The US, UN & Iraq III

TRB FROM WASHINGTON
Sore Winner
by Peter Beinart

Post date 05.01.03 | Issue date 05.12.03

Americans sometimes wonder why so many non-Americans view the United States as a bully. Are they jealous, resentful, irrationally afraid? Perhaps. But there's a simpler explanation for the widespread perception that the United States is vindictive, arrogant, and petty. Under this administration, it's true.

Consider the Bush team's behavior over the past few weeks toward countries that opposed the war in Iraq. Almost as soon as the fighting stopped, the French government started trying to mend fences. Paris abandoned its long-standing opposition to NATO control over the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan. In a surprise concession, and a break with Russia, it agreed to suspend (though not remove) U.N. sanctions on post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. Jacques Chirac warned Syria not to harbor Iraqi officials and telephoned George W. Bush, breaking a months-long silence between the two men. Jean-David Levitte, France's ambassador to the United States, said his government wanted to "turn this bitter page and think positively about what we have to do together."

The Bush administration responded with a high-level meeting to decide how to punish Paris for opposing the war. According to reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post, the Bushies are considering downgrading France's status at international meetings and bypassing the North Atlantic Council, NATO's governing body, because France is a member. Bush officials noted that when the president attends the G-8 summit in Evian, France, this June, he will stay across the border in Switzerland. No pettiness here.

And it's not only France. President Bush, who famously refused to place a congratulatory phone call to Gerhard Schroeder after he was reelected on an antiwar platform, has not spoken to the German leader yet this year. The White House recently canceled a Bush trip to Ottawa, leading one Canadian academic to tell the Times that relations between the two countries were at "the lowest moment since the early 1960s." The United States has pointedly refused to set a date for signing a long-planned free-trade deal with Chile, which refused to use its rotating Security Council seat to back a second resolution authorizing war. (There are also reports, denied by Bush officials, that the United States has slowed talks on a trade deal with Thailand as punishment for its lukewarm stance on the war.) White House Envoy to the Americas Otto Reich recently warned Caribbean countries that their antiwar stance might bring U.S. "consequences." And, in a slap at Mexican President Vicente Fox, the former Bush pal who refused to back the Iraq war, the White House has scrapped this year's Cinco de Mayo celebrations. Pettiness? Perish the thought.

This retaliation isn't just vindictive; it's deeply stupid. First of all, it will hurt Iraq. Andrew Natsios, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), recently told "Nightline"'s Ted Koppel that USAID would spend $1.7 billion this year--and not a penny more--to reconstruct Iraq. That's quite an admission, considering that the Council on Foreign Relations has put the cost of rebuilding Iraq at roughly $15 billion per year for the rest of the decade, and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has put the cost far higher. (When experts hear Bush officials claim that exports from Iraq's decrepit oil industry will fund the reconstruction, they generally laugh.)

After the first Gulf war, America's allies wrote most of the checks that rebuilt Kuwait. In fact, over and over in recent years--in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan--the United States has bled to win the war, and its democratic allies have paid to win the peace. It's a formula that needs to be vastly expanded if Iraq is to become a stable, liberal country. But, by doling out postwar snubs and restricting postwar contracts to U.S. firms, the Bush administration is doing its best to ensure that countries such as France, Germany, and Canada don't fork over the money Iraq desperately needs. Tony Blair sees the folly in this. Which is why Britain supports a large U.N. role in post-Saddam Iraq, a role that will give countries that opposed the war the political cover they need to fund Iraqi reconstruction. The White House, however, isn't listening to Blair--after all, even British companies weren't invited to bid for USAID contracts in postwar Iraq.

But the bigger problem isn't the impact of White House score-settling on Iraq; it's the impact on the United States. Key Bush officials--particularly Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld--clearly believe Al Qaeda and Saddam were emboldened in the 1990s by U.S. weakness. Their solution: Show terrorists and dictators that the United States hasn't gone soft; restore some good old-fashioned fear of Uncle Sam.

As an analysis of Saddam, Osama bin Laden, and Kim Jong Il, this makes sense. What has become appallingly clear in recent weeks, however, is that many in the Bush team apply the same logic to independent-minded Western democracies such as France, Germany, Canada, and Chile. The problem with America's relationships with its allies, they seem to feel, is that we don't throw our weight around enough. If we make countries that opposed the war suffer, they'll be more pliant next time around.

But there's a key difference between the way Bashar Al Assad makes decisions and the way Gerhard Schroeder does. It's called democracy. Supporters of the administration train their anger on antiwar leaders. Ask many American conservatives why France opposed the war, and, without missing a beat, they'll say it was because Chirac has a corrupt history with Iraq and feared what the United States might find in the Baghdad archives once Saddam was gone. What they generally overlook is that public opinion in France--and virtually everywhere else in Europe--massively opposed the war. I think those large antiwar majorities were wrong, but they were a response to perceived American arrogance and aggression. As Charles Grant, director of London's Center for European Reform, recently noted to Businessweek, "In every West European country, polls show that George W. Bush is seen as a greater threat to world peace than Saddam." Europeans ignored Saddam's horrors and identified with Iraq as a small country being pushed around by the United States. That public sentiment led leaders in Europe and in democracies such as Chile, Canada, Mexico, and Turkey to oppose the war. (In the case of Schroeder, a pro-war stance would probably have cost him reelection.)

In other words, governments across the world opposed the Iraq war to appease citizenries angered by perceived U.S. bullying. So now that the war is over--and our military victory gives us a chance to improve America's image--the Bush administration has responded with a fresh round of bullying. Sounds like a winning strategy to me.

Peter Beinart is the editor of TNR.

We do seem to differ, however, as to whether it matters which state is the main reason for the UN's ineffectiveness. You seem to say the U.S. is the transgressor entirely or mostly to blame.

I state that there has been and will continue to be a linneage of transgressors that trample UN hopes. The specific nation seems of little consequence. Given the U.S. invading Iraq, U.S.S.R. invading Afghanistan, or China invading Tibet, the U.N. still appears ineffective in the prevention of these types of actions.

Perhaps our differences are philosophical where you are perhaps Jeffersonian, trying to see the innate goodness in mankind and trying to extrapolate this into his institutions. I see myself more Adamsonian (John) finding the innate selfishness of mankind constantly manifested.

However, the force driving those early colonist to unify was one of a common threat, Europe.
What common enemy would draw all the members of the UN together?
What was that threat from Europe?

a fundamental reinterpretation of environmental law, and a reversal of four decades of federal wilderness policy.