Though in retrospect the transatlantic clash over Iraq certainly appeared to be the result of inexorable structural forces, a careful examination of that clash shows that it was not. Obviously, Americans and Europeans had disagreed for years about how to deal with Iraq, and the Bush administration certainly came to a different conclusion from some key European governments in the winter of 2002–2003. As late as January 2003, however, it was not only possible, but in fact it still seemed likely, that defiance by Saddam Hussein would rally the international community to support the use of force against Iraq in accordance with UN Security Resolution 1441. After all, Saddam had long demonstrated a remarkably consistent capacity to miscalculate opponents’ reactions to his actions, and there was every reason to believe that this time, too, he would refuse to cooperate with UN Security Council demands, creating a pretext for war. It was also pos- sible that the United States, having agreed to go to the United Nations and make disarmament its key objective, would agree to forego an immediate attack on Iraq.
That neither of these scenarios came to pass resulted from a com- bination of inexplicable Iraqi decisions and the unfortunate choices of the leaders who happened to be in power in the United States and Europe. Why Iraq, even when facing a credible military threat, never accounted for its prohibited weapons—especially if in fact those weapons no longer existed—may never be known. Whatever the rea- sons, Baghdad managed, whether deliberately or by accident, to cali- brate its cooperation with UN disarmament demands to split the United States and Europe on the question of the necessity of war in Iraq. Under those circumstances, a U.S. administration that assumed for itself the right and duty to take unilateral national security deci- sions to defend America and its interests resolved to overthrow the Iraqi regime. Meanwhile, the personalities and political situations of
the leaders in Germany, France, and Russia led them to challenge that right. The result was a diplomatic disaster.
Both sides made some real miscalculations. Bush administration officials, hewing to a theory of leadership that weaker allies would have little choice but to follow America’s lead if the direction of U.S. policy were clearly spelled out, never believed that opponents in Europe would dare challenge U.S. power. They were thus surprised and appalled when France, Germany, and Russia—let alone Mexico, Chile, Cameroon, and others on the Security Council—did just that. The Americans, so convinced they were right about what to do in Iraq, vast- ly underestimated the resistance to war in Western Europe, in Turkey, and in the rest of the world. For their part, many Europeans—particu- larly the French—for too long did not believe that even the assertive, unilateralist Bush administration would, in the face of widespread public opposition, be able to go to war based mostly on alleged flaws in a highly technical Iraqi weapons declaration. They thus misread Bush as badly as some in Washington misread the French.
Another important miscalculation—which derived in part from the underestimation of opposition to war—was the British decision, with reluctant American support, to insist on seeking a “second resolu- tion” authorizing military action against Iraq. There were, of course, real reasons for Blair to desire such a resolution, and even to believe that he could achieve one. Faced with strong domestic opposition to the war, Blair had always insisted that he would only act with interna- tional legitimacy and support, and acting without explicit UN support would have appeared to violate that pledge. Having been assured by Blair that he would get a second resolution, moreover, numerous mem- bers of Parliament from Blair’s Labor party had repeatedly promised their antiwar constituents that they would only support a war backed by the UN, and were reluctant to break that pledge.
Ultimately, however, pursuing the new UN authorization turned out to be a misstep that significantly raised the stakes in the growing
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contest with France. Had Blair gone along with the United States’ orig- inal preference to declare that they already had all the legal and moral authority to act—as even the French were by then urging them to do— much of the hostility that emerged in February and March 2003 could have been avoided. The United States and Britain would still have acted, and the French, Germans, and Russians would still have opposed the war, but the mutual resentments and accusations of acting in bad faith—both across the Atlantic and within the European Union— would have been much less fervent.
The combustible interaction of politicians on both sides also deeply exacerbated the transatlantic split. On the American side, the self-assured, moralistic, and often condescending attitude of much of the Bush administration—particularly Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Richard Cheney, but often the President himself—made many Europeans even more determined to resist American leadership. From the start, Americans, including the President, gave the impression that they considered the Iraq decision— and indeed all decisions about global peace and security—solely for them to make, and that Europeans had little choice but to follow their lead or get out of the way. This was an attitude almost designed to pro- voke opposition from those in Europe who were reluctant to accept unquestioningly the virtues of American leadership or the merits of a unipolar world.
Bush’s deep personal unpopularity in Europe going into the con- flict—his track record on issues ranging from the environment to the death penalty to missile defense—only made things worse. Europeans were being asked not only to support a war the wisdom of which they strongly questioned, but to give political backing to a leader whose priorities they did not share and whose vision of leadership seemed to offer them little in return for their support. A different American leadership may or may not have decided to confront Iraq in 2002, but it would almost certainly have placed a higher premium on interna-
tional agreement—and faced less overall hostility—than the Bush administration did.
