The Rift Between America and Old Europe The Distracted Eagle (Contemporary Security Studies)

THE RIFT BETWEEN AMERICA AND OLD EUROPE This book strives to explain the opening of the great political rift between America and Old Europe in 2002–2003. Following the wave of solidarity with America in 2001, most of America’s European allies enthusiastically joined the war in Afghanistan, but for some of them enthusiasm soon gave way to pacifist reactions to the American switch from the common war on terrorism to regime change in Iraq, to American rejection of international treaties and to hostility to the UN. The evolution of American foreign policy from earlier multilateralism to the neo-conservative unilateralism of the Bush administration thus caused hostility in some of America’s traditional allies, among them France and Germany. French and German public opinion polls, media opinion, and the context of past foreign policy supply the background for this analysis in a year of major parliamentary elections in both countries in 2002. Early in 2003, the European-American estrangement led to an open break as Washington plunged ahead, overriding UN and allied support for weapons inspections in Iraq, to launch a blitzkrieg operation against Saddam Hussein. Ultimately The Rift Between America and Old Europe analyses how this decision, combined with the rejection of Kyoto and other international treaties, all clearly related to the conservative Republican revolution in domestic policies, widened the rift by undermining the role of America as a democratic model. The book ends with a critical assessment of the 2000 presidential election and its significance for America’s leadership abroad. This book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in international relations and security studies as well as to journalists and policy-makers. Peter H.Merkl is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California. He has published widely in the field of political science, diplomacy, and European Politics.

CONTEMPORARY SECURITY STUDIES Daniel Ganser, NATO’s Secret Army: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe Peter Kent Forster and Stephen J.Cimbala, The US, NATO and Military Burden-Sharing Irina Isakova, Russian Governance in the Twenty-First Century: Geo-Strategy, Geopolitics and New Governance Craig Gerrard, The Foreign Office and Finland 1938–1940: Diplomatic Sideshow Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Jan Angstrom (eds.), Rethinking the Nature of War Brendan O’Shea, Perception and Reality in the Modern Yugoslav Conflict: Myth, Falsehood and Deceit 1991–1995 Tim Donais, The Political Economy of Peacebuilding in Post-Dayton Bosnia Peter H.Merkl, The Rift between America and Old Europe: The Distracted Eagle Jan Hallenberg and Håkan Karlsson (eds.), The Iraq War: European perspectives on Politics, Strategy, and Operations Richard L.Russell, Strategic Contest: Weapons Proliferation and War in the Greater Middle East David R.Willcox, Propaganda, the Press and Conflict: The Gulf War and Kosovo Bertel Heurlin and Sten Rynning (eds.), Missile Defence: International, Regional and National Implications Chandra Lekha Sriram, Globalising Justice for Mass Atrocities: A Revolution in Accountability

THE RIFT BETWEEN AMERICA AND OLD EUROPE The distracted eagle

Peter H.Merkl

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2005 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX 14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” © 2005 Peter H.Merkl All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Merkl, Peter H. The rift between America and old Europe: the distracted eagle Peter H.Merkl. p. cm.—(Contemporary security studies) ISBN 0-415-35985-6 (hardback)—ISBN 0-415-35986-4 (pbk.) 1. National security-United States. 2. National security-Europe. 3. United States-Foreign relations-Europe. 4. Europe-Foreign relations-United States. 5. World politics-1995–2005. I. Title. II. Series: Cass contemporary security studies series. UA23.M467 2005 327.7304-dc22 2004023978 ISBN 0-203-00791-3 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-35986-4 (Print Edition)

CONTENTS Introduction

1 Who lost America? Who lost Old Europe?

1

5

2 Alea iacta: How did the rift happen?

34

3 The distracted eagle

68

4 A conservative revolution?

104

5 Revisiting President Bush’s election

134

Notes

168

Index

189

INTRODUCTION In the aftermath of the cataclysmic events of September 11, 2001, the dramatic opening of a rift in the Atlantic Alliance, particularly between the United States and some of its oldest allies, Germany and France, may well have been the least expected consequence of that fateful day. Nearly everybody remembers the extraordinary impact of that horrible day on Americans and on friends and onlookers the world over. Who could forget the outpouring of sympathy and offers of assistance of that moment, especially from massive rallies in capital cities of the West, such as Paris, Berlin, London, and Rome? The respected liberal French daily Le Monde headlined: “We are all Americans now.” The German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder of the Social Democrat party (SPD), called the terror attacks “a declaration of war against the whole civilized world” and promised “unlimited solidarity” and being “firmly at the side” of the American ally in the war on terror; many other voices in Europe and around the world, great or small, gave similar assurances and signs of affection. Half a year later, however, this worldwide solidarity began to fade and even within the alliance, cracks began to appear. Soon, both France and Germany and some other governments began to oppose the American course of policy regarding “regime change” in Iraq and the new American doctrines pointing towards unilateralism and super-power hegemony. They did not believe that the dictator Saddam Hussein had had anything to do with the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon. In October, 2002, the American leadership role was challenged at the United Nations Security Council where France, as one of its five permanent members, has a veto. After considerable wrangling, however, the Council unanimously passed a resolution (no. 1441) authorizing the resumption of UN weapons inspections in Iraq and threatening serious consequences if Saddam Hussein did not cooperate. But early in 2003, just before the beginning of the hostilities in Iraq, implacable French stalling, along with Russian, Chinese, German, Mexican, and nearly everyone else’s opposition, denied the United States the support of the Security Council for an immediate military invasion of Iraq. Americans, in and out of government, became rather angry with Germany and France to the point where the in-house cafeteria of Congress decided to relabel French fries on its menu “freedom fries” and prominent Washington bar stewards demonstratively poured French wine and champagne down the drain. Notable pundits distinguished themselves attributing cowardice to the French who did not seem eager to fight for President Bush’s crusade, even calling the French “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” in conservative magazines. The word “surrender” in this connection implied that Iraq represented a World War Two-like threat to the West and that French and German reluctance to meet it constituted “appeasement,” comparable to appeasing Hitler’s aggression in 1939. In France, one writer called President Bush a cowboy à tête de boeuf—a common insult also among British and German peace demonstrators—and there were calls for a boycott of American goods. According to a Sofres poll in France at the peak of the dispute, 18 percent of a national sample agreed with this boycott strategy.1

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Prominent French intellectuals like Emmanuel Todd (Après l’empire) were widely discussed all over Europe. Todd suggested that America, far from being omnipotent—but a “hyperpower” in 1945—was in process of decomposition now. In a German public opinion poll in February, 2003, 47 percent of the respondents of a national sample (up from 42 percent the previous year), also opined that “as Europe rises, the US is declining as a great power.”2 As in other testimonials from around the continent, there were overtones of dismay about having to work with an America identified with the neoconservative Republican regime, sure of its manifest destiny, greedy for the lucre of this world, unilateral by conviction, and grudgingly ready for multilateral approaches only when these suited its purposes. A prominent German intellectual, Ulrich Beck, in an essay in Der Spiegel, “Make law not war,” similarly railed against the new American emphasis on military superiority and the doctrine of preemptive war. International conflict and global threats call for a strengthening of international law and treaties, for moderation via multilateral institutions and diplomacy. Writing at the very beginning of 2003, Beck warned that American military unilateralism would not only bring about regime change in Iraq, “but destroy the United Nations and bomb the world back into the precontractual state of nature” [of Hobbesian anarchy, or the war of all against all]. He conceded that an open society, freedom, and democracy alone—without military muscle—might not always convert hearts and minds or promise security; he pointed to Europe’s helplessness in the face of the civil wars in the Balkans prior to American intervention. An unlimited right to use preemptive strikes against a self-defined security threat, such as the assumed presence of weapons of mass destruction, however, sets intolerable precedents for other nations, such as India and Pakistan, or China vis-à-vis Taiwan. Is this, he asked, perhaps not the rise but the fall of the Pax Americana?3

