US weighs cost of lost friendships
By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Published: March 27 2003 19:36 | Last Updated: March 27 2003 19:36
While the US establishment remains fully confident of winning the war in Iraq, there is a growing perception that victory will come at the price of too many broken friendships.
Colin Powell, secretary of state and the most respected figure in the Bush administration, was given a sombre reception at a congressional budget committee this week.
"It is with deep sadness about our current world situation that I welcome you here," Jose Serrano remarked. Dropping his planned opening statement on Mr Powell's proposed budget, the Democrat plunged into his concerns about "strong anti-American feelings worldwide".
This week, Mr Powell has sought to address the Islamic world through interviews with several television networks, including al-Jazeera, despite its being criticised by the Bush administration for airing footage of US dead and prisoners. The US, Mr Powell said, did not want this war but it would free people from dictatorship and return their country to them with the help of the UN. "We have got to get that message out. We have got to do a better job of it," he said.
Some traditional allies were not on board, but new ones were, in a growing coalition that numbers 47 so far, Mr Powell said, admitting many were too small to deliver a military contribution.
No names were mentioned, but President George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing", which includes such far-away nations as Rwanda, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands (population: 65,000), has been openly derided by former senior diplomats.
In the corridors of the state department, the concept of reconstruction is often applied to how the US needs to rebuild vital but wrecked alliances, rather than the rebuilding of Iraq.
Perceptions of strategic partnerships have been stood on their heads in a matter of weeks. That other governments are more beholden to their public opinion than President George W. Bush, despite the controversy over his own election victory,was not appreciated in the White House, say US diplomats.
The country of greatest concern is not France or Germany, but Turkey and its new Islamic-oriented government, now led by prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The US, presenting its $75bn war budget, gave battered Turkish markets some relief this week with the surprise allocation of $1bn in grants for Ankara, despite its refusal to give access to US troops bound for northern Iraq.
Analysts in Washington have described the months of diplomatic efforts that led up to that rejection as a fiasco with far-reaching consequences. Some even fear that a rise in anti-American, Islamist sentiments in Turkey could even lead to the downfall of one of the region's few democratic states, should the military decide to step in again.
Members of Congress warned Mr Powell that he would need all his "persuasive powers" to get approval for that $1bn. Mr Powell replied that Turkey remained a "good friend" but also noted that the money might not be extended, depending on economic conditions.
Philip Gordon, analyst at Brookings Institution, noted that Turkey had been an "absolute strategic partner" for decades. "It would be a Pyrrhic victory indeed if we do finally manage to change the regime in Iraq, but the result of that is instability in northern Iraq and destabilisation in Turkey."
While Mr Powell, the most committed but outgunned multilateralist of the Bush administration, spoke positively of the future of US-Turkish ties, there was a sense of a deeper hurt in his comments on France and Germany.
As a former soldier who had guarded Germany's cold war frontier, he said Germany's refusal to support its old ally would not be soon forgotten.
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