'Foreign affairs' on foreign affairs

When Bob Woodward, of "All the President's men" fame, chose to update his post-September 11, 2001 inside-look into the White House in April, 2003, he ended his vivid portrait of unfolding contemporary history with these words:

'The American combat deaths to the short war were less than the 148 deaths in the 1991 Gulf War. Bush acknowledged that the US military presence in Iraq could continue for two years...'

We are living exceptional times when today's news is bound to be more outlandish than yesterday's fiction or Hollywood's next blockbuster in the making.

The easiest thing is to snipe at the Palestinians, the Israelis and the Americans too but I sincerely feel that the time for some deep reflection is now long overdue.

We simply cannot continue to appraise the situation as if we happened to be playing war-games in a smoke-filled air-conditioned study over a glass of Chilean red wine.

Having just come back from my holidays, I had much reading to catch up with. And yet the two most intriguing pieces I came across were not picked up from my favourite bookshops but from the website of the Council on Foreign Relations which carried advance copies of its September/October issue of its influential 'Foreign Affairs' journal.

On one hand, I found Madeleine K. Albright's "Bridges, bombs or bluster?", while on the other, I came across "Taking Arabs seriously" by Mark Lynch.

I happened to read these two intriguing pieces on the morrow of the terrorist bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad that killed the head of the UN mission in Iraq, Sergio Vieria de Millo.

At the time of writing, it was not yet clear who was behind the escalating terror attacks in Iraq although there was no shortage of suspects. They could be al Qaeda itself, but then they could also be Islamist fighters who have been known to be entering the country since the war ended. On the other hand, they could also be Baathists or left-overs from the Hussein regime.

Although the UN HQ were protected by US armed forces, both the attack on the Jordanian embassy and the UN headquarters indicate a shift to more sophisticated terror tactics. As a foreign diplomat predicted to me over lunch recently, in modern day terrorism there is a willingness to hit so-called 'soft' targets, which are non-military and often occupied by civilians. Some even argue that these so-called targets of opportunity are far easier to strike than the heavily protected military facilities of US forces, among others.

I have decided to reflect upon the Albright and Lynch articles because both are American citizens of political clout and influence. Neither can be accused of harbouring any anti-American sentiments and yet they made certain incisive observations which one can ill afford to bypass or ignore.

Ms Albright saw a scenario unfolding whereby reliance on alliance had been replaced by redemption through pre-emption, with the shock of force trumping the hard work of diplomacy and long-time relationships being redefined in the process.

When President Bush did discuss the pursuit of al Qaeda, Ms Albright felt that he portrayed it less as a global struggle against a global threat than as an effort to bring terrorists to 'American justice' - as if justice alone were not enough.

In spite of the Bush administration's efforts to put Iraq and al Qaeda in the same bag, by describing them as 'complementary halves of the same existentialist threat', she could not refrain from recalling that when the United States duly went to war against Iraq, it did so despite having convinced only four members of the UN Security Council to back the action.

By the time of writing few showed concern that the ongoing failure to capture Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein did not seem to matter.

From an American perspective I am inclined to agree with her viewpoint that the war with Iraq could have been justified on the basis of Saddam's decade-long refusal to comply with UN Security Council resolutions on weapons of mass destruction, but then why bypass the UN itself in the first place ?

In fact when recently commenting on the UN role in Iraq, Representative Richard Gephardt criticised the US for having chosen the path of 'going it alone' foreign policy when it should have sought a Security Council mandate from the UN so other important allies would also join them at this 'critical' moment.

Ms Albright's statement that a war against Iraq, although justifiable, was not essential in the short term to protect US security, calls for deep reflection.

What has complicated matters is that what simply started by asking others to oppose al Qaeda, has developed into asking them to oppose al Qaeda, support the invasion of an Arab country and endorse the doctrine of pre-emption - all as part of a single package.

With these thoughts in mind one can more easily understand why there is a certain degree of European unease with American pretensions coupled with American doubts about European resolve.

Wars must be waged out of necessity not out of choice - clamoured Ms Albright.

Her most biting criticism ran as follows:

'Perhaps above all, the Europeans should be treated as adults. If they have differences with US policy, those differences should be considered seriously, not dismissed as signs of weakness or tantamount to treason. Washington needs to recall that 'allies' and 'satellites' are distinctly different things.'

Marc Lynch's article carries similar weight, particularly since it features practically alongside Ms Albright's hard-hitting article in the same influential journal by one of America's leading think-tanks.

Mr Lynch's message was that the Americans are approaching the Arabs with the right goals but with the wrong touch. Even those Arabs most critical of Saddam Hussein tend to share Mr Lynch's view that the failure to find dramatic evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction has spurred widespread debate in the Middle East about the real purpose of the recent war, which most Arab commentators now see as a bid by the US to consolidate its regional and global hegemony.

This article coming from a Maltese politician and columnist who has always held the US in high regard and considers its role in geo-strategic developments to be pivotal, may be making observations which might sound startling. But I personally believe that in the post-September 11, 2001 scenario America could have done so much more to win over the sympathy of those who were in the past traditionally critical of it.

Rather than widening its focus, it has narrowed its base of support.

America cannot afford to do so.

Either in its own interests or in the interest of global security.

Mr Brincat is opposition spokesman on foreign affairs and information technology.
leo.brincat@gov.mt