America and Europe: a generation gap writ large Against a backdrop of these debates and recriminations, pundits unctuously proclaimed the rift between the United States of America and Europe a growing chasm, long coming and a bane on the future. But isn’t America largely descended from Europe, physically and culturally, if around some corners such as the long-established immigrant settlements in North and South America? Only the native Americans and pure descendants of African slaves are completely without such European antecedents and have a right to reject such Eurocentric perspectives. The rest is stuck with a love-hate relationship with European ancestors, not unlike the generational split between children and parents. America is indeed the younger generation, energetic, resourceful, and vibrant, having left the parent civilization behind in many ways. Old Europe once believed itself at the center of the modern world, but it is no more: It shows its age, its fatigue, and its distemper in the face of its own offspring. The times are waning when some Americans still felt they had to go on ritual visits to the old sod, their cultural roots, in order to gain a sense of purpose and perspective, not to mention picking up the latest fashions or glimpses of avantgarde thought. Indeed, the US—Latin America and Europe have followed somewhat different patterns—and Old Europe have been squaring off in recent years just like père et fils in classic novels, generations clashing furiously on many subjects and yet linked by one of

Introduction

3

the most powerful bonds known in nature. As in a family where the younger lot is desperately determined to assert its autonomy by any means possible, they turn passing controversies into vehicles of self-assertion. As in such a maturing family, there is plenty of mutual misunderstanding and miscommunication to aggravate an already difficult situation. The generations malign each other in words and images—“Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus”—as if they were not intimately related. The older generation resists the emancipation of their offspring by picturing them as wayward and lost, or downright perverse, in any case far from the cultural standards and sterling values of their elders. The younger generation sees the flaws and limitations of their fathers and forebears in the most unflattering light. And yet, neither can really divorce themselves from their common bond, just as real parents and their grown children will hardly ever— in spite of acrimony and bitter recriminations—actually divorce each other. Instead, they often go, after short periods of blissful distance, from acute conflict and perennial underlying tensions, back towards nostalgic reunions. Common traits are rediscovered and sentimentally welcomed. Sympathy and mutual support are reestablished, if only in symbolic fashion. They owe each other far too much to go on denouncing one another. Even where the estrangement has been bitter and prolonged, a profound regret may come over both sides, perhaps even a strong desire to patch up the filial ties and to apologize, explicitly or implicitly, for the confrontations of yesterday: “We should not have stormed out of our parents’ house at the height of a huge argument over rather small matters,” the younger set may feel. “How could we show the door to our own offspring in the heat of a passionate disagreement?”, the parents say. On a verbal level, of course, the parting of the ways of, for example, the US and Germany, long an American protégé and client, may well be couched in the rhetoric of generational conflict: When taking office in 1998, German Chancellor Schröder proclaimed that “Germany had now become of age” and, at the time of the break in 2002, he spoke of “German emancipation” from American hegemony. For the American side, a former ambassador to Bonn called the German departure “the opening shot of a new, disloyal, confused and weak Germany. This is not a grownup but a teenager screaming defiance at the father.”4 German postwar and Cold War history of course seems to reverse the roles of son and father but below these layers of historical perceptions, the long-range perspective shows a youthful and self-confident America confronting the gouty hands and arthritic back of old European traditions. Public perceptions of history in any case are highly selective: When public opinion pollsters at the peak of the crisis asked Germans whether they should not still be grateful for American support during the Cold War (1949–1990), 62 percent flatly said “no.” Only one third replied “yes,” even though as many as 87 percent agreed that the US would still be the most important German ally in the future.5 As for the French, to whom American neo-conservatives ascribe monstrous arrogance and colossal ingratitude for the American military interventions in World Wars One and Two (France missed the German postwar stage of American tutelage), the commander of the American Expeditionary Force of 1917, General J.Pershing, had the magic words on arriving in war-ravaged France: “Lafayette, here we are.” He was referring, of course, to the gallant Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834) who in 1777 arrived in revolutionary Philadelphia and, as a divisional commander, helped George Washington win the War of Independence against the British Empire. History spins long threads of obligation and

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tradition, along with moments of wrath and denial. It should not be invoked selectively except in a positive way, to acknowledge and express affection. Any amateur historian would have known that the American interventions in World Wars One and Two had very complex goals among which saving France from the Germans was hardly the only one. By the same token, the Louisiana Purchase of 1804 which made the newborn American republic potentially a major player on the international scene had complex reasons and was hardly intended as a house-warming gift to the United States. However much maligned, today’s France, in many ways perhaps the most American of European nations, is among America’s most important ancestors and antecedents.

1 WHO LOST AMERICA? WHO LOST OLD EUROPE? Back in the 1950s, a common slogan of conservative Republicans was “Who lost China?”, intended to pillory those in American foreign policy-making—particularly the Truman administration and even liberal Republicans—who in 1949 allegedly allowed one-fourth of humanity to slip into communist hands. Of course China was never ours to lose, nor did the critics propose a workable alternative policy other than coddling the corrupt regime of Generalissimo Chiang-Kai-Shek, which was probably the least likely way to prevent the communists from winning the civil war. But there was no denying the enormity of the loss. “Who lost China?” became a very effective political slogan that could quickly separate friend and foe in the US. The sudden estrangement in 2002/2003 between the US and Europe, not just with the governments of Germany and France, but with 70–80 percent of the public in all European nations—including those of President Bush’s “coalition of the willing”—may well leave a similarly lasting cleavage in the world. To be sure there are striking differences as well: Even though there were slogans among the American military such as “First Iraq then France,” military clashes between Old Europe and the US are very unlikely whereas the Korean War actually brought the armies of communist China into lethal confrontation with American forces in the early 1950s. And there was no equivalent in Sino-American relations then to the various motives that induced the 18 governments of “New Europe” to endorse the American war in Iraq in the face of their unwilling citizenry, not to mention the American allies Britain and Spain which also faced large anti-war majorities at home, at least initially. In any case, there is no mistaking the sentiment from many quarters in Germany, France, and Belgium that “somebody lost America” and “how on earth could we have let this happen?” There is genuine regret about the estrangement and a search for ways to rekindle the warmth that once existed between Old Europeans and Americans, in fact such a short time ago. The German public, according to public opinion polls, was well aware of the deterioration of German-American relations during the second half of 2002. In May of that year, 88 percent still considered these relations “good” and only 9 percent called them “bad.” But after October of the same year, when the balance between good relations and bad was still 65 percent good and 33 percent bad, the truth began to sink in, probably encouraged by media reports of the reactions in Washington and some regret on all levels.1 The show of good will in Washington alone, in contrast to the saber-rattling by Vice President Dick Cheney and the neo-conservatives, perhaps had impressed the Germans. Even the opposition of pacifist SPD adherents among the respondents, 60 percent of whom had not wanted Germany to participate under any circumstances, had shrunk to 51 percent.2

