NEWS ANALYSIS : U.N. Can Now Become the Catalyst for ‘New World Order,’ Bush Says

As President Bush sees it, the collapse of communism gives the world its third chance of this century to create an international order governed by reason and the rule of law. But he realizes that the ethnic hatreds that spoiled the first two opportunities also have re-emerged.

In a 23-minute speech to the General Assembly on Monday, Bush called on the United Nations to revive the idealism of its creators who envisioned a Utopian world parliament. After 45 years as a Cold War debating society, he said, the United Nations at last has a chance to become a place where governments can settle their differences peacefully instead of on the battlefield.

“Where institutions of freedom have lain dormant, the United Nations can offer them new life,” Bush said. “These institutions play a crucial role in our quest for a ‘new world order,’ an order in which no nation must surrender one iota of its own sovereignty; an order characterized by the rule of law rather than the resort to force; the cooperative settlement of disputes, rather than anarchy and bloodshed, and an unstinting belief in human rights.”

It was Bush’s most detailed outline of the meaning of the “new world order,” a phrase that has dotted his speeches for more than a year. What he described Monday was an updated version of the hopes expressed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1918 and by President Harry S. Truman in 1945--when the League of Nations and the United Nations, respectively, were created.

Later, in a luncheon toast to retiring Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, Bush said that the ideological rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union had “dominated many of the debates here and, indeed, poisoned the international arena” for the last 45 years.

“But the passing of this rivalry has enabled the U.N. to assume its proper role in the world stage--that was the role that was envisioned . . . by its founders,” he said.

It was, in many ways, an astonishing change in American policy toward the United Nations. For years, U.S. delegates complained that the U.N. deck was stacked against the United States with a proliferation of Third World nations sniping at American interests.

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the U.N. ambassador during the Reagan Administration, repeatedly complained about anti-American sentiment. She once said that representing the United States at the United Nations was like wearing a sign that said “kick me.”

Bush was the U.S. envoy at the United Nations 20 years ago and must have shared Kirkpatrick’s frustration. But since the Security Council authorized the use of military force to reverse Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, U.S. attitudes toward the world body have changed. Bush said Monday that the U.N. stand against Iraq was “one of its finest moments.”

Although Bush said at the outset of his speech that he would not “dwell on the superpower competition that defined international politics for half a century,” in reality, he did little else.

At least since the late 1940s, when Communist regimes seized control of most of Eastern Europe, communism had disrupted the normal flow of history, Bush said. Now history is ready to revive, he said, but the revival brings back the sort of ethnic and nationalist hatreds that once were hidden behind the ideological disputes of the Cold War.

“Communism held history captive for years,” Bush said. “It suspended ancient disputes, and it suppressed ethnic rivalries, nationalist aspirations and old prejudices. As it has dissolved, (the) suspended hatreds have sprung to life.”

Clearly, Bush does not advocate a revival of communism as a counterbalance to ethnic disputes. He hopes that the United Nations can fill that role, although he admits there is no guarantee that it can. And he admits that he has no other sure-fire substitute.

“In Europe and Asia, nationalist passions have flared anew, challenging borders, straining the fabric of international society,” he said. “Around the world, many age-old conflicts still fester. . . . And, although we now seem mercifully liberated from the fear of nuclear holocaust, these smaller, virulent conflicts should trouble us all.

“No one here can promise that today’s borders will remain fixed for all time,” Bush said. “But we must strive to ensure the peaceful, negotiated settlement of border disputes.”

In a direct challenge to the 166 members of the United Nations, Bush said: “We can build a future more satisfying than any our world has ever known. . . . We can choose the kind of world we want, one blistered by the fires of war and subjected to the whims of coercion and chance, or one made more peaceful by reflection and choice.

“Take this challenge seriously.”