Here we go...back to the policies of failure....
February 17, 2002
WHITE HOUSE MEMO
Allies Hear Sour Notes in 'Axis of Evil' Chorus
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 — As a
new and glaring rift emerges
between the White House and America's
allies over how to pursue the next phase of
the war on terrorism, something odd has
happened: President Bush and his top aides
now seem to welcome, even to egg on, the
sharp differences prompted by Mr. Bush's
determination to expand his battle against
what he calls "evil" regimes.
In private, his friends and closest aides
report, Mr. Bush fumes about weak-kneed
"European elites" and scared Arab leaders
who, in his view, lack the courage to stand
up to states that may one day provide
terrorists with nuclear or biological
weapons.
Today Mr. Bush departed for Asia saying
that the goal of his trip was to strengthen his
antiterrorism coalition. But it was telling that
even before Air Force One departed, the
South Korean press was filled with
denunciations of his inclusion of North
Korea as part of the "axis of evil," protesting
that Mr. Bush was undercutting years of diplomacy aimed at luring the
Stalinist North out of its frightfully armed shell with economic incentives.
In China, where Mr. Bush is making a delayed state visit, the country's
leadership has warned in the past few weeks of "serious consequences" if the
president takes military action against Iraq. Beijing has voiced worries about
a re-emergence of American unilateralism, which it thought had faded in the
months after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But in the last two weeks, Mr. Bush's strident tone has suggested just the
opposite. In appearances across the country, he has built on the "axis of evil"
phraseology of his State of the Union address, knowing full well that each
repetition irritates and divides the countries he once hailed as his great
coalition partners.
His national security aides — usually more attuned to how Mr. Bush's words
play Poland or Peru than Peoria — have begun to cite evidence that
Americans are behind the broader mission of rooting out rogue states
seeking weapons of mass destruction, even if the allies are not.
They compare Mr. Bush's mission to Ronald Reagan's single-minded goal of
ridding the world of Communism. They describe their boss as a man who
emerged from the first phase of the war more convinced than ever that the
United States alone has the power to complete its task, with the coalition if
possible — and without them if necessary.
It is an America-first position that Vice President Dick Cheney voiced with
particular clarity on Friday to the Council on Foreign Relations.
"America has friends and allies in this cause, but only we can lead it," he said
in a ballroom filled with many of his old friends and former colleagues. "Only
we can rally the world in a task of this complexity against an enemy so
elusive and so resourceful. The United States and only the United States can
see this effort through to victory."
When America's allies have begged to differ in recent days, they have found
themselves engaged in open, public bickering with even with the most
diplomatic members of Mr. Bush's war council.
It started when France's foreign minister, Hubert Védrine, dismissed Mr.
Bush's approach to Iran, Iraq and North Korea as "simplistic," and
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell shot back that his French colleague was
"getting the vapors."
Then, all this week, there has been a far more telling war of words between
Mr. Powell and Christopher Patten, the European Union's foreign affairs
minister. Until a few days ago, he was a favorite of Washington
conservatives for the tough line he took against China while serving as
Britain's last governor general to Hong Kong.
When Mr. Patten started off the tiff by accusing Mr. Bush of taking an
"absolutist" approach to the world, Mr. Powell shot back that his old friend
deeply misunderstood and said, "I shall have a word with him, as they say in
Britain."
Before he had a chance, Mr. Patten published a lengthy rebuke of the
administration in The Financial Times, saying that American success in
Afghanistan had "reinforced some dangerous instincts," including the belief
that "the projection of military power is the only basis of true security," that
"the U.S. can rely only on itself," and that allies were "an optional extra."
He is hardly alone in that view. The German foreign minister, Joschka
Fischer, said this week that the Bush administration was treating coalition
partners like "satellites," a term clearly meant as a comparison to the old
Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc.
And then President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Bush's newest strategic
partner, weighed in with the observation that the members of the antiterror
coalition signed up to battle the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and "Iraq is not on
this list."
Even Canada — America's closest allies save for Britain — warned that any
effort by the United States to act unilaterally in the next phase of the war "will
go nowhere."
What makes these exchanges particularly notable, apart from their bluntness,
is the shift they reflect in foreign views of Mr. Bush — and Mr. Bush's
evolving views of his allies.
For the first nine months of his presidency, whenever Mr. Bush was tempted
to act on his own — dumping the Kyoto Protocol on global warming with
barely a warning to Japan or Europe, for example — he usually followed up
with an intensive round of fence-mending. By this summer, he was
moderating his language, paying off America's dues to the United Nations
and talking about the future of new partnerships.
Then came Sept. 11 and a new spirit of alliance. European and Asian leaders
said they thought they were seeing a George W. Bush emerge. This was a
president who invited foreign leaders to the Oval Office for long
conversations, who dialed around the globe the way his father once had,
whose go-it-alone tendencies were being sanded down by the realities of
operating in a complex world that provided many physical and financial
havens for terrorists.
Now, they fear, the old Mr. Bush may be re-emerging. The change in view
began with his decision to withdraw from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile
Treaty, but since Russia seemed to react mildly, so did Europe. It
accelerated when he declared that Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters were not
"prisoners of war." Then came the "axis of evil," a phrase that European and
Asian allies alike said dangerously lumped together three countries that pose
very different challenges.
What bothers the Europeans the most is not entirely clear: Mr. Bush's goals,
his missionary zeal, or the thought that Washington sees its role as wiping out
bad governments and the allies' role as one of cleaning up with aid and
peacekeepers.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage has little patience for that
kind of hand-wringing. "It's very hard to attack something like `axis of evil,' "
he said, "because Mr. Bush was not talking about people, but about
regimes."
At the core of the debate lies a deeper question about American foreign
policy that now bedevils Mr. Bush and his aides: is America stronger when it
acts in an unfettered manner and defends its national interests directly, or
when it acts with allies whose interests may frustrate Washington's goals?
Bush will go it alone real soon....and his party of warmongers and spendaholics will fail in the fall....or fall in the fall, whichever you prefer.
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