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Separation anxiety American official and public opinion was shocked by the refusal of first the German, then the French government to follow the signals from Washington and tended to see in this resistance a conspiracy against American leadership in the Western alliance. It is very important to distinguish between the French and the German reactions to President Bush’s obvious intent to launch war upon Iraq—with or without the support of “Old Europe.” While both European governments had been taken aback the year before by the adamant refusal of the new administration in Washington to adhere to a long list of international treaty obligations and promises of future commitments—particularly the Kyoto Protocols on global warming, a brace of disarmament treaties rejected as out of date or “dead,” strong support for the UN, and the treaty establishing an International Criminal Court—the Germans were clearly the first to take a stand against the war. They did so under the pressure of a crucial parliamentary election (September 22, 2002) and on the basis of long-standing popular attitudes. On the other hand, the French government under President Jacques Chirac was still uneasily sitting on the fence at the time, probably debating the issues internally and, if anything, viewing the German démarche with considerable skepticism. In Washington, of course, wishful thinking imagined both to be in line with the Bush campaign. The administration and its coterie acted very surprised when first the German and then the French governments voiced major reservations to the American course. When Washington’s neo-conservative establishment discovered its error, it reacted with great anger and suggested motives such as “cowardice before the enemy” and “historic appeasement,” or possibly even German sympathy for Saddam Hussein. Many of the advocates of the war, including the president himself, had long pictured themselves as the Churchilleans in a pre-World War Two situation, having to brave a Third-Reich-like threat in the face of apathy and appeasement in the style of Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier in 1939. Whether this line of thinking made any sense under the challenge of international AlQaeda terrorism, and whether it justified war against Iraq was another question. Unlike the Germans, the French were a rather recent colonial empire with longstanding involvement in the Middle East and Muslim North Africa, and may well have viewed the American plans there with a jaundiced eye. In an earlier generation, they had looked askance at American folly in Vietnam where they had long been the imperial masters and had eventually been driven out. Chirac also had not yet developed a close relationship with Chancellor Schröder, as President Mitterrand had cultivated with Helmut Kohl, or their predecessors Giscard d’Estaing with Helmut Schmidt. Hence the conservative president, Chirac, exhibited no more than the customary diplomatic courtesy of congratulating “cher Gerhard,” the Social Democratic chancellor, on his narrow election triumph in 2002 in a message “looking forward to future cooperation in the EU.” Chirac probably hoped for a victory of the conservative opposition Christian Democrats with whom he would have had more in common. The German press also noticed the “unusually friendly reception” lavished by Chirac and his Premier Jean-Pierre Raffarin on the German opposition candidate for chancellor, Edmund Stoiber, and speculated that Chirac had been unhappy with Schröder’s course on Iraq and the US. Schröder for his part reflected strong grassroots sentiment in both of his rather pacifistically inclined

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coalition parties, the SPD and the Greens, and in the electorate at large. In the fulcrum of a hotly contested democratic election, he had little choice but to give in to these pressures and not to the aggressive posturing of Bush and his Vice President Cheney whose recent speeches left no doubt about America’s intentions. Yet the big crisis in transatlantic relations still lay ahead, perhaps triggered on the one hand by the unanimous passage of the Security Council Resolution and, on the other hand, by the evident unwillingness of the US to let the newly authorized UN inspections in Iraq proceed. Hence in mid-December, the pollsters asked Germans, in case of a war in Iraq, exactly how they thought their country should be involved. The results were stunning: Now 53 percent responded “in no way” (65 percent of SPD adherents, 40 percent of Christian Democrats) while only 13 percent wanted to send troops. In the end, of course, the Fischer/Schröder government sent neither. In fact it did its share in the Security Council and in Europe to agitate against the American initiative. A month later, after antiwar rallies and demonstrations had surged around the world, the percentage of German opponents to any contribution to the war effort had increased to 59 percent, including also many more Christian Democrats (now 47 percent) who were also less inclined now (32 percent, down from 38 percent) to send matériel and money.3 In the eyes of Christian Democratic intellectuals, the refusal of the “Red/ Green” Schröder government had brought on the “worst German-American crisis” since 1945. To speak of “military adventures,” and refuse even financial support was bad enough. But for Justice Minister Herta Däubler-Gmelin to attempt comparisons between Bush and Adolf Hitler was bound to “poison relations,” as National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice had put it. When Ludwig Stiegler, the SPD whip in parliament, added his silly comparison of Bush to the Roman emperor Augustus, he added fuel to the flames. Though media voices and Red/Green politicians were quick to protest against the accusation of being anti-American, this was precisely what official Washington called them. As the CDU/CSU weekly Politische Meinung saw it, they had “manipulated pacifism and anti-Americanism” for electoral purposes and, in the process, recklessly undermined the good transatlantic relations since 9/11. It was idiotic to depict the US as “a manipulative, imperial, aggressive super-power” and its current government as “warmongering” along the lines of familiar anti-American stereotypes. The author recalled the “anti-American media campaign” of the 1990/1991 Gulf War when half of the German public opposed a perfectly legal and UN-sanctioned intervention. Christian Democratic comments were even less forgiving about the lame apologies of Schröder and DäublerGmelin this time and the reverberations of the whole contretemps in the German media. It was the German “not under any circumstances”—the French had been more polite up to this point—that was unilateralist, they said, and it was isolating Germany. It also undermined the French and UN efforts, Politische Meinung wrote, to forge procedural compromise solutions—for example putting a deadline upon the UN inspections.4 George W.Bush was bound to take offense and he was known to bear grudges. A comment by the respected political scientist Christian Hacke of Bonn University was more analytical, and critical of Robert Kagan’s widely quoted neo-conservative essay “Power and Weakness” about why European-American relations were deteriorating. Hacke, a Christian Democrat, disagreed with Kagan’s one-sided emphasis on how American military-technological (and defense budget) superiority predisposed Americans to power politics, while Europe’s relative military weakness made the

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Europeans more inclined towards Wilsonian precepts of international law and multilateral organization. According to Hacke, this dichotomy not only reversed the pre-World War Two foreign policy positions of the two but ignored the importance of the non-military aspects of the transatlantic face-off. Germany should be proud of its demonstrated commitment to multilateral conflict resolution which is acknowledged by both major parties. Unlike its European allies, the Bush administration had not shown sufficient interest in non-military international cooperation in environmental, international development, and other questions. Hacke acknowledged the pivotal change in global politics that came with the terrorist attack of 9/11 and praised the dispatching of nearly 10,000 German troops from the Balkans to Kuwait and Afghanistan in spite of severe gaps in logistical capacity and equipment and cutbacks in defense spending, weaknesses endemic to present European organizations including Nato. The clash over Iraq, to him, is a reflection of European-American differences in Middle East policy— never mind Mars and Venus and their alleged links to either imperial policies or an appreciation of the national welfare state. European governments including that in Berlin focus on the economic and cultural structural problems of Middle Eastern backwardness, but Washington concentrates on using anti-terrorist and military measures. Both have a point, Prof. Hacke writes, but the inexperienced German government of Schröder and Fischer “blew the chance of a brilliant diplomatic solution” along European lines with its emotional confrontation: In the face of the American Realpolitik, it should have stressed the need to first pacify the conflicts of Afghanistan and between Israel and the Palestinians, emphasized the need to plan for the postwar order in Iraq and the Middle East, and warned about the economic and other costs of a war in Iraq, even with the legitimacy of UN backing. The intemperate words brought on a severe German-American crisis that, in effect, isolated Germany and robbed it of its leverage with the US while preventing the emergence of a well-crafted common European strategy, with Russia and China under the aegis of the UN. The unanimous passage of Resolution 1441 on November 8, 2002, demonstrated the isolation and helplessness of a German policy of “moral provincialism,” and resulted in long-lasting damage. The principles of military security and mission civilisatrice (civilizing mission), American or French, are quite compatible and can be beneficially combined.5 Another conservative political scientist, Lothar Rühl of Cologne University, commented drily in the same monthly that there was no realistic alternative to the combination of UN inspections and the American threat of war in case of Iraqi noncooperation or serious violation of the conditions imposed by the Security Council. Rühl conceded that international law specialists and politicians would continue to argue about the precise threshold between a “threat” and a violation of international security, especially in a case like Iraq which in 1991 had sent Scud missiles into Israel and Saudi Arabia. The El Samoud missiles found by the inspectors in January, 2003 were quite capable of such use and clearly supported President Bush’s argument that the US should not wait until they were actually used with payloads from the Iraqi arsenal of prohibited weapons. However difficult the assessment of an immediate threat, the uncertainties of the inspections and the politics of Security Council deliberation, in Rühl’s opinion, the UN-recognized right of self-defense authorized American military action.6 In sum, if Washington counted on their support, the Christian Democratic spokespersons were not agreed but certainly tended towards the American position. In

