America
is making enemies
of even its friends
By
Jonathan
Power
August 23, 2002
LONDON - Europeans are beginning to experience the
same sensations of impotence that Muslims long have.
Whatever they think or say, it is tossed in the
wastepaper basket by their American friends. In the last
week or so it has become evident that the Bush
Administration is hell bent on implementing a new law,
part of the recent anti-terrorist legislation, that sets
out in no uncertain terms to undermine the new
International Criminal Court, the pride and joy of a lot
of countries but of the Europeans in particular, who see
it as an effective tool for deterring would-be war
criminals.
The State Department has made it clear to all foreign
countries that their military aid will be cut off unless
- like Romania and Israel last week - they sign a pledge
to protect Americans serving in their countries from the
Court's reach. Brave Norway has told the Americans "no",
and doubtless other Europeans if asked will say the same
thing. But "nos" won't be enough perhaps. The law says,
as the New York Times has just reminded us, that
authority is given to the president to free Americans who
are in the Court's custody by "any necessary and
appropriate means". One presumes that means war.
Now the Europeans are beginning to understand what
President George Bush meant when he said last autumn,
"who is not with us is against us". Who knows at the rate
things are going there may be some briefing from some
Pentagon "think paper" that will warn that Europeans are
no longer to be regarded as allies. Saudi Arabia is still
recovering from last week's shock of being labelled by a
Pentagon working party as "the kernel of evil, the prime
mover, the most dangerous opponent" of the U.S. in the
Middle East. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld made it
clear that he did not dissent from this piece of inside
advice.
It would be useful to know where the Netherlands
stands in the Pentagon's eyes. It is home of the
International Court and much of its informed opinion is
cool on current American realpolitik. It is presumably a
wild exaggeration to say that America is going to use
military force against its best friends, but nevertheless
all this is leaving a strange taste in European mouths.
At best, many Europeans consider what has happened in
America the last couple of years as bizarre. First,
acting as if it were some insecure newborn democracy, it
chooses as a president the son of the last president but
one who has few qualifications other than his family
name. The election itself was run in such a roughshod way
that the ballot was suspect. Then the new president
appoints a lot of senior officials - vice president,
defence secretary, national security advisor and many
other high level appointees - who have never known war,
or shed blood, much less seen corpses rotting on the
battlefield or villages destroyed with the remains of
children's bodies splayed in a hundred directions. Many
of them, like the president himself, consciously avoided
the draft at the time of Vietnam. Yet it is they who are
telling the military against its better judgement that it
has to gear up for a new major war, against Iraq and who
knows what then? Saudi Arabia?
Then comes September 11th, followed by a commitment to
"smoke out" Osama bin Laden. A war is begun against his
refuge, Afghanistan, but bin Laden apparently escapes
whilst at least as many innocent people are killed as
lost their lives in the World Trade Centre. America -
with its allies - is left trying to establish a central
government in Afghanistan by cutting short-term deals
with autocratic warlords, a precarious effort that
Washington makes clear is a distraction from the prime
(but failed) objective.
Shortly after the U.S. unilaterally raises its steel
tariffs, hurting not just its closest trading partners
but many of the Third World countries that finally are
becoming what America always said it wanted, well on the
way to becoming developed. Europe, careful not to do
anything to polarise the deteriorating transatlantic
relationship, forgoes its legal right to retaliate.
Before and after and in between these major events the
administration takes pot shots at other causes the
Europeans hold dear - the UN torture convention, the
treaty on global warming, the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty and the UN discrimination against women's
convention. At the same time it effectually licences
Israel to re-take the Palestinian West Bank, with
Rumsfeld now making it clear that American promises made
as recently as early summer to push for a Palestinian
state are now seriously in question.
No wonder that sober people in Europe are beginning to
ask where do they fit in to the new Machtpolitik?
According to one observer, Robert Kagan, in widely
circulated essay, (see this month's issue of Prospect
magazine) an American show of power is inevitable
considering that America has the weight of the world on
its shoulders and is the only country powerful enough to
change things for the better. But it is not simply a
question of cracking the whip in the style of the old
British Empire. The world doesn't work like that anymore,
neither financially, nor socially and not even
militarily. No country these days however strong can walk
alone without courting defeat and disaster. If America's
friends are pushed to be against it this can only benefit
America's real enemies. Is this what America really
wants?
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 By
JONATHAN POWER
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"Like
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