to disarm the world.”

* On self-determination, the Administration is dealing with an explosive issue that could reshape the world map. But it is inconsistent in either honoring the territorial integrity of existing states or backing the dreams of nationalists seeking their own countries.

In Iraq, Washington supports territorial integrity over demands for self-determination by the Kurdish minority. In contrast, U.S. policy supports self-determination for the three Soviet Baltic states--even though Washington has accepted Moscow’s go-slow approach and has no policy on efforts by the 12 other Soviet republics to dismember the world’s most powerful remaining empire.

U.S. policy rejects self-determination for the Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia, threatening to cut off aid to the whole country if they secede. And it has no public position on French Quebec’s separatist efforts despite private hopes that Canada will hold together.

“It is not possible to set down a hard and fast rule of self-determination,” Scowcroft said. “Why? Because you can get down to a single village, a tribe. It has to stop at some point.

“By and large, we and I think our NATO friends and allies are opposed to the disintegration of states or the breakup of states. What we are really after is that any group of people who has a self-identity . . . ought to have the right to self-expression. It does not necessarily have to take the form of political independence.”

In Iraq, the preference for holding the country together is tied to fears that a change in the balance of power with the creation of new states “could induce enormous instabilities” in an already unstable region, Scowcroft said.

But U.S. policy on the world’s growing number of nationalist and separatist movements will be determined “flash point by flash point,” he added.

As a result of inconsistent or shortsighted policies, contended New York University’s Young, the new world order “is not new, it’s not about the world and it’s not orderly. . . . (It is) in pursuit of limited Realpolitik goals with no pretense to any moral imperative.”

Despite its current predominant position, the United States may not even be the major force in establishing the new order.

“The United States, particularly, is not very conceptual,” said John D. Steinbruner, director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. “It’s true of all administrations. It doesn’t settle matters of principle all that much. I do not expect that the United States is where we’ll find the vanguard.”

Nevertheless, Steinbruner, Norton and others have identified three principles that they see emerging to shape the new order.

* As the East-West divide is replaced by cooperative security arrangements, embodied in organizations such as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, confrontation has been replaced by engagement of existing and potential rivals. “It’s preventive medicine,” said Steinbruner. “It’s an entirely new concept.”

* Driven by the technology revolution and the globalization of business, economic integration is also bringing all countries into a single global system. The growing number of regional blocs could foster fierce new forms of competition. But Steinbruner predicted that, just as the Communist countries found they could not remain isolated from the world around them, neither will it be possible for regional blocs to survive without integrating themselves into a larger global system.

* Finally, the new world order has an implicit standardization of human rights while allowing for cultural diversity.

“That means that there are limits to what we can tell China to do, but it also says China can’t do things without international scrutiny,” Steinbruner said.

But the specifics of the new order may still be years away.

U.S. officials say more time is needed to formulate a new doctrine. “How long did it take for containment to take shape?” a State Department official asked rhetorically.

“In 1945, the seeds of the problem were visible, but we didn’t come up with the Truman Doctrine until 1947. And not until June, 1950, did (National Security Directive) 68 come out. These are the documents that laid out the parameters of U.S. national-security policy that lasted until 1989.”

“This is a decade-long process,” agreed Steinbruner. “Historians of the future will probably recognize this moment as a decade into (a new order.) The roots are now in the ground, and the sprouts are now coming up. Its form is not yet immediately recognizable to everyone. It’ll be another decade before it’s internalized and has an effect on policy.”

A New World Order in Theory and Practice

“We have a vision of a new partership of nations that transcends the Cold War: a partnership bases on consultation, cooperation and collective action, especially through international and regional organization; a partnership whose goals are to increase democracy, increase properity, increase the peace and reduce arms.”

--President Bush in October U.N. speech

COLLECTIVE SECURITY

In theory: U.S. supports an international “partnership” based on collective action.

In practice: Acts unilaterally or brings in the United Nations after the fact.

Example: Negotiates an end to Ethiopian crisis and mediates Arab-Israeli conflict alone. Brings in the United Nations only after intervention in northern Iraq.

DEMOCRACY

In theory: U.S. supports democracy worldwide.

In practice: Actively uses financial and political leverage to promote democracy in socialist states while tolerating slow or no change among conservative holdouts.

Examples: Active on Soviet change but slow on pushing Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other pro-U.S. or rightist regimes.

ARMS SALES

In theory: U.S. supports worldwide reduction of both conventional and unconventional arms, especially in world hot spots.

In practice: Is negotiating new arms sales.

Examples: Calls for an end to Czech, North Korean and Chinese arms sales to the Middle East, while proposing $18 billion in U.S. sales to the area.

SELF--DETERMINATION

In theory: U.S. supports self-determination.

In practice: in most flash points supports territorial integrity of existing states over nationalist movements’ dperaratist efforts.

Examples: Supports territorial integrity of Iraq and Yugoslavia over self determination for the Kurds, Croats and Slovenes.

The Press

No group has capitalized more on the seeming inconsistencies of President Bush’s “New World Order” than the political cartoonists of the global media. The Soviet news agency, Tass, once branded Western journalists as “pen gangsters,” and after viewing the cartoonists’ work, Bush might agree. A sampling of their work: