Bridges, Bombs, or Bluster?

Madeleine K. Albright

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003

Summary:  Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has pressured every country in the world to make a simple choice: Are you with the United States or with the terrorists? But by casting the choice so starkly--and expanding the war on terror to include its campaign in Iraq--Washington has alienated many natural and potential allies and made the fight against al Qaeda more difficult. It didn't have to be this way. The White House has acted as if it doesn't care what others think, and the country is paying the price for its mistake.

Madeleine K. Albright was U.S. Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001. She is the author of the forthcoming Madam Secretary: A Memoir.

The ouster of Saddam has indeed made the world, or at least Iraq, a better place. But when the United States commits tens of billions of dollars to any worthwhile project, that is the least it should be able to say. Even more vital is progress toward mobilizing the kind of multinational, multicultural, multifaceted, and multiyear initiative required to discredit, disrupt, and dismantle al Qaeda and whatever splinter factions it may one day spawn. That initiative will require a maximum degree of global coordination and the integration of force, diplomacy, intelligence, and law. It will require strong working relationships in regions where radical ideologies thrive and pro-Western sentiments are scant. And above all, it will require vigorous leadership from Islamic moderates, who must win the struggle for control of their own faith. Unfortunately, the Iraq war and the subsequent U.S. occupation of Baghdad -- the capital of Islam during that faith's golden age -- have made more difficult the choices Islamic moderates and others around the world must make.

The problem is that President Bush has reframed his initial question. Instead of simply asking others to oppose al Qaeda, he now asks them to oppose al Qaeda, support the invasion of an Arab country, and endorse the doctrine of preemption -- all as part of a single package. Faced with this choice, many who staunchly oppose al Qaeda have nevertheless decided that they do not want to be "with" the United States, just as some Iraqis are now making clear their opposition both to Saddam and to those who freed them from him.

It is perhaps unsurprising to find attitudes of this sort widespread in the Arab world. But it is more remarkable to find them taking hold in much of Europe. President Bush ran for office pledging to be "a uniter, not a divider," but as the numbers suggest, he has proved highly divisive among the United States' closest friends. This was true even before September 11, thanks to his administration's scorn for international measures such as the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. But the divide deepened considerably in the run-up to the second Gulf War, and it has moderated only slightly since. Transatlantic friction, of course, is not new. But European unease with American pretensions, coupled with American doubts about European resolve, has created the potential for a long-term and dangerous rift.

Some commentators have tried to explain European opposition to the war as being based on a slavish allegiance to multilateral organizations, a sense of relative powerlessness, or simple jealousy of the United States. Such analyses, however, miss the possibility that the American arguments simply were not fully persuasive. I personally felt the war was justified on the basis of Saddam's decade-long refusal to comply with UN Security Council resolutions on WMD. But the administration's claim that Saddam posed an imminent threat was poorly supported, as was its claim of his alleged connections to al Qaeda. The war's opponents also raised a number of questions that were not very ably answered regarding American plans for postwar reconstruction and the possibility that the war would actually enhance al Qaeda's appeal to potential recruits. It should be no wonder, then, that there were disagreements about the wisdom of going to war. It was, after all, a war of choice, not of necessity. And it was initiated by Washington in a show of dominance prompted by a sense of vulnerability that most Europeans do not fully share.

The concerns raised by European critics of the war were neither trivial nor unanswerable. They should, however, have been answered not with exaggerated, unproven allegations, but with a combination of patience and ample evidence. By linking Baghdad to al Qaeda, the Bush administration sought to equate opposition to fighting Iraq with gutlessness in confronting bin Laden. This tactic, wildly unfair, contributed to a perception within the American public that the French and the Germans were not simply quarrelsome but traitorous. The real problem with the war critics, however, was not their timidity toward al Qaeda but their record of having cut Saddam too much slack in complying with UN Security Council resolutions over the last decade. The French and the Russians were especially culpable in this regard; their special pleading had, for years, given Saddam hope that he could divide the council and get sanctions lifted without coming clean about his weapons programs.

The best rebuttal Washington had to qualms about regime change was that military force was the only way (in the absence of effective UN inspections) to enforce the council's resolutions and thereby strengthen both the UN's credibility and international law. Unfortunately, the Bush administration made its eagerness to pull the plug on chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and his team transparent and billed its preemptive war doctrine as a replacement for international law. As a consequence, much of the world saw the invasion not as a way to put muscle into accepted rules, but rather as the inauguration of a new set of rules, written and applied solely by the United States.

It didn't have to be this way. After World War II, the United States was also at a pinnacle of power, and also faced new and unprecedented dangers. Yet the Truman administration still sat down and haggled with a flock of less powerful countries about what the rules of the new international game should be. The current administration, however, has created the impression that it does not care what others think, and it has thereby set the world's teeth on edge.

As I suggested above, responsibility for the transatlantic split does not rest on the shoulders of the Bush administration alone. The French certainly have not helped matters, by arguing, for example, that the very purpose of European integration should be to create a counterweight to American power. This constitutes de Villepin's choice "between two visions of the world," by which he means a choice between a unipolar world in which Washington acts as an unrestrained hegemon and a multipolar one in which American power is offset and balanced by other forces, most particularly a united Europe. But that argument is ludicrous. The idea that the power of the United States endangers the interests of European democracies, rather than strengthens and helps shield them, is utter nonsense. American power may harm French pride, but it also helped roll back Hitler, save a blockaded Berlin, defeat communism, and rid the Balkans of a rampaging Slobodan Milosevic.

The divisions that have arisen between the United States and many in Europe can and must be narrowed. The challenge for Europe is to reject French hyperventilating about American hyperpower and keep its perspective. The United States has not lost its moorings, and the American people, with an assist from Secretary of State Colin Powell and other voices of reason, will not let the administration go too far.

The challenge for the United States, however, is to frame a choice for Europe that most of Europe can embrace with dignity (if not always with France). To help this mission along, NATO should be used in Afghanistan (where it has finally gained a role, two years after September 11) and in Iraq, where its umbrella might help relieve the pressure on hard-pressed U.S. troops. The Bush administration should enthusiastically welcome European efforts to develop an independent rapid reaction capability, especially to conduct peacekeeping operations and respond to humanitarian emergencies. When Europeans perform important jobs, as the Germans and the Turks have done over the past year in Afghanistan, they deserve congratulations, regardless of differences over less basic issues. Furthermore, the Europeans should be invited, not directed, to work closely with Washington on the toughest challenges, including that posed by Iran's nuclear program. Perhaps above all, the Europeans should be treated as adults. If they have differences with U.S. policy, those differences should be considered seriously, not dismissed as signs of weakness (or age) or tantamount to treason. Washington needs to recall that "allies" and "satellites" are distinctly different things.