NYTimes.com Article: A Fissure Deepening for Allies Over Use ofForce Aga

The reality of the US political class is becoming ever more surreal.
Kissinger's endorsement of the pursuit of empire -

"If this keeps up, we will wind up in a sort of
19th-century balance-of-power game, in which it is not
self-evident that we will lose."

is an immortal phrase which is destined for future history textbooks.  As
for belief shared by Mike McFaul and Condi Rice that the US has seen zero
benefit from its post-9/11 alliance with Russia, with which it is now
unnecessary to negotiate, all that may be said is that their opinion forms
a fitting epitaph for the discipline of Sovietology.

--

A Fissure Deepening for Allies Over Use of Force Against Iraq

March 6, 2003
By PATRICK E. TYLER




WASHINGTON, March 5 - The declaration issued today by
Germany, Russia and France against war in Iraq now - with
its implicit threat of veto - may go down as the loudest
"No!" shouted across the Atlantic in a half century or
more.

The nine-paragraph statement may not have slowed the
seemingly inexorable drive by the Bush administration to
commence military operations as early as next week.

But the fact that Europe's largest powers felt compelled to
present President Bush with an 11th-hour challenge deepened
fissures that have opened in the last year with major
allies.

It also set up a final confrontation at the Security
Council over a resolution authorizing war in Iraq, a step
that increasingly looks as if it could be forsaken for lack
of majority support among the 15 members.

Beyond the immediate issue of war, the declaration was a
broad affront to Washington that admonished the Bush
administration that the international system is "at a
turning point" on establishing the rules of the road after
the cold war, and the Franco-German bloc is too large a
force, if not in military power, then in economic and
cultural terms, to ignore.

Their criticism extended to Mr. Bush's overall Middle East
policy, where they faulted his administration for delays in
"publishing and implementing" a road map that would return
the promise of negotiations and peace to the Arab-Israeli
dispute, something most Europeans feel Mr. Bush has
neglected.

The Bush administration, it seemed clear from public
remarks today, did not see the European announcement
coming. Even after the statement from Paris was issued by
the three foreign ministers, Ari Fleischer, the White House
spokesman, was trying to play down the significance of
their warning, "we will not let a proposed resolution pass
that would authorize the use of force."

Private bristling and public bluster had been building for
days as Igor S. Ivanov of Russia, Dominique de Villepin of
France and Joschka Fischer of Germany consulted in advance
of their thunderbolt while American and British diplomats
tracked their movements and conversations as if they were
adversaries.

Allies do not act this way, Henry A. Kissinger, a former
secretary of state said. For members of the Western
alliance "to go into open opposition" on a matter like
Security Council resolution No. 1441, which clearly frames
a war issue affecting American security after the Sept. 11
attacks, "that's a very grave decision," Mr.. Kissinger
said.

"If this keeps up," he added, "we will wind up in a sort of
19th-century balance-of-power game, in which it is not
self-evident that we will lose."

But German and French diplomats said today they were simply
declaring their independence, something Washington has long
expected in the wake of the cold war.

"I don't see it as a permanent rift," said Karsten D.
Voigt, the German diplomat who coordinates policy toward
America. For Germany, the trans-Atlantic relationship
remains a "fundamental pillar" of its foreign policy, he
said.

But today's declaration should be a reminder to Washington
not only of the deep "moral and ethical" aversion to war on
the Continent, but also of the negative reaction to the
tone emanating from the administration.

That tone, Mr. Voigt said, was that "the Europeans are not
needed, that they reflect something old and that, at best,
they are irrelevant."

For France and Germany, today was also an opportunity to
strike a pose of unity to an audience within Europe, where
new democracies among East and Central European states are
clamoring to join the European Union and have declared
support for Washington's Iraq policy.

In backing President Bush so strongly these newly liberated
states have undermined Paris and Berlin as the dominant
voices in shaping the continent's foreign policy.

But the continent's traditional powers - "Old Europe" to
some Bush aides - may have recovered some of that influence
today.

The declaration also dispelled the notion among senior Bush
aides that Germany, France and Russia could be peeled away
from the opposing camp one by one and it may render moot
the Security Council meeting on Friday in New York.

There, Hans Blix, one of the chief United Nations
inspectors, is to summarize his views that inspections have
shown progress but that Iraq has not made the fundamental
decision to disgorge the materials and the secrets of
programs to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Secretary Powell argued forcefully today that this should
be proof enough that the time for diplomacy has ended. The
meetings at the White House today between Mr. Bush, his
national security advisers and Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the
commander in the Middle East, signaled that Mr. Bush may
have already moved beyond diplomacy.

Others hold out hope.

"Russia is prepared for a kind of
compromise," said Vladimir P. Lukin, a former ambassador to
Washington. "But what kind of compromise can you have if
the U.S. doesn't want to hear anybody?"

For Bush aides, like Condoleezza Rice, the national
security adviser, an expert on Russia, the apparent
defection of President Vladimir V. Putin and Russia's
threat to exercise its veto was something of a repudiation
of the administration's policy toward Russia.

Even though Mr. Putin stepped up intelligence cooperation
and made a profound strategic adjustment to welcome
American forces into former Soviet territory on
Afghanistan's northern flank, "No Russia expert can cite a
net gain or a tangible benefit from Russia's relationship
with the United States after Sept. 11," said Michael
McFaul, a Russia specialist with the Hoover Institution at
Stanford University.

As the hourglass empties on Iraq, the gap between
Washington's disarmament demands and Europe's strategy for
achieving them with "speeded up" inspections and "detailed
timelines" seems very narrow. "Timelines" sounded very much
like deadlines to give a final answer on where VX nerve gas
and the mobile biological weapons labs are hidden.

"These inspections cannot continue indefinitely," the
European statement said. It failed to suggest an
alternative that might form the basis of a reasonable offer
to Mr. Bush, who appears to be under pressure to act
quickly if only to stanch the slide in public support for
the war and for his handling of foreign policy.

For every diplomat who today said that compromise was still
possible, another expressed pessimism. "This is now the
endgame of a very complicated situation," Mr. Voigt said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/06/international/europe/06ASSE.html?ex=1047937247&ei=1&en=6be96a8b60d181c5



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