ROAD TO WAR
Already, there have been casualties
By Ray Moseley
The Chicago Tribune
Published March 2, 2003
So far the march toward war against Iraq has threatened to destroy NATO and the European Union, turned America and its cheese-eating and pilsner-swilling erstwhile friends in France and Germany against each other, reawakened doubts about the effectiveness of the United Nations, fed anti-Americanism around the world, stalled any hopes for an early stock market recovery, exacerbated a monumental Christian-Muslim world divide, threatened to bring about regime change in Britain, left an almost-forgotten Osama bin Laden sitting pretty and heightened Americans' fears of terrorist attack.
Not to mention, of course, that it has pitted Hollywood against Washington, a case of two superpowers vying for the American soul. It may seem there are only two ways out of this situation: (a) call the whole thing off before matters get even worse, or (b) get on with the war as rapidly as possible on the assumption that only a war at this stage can sort things out.
In fact, the first option is not a real option, as it would give an unacceptable victory to Saddam Hussein and make the split among the Western allies almost irreparable. That doesn't make the second option necessarily more palatable to those who wonder how we slipped into this mess in the first place.
Some of the problems that have arisen were unavoidable, but in most cases no hindsight is required; the warning signs were there from the beginning and were ignored. And there is room for blame all around.
Any assessment of blame has to begin with the neo-conservatives of the Bush administration--it will be their war, after all--and with their novel approach to foreign policy.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice encapsulated that vision in an article she wrote for Foreign Affairs quarterly just before President Bush's inauguration, when she said the United States would pursue foreign policy in its own national interest, and any corollary benefits for the rest of the world would be incidental.
That represented a more radical departure from traditional U.S. foreign policy than many people recognized at the time. It was a benchmark for unilateralism after more than a half-century in which the United States locked itself in a web of mutually beneficial alliances with key nations around the globe that promoted stability in a dangerous world.
The long-standing policy had its failings, mainly arising from an exaggerated perception of the Soviet threat to the world, but by and large it represented the most enlightened approach any great power has taken in the history of statecraft. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the neo-conservatives saw the approach as passe.
In their view, the United States had a mission to expand its influence, an inescapable reality of American history, in the words of the chief ideologue of this thinking, historian Robert Kagan.
He has coupled that with an implied suggestion that what is good for America, or more precisely, what Americans assume is good for America, is good for the world. In short, America's role is to remake the world in its own image, according to its own principles, even if that means acting without regard to international opinion or the historical factors that have shaped different perspectives among other people. This is so, according to Kagan, because American ideals and principles are unquestionably superior to those of the rest of the world.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a nation acting in what it perceives to be its self-interest. All nations do it.
But the messianic vision of the Bushites goes beyond that in the breadth of its hubristic arrogance, based on the premise that the United States is powerful enough to do what it likes and is a unique nation with a unique understanding of what is best for all of humankind.
Contempt for others
That mind-set led the new administration, just before and after Sept. 11, 2001, to demonstrate its contempt for the opinions of others by a number of actions, such as tearing up treaties to which the U.S. had committed itself.
Then it began plotting a war without bothering to lay the foundations of international support, either through diplomacy or an attempt to influence public opinion abroad. It moved late toward a resumption of multilateralism of sorts.
As a consequence, what once would have seemed crude caricatures of the United States take on grim reality for those abroad. Americans may decry their leader being called a cowboy president, but when he resorts to gunslinger rhetoric--"We will hunt 'em down, smoke 'em out"-- that is precisely the image the rest of the world sees and draws back from in distaste.
Contrast Bush's language with the wartime rhetoric of Franklin Roosevelt or Winston Churchill and it is easy to see why Bush comes across, outside the U.S., as hellbent on war and dismissive of the cost in lives.
Or take the example of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld scorning Germany and France as "old Europe" because of their reluctance to endorse war. When the shooting is over in Iraq, the cost of running and rebuilding the country will run into the billions of dollars, which the U.S. cannot meet alone.
But how many countries subjected to official U.S. abuse will be willing to share the burden?
Some of the lesser but still influential voices from the Bush administration are even more repugnant to those outside the United States. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum, for example, advocates the United States establishing something akin to the old Ottoman Empire in the Middle East.
Then there is the Defense Policy Board chairman, Richard Perle, who says that Israel has a "legitimate and noble" claim to land held by Palestinians.
Rhetorical flourishes aside, the administration may have a case for going to war but it has failed to make the case because it prefers blind acceptance to diplomatic persuasion.
Emphasis is wrong
The best case rests on emphasizing the need to replace a tyrant who has brutalized his people and been responsible for millions of deaths. The weaker case, which the Bush administration has relied upon most heavily, rests on the issue of weapons of mass destruction, which probably can be contained by a permanent inspections program.
Beyond that, many outside the United States question the administration's choice of priorities.
Hussein has to go sooner or later, but is that more important than making sure Osama bin Laden goes now? More important than settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a root cause of anti-Americanism in the Middle East?
The resentment that the administration has engendered abroad is understandable to a point. It is not primarily based, as some Americans like to believe, on envy of U.S. power. In the case of Germany and France, it has gone beyond all bounds of reasonableness; extremism on one side of the Atlantic has given rise to extremism on the other.
French President Jacques Chirac in particular has, along with Rumsfeld, acted to undermine the European Union, the institution on which the stability of Europe rests. He has tried to bully the Eastern European states into accepting his view on Iraq, using language that is grotesquely insulting, and he and German leader Gerhard Schroeder have played with fire in their treatment of another vital Western institution, NATO.
If all this simply reflects European resentment at Washington's perceived highhandedness, it is a puerile reaction.
There is plenty of room for legitimate disagreement about the wisdom of going to war against Iraq, but little excuse for disagreement to take on the character of a schoolyard fight and to threaten alliances and institutions that are in the interest of all Western people.
Still, it was up to the promoters of this coming war to build support for it through careful diplomacy that considered differing national interests. They have proved to be a thorough and unrepentant failure at that, so how can anyone trust them to carry out the war and its aftermath effectively?
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A former Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent of long standing, Ray Moseley now lives and writes in London.
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune
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