Here's something I want to share and think about...
...you know, sometimes I'm thinking whether Bush and Blair are doing a Galileo or Columbus (the world is round) wherein everybody thinks their nuts, but in fact they aren't or are these two gentlemen doing a Quixote...
Goodbye To All That
How Long Will America's Allies Put Up With Bush's Behavior?
John Prados is a senior analyst with the National Security Archive in Washington, DC. His current book is Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby.
The present course of the Bush administration quite plainly threatens regime change. Not changes in Iraq's regime, although American military power may well bring that about, but a transformation of the entire pattern of the United States' relationships with the world. Americans have long been taught that international alliances and cooperation form the bedrock of our standing in the modern world. Global economics depends on that kind of cooperation; global politics builds on it. Talking about the United States as a "hyperpower" obscures the fact that we exist within an international system. That system required decades to craft, but now finds itself under threat after only two short years of the Bush administration. The juxtaposition of the current war on terrorism with a near-certain conflict in Iraq throws these developments into sharp relief. Americans need to pay attention to Bush administration demands on the international system, as these strains are triggering subtle changes that are not in our best interests.
Americans need to pay attention to Bush administration demands on the international system.
We learned this lesson once before, in the inter-war era of the twentieth century, the time between the end of one world war and the onset of a second, when the failure of international collective action (then expressed in the League of Nations) enabled an enormously destructive new war to occur. At the urging of isolationist leaders, the United States had not joined the League of Nations. During the heat of World War II, four months before the Pearl Harbor attack, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt held a conference with British leader Sir Winston Churchill aboard a British warship anchored at Placentia Bay in Canada. That August 1941 meeting adopted an "Atlantic Charter" that expressed principles -- such as self-determination and freedom from want -- to be upheld by collective action. These principles were invoked at the creation of the United Nations in 1945, and again by the foundation of the Atlantic alliance known as NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) five years later. Presidents from Truman to Kennedy worked to strengthen NATO, and Eisenhower tried to extend the structure by establishing similar alliances in regions across the globe, yet the core relationship has remained the one that spans the Atlantic.
The system has withstood shocks before. The Vietnam War proved divisive in many countries, and American rejection of its allies' advice put strains on the structure. The international financial chaos that resulted when Richard Nixon took the United States off the gold standard in 1972 typified another kind of strain, as did the conflicts of the late '80s and early '90s over global environmental standards (now enshrined in the Kyoto agreement). Not all strains have been products of U.S. action -- when the British and French invaded Egypt in 1956 (the Suez crisis), Atlantic allies were pressuring America to involve itself in their rear-guard colonial wars. But those tensions eventually eased, and the underlying web of mutual interests always pulled the allies back together. Optimists today argue that the same thing will happen again, that after a day or a year people and leaders will overcome their resentments.
Rather than defying the system on a single demand or issue, George W. Bush has shocked America's friends on multiple counts.
But today's situation is unprecedented, and possibly irreparable; one need only look to the Bush administration's foreign policy actions for glaring evidence. Rather than defying the system on a single demand or issue, George W. Bush has shocked America's friends on multiple counts. Bush's renunciation of the Kyoto standards, U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, and the administration's "unsigning" from the treaty establishing an international war crimes tribunal (actually illegal under applicable international law), plus its disputes over commodities and preferences within the World Trade Organization -- all these posed direct challenges to our global partners. Separately and together, these issues were sparking conflict before September 11, 2001. Politically, Bush actually profited from the 9/11 attacks, which diverted everyone's attention from the growing discord within NATO.
The Bush administration requires international cooperation to even hope for success in the terror war. But having pocketed alliance help in Afghanistan, in police actions, and in halting money-laundering efforts, the administration has left the allies to pick up the tab for rebuilding the demolished former Taliban seat while claiming the credit for itself. The United States has also snubbed alliance views on a constructive approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An Iraq war portends more of the same unilateralism -- a U.S. determination to go to war in spite of what allies think, and in spite of the costs that Bush's decisions in Washington will incur in Europe. Win or lose in Iraq, gasoline prices will rise in Copenhagen and Vienna, not merely in Cincinnati.
The looming question is, how long will America's allies put up with Bush's behavior? Europe -- and this is a hidden development -- is stronger and more united today than ever before, with increasing reason to resent American arrogance. A European political move to the right will be about building an autonomous superpower -- not about cooperating more fully with the United States. At the same time, another round of U.S. pocketing support then rejecting European concerns -- which looks likely if a "coalition of the willing" attacks Iraq -- will push our traditional alliance partners in the same direction. Meanwhile the issues in the European-American relationship that were masked by 9/11 have not disappeared; they are simply submerged at the moment. Those issues will resurface to disturb a harmonious alliance, and push our friends toward independence in the form of a United States of Europe. It's ironic that the net result of the Bush war could do more for European integration than decades of economic and political efforts; it will be doubly so if a strengthened Europe supplants a United States weakened by war and economic recession as the new world hyperpower.
