NYT must be trying to atone for something ... two decent op-ed pieces on the same day:
May 13, 2003
Europe Won't Be Fooled Again
By OLIVIER ROY
PARIS
After months of cold war with the United Nations, the United States put forth a draft resolution last week to give the international body oversight of efforts to rebuild Iraq. Although this might help the United Nations gain back some credibility, Washington's effort was clearly intended as a peace offering to its former "Old Europe" allies. While the offer is certainly genuine, it is unlikely to thaw relations with Russia, France, Germany and Turkey. The problem is that the Bush administration, while ostensibly trying to get its traditional friends on board, continues to dissemble about where the train is headed.
To understand the problem, one has to consider what the Europeans were presented with in the build-up to war. Beyond polemics and misgivings, the basic problem was that Washington's stated war goals were not logically coherent, and its more intellectually compelling arguments were usually played down or denied.
The official war objectives given to the allies were these: destruction of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction; fighting terrorism; getting rid of a tyrant. The Europeans responded that there were no operational weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that the inspections could have maintained the status quo at a lesser cost than a military campaign; Saddam Hussein was in no way integral to Al Qaeda, which had shifted to Pakistan (as shown by all the recent arrests); and, yes, Saddam Hussein was a bloody tyrant, but who decided not to finish him off in 1991?
For Old Europe, the poverty of the official American arguments gave rise to suspicion that there was a hidden agenda. European public opinion endorsed the idea that the war was about oil, a claim that fed into the good old anti-imperialist reflex from Cairo to Paris.
That oil argument was of course wrong. But that is not to say these Europeans were mistaken about the United States having a broader agenda. And, in fact, there had always been a not-so-hidden agenda, one explicitly expressed by many professional thinkers at the American Enterprise Institute, for example. The idea is that the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate is America's most worrisome foreign entanglement, and can be broken only if the overall existing order in the Middle East is shaken up first.
In this sense, the rationale for the military campaign in Iraq was not that Iraq was the biggest threat but, on the contrary, that it was the weakest and hence the easiest to take care of. The invasion was largely aimed at demonstrating America's political will and commitment to go to war. Reshaping the Middle East does not mean changing borders, but rather threatening existing regimes through military pressure and destabilizing them with calls for democratization.
After Baghdad's fall, Tehran, Damascus and Riyadh should understand that America is back. The Israelis, for their part, are now insisting that the Iranian nuclear program be dealt with immediately. Pentagon officials hint that Syria is the next target. The idea is to force Damascus and Tehran to cut off terrorist groups like Hezbollah, which means depriving both regimes of their ideological legitimacy, which in turn would weaken their grips on their populations. Is it simply a coincidence that the draft resolution on Iraq went to the Security Council just as Secretary of State Colin Powell was heading to Jerusalem?
This American agenda is very risky and full of pitfalls, but it is logical, perhaps laudable, and should have been put on the table. At least then the real issues could have been debated.
The problem is that no American official ever bothered to express the real motivation to the usual allies. One reason for this partial disclosure may have been that the consensus in Washington was built only on the lesser aspect -- removing Saddam Hussein. But the broader, regional plan could at least have been privately conveyed by President Bush to his European counterparts. It was not. Mr. Bush does not like to travel and meet his peers, in contrast to his father and Ronald Reagan. No private contacts were maintained where ideas could be put forward without being couched in official statements.
The State Department consistently referred only to the restricted agenda (terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and tyranny) and systematically dismissed any idea of a broader agenda. Any European diplomat or expert who addressed American officials about the broader goals being discussed in the many think tanks close to the Pentagon -- democratization, reshaping the Middle East, getting to Iran and Syria after Baghdad -- were told that such debates did not reflect official views.
Would Europe have accepted the real agenda? Certainly not. But at least the debate would have been based on the relevant issue: does it make sense to reshape the Middle East through military pressure?
Thus there is no reason for Old Europe to repent today. To join a coalition means, at the very least, being told about the whole strategy and not just being enlisted blindly in battle. Europe has its own concerns: pacifist public opinion, proximity to the Middle East, a large population of Muslim citizens far more vocal than that of the United States.
The fact is, the Bush administration's long-term agenda will be very difficult without real allies and an international umbrella. The situation in Iraq will soon remind the American public that United States troops are, in legal terms, an army of occupation. Hence last week's United Nations olive branch. Unless the traditional allies and the United Nations are given a real role, America will be obliged to rule Iraq for years and to keep tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of troops there.
Washington has claimed that it can create a friendly, democratic and stable Iraq within two years. Forget it: achieve two of those adjectives and consider yourselves lucky. There is no democracy without nationalism, and the Iraqis will sooner or later challenge the American presence. The United States cannot stand alone when dealing with the driving force in the Middle East. This is neither Islamism nor the appetite for democracy, but simply nationalism -- whether it comes in the guise of democracy, secular totalitarianism or Islamic fervor.
nytimes.com
Olivier Roy is a specialist on the Islamic world at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. |