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any case, they felt free to discuss all aspects of the decision to be made without a sense of fear about open debate or a compulsion to agree, such as the Bush administration had conveyed to the Europeans who took this to be a lack of democratic spirit. In official Washington circles, of course, this was the same impatience born of insecurity which “simply did not want to talk about it anymore,” that had manifested itself with the Clinton impeachment, the presidential election of 2000, and now the rush to war in Iraq. Europeans also sensed in this dogmatic attitude on the war the leading role of the US military—a favorite target of military stereotypes—where hierarchic authority replaces democratic discussion. If the Germans were troubled by the split, there has been far less of such a sentiment in the US—except perhaps among Democratic politicians—least of all in official Washington, where the anger and hostility of yesterday were still felt and there seemed to be no desire to meet the European objections even halfway. It would, of course, be an illusion to think that the German and French voices that have since expressed regret at the parting and a desire to get together again were motivated by any kind of belated conversion to the American rush to war. On the contrary, the postwar revelations that the original reasons for attacking Iraq—such as the alleged immediate threat to its neighbors and the West’s security, the link between Saddam Hussein and AlQaeda, and the need to find and destroy Iraq’s much ballyhooed weapons of mass destruction—may all have been bogus reinforced the French and German resistance to the invasion. Seeing Prime Minister Tony Blair squirm under the onslaught of his domestic critics that he had “sexed up the intelligence” basis for the war made many other Old Europeans feel they were right to resist. They were not persuaded otherwise by the bait-and-switch operation that tried to replace the original reasons with evidence of the atrocities that were committed by the regime of Saddam Hussein, including some undertaken while Iraq was allied with the US.7 Given the habit of major powers, including the US, of having dictators like Josef Stalin for allies, their brutalities have never been considered a cause for launching war against them. Before we get into the details of the German and French developments before and during the “damned Iraq year,” as one representative publication of the German opposition (CDU/CSU) called it,8 we need to briefly address three broader aspects of the situation. One is the differences among European nations and the rapidly shifting nature of the scenarios and attitudes among the principal actors of that year. It would clearly be silly to describe the varying relations between Old Europe and America during that turbulent period as if they represented mostly positive or negative constants rather than the ups and downs of short-term causes and effects. To the extent that anti-Americanism played a role (see below, Chapter 2), for instance, while there may indeed be some longterm attitudes such as popular historic prejudices between the French and the British, and by extension Anglo-Americans too, it took contemporary actions and policies on both sides—for example the confrontations at the United Nations Security Council—to activate and aggravate them. This was particularly true of the Old European side where large percentages of the public always eagerly observe international politics and keep themselves quite well-informed about the outside world. In the United States, the dominance of jingoistic rightwing talk radio, the extraordinary concentration of corporate media ownership, and a habitually largely indifferent public raise doubts about the authenticity of popular sentiments on topics of foreign policy.9 We will come back to the

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subject of anti-Americanism, which is our second broader aspect, in a national context below. That the anti-American anger had reached crisis levels in the Middle East half a year after the end of the Iraq war and at the height of Anglo-American occupation troubles and the seeming exhaustion of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process requires little reference to long-standing patterns of anti-American prejudice. Arab nations, if anything, have been in love with American culture for decades but became extremely angry at particular American government policies. It is the short-term policies, not the long-term bias, that have led some Muslim extremists to launch lethal terrorist attacks on the US. As for the differences between the foreign policies of European nations, France and Germany, despite their agreement on the war in Iraq, represent opposites in other ways. French foreign policy since Charles De Gaulle reflects an imperial air and the memories of an empire circling half the globe, including also Middle Eastern interests and other Muslim areas in North Africa. Part of this imperial air stems from the universal mission civilisatrice of French culture that France has always claimed as a rationale of its empire—a curious parallel to a similar sense of mission among Americans—and that accounts for a national pride that is sometimes perceived by others as sheer arrogance. Once dominant in Europe, France fell behind Germany in population and economic power in the twentieth century, but its regained political and military equality—it is a nuclear power and has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council—rather make for continuing rivalry with Germany. Fortunately, since the beginnings of European unification, this century-old rivalry no longer leads to wars but has given way to close cooperation in many fields, particularly in building the EU into a mutually beneficial enterprise. The third broader aspect that, in particular, American readers must bear in mind to understand the Old European reactions to that “Iraq Year,” and since, is the context of European integration. Even though it receives scant and often unfavorable attention in the American media, the gradual unification of Europe is vitally important to Europeans, in fact a serious rival to their affection for America. It is far ahead of today’s neoconservative dreams of American empire which have little to recommend them to Europeans. The dream of a united Europe is a politico-cultural vision spelt out for example by Chancellor Schröder’s slogan of “L’Europe puissance” (the power of European culture) in 1999, not a dream of military prowess and conquest but an image of Europe as a distinctive civilization and culture and characterized by a specific type of European welfare state, a viable and specifically European response to economic globalization. Started in fact in the late 1940s by American leaders, in a manner of speaking, who made European economic cooperation a precondition for the Marshall Plan, today’s European Union (EU) has experienced dramatic changes in the decades since the end of the Cold War and especially during the year of Euro-American friction over Iraq: Since its relaunching with the European Single [market] Act (1986) and the Maastricht treaty (1992), the EU made its way towards further market integration, the introduction of the euro currency—another target of initial Anglo-American scorn—the revision of the European treaties at Nice (2000), the drafting of a European charter of fundamental rights (initiated by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer), and finally the difficult negotiations over the drawing up of a constitution for the enlarged EU. Finally, the accession of six new members (and acceptance of Turkey as a candidate) and their place

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in the fabric of the EU had to be agreed upon. Against such major competition, the unpleasantness with America obviously stood out only for a while and in a minor way. Americans who tend to think of Germany and France as anti-American co-conspirators also may be surprised to learn that the two came to blows repeatedly and over various EU issues at the Nice conference and since, particularly over the question of their equality in the EU institutions. In the meantime, especially since Fischer’s speech on “finalité”—the shape of the final union—at Berlin’s Humboldt University (2000), Europeans are also debating the final character of a united Europe, whether it is to be a Western Europeoriented federation of nation-states rather than a United States of Europe, or an Eastern Europe-oriented union dominated, as it was in the nineteenth century, by German hegemony.

