Posted on 04/25/2004 8:17:22 PM PDT by Norman Arbuthnot
While Europe is a eunuch, America is our only shield
We can't walk away from Bush's follies without a credible military alternative
Overtaken on the motorway by a motorcycle weaving between lanes at reckless speed, we glance at the rider and mutter something about bloody fools. Curiosity focuses upon the pillion passenger. Is he or she enjoying this? Is it not ridiculous to put one's life absolutely in the hands of a reckless idiot? In other words: how does it feel to be Tony Blair in Iraq?
So much bad news turned up at Chequers over the weekend that the prime minister might be forgiven if he failed to spot the latest barrage of suicide bombings in Iraq. But Britain's 8,000 troops on the ground noticed, and are not happy. They are prisoners of an American command whose incompetence is manifest, whose soldiers are unsuited to their task, whose failures of policy have been laid bare.
Yet I suggested two years ago that it is wrong to perceive Iraq as the real focus of this crisis, even if it is the proximate cause. What we really need to debate is the issue of how the world manages the United States, the world's only superpower. The matter of Iraq will some day be resolved, however unsatisfactorily. It will fade from the headlines. But the matter of America will not go away. Somehow, the world, in general, and the British, in particular, have to consider anew our relationship with the power of the US, granted the less-than-godlike nature of most of the presidents elected to exercise it.
Jim Steinburg, former deputy national security adviser to President Clinton, remarked to me a few months ago that for the cautious Clinton, policy-making was an intellectual game. "He'd try something, see how it played, push on if it seemed to work, pull back if it looked rough or the polls went wrong." The contrast with George Bush could not be more striking. He and his associates are driven by a set of primitive visceral convictions, from which they refuse to be budged by persuasion or evidence.
Samuel Berger, Clinton's national security adviser, writes of the Bushies in this month's Foreign Affairs: "Key strategists ... appear to believe that, in a chaotic world, United States power - and especially military power - is the only real force for advancing United States interests, that as long as the United States is feared, it does not matter much if we are admired."
I was among those who wobbled about the war in Iraq. I never doubted that the allied armies could easily get to Baghdad, that Saddam Hussein's demise was good for Iraqis. But I believed the invasion was misconceived. Not for 50 years have the Americans displayed the skills or staying power to reshape nations. Invasion seemed certain to damage, not assist, Bush's misnamed "war on terror", by highlighting US double standards towards Israel and Islam.
None the less, when Blair made his case about weapons of mass destruction, I believed him. By, say, October 2002, it became evident the Americans were determined to invade. If the Atlantic alliance was to survive, it seemed necessary that British troops should participate. I nursed a further delusion - that Britain might thus be able to exercise marginal influence on Washington's behaviour. We could press Bush to seek international legitimacy, to behave more even-handedly towards the Palestinians.
In all those things, I was wrong. To quote Berger again, the Bush administration believes the US "does not need to seek legitimacy from the approval of others. International institutions and international law are nothing more than a trap set by weaker nations to constrain us."
Yet the most likely outcome of the forthcoming presidential election is still a Bush victory. There is no reason to suppose this president will behave any differently in a second term. Unlike Clinton, the cynic and adulterer, Bush is a true believer. We are learning the hard way that, in power, true believers can be far more frightening and dangerous than cynics.
Many people in this country are in a mood to say that Britain's path is obvious: we must get our troops out of Iraq as swiftly as possible, then forswear any further military adventures under this administration's auspices. Yet, regrettably, neither of these options is convincing. First, if there is one course more dishonourable than invading Iraq without a plausible policy for its future, it would be to abandon it to anarchy. Somehow, and in the face of daily US follies, the attempt must continue to create an indigenous government before we quit.
Can't we say at least that we will join no more Texan roundups? In the short term, mercifully, it is unlikely that Bush will invite Britain to join another war party. But the world is full of uncertainties. If Saudi Arabia suddenly collapsed into anarchy, could the west stand by and do nothing? Maybe yes. But it would be recklessly irresponsible for Britain explicitly to rule out participation in any military operation with the US.
Let us take it, however, that henceforward any sensible British government will be prejudiced against armed neo-con nonsense. Any tenant of Downing Street should be proofed against delusions about our ability to influence Washington. The Bush administration wears ear defenders when the British are in town.