Europe’s particular constellation of leaders and political circum- stances also contributed to the severity of the clash. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s willingness to pander to voters (and divert their attention away from Germany’s economic crisis) by launching a categorical antiwar campaign broke with a longstanding tradition of German Atlanticism and caused deep resentment in Washington. A pure and instinctive politician, Schröder differed great- ly from his predecessor, Helmut Kohl, who thought in geopolitical terms and put a high premium on foreign policy and relations with the United States. And at the very time when the United States was forcing Iraq onto the global agenda, Schröder happened to be facing the fiercest electoral battle of his political life.
The Atlanticism Schröder seemed interested in promoting the year before—when he pledged “unlimited solidarity” with the Americans after 9/11 and forged a surprisingly good initial relationship with George W. Bush—was sacrificed on the altar of domestic political expe- diency. Had the United States delayed the launch of its campaign to rally domestic and international opinion for a showdown with Iraq until after the German election, there may have been no public clash with Germany. It does not appear, however, that the White House—or the Vice President’s office—ever considered doing so. According to scholar Stephen Szabo, when asked whether Vice President Cheney had considered the potential impact on the German election of his tough Iraq speech in August 2002, a close confidant of Cheney’s responded, “Why should he care about the reaction in Germany?”
The political leadership that happened to be in power in France also made the transatlantic clash far more severe than it needed to be. President Jacques Chirac was an assertive Gaullist who had long per- sonal relationships with leaders in the Middle East and strong views about the region. As such, he was the perfect foil for a Bush adminis-
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tration that saw the United States as the natural leader of the free world. Chirac’s foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, was a part-time poet and an avowed admirer of Napoleon who had recently written a book glorifying the “hundred days”—the former Emperor’s failed attempt to reconquer Europe after escaping from prison. De Villepin wrote that “not a day goes by without me inhaling the perfume of the discreet vio- let,” the flower worn by those who sought to help Napoleon retake France, and he approvingly cited the former Emperor’s motto, “Defeat or death, but glory in any case.” This was not a worldview likely to find admirers among the foreign minister’s more pragmatic (and prosaic) counterparts in the Bush administration.
And just as a different American leadership would probably have handled Iraq very differently than the way the Bush administration did, a different leadership in France would likely have pursued a less confrontational French policy. According to former French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine, had the Socialists won the April–May 2002 elections, they would still have opposed the war, but it is unlikely that they would have launched such an all-out campaign to stop the United States.
In other words, the crisis that in some ways seemed to be the inevitable result of powerful centrifugal forces splitting the Atlantic alliance might have been far less severe—or even avoided altogether— under slightly different circumstances. If either Florida’s famous but- terfly ballot had not deprived Gore of that state’s electoral votes or if fringe presidential candidate Christiane Taubira had not kept leading Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin out of the second round of the French presidential election by taking 2.3 percent of the vote, the diplomacy of 2002–2003 might have been significantly different. These were not exactly tectonic forces.
In Turkey, too, contingent factors played a major role. Turkey’s opposition to the war, as already noted, played a significant role in bol- stering others, in France, Germany, and elsewhere, who hoped to avoid
a war. The irony, however, was that Turkey’s opposition was also to a large degree accidental. The Turkish public was genuinely and deeply opposed to war, but the Islamist-oriented government that was elected in November 2002 nonetheless went to great lengths to support the United States. Faced with a U.S. request for access to Turkish territory for forces that would invade Iraq, the governing Justice and Development party supported that request and asked its members of parliament to do the same, which more than 70 percent of them did.
The powerful Turkish military, however, and the opposition Republican People’s Party, did not want to implicate themselves in such an unpopular decision and decided to allow the ruling Islamists to take the heat for it, assuming—like most outside observers—that the mea- sure was going to pass anyway. Even then, when the vote took place on March 1, 2003, more members of parliament actually voted for the resolution than voted against it, but the resolution failed. As noted in the previous chapter, according to Turkish parliamentary rules, the 19 abstentions were effectively counted as votes against the resolution. For several minutes after the vote, the parliament did not even realize that it had rejected the measure.
None of this is to say that there were not genuine divisions across the Atlantic. But it is clear that a large number of contingent factors came together to turn what might have otherwise been just one more major diplomatic challenge for the Atlantic alliance into a crisis that risked tearing it apart.