The unwarlike Germans of today From recent historical antecedents such as German nationalism and World Wars One and Two, we tend to think of the Germans as a warlike people that, both under the Kaiser and under Adolf Hitler, was ready to battle the world for European hegemony. But there is also a long German prehistory of resistance to war dating back especially to the German opposition to Hitler—particularly motivated by leftwing pacifism and by religious beliefs—and to the shattering experiences and defeat in World War Two. While the Third Reich, of course, made every effort to revive German militarism and to pursue racial empire as a vehicle of national revenge for the humiliating defeat in World War One, there is considerable evidence that, despite unceasing German victory propaganda, Germans developed cold feet about the war. They became ever more cynical about the standard slogan of consolation presented to the mothers, wives, and children of the fallen: “Der Dank des Vaterlandes ist Euch sicher (be assured of the thanks of the fatherland).” Instead of thinking of wars and victory in the glorious colors of military and Nazi propaganda, they learned to see it as vast and immensely pointless slaughter—including of themselves and their best comrades—under sadistic and incompetent officers and, ultimately, insane civilian leadership, the proverbial old men sending young men to their deaths. Rising casualties and the major reverses of 1942/1943 (North Africa, Stalingrad) squelched any illusions about a possible final victory while the intense Anglo-American bombing campaign of German cities knocked the rest of the stuffing out of German warlikeness. The Allied landings and rapid advance and the obvious rout of the German armies left no doubt about the bitter end of the Nazi racist and imperial quest: Now the Germans would have to pay for a sea of terrible injustices they had inflicted on a world of victims, from Coventry to Moscow and from Auschwitz to the island of Crete. The Nuremberg International War Crimes tribunal (1945–1946) and other war crimes trials reinforced this first lesson in the price of national hubris and warlikeness when the Nazi and military leadership was tried for preparing and executing “crimes against peace (wars of aggression)” and crimes against humanity, in particular genocide against gypsies and Jews. The international military court proceedings were founded on international agreements, particularly dating from the Geneva conventions on war and the KelloggBriand pact of 1928, a gallant effort by a French and an American secretary of state to outlaw war altogether. The Allied occupation of postwar Germany (1945–1949) followed

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up the trials and purges with determined efforts in each zone at “reeducating” the German population for a peaceful and democratic future in a setting of international cooperation.10 Even the Soviets emphatically applied themselves to this concern although they tended to equate Nazism with capitalism, and German past and implied present aggression (as a Nato member) with hostility towards the Soviet Union and other communist countries. The American occupation more than anyone stressed democratic reeducation and the extirpation of all traces of past German warlikeness, a message willingly accepted by most German politicians under the four occupation regimes. This was the third German lesson in peace and international cooperation and it took root strongly, especially among young Germans.11 If there is any need to demonstrate how deeply the lessons of antiimperialism and visceral opposition to war had penetrated, at least in West Germany, we only need to recall the waves of well-organized pacifism on German soil that often had the heartfelt support of churches, both Protestant and Catholic, of trade unions, and of the political left, especially the Social Democrats (SPD), who were the main opposition party during the 1950s and 1960s, and again in the 1980s and 1990s. They also were frequently at loggerheads with American power interests and with Nato. In the 1950s, West German pacifists first mobilized against West German rearmament within Nato, the Faustian bargain entered into by West Germany’s first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer: Germans were to serve in defense of the Western alliance (and themselves) in exchange for being once more accepted among the civilized nations of the West, after the great crimes of the Nazi era. In the late 1950s, Germans also marched along with other pacifists in the Banthe-Bomb and Easter Marches against Nato nuclear arms and a possible nuclear armament for German Nato troops. In the late 1960s, German leftwing student rebels exhibited a decided tilt against Nato and what they insisted on calling US and Western imperialism and neo-colonial exploitation—including the war in Vietnam. In the 1980s again, a mighty peace movement assembled against the US and West German plans to refurbish Nato missile defenses against the Soviet Union whose leader, Leonid Brezhnev, had chosen to surround the Federal Republic and its Nato bases with a ring of his own threatening missiles (SS 20s). Rather significantly, the SPD—in power at the time—split on the issue: its leader, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, had helped initiate the missile redeployment while his party was rather cool if not hostile to it. At the time of the first Gulf War, finally, yet another, rather youthful but very large peace movement arose in opposition to the imminent war against Saddam Hussein. Not unlike today, the pacifists never meant to defend the monstrous Iraqi dictator and invader of Kuwait, but they opposed the bombing, warlike action, and later the economic sanctions against innocent civilians, especially women and children who were reportedly dying from the lack of food and medicines. Then as now, German pacifist banners proclaimed “No Blood for Oil,” even though their government’s policies then, and through most of the 1990s, balked at sending German soldiers for military action “out of the Nato theater” anyway. Aside from paying a substantial sum towards American expenses for the first Gulf War, Germany limited itself to minor logistical support for the operation against Iraq, and this under a Christian Democratic chancellor, Helmut Kohl. Later Nato and UN-supported action in the Balkans found the German government, not just the public, most reluctant to go much beyond peace-keeping, humanitarian, and police functions there.12 The German government had been quick to trigger the avalanche

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of Yugoslav disintegration by recognizing the independence of Slovenia and Croatia, but quite unwilling to intercede forcefully in the terrible civil wars that followed. On the other hand, German relations with America in the 1990s were quite harmonious: President Bush the Elder had many admirers for his judicious handling of German unification and of the necessary placation of British, French, Russian, and other European objections to it. He flattered the German chancellor by coining the slogan of a “partnership in leadership” and deserves even more praise for easing the complex problems of the disintegration of the communist empire—which he handled with none of the counter-productive, aggressive imperial drive of his son.13 If he had intervened in the dissolution of the Soviet Union with anything like the pre-sumptousness and imperial drive of the George W.Bush administration, World War Three might have been triggered, or there would have been, at the very least, one major international crisis after the other. His successor, Bill Clinton, maintained the warmth and positive tenor of transatlantic relations although he must often have gotten exasperated with the seeming helplessness of the Europeans in the face of the Balkan wars, especially with the German reluctance to commit forces “out of theater.”

