Stumbling Into War

James P. Rubin

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003

Summary:  Why did most of the world abandon Washington when it went after Saddam Hussein? The war in Iraq could never have been an easy sell, but nor should it have been such a difficult one. The Bush administration badly botched the prewar maneuvering, presenting a textbook study in how not to wage a diplomatic campaign.

James P. Rubin is a Visiting Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and was Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from 1997 to 2000.

One reason Washington's goodwill reserve had all but vanished is that European countries pay a lot of attention to treaties. Their foreign ministers meet, week after week, in a rolling discussion of how to modify and improve the treaties that form the European Union, and these ministers regard international law and formal accords as the primary currency of foreign policy. Nonetheless, early in its term, the Bush administration declared war on all outstanding international treaties. First he repudiated the Kyoto Protocol on the environment. Then came Washington's withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, its rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and its repudiation of the protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention.

Just as unpopular was the U.S. policy on the International Criminal Court. The ICC accord may have its flaws, but the Bush team broke new legal ground when it declared Clinton's signature of the treaty null and void (a gratuitous step, since the agreement had never been ratified by Congress). In order to weaken the ICC further, Bush also provoked a bitter battle over the court with the entire EU, demanding that every country sign a special waiver to exempt American citizens and soldiers from the court's jurisdiction. This step was overkill; the idea that the ICC would ever have forced a European country to imprison an American citizen over the objections of the U.S. government is not only hypothetical in the extreme, but also politically unthinkable.

Next, the matter of the prisoners held on Guantánamo may have actually marked the beginning of the end of European sympathy for and solidarity with the United States after September 11. Europeans across the political spectrum reacted with shock and condemnation when Rumsfeld brusquely dismissed the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to these prisoners on January 16, 2002, saying he didn't have "the slightest concern" about how they would be treated in light of their organizations' attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Even the normally pro-American weekly The Economist called this view "unworthy of a nation which has cherished the rule of law from its birth."

Unfortunately, Guantánamo became a rallying point for anti-Americanism. The fact that the United States would not even accept the Geneva Conventions in this case, critics argued, showed that the Bush administration really did see itself as above the law of nations. A more careful diplomat than Rumsfeld would, in answer to a question about the convention's applicability to the prisoners, have simply said, "of course we will apply the principles of the Geneva Conventions to any prisoners we are holding" -- and then gone on to explain that government lawyers were considering how to apply those principles in this unprecedented situation. Indeed, this is precisely what the U.S. government ended up doing, but by then the damage had been done.

Washington had also alienated Europe through its approach to NATO. Top NATO officials have been stewing ever since the alliance's offer of help after September 11 was spurned. Although the now-famous invocation of Article V (the mutual self-defense clause) of NATO's founding treaty was more of a political act than a prescription for joint military operations, the Pentagon's subsequent, disparaging attitude toward a NATO role in Afghanistan stung Brussels deeply. Nato had long been the United States' favorite multilateral forum; but Washington's recent "don't call us, we'll call you" message led many Europeans to conclude that even NATO was no longer valued by the Americans.

A final reason for the loss of goodwill toward the United States was the White House's approach to peace in the Middle East. Although most of the world recognizes how difficult stopping Arab-Israeli violence will be, they expect the U.S. government to try. Bush's across-the-board support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, therefore, and his administration's lack of high-level engagement in the peace process prior to this summer made it hard for Washington to attract support for its war in Iraq. Blair, at least, understood this problem and pushed Bush hard to commit political capital to getting both the Palestinians and the Israelis to compromise. Although the White House did begin to move in this direction right before the invasion of Iraq began, its effort was too little and too late to repair the damage done by its two years of studied avoidance of this critical issue.

IN THE COURT OF WORLD OPINION

After the diplomatic failure in New York, it became fashionable to ask why the United States should have had to try to win support in the first place from African countries such as Angola, Cameroon, or Guinea, or Latin American nations such as Chile and Mexico. Many wondered why these smaller countries should play such an important role in deciding whether international action is legitimate or not.