>February 25, 2003
>
>Threats, Promises and Lies
>
>By PAUL KRUGMAN
>
> So it seems that Turkey wasn't really haggling about the price, it
>just wouldn't accept payment by check or credit card. In return for
>support of an Iraq invasion,
> Turkey wanted — and got — immediate aid, cash on the barrelhead,
>rather than mere assurances about future help. You'd almost think
>President Bush had a
>credibility problem.
>
>And he does.
>
>The funny thing is that this administration sets great store by
>credibility. As the justifications for invading Iraq come and go —
>Saddam is developing nuclear weapons; no, but he's in league with Osama;
>no, but he's really evil — the case for war has come increasingly to
>rest on credibility. You see, say the hawks, we've already put our
>soldiers in position, so we must attack or the world won't take us
>seriously.
>
>But credibility isn't just about punishing people who cross you. It's
>also about honoring promises, and telling the truth. And those are areas
>where the Bush
>administration has problems.
>
>Consider the astonishing fact that Vicente Fox, president of Mexico,
>appears unwilling to cast his U.N. Security Council vote in America's
>favor. Given Mexico's
>close economic ties to the United States, and Mr. Fox's onetime personal
>relationship with Mr. Bush, Mexico should have been more or less
>automatically in
>America's column. But the Mexican president feels betrayed. He took the
>politically risky step of aligning himself closely with Mr. Bush — a
>boost to Republican
>efforts to woo Hispanic voters — in return for promised reforms that
>would legalize the status of undocumented immigrants. The administration
>never acted on those
>reforms, and Mr. Fox is in no mood to do Mr. Bush any more favors.
>
>Mr. Fox is not alone. In fact, I can't think of anyone other than the
>hard right and corporate lobbyists who has done a deal with Mr. Bush and
>not come away feeling
>betrayed. New York's elected representatives stood side by side with him
>a few days after Sept. 11 in return for a promise of generous aid. A few
>months later, as
>they started to question the administration's commitment, the budget
>director, Mitch Daniels, accused them of "money-grubbing games."
>Firefighters and policemen
>applauded Mr. Bush's promise, more than a year ago, of $3.5 billion for
>"first responders"; so far, not a penny has been delivered.
>
>These days, whenever Mr. Bush makes a promise — like his new program to
>fight AIDS in Africa — experienced Bushologists ask, "O.K., that's the
>bait, where's
>the switch?" (Answer: Much of the money will be diverted from other aid
>programs, such as malaria control.)
>
>Then there's the honesty thing.
>
>Mr. Bush's mendacity on economic matters was obvious even during the
>2000 election. But lately it has reached almost pathological levels.
>Last week Mr. Bush —
>who has been having a hard time getting reputable economists to endorse
>his economic plan — claimed an endorsement from the latest Blue Chip
>survey of business
>economists. "I don't know what he was citing," declared the puzzled
>author of that report, which said no such thing.
>
>What Americans may not fully appreciate is the extent to which similarly
>unfounded claims have, in the eyes of much of the world, discredited the
>administration's
>foreign policy. Whatever the real merits of the case against Iraq, again
>and again the administration has cited evidence that turns out to be
>misleading or worthless —
>"garbage after garbage after garbage," according to one U.N. official.
>
>Despite his decline in the polls, Mr. Bush hasn't fully exhausted his
>reservoir of trust in this country. People still remember the stirring
>image of the president standing
>amid the rubble of the World Trade Center, his arm around a fireman's
>shoulders — and our ever-deferential, protective media haven't said much
>about the broken
>promises that followed. But the rest of the world simply doesn't trust
>Mr. Bush either to honor his promises or to tell the truth.
>
>Can we run a foreign policy in the absence of trust? The administration
>apparently thinks it can use threats as a substitute. Officials have
>said that they expect
>undecided Security Council members to come around out of fear of being
>on the "wrong" side. And Mr. Bush may yet get the U.N. to acquiesce,
>grudgingly, in his
>war.
>
>But even if he does, we shouldn't delude ourselves: whatever credibility
>we may gain by invading Iraq is small recompense for the trust we have
>lost around the world.