Enter the Schröder/Fischer government With these antecedents it should have been no surprise that the Germans were less than enthusiastic to follow President George W.Bush on the war-path to Baghdad. By this time, Chancellor Kohl had faded after 16 years in power and been replaced by Gerhard Schröder and his never very warlike SPD—warlike Germans are hard to find today. The roots of Social Democratic pacifism go back to the Bismarckian empire and World War One. Schröder’s coalition partner, moreover, turned out to be the Greens party, a young environmental movement which had latched on to pacifism as an entry gate to the national political stage back in the days of anti-Nato missile agitation of the early 1980s. Even in 1998, Washington viewed the Greens and their leader, Joschka Fischer, with considerable apprehension, although Schröder as a left-of-center centrist close to the policy line of Clinton and Tony Blair enjoyed excellent rapport with the Clinton White House. German coalition governments usually draw up formal coalition agreements before inauguration, a kind of partisan prenuptial contract that spells out the compromise policies they are willing to follow in the future. The coalition platform of the new Schröder/Fischer government contained a number of formulations on transatlantic ties that in retrospect appear rather devoid of tangible commitments: “The new federal government considers the Atlantic Alliance an indispensable instrument for stability and security in Europe and for the establishment of a lasting peace order [for the world].” It refers to the US as “Germany’s most important non-European partner” and speaks of “a close and friendly [transatlantic] relationship,” based on common values and interests, “an indispensable constant of German foreign policy.” Even the Greens found their longstanding nemesis, American-dominated Nato, quite tolerable as long as it stayed within the framework of the UN, international law, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The widely shared multilateral trust in the United Nations, the network of multilateral treaties, and the orderly processes of international

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law and international courts were the well-understood ground rules behind a government coalition that, if anything, cared far more about its domestic policies than about foreign policies. As fate would have it, however, the new cabinet had barely settled in, in October 1998, when the Balkan wars were once more getting out of hand and forcing it to take action contrary to its well-established, inward-looking inclinations. Two weeks after taking office, Richard Holbrooke’s ultimatum to Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his security forces from Kosovo or face military force intervened: the Schröder government faced an “exceptional case” and agreed, on the spur of the moment, to support the threat of military action even without UN sanction or the backing of international law. It was true that it was the outgoing Kohl government that had made the hurried deal, in the presence of representatives of the incoming Schröder/ Fischer government, to participate militarily, if necessary, in Kosovo under American leadership. Still, it was a spectacular fall from grace—or from the kingdom of peaceful pursuits under international law—for the SPD/ Greens coalition. There was some scattered opposition in both parties in parliament, but the Red/Green government had now clearly accepted the primacy of US military leadership over the option of multinational OSCE conflict resolution under a UN Security Council mandate, at least for this case. The “great exception of Kosovo” quickly grew into German support for the American negotiators at Rambouillet and Paris and, a few months later, the bombing campaign against the stubborn Milosevic, all still without the UN, but for humanitarian reasons. The Red/Green coalition agreement had not promised any military commitment to go with its loyalty to the West. But in late February of 1999 the German parliament agreed to contribute 6,000 troops and in April the bombs began to fall on Yugoslavia, followed shortly by the peacekeeping actions in Kosovo and Macedonia.14 The last-mentioned commitment was a tight squeeze even though the UN had specifically given its blessing; the government failed to muster a parliamentary majority from among its followers. It is worth mentioning that France had no such qualms or internal conflicts—except for a historical bias in favor of the Serbs over the Croats who had once been Nazi allies— and participated in every way in the Balkans. In the meantime, and as if to reinforce the obvious change of German policy, there was a complex debate over the future role of Nato, the mighty old Cold War alliance to which all three countries (France, Germany, and the US) belonged. Nato was now suspended between the European aspirations of a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the EU—that might better serve the new “European Security and Defense Identity”—and American hopes to make Nato a tool of international crisis management beyond the traditional, European theater and “decoupled” also from conflict resolution under the aegis of the UN Security Council. The result was the new Strategic Concept for Nato of April, 1999, conceived at a Washington conference and designed “not to tie the hands of the US” in international crisis management, another example of Clinton policies anticipating those of his successor. Again the German government accepted the change, although by now Foreign Minister Fischer had set out to soften the consequences with significant modifications: For the Balkans, he helped devise a major stabilization plan under which the EU and OSCE began to finance and staff the reconstruction efforts under UN supervision throughout devastated former Yugoslavia.15 For the new Nato, he tried unsuccessfully to drop the first-strike rule for the use of nuclear weapons, a leftover from the days of

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overwhelming Soviet conventional superiority. Both Americans and Europeans were also quite anxious to expand access to Nato processes to Russia, which had become very alarmed about the bombing of Yugoslavia and the plans for admitting former Soviet satellites and even former Soviet areas like the Baltic States and Ukraine to Nato. During the last year of the Clinton administration, which had stirred the Europeans from years of indecision and inaction in the face of the horrors of the Balkans, a coordinated policy finally got under way: In January 2000 an EU Agency for Reconstruction took over from the Task Force Kosovo (TAFKO) which had already worked on demining the country (including the removal of unexploded ordnance and cluster bombs), restoring electricity and other essential services, rebuilding housing, and establishing local government. Throughout the 1990s, the EU contributed 5.1 billion euros in relief funds, and through 2001, 852 million in national contributions for five Balkan countries. While the US had split the Gordian knot of Serbian imperialism with military force, the EU now accounted for nearly 90 percent of KFOR personnel, including some 800 police officers for Kosovo. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the EU paid an annual 38 million euros for 500 police officers, including over 100 from Germany, which expressed considerable pride in its economic and political contributions. In a manner of speaking, this put paid to more than a hundred years of fateful meddling in the region by the Habsburg empire, Russia, Germany, Britain, France, and Italy. Except for Woodrow Wilson’s championship of national self-determination here (a Pandora’s box in this multiethnic area) after World War One, the US had remained out of it until now. The competing historical imperialisms of Serbia, fascist Croatia, Italy and Germany, Albania, and Macedonia had littered the region with mass graves and ever-resurgent ethnic hatreds and blood feuds. The EU and Nato now hoped to build viable states from the ground up to secure the future against the mindless recurrence of the bloodstained past, as a part of the “European peace order” Europeans have liked to evoke since 1949. The further development of Nato unfortunately did not follow the lines set down in former Yugoslavia. By the time of the Nato conference of 2002 in Prague, the impact of the events of 9/11 had cast a very different light on the plans for expansion of the organization to span the area from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Even though Nato had immediately invoked its collective security article (Article 5), it really lacked the military preparedness for following up its commitment. Instead of organizing the retaliatory campaign into Afghanistan from Nato headquarters in Brussels, therefore, the orders had to come from the US Central Command in Florida. The Pentagon, moreover, grumbled about the clumsy Nato bureaucracy and its “war by committee,” and let it be known that it considered Nato militarily useless to the US in the face of the major new threat, international terrorism—which had been a minor item on the list of Nato tasks of the 1999 Strategic Concept. Once at the center of the Western alliance against the Soviet Union, mighty Nato now was reduced to a marginal role in the central drama, the USorganized war on terrorism. On November 21, 2001, Chancellor Schröder won a parliamentary vote of confidence against the pacifists in his coalition which freed him to make a commitment to fight AlQaeda in Afghanistan. German troops and technical personnel were sent to join the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul and served in the Horn of Africa. German foreign policy, in response to 9/11, had careened into its second “great exception” from its course of military non-involvement. As a defensive alliance of sovereign states against a group of hostile states, the Warsaw

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Pact of the Cold War, Nato had to change its basic rationale in the face of a non-state actor, even though the terrorists had found shelter in another territorial state, Afghanistan, that could be attacked militarily—unlike most of the terrorist groups of the 1970s. After Operation Enduring Freedom got under way in distant Afghanistan, furthermore, and as Nato invited seven more prospective members (the Baltic states, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia) at the Prague meeting, a number of new commitments were added to its original agenda: the establishment of a rapid reaction Nato Response Force (NRF), significant structural reforms and improvements of its intelligencegathering capabilities, and a pledge of full support for the enforcement of Security Council Resolution 1441 to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction that it might share with terrorists.16 Russia’s Putin now had dropped his opposition to the expansion of Nato to the Russian border and eagerly joined America’s war on terrorism, probably with his own domestic war on Chechnya in the back of his mind. The core of what Ronald Reagan had called “the evil empire,” the Soviet Union, thus joined up with the purposes of the anti-Soviet Nato. And Washington, which like the Europeans had at first been reluctant to push Nato expansion so as not to antagonize Putin, now welcomed the Eastern European Nato recruits as potential members of its “coalition of the willing” for the war in Iraq. Their eagerness to join Nato—rather than awaiting the long-shot chances of EU membership—also reflected the fact that the US had long tried to woo them.