Yet even the French and Germans recognise that no responsible nation can simply turn its back on the US. The strange part is that America's critics refuse to take the obvious step further: to recognise that Europe could only afford entirely to distance itself from US policy if it possessed the military means to manage its own security.
Terror within the Ministry of Defence about a breach with Washington reflects our dependence on security and, above all, intelligence cooperation with Washington. European disenchantment with Bush's foreign policy is not reflected in willingness to adopt the obvious remedy: that of creating armed forces capable of acting effectively without the US.
Britain's defence policy today rests on the avowed presumption that we shall never have to engage in conflict without the Americans. This may represent reality, but it is also a huge European abdication of responsibility. If we are really fed up with Bush, if we recognise that no future US president is likely be entirely to our taste, we should surely get on with creating credible European armed forces. As it is, no European nation - with the possible exception of France - shows the smallest interest in spending money or displaying spine for this purpose.
Until we address this, and against the background of a struggle against international terrorism that is likely to grow more alarming rather than less, America remains the indispensable ally and shield. That means George Bush. At the very moment when most of us feel surfeited with the president's vacuous grin and impregnable moral conceit, we cannot walk away from his follies unless or until Europe makes itself something quite different from the eunuch it is today.
· Max Hastings is a former editor of the Daily Telegraph and the London Evening Standard
LOL!!! Gee, what a brilliant formula that was. /Sarcasm.
The Clinton Doctrine: Well North Korea "looks rough". We better pretend we don't know that they are continuing their development of Nukes. Ditto Saddam and WMD's. Gore or Bush can deal with that"sh#t.
I never doubted that the allied armies could easily get to Baghdad, that Saddam Hussein's demise was good for Iraqis. But I believed the invasion was misconceived. Not for 50 years have the Americans displayed the skills or staying power to reshape nations.
Really? What about Germany, Japan and South Korea?
Hastings is an Idiot.
He's an intelligent guy and no real lefty, but he's one of these Brits whocan never accept the reversal of status of the two nations. His complaints about the mess in Iraq, and his beliefs that British troops make better peacekeepers are not without merit, but his main, unspoken, complaint is that the Brits are where they are and the Yanks where they are and it's not going to change, and he's bummed out by that reality.
Clearly Hastings is an adherent of the trendy "America can do no right in Iraq" school of thought that serves to soothe the general European conscience and absolve the adherent of the difficulties of comprehending a complex, rapidly-changing situation. It is impossible to credit this school of thought with anything but superficiality in view of the changes in the middle east that would not have been otherwise possible - the Libyan eschewal of nuclear weapons, the Sudanese rejection of Syrian chemical weapons announced today, and the continued survival of a non-Taliban government in Afghanistan being three examples.
In fact, nation-building in Iraq was not our aim; taking down Saddam Hussein and preventing state-level support and sanctuary for a constellation of terrorist organizations was. And clearly there have been major accomplishments in those areas. Hastings, were he honest about it, would have to admit that sometimes there are advantages to allowing the other fellow to do the dirty-work, and that the presence of those 8000 British troops there is what prevents Great Britain from the smug abdication of which he rightly accuses the French and Germans.
In fact, it isn't just that that stance is the only one possible for those who will not pick up a sword, it is the luxury of those who don't have to. Were the EU to magically grow an army from dragon's teeth overnight it would still be short of the spine to use it and to accept the responsibility for the consequences.
What about Germany, Japan and South Korea?
We started reshaping those governments more than 50 years ago. That's what he said -- that in the last 50 years we haven't gotten it right once. Those three came more than 50 years ago (since 1954).
You have to ask yourself how they got into that situation? What event caused the highly militaristic Germans for instance to no longer have the will to wage war? The answer is clearly the huge level of destruction visited on their country as a consequence of militarism. And that is the key to winning the war on terorism. We can't just take away their means to wage terror. We must take away their will to wage terror. A terrorist can always find a new way to make a weapon, but if he hasn't got the will then it is a moot point. Until we are willing to move to a level of war that will ensure that the terrorists lose the will to commit acts of terror, we will surely lose.
As you have noted, we started reshaping those governments more than 50 years ago, but that was a long term process that took decades to complete for each country. Hastings seems to be suggesting that we don't have the ability and/or the political will to duplicate the success we achieved with those nations. I would disagree.
Why bother? In the first place you can't afford them, and in the second place you don't have the balls to use them even if you could afford them.
In Chrrchill's time there was also Neville Chamberlain.
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