Bush's Asia Tour: America's New Bush-League Diplomacy

U.S. President George W. Bush's recent tour of Japan, Korea and China served to highlight both the sheer hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy and the opposition that is emerging to that policy around the world.

In Seoul, South Korea, where he was greeted by thousands of protesters demanding that the U.S. get out of Korea, Bush railed against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) which he has labelled part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq. He claimed that North Korea is developing and selling weapons of mass destruction and is therefore a threat to the peace and security of Asia. Yet his own country spends more on weapons of mass destruction that all other countries in the world combined, is the largest arms merchant in the world and has hundreds of nuclear missiles stationed in South Korea which are aimed at the North. The United States has also systematically frustrated every effort of the two governments of Korea to work out their differences and reunite their country, because if they succeed the U.S. will be forced to remove its troops and nuclear missiles from the Korean peninsula.

In China, Bush chided the Chinese government for purportedly selling weapons and dual-use missile-related components to North Korea and Iran and suggested that China should get serious about negotiating a deal on arms proliferation. China's President Jiang Zemin suggested, in return, that the U.S. should stop its arming of Taiwan. He could also have pointed out the hypocrisy of Bush demanding an arms proliferation treaty from China only weeks after he had torn up the anti-ballistic missile treaty and when he is refusing to recognize the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.