The eagle takes flight The impact of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 went far beyond what we have described because, in the meantime, a new administration had taken the helm in Washington. From the perspective of many Republicans, the elec-tion of George W.Bush ended a long interregnum of Clintonian failures to inspire the nation at home and to play a role of forceful world leadership abroad. It is natural for partisanship to see stark and startling changes when a strong opposition—which had taken over both houses of Congress and eventually used its power to impeach Clinton on spurious grounds—had for so long been denied. They hardly perceived that America’s reputation as a model of democracy in the eyes of the world had meanwhile been tarnished by the extraordinary power struggle in Washington and its natural leadership diminished by the impeachment of President Clinton, 1998–1999, which Europeans and other foreign observers almost unanimously took to be “a coup attempt” against a duly elected president.17 Since the US House of Representatives at taxpayers’ expense had distributed the salacious Starr Report via internet all around the world, evidently to shame the president into resigning his office, the whole world was watching this curious episode. Its interpretation—rather different from the partisan “spin” in most of the American media—was of course its own. Much of the American public, distracted by partisanship and by its well-known amnesia about even the most recent past, as well as by the inattention of the American media, also preferred the partisan interpretation or simply forgot about the whole thing.18 Belief in the democratic character of the United States had been further shattered by the American presidential elections of 2000 which left a deep impact—via the foreign media—on Europeans and observers from all around the world (see Chapter 5). The difficulties and confusion of the Florida part of the presidential elections, reported first

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with considerable exaggeration and distortion by American journalists and repeated by the global media, were extremely disillusioning to America’s democratic friends abroad. The final resolution of the electoral cliff-hanger by a transparent trick of the US Supreme Court further shook the faith of Europeans and others in the democratic image of America. How could the world’s most prominent democracy, a beacon to the world, make such an undignified hash of the election of the most powerful man on earth? There have been other American democratic breakdowns in the eyes of the world, such as the widespread perception of the California recall election of 2003 under an outdated law— only Californians and, of course, Republicans could have called this “a triumph of democracy.”19 Perceptions vary, of course, but it is myopic to expect everyone to accept the one and only, self-serving interpretation—or be silenced by charges of “antiAmericanism” (see Chapter 2). The bottom line for the outside world was that the beacon of United States democracy, under the relentless onslaught of the conservative revolution, had dimmed. Americans may have been surprised and shocked when they learned, for example, that the highly respected Shiite Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani in Iraq evinced deep mistrust for the American plans to put Iraqi national representation on a “democratic basis” with a “caucus substitute” for direct elections in 2004. American occupation proconsul L.Paul Bremer on this occasion was even quoted to have claimed that he, Bremer, was synonymous with democracy. The same distrust for American-style democratization can be found throughout the Middle East and in parts of Asia and Europe, and not only among purists of democracy. Developing nations everywhere have grown skeptical of democratization American-style and suspect ulterior motives—such as the quest for their natural resources and for control of their economies under the guise of global free trade. The media of well-established European democracies is full of critical assessments of, and allegations of ulterior motives behind, the American banner of democracy. Even countries such as Germany, Japan, and Italy which supposedly “learned democracy” from America in the 1940s will not hesitate to criticize American abuses of universal standards of it. A telling example of such an assessment of the state of American democracy comes from the former editor of the London Observer, Will Hutton, who writes in his book that American conservative “democracy, where votes and office are increasingly bought, is a reproach to democratic ideals,” and far from America’s “noble traditions of democracy.”20 On top of this disillusioning discovery, Europeans for the most part took an instant, personal dislike to the newly elected George W.Bush even though he had made every effort during the election campaign of 2000 to avoid being identified with the conservative revolutionaries in his own party. They associated him particularly with the fact that, as Texas governor, he had presided with pride over a reported 168 executions, more than in any other state. The death penalty has long been abolished throughout the EU and is considered a legacy of a barbaric past. Like or dislike for a new American president—who after all will have a great impact on their lives—is not new to Europeans: They had idolized President John F.Kennedy, found excuses for Richard M.Nixon when he was embroiled with Watergate, and admired both Bush Senior and Clinton. If Old Europe had mistaken the new American president for a moderate conservative—he had billed himself as a “compassionate conservative,” which to European ears sounded like their own traditional conservative politicians—its first

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impressions were soon corrected by his first steps in the international arena: In quick succession, the new administration rejected one international treaty after another on which the Europeans had hoped to found international peace and cooperation. The greatest impact of this new American unilateralism on Europe came with the American rejection of the Kyoto climate accords, an effort to halt global warming, and other environmental and public health efforts, such as the volume of foreign aid for Third World health improvements. Unlike the US, in European countries like Germany, all political parties take environmental problems very seriously—for example by not allowing certain industries (especially energy) to get around the protection of air and water supplies—and the Schröder/Fischer government did so with a vengeance: It even decided to shut down the nuclear energy industry. A similar impact was wielded by the rejection of key disarmament agreements, for example in connection with the AntiBallistic-Missile (ABM) treaty and the revived plans for a national missile defense system (NMD, or Star Wars), which is at best a multi-billion dollar boondoggle, and at worst a sinister shield behind which future US administrations could carry out aggressive or imperial schemes with impunity. Europeans were particularly shocked by the Bush administration’s war upon international legal institutions such as the International Criminal Court, a major recent, multilateral effort to make international law a reality in an insecure “dog eat dog” world. For the German government and most Germans, including the opposition to the Red/Green coalition, this shameful American attack on international law and order was a bitter pill to swallow and they were not shy about expressing their dismay at this dismantling of the world as they had envisaged it: a world of multilateral international law and cooperation under the aegis of the UN charter and of the collective security system of the Security Council that it embodied. The juridification of international relations had really been gaining ground for decades against the anarchy of threatening international forces when the new administration in Washington stopped it in early 2001. International tribunals in fact have been in operation for years, for example against Yugoslav war criminals and the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The high judiciary or prosecutors in several countries, including Britain, Spain, Germany, and Belgium, had begun to indict brutal dictators— Chile’s Pinochet, for example—and alleged war criminals. Typically, Spanish prosecutors might charge an Argentine general for the murder of Spanish citizens in the “dirty war” of the 1970s. The ministry of justice in Germany, among others, had also prepared legal procedures for bringing war crimes charges against foreign nationals for acts committed outside Germany, but such action could proceed only if the accused were not likely to be tried by the courts of their own countries. In other words, American courts would get the first crack and could easily squelch harassment suits.21 But the United States, fearful of harassment prosecutions of American leaders and military, and especially of violations of its sovereignty, stopped the trend even though it was advised of the specific safeguards against such abuses. This Bush administration’s war upon international law took the form of major threats against its defenders, for example by threatening poor and developing countries with a crucial cutoff of aid programs or, by an act of Congress, threatening to invade the Netherlands militarily if it ever permitted Americans to be held for trial before the international tribunals in The Hague (which are not under Dutch jurisdiction).

