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the goal of securing adequate supplies of energy did contribute to favoring work for a
Palestinian state. Many experts on the Middle East have maintained that Palestinian
independence would indeed contribute to political stability and the free flow of oil in that
region.
For the most part, the usual international cooperators favored Palestinian
statehood and U.S. even-handedness, as did people with more formal education, liberals,
and Democrats. But strong Republicans tended more often than others to call President
Bush’s endorsement of a Palestinian state “a good idea,” just as they tended to approve
all his other policies.
Support for the United Nations and International Institutions
During the 1990s, U.S. relations with the United Nations came under considerable
strain when prominent conservative Republicans expressed contempt for that
organization and when Senator Jesse Helms (R, NC), chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, blocked payment of U.S. dues to the UN until various U.S.-
imposed “reforms” were enacted. In the George W. Bush administration tensions
reemerged, particularly over the refusal of several nations in the UN Security Council
(including veto-bearing France, Russia and China) to authorize the U.S. / British invasion
of Iraq. President Bush declared that the Security Council was in danger of becoming
“irrelevant.” Administration officials resisted giving the UN a major role in the post-war
reconstruction of Iraq or the development of a new Iraqi government.
The U.S. public takes a different view. Ever since the closing years of World War
II, when the United States helped create a United Nations organization, most ordinary
Convention