Albright: U.S. Policies Divide Allies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:46 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says President Bush's foreign policy has driven away moderate Arab leaders and created the potential for a dangerous rift with European allies.
Albright, writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs quarterly, criticized Bush for, as she put it, using ``the shock of force'' rather than relying on alliances in ways that fundamentally depart from more than a half-century of U.S. foreign policy.
Albright, a Democrat who headed the State Department in the Clinton administration, said Bush was rejecting the advice even of his father, former President George H.W. Bush, that the United States should not go it alone in the fight against terrorism ``or in anything else, for that matter.''
She quoted the current president as declaring before going to war with Iraq that ``at some point we may be the only ones left. That's OK with me. We are America.''
White House officials had not yet read the article and declined to comment, spokesman Brian Besanceney said Wednesday night.
Albright said she would applaud Bush's ``admirable definition of spine in confronting those who threaten the safety of the American people ... if only those policies were safeguarding U.S. citizens more effectively.''
Specifically, she said the Bush administration's decision to shift its focus from opposing the al-Qaida terror network to invading Iraq and threatening military action against others caused popular support for the United States among Europeans to drop sharply.
The ouster of Saddam Hussein in Iraq has made the world a better place, Albright wrote, but it also cut into the support the administration needs to discredit and dismantle al-Qaida.
``The Iraq war and the subsequent U.S. occupation of Baghdad, the capital of Islam during that faith's golden age, have made more difficult the choice Islamic moderates and others around the world must make,'' Albright said.
Instead of asking them to oppose al-Qaida, Bush also asked for support for the invasion of an Arab country and endorsement of the doctrine of pre-emption, all in one package, she wrote.
Even more remarkable than Arab leaders deciding they did not want to be with the United States even though they opposed al-Qaida, she said, was the reaction among the closest U.S. friends in Europe.
Albright wrote that Washington initiated the war ``in a show of dominance prompted by a sense of vulnerability that most Europeans do not fully share.''
If former Vice President Al Gore had won the presidency in 2000, Albright said his administration would have concluded ``that a war against Iraq, while justifiable, was not essential in the short-term to protect U.S. security.'' |
