- President Bush has reached a dead end in his foreign
policy, but he has failed to recognise his quandary. His belief that the
polite reception he received in Europe is a vindication of his previous
adventures is a vestige of fantasy.
-
- As the strains of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, the
Pastoral,
filled the Concert Noble in Brussels, Bush behaved as though the mood music
itself was a dramatic new phase in the transatlantic relationship. He gives
no indication that he grasps the exhaustion of his policy. His reductio
ad absurdum was reached with his statement on Iran: "This notion that
the US is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having
said that, all options are on the table." Including, presumably, the
"simply ridiculous".
-
- Bush is scrambling to cobble together policies across
the board. At the last minute he rescued his summit with Vladimir Putin,
who refuses to soften his authoritarian measures, with a step toward
safeguarding
Russian plutonium that could be used for nuclear weapons production. This
programme was negotiated by Bill Clinton and neglected by Bush until two
weeks ago.
-
- The European reception for Bush was not an embrace of
his neoconservative world view, but an attempt to put it in the past. New
Europe is trying to compartmentalise old Bush. To the extent that he
promises
to be different, the Europeans encourage him; to the extent that he is
the same, they pretend it's not happening.
-
- The Europeans, including the British government, feel
privately that the past three years have been hijacked by Iraq. Facing
the grinding, bloody and unending reality of Iraq doesn't mean accepting
Bush's original premises, but getting on with the task of stability.
Ceasing
the finger-pointing is the basis for European consensus on its new, if
not publicly articulated, policy: containment of Bush. Naturally, Bush
misses the nuances and ambiguities.
-
- Of course, he has already contained himself, or at least
his pre-emption doctrine, which seems to have been good for one-time use
only. None of the allies is willing to repeat the experience. Bush can't
manage another such military show anyway, as his army is pinned down in
Iraq.
-
- The problem of Iran is in many ways the opposite of Iraq.
The Europeans have committed their credibility to negotiations, the
Iranians
have diplomatic means to preclude unilateral US action, and Bush - who,
according to European officials, has no sense of what to do - is boxed
in, whether he understands it or not.
-
- The secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, seeking to
impress French intellectuals while in Paris, referred to Iran as
totalitarian,
as if the authoritarian Shia regime neatly fitted the Soviet Union model.
With this rhetorical legerdemain, she extended the overstretched analogy
of the "war on terrorism" as the equivalent of the cold war to
Persia. Her lack of intellectual adeptness dismayed her interlocutors.
One of the French told me Rice was "deaf to all argument", but
no one engaged her gaffe because "good manners are back".
-
- Regardless of Rice's wordplay, it is not a policy. Rice
has vaguely threatened to refer Iran to the UN security council. The
"simply
ridiculous" remains on the table at the same time as the US is
unengaged
in diplomacy. Bush doesn't know whether to join the Europeans in
guaranteeing
an agreement to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons or not.
-
- "So long as Iran remains within the
non-proliferation
treaty and the [UN weapons] inspectors remain on the ground there, there's
nothing the US can do within the security council," John Ritch, the
former US ambassador to the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, told
me.
-
- The argument for keeping the Iranians within the treaty
was overwhelming, he said. "As long as they are in the inspection
system it gives us maximum opportunity to evaluate every step of their
nuclear development ... The US should be willing to support a
European-brokered
deal under which the Iranians forgo their right to build a domestic nuclear
enrichment and processing capability. Ultimately, the way to promote a
satisfactory outcome is to empower the Europeans by asserting that the
US will back up a sound agreement."
-
- Bush has hummed a few bars of rapprochement. With their
applause, the Europeans have begun to angle him into a corner on Iran.
In time Bush must either join the negotiations or regress to
neoconservatism,
which would wreck the European relationship. If he chooses a course that
is not "simply ridiculous", on his next visit the Europeans might
be willing to play Beethoven's Third Symphony, the Eroica.
-
- - Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President
Clinton and author of The Clinton Wars
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2005
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1425020,00.html
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