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Needless to add, these strong-arm policies of the incoming Bush administration engendered a lot of hatred, ill will, and the worst kind of publicity against America. No one outside the US gave credence to the standard excuses of the American government, least of all that this was just another example of anti-American prejudice. Many observers brought up instances of American corporate greed, crimes, or military abuses abroad— “friendly fire” incidents, or major military accidents such as an American Nato pilot on a training flight in an Alpine skiing resort causing a gondola to plunge, taking 20 tourists to their deaths—for which there would be no more legal remedy or damage claim. Some European media comments likened the American action to an outlaw gunning for the local sheriff or judge. Some of the outfall reflected again on the shaky image of American democracy by casting further aspersion on the breakdown of American attitudes towards law and courts, and respect for constitutional rules.

The war against international terrorism Against this background, the thunderclap of September 11, 2001 assaulted the ears of Western allies with tremendous force, reminding them all that there were international terrorists in their midst and that similar outrages might be committed against them as well in the near future. It was not that they themselves had not experienced terrorism of a more or less international character in the not so distant past. Spain has for many years suffered from the Basque ETA, and Britain from the Provisional IRA and from Protestant Ulster terrorists. Italy was tormented by the Marxist Red Brigades and other terrorist movements.22 Germany had the lethal Baader-Meinhof group and its latter-day successors in the 1970s and 1980s—also other terrorist groups such as the Revolutionary Cells and June 2nd Movement—not to mention radical Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Olympic Games and in later hijackings.23 None of these, however, generated the number of victims of September 11, or the element of deadly surprise, or the sheer evilness of planning visible behind crashing civilian passenger planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The devastating nature of this blow against American feelings of invulnerability explains the passionate outpouring of solidarity and the quick agreement to send troops and other personnel after AlQaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and to join the American war against terrorism whole-heartedly. But the past experiences with terrorist movements also explain the German and other Old European readiness to view the American strategies against terror with an expert’s skepticism. It made sense to respond to terrorism with the immediate deployment and expansion of police and intelligence capabilities, especially as AlQaeda cells were being discovered in Hamburg, Paris, London, Madrid, and Rome, and elsewhere in Europe. It also made sense to attack the Taliban government in Afghanistan—though some Germans thought the bombing might hit more innocent civilians than terrorists—since Osama Bin Laden had entrenched himself there. President Bush’s clarion call for the allies to rally against international terror was persuasive as long as he aimed his crusade—even the word “crusade” was soon considered inappropriate because of its evocation, at least to Middle Eastern minds, of the medieval Christian crusades to “free Jerusalem” from the Muslims—solely at terrorists and those who would shelter them. But

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there were a number of obvious flaws in the response of the Bush administration to the terrorist challenge which did not escape the wary eye of Old Europeans and many other observers. One was the striking personalization of the enemy, “Osama Bin Laden, dead or alive,” which seemed a foolish strategy, considering the well-known ability of prominent terrorists to drop from sight and escape capture. Some may recall the 25-year disappearance of “Carlos, the Jackal,” the Venezuelan terrorist menace who, among other exploits, once invaded and held captive an entire conference of representatives of the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) to extort concessions from them. With bin Laden’s money and international AlQaeda connections, it should have come as no surprise that even after years of successful military operations in Afghanistan—and occasional taunting and threatening messages from bin Laden himself—he has not been caught or turned over to the West. Why not just target the terrorist organization AlQaeda and its affiliates? There is need also to clean out a number of misconceptions about the 9/11 attack which are widely present but cannot withstand closer examination. It is not true, for example, that the suicide character of the scheme was new in American history, or comparable only to the Palestinian suicide attacks in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank— witness the Japanese kamikaze pilots and various military commandos of World War Two. In view of the stress on costly high-technology items in US military budget requests for “fighting international terror,” it also bears repeating that 9/11 was by all estimates a low-cost and low-technology affair. There has also been insufficient emphasis on the extreme, fundamentalist religious character of AlQaeda and its terrorist activities, possibly because the Bush administration itself is closely allied with fundamentalist religions in America—some bad jokes even referred to the 9/11 attacks as “a faith-based initiative,” the label for administration efforts to devolve some social welfare activities upon churches. As a growing literature on religious terrorism has pointed out, it makes a lot of difference if terrorists are motivated by their strong religious beliefs: For one thing, it becomes immeasurably harder to dissuade them from their actions which seem beyond ordinary, earthly human inducements. Non-religious terrorists are already extremely hard to reach; the religious kind are impossible to stop short of killing them.24 Zbigniew Brzezinski also pointed out how, in the months after 9/11, European conceptions of terrorism as “a political emanation” or expression distanced themselves from Bush’s quasi-religious rhetoric of “evil” and “evildoers.” Another obvious snag in the American anti-terrorism drive lay in the loose, allencompassing definition of international terrorism which was very likely to entangle the anti-terrorist campaign in dozens of local efforts around the world to combat in each case their own unrelated insurgencies, or even just domestic oppositions: Not only were there the continuing old terrorist problems named above (such as ETA or the IRA), but there was, for instance, Nato member Turkey combatting violent Kurdish and leftwing rebels, Central Asian dictatorships calling their critics and opponents terrorists, Russia brutalizing Chechnya, and Djakarta and Manila fighting Indonesian and Filipino separatist rebellions (and many others) that had little or nothing to do with AlQaeda. Then there were complicated situations such as that of Pakistan, India, and Kashmir, a hotbed of various kinds of terrorists sent out by both sides. The Pakistani Military Intelligence Service (ISI) had played a major role in establishing and supporting the

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Taliban in Afghanistan before 9/11. But Pakistan’s leader, General Pervez Musharraf, who had seized dictatorial power by coup a year earlier, found it expedient to become America’s ally in the war against AlQaeda and the Taliban in exchange for international recognition of his coup, forgiving of Pakistan’s debt, and the lifting of the international sanctions against Pakistan for illegally developing nuclear arms and trading in nuclear materials. Pakistan thus became the first recognized Muslim nuclear power. AlQaeda and the Taliban also seem to have slipped away from the scene of their defeat in Afghanistan into tribal areas of Pakistan from where they stage invasions into unstable Afghanistan. Since the US is unable or unwilling to liberate all of Afghanistan, in some provinces there have even been instances of co-operation between the resurgent war lords and a local “moderate Taliban,” mocking the simplistic dichotomy of President Bush’s rhetoric in distinguishing between friends and foes of international terrorism: “You are either with us or against us.”

Darkening transatlantic relations There is little evidence that European leaders were immediately aware of the sudden change of course in Washington policy after 9/11, from targeting AlQaeda to focusing on the axis of evil, or that they were quick to react to it. They enthusiastically signed up for Operation Enduring Freedom, even though their military equipment was hardly up to the challenge of transporting significant numbers of troops and amounts of supplies all the way to Kabul and the Horn of Africa. Their limited defense budgets were the consequence of three obvious factors. First, under the Maastricht Treaty, their annual budget deficits were capped at 3 percent and the defense budgets obviously became targets of budget-cutting. Second, they still clung to the fond idea of the “peace bonus” which the end of the Cold War was supposed to shift from military to social expenditures, such as education and public health.25 And third, they had grown accustomed to American protection from the Warsaw Pact. They made no secret of their resulting relative backwardness in military technology as compared to the Pentagon which naturally took the lead in marshalling the resources of the West against the government that sheltered AlQaeda. It is possible