Transatlantic Visions [TIES]

The dispute between the United States and France and Germany over Iraq has resulted in deep and possibly lasting damage to transatlantic relations.
The differences between the sides can be traced to widely divergent priorities and perceptions on the two sides of the Atlantic. After September 11, the Bush administration made clear that it was not going to live in a world in which Iraq, a sworn enemy of the United States that had welcomed the terrorist attacks, possessed large stocks of chemical and biological weapons and might be continuing efforts to acquire nuclear arms. It therefore warned of and began to plan for military action against Iraq.
With the support of the Congress and the Gulf Arab states who provide the staging points, the United States had the capability and the determination to "solve" the Iraq problem. Support from countries such as Britain and Australia was welcome, especially to the American public, as would have been support from France and Germany. But it was not essential.
For a variety of reasons, in late summer U.S. president George W. Bush, prompted by Secretary of State Colin Powell, decided to take the U.S. case to the United Nations. The decision to go to the UN raised the stakes for all parties concerned. The United States in effect was saying that while Washington was determined to deal with Iraq one way or another, other countries could have influence over the method, timing, and political context in which it did so, provided they accepted the basic premise that Iraq's ongoing violation of past UN resolutions was a problem for the international community as a whole and not just the United States. Iraq was given a "last chance" to come into compliance with UN resolutions, including a new resolution, 1441, that was premised upon international recognition of Iraqi non-compliance with numerous earlier resolutions.
The ensuing developments are well known. While it generally is agreed that Iraq still is not fully complying with 1441 and the other resolutions, France, Germany, and many other countries have seized upon the inability of the inspectors to find a "smoking gun" and the apparent lessening of the degree of Iraqi non-compliance to argue for more time -- indeed to hint, in their opposition to timetables and firm deadlines, at an extended and perhaps indefinite delay. While the United States and Britain continued preparations for war, Germany and France preemptively announced that they would not follow the U.S. lead -- Germany very visibly in the fall election campaign and France at the UN, notably in Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin's remarks to Powell at the January 20 session of the Security Council.
The deadlock on this issue reflects deep differences in how the United States and European countries approach international problems. The Bush administration wants to "solve" the problem of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. It does not intend to be dissuaded from this course by arguments that solving this problem may lead to other problems or that there are still other problems (such as North Korea) that also deserve urgent attention. France and Germany, in contrast, are inclined to approach international issues in terms of process. In this they are following a more typically European approach, as reflected in the "Lisbon process," the "Barcelona process," the "Cardiff process," and numerous other internal and external EU processes.
De Villepin and others invoke the overriding importance of avoiding war to justify continued commitment to this process, but these arguments carry little weight in Washington, where there growing suspicion that the real objectives of French diplomacy lie elsewhere: to cement the Franco-German entente in a way that will insure joint co-determination on the key issues of EU constitutional and policy reform, to show the accession countries of central and eastern Europe who "calls the shots" on Common Foreign and Security Policy, and to burnish France's credentials as both a great power and a friend of the third world, peace, and the Arab world.
From the U.S. perspective, the French approach is being pursued at too high a price. While Iraq has readmitted inspectors and, in response to Blix's reports, made procedural improvements in its compliance with 1441, international pressure on Saddam to comply has all but collapsed, not least because of the divisions in the West. France and Germany, in part to justify their own commitment to process, have shifted the burden of proof from Baghdad to Washington -- in effect moving away from earlier and stronger statements about Iraqi weapons of which their intelligence services are aware. Iraq has welcomed the split in the international community and applauded what it sees as U.S. isolation.
The effect these developments in the United States has been to solidify support for Bush. While much is made in Europe of the American peace movement, the Democratic opposition and the press appear to have moved closer to Bush, to some degree in reaction to what is seen as the cynical maneuvering on the part of Chirac and Schroeder. The Washington Post has been remarkably hardline on the Iraq issue, as seen for example, in its editorial of February 11, provocatively entitled "Standing with Saddam," in which it accused France and Germany of being more interested in checking U.S. power than in confronting the weapons of mass destruction issue. The New York Times has been consistently more anti-war and anti-Bush, but its position has noticeably hardened in response to French tactics. As the Times editorialized the morning after de Villepin's most recent remarks to the Security Council, "it's easy to see where France's wishful thinking leads. Baghdad could continue dribbling out meaningless concessions such as yesterday's laughable decree that the development of weapons of mass destruction is now prohibited in Iraq" (February 15).
The other important aspect of the crisis has been its link to anti-Americanism in Europe and what some see as the birth of a new anti-Europeanism in the United States. While many Europeans insist that they are anti-Bush and anti-war and not anti-American, many in the United States are questioning whether this neat separation can be sustained. As Henry Kissinger has argued, European leaders seem to be reacting to but also helping to foster anti-U.S. sentiment.
An interesting question is the degree to which, in response to European criticisms, a counter anti-Europeanism is taking root in the United States. Some European observers (e.g., Timothy Garten Ash in the New York Review of Books of February 13) purport to see such a trend. Others (e.g., Gerard Baker of the Financial Times) dismiss it out of hand, arguing that anti-Europeanism, to the extent that it exists, is confined to a small group of American neo-conservatives with which the European press has a strange fascination. While focusing very heavily on the secondary phenomenon of neo-conservative hostility to Europe, European analysts may be missing the bigger picture: the degree to which the average American, through newspaper stories and television, is becoming aware of the depth and breadth of anti-U.S. sentiment in Europe. Where this will lead is unclear, but it is a significant new factor in transatlantic relations.
Meanwhile, the Iraq crisis seems to be heading toward its predictable denouement. While France and Germany will stress the importance of process, Bush is likely to act, and to act soon. The best that is to be hoped for is a rapid and successful campaign, after which it will be time to try to patch up what remains of transatlantic relations.