Opinion: Kofi Annan and the Truman Connection
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On Monday, twenty days before leaving his post as U.N. secretary general, Kofi Annan gave his final major speech at the Truman Presidential Museum and Library, blending blunt (for Annan) criticism of U.S. foreign policy with high praise of American democracy. He quoted President Truman several times:
‘The U.S. has given the world an example of a democracy in which everyone, including the most powerful, is subject to legal restraint. Its current moment of world supremacy gives it a priceless opportunity to entrench the same principles at the global level. As Harry Truman said, ‘We all have to recognize, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please.’’
President Bush has acted on that moment of world supremacy with more ‘license’ than Annan might have liked (two years ago Annan declared the Iraq invasion ‘illegal’). Annan might also take issue with Bush’s claim to the Truman legacy.
At West Point’s graduation ceremony in May, Bush praised Truman’s bold moves against new threats and his reframing of old alliances:
‘President Truman set a clear doctrine.... He told the Congress, ‘It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.’’
So who is Truman’s rightful heir? It’s a tough call. Truman had high hopes for the United Nations even though he was not the liberal idealist Woodrow Wilson was. Truman put U.S. troops under U.N. auspices in the Korean War, but he also acted unilaterally when he thought necessary. He restructured the American security apparatus for a new threat but he also avoided preventive war, opting instead for containment, the practical application of which led to the Vietnam War that is so often compared to Iraq.
And finally, in the speech Bush cites above, Truman continued, ‘I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political process.’ You can also find that excerpt in a speech by Ronald Reagan, addressing Congress on the topic of Central America in 1983.
In other words, Truman’s is a complicated legacy indeed. For the curious, the Truman library has all of Truman’s U.N.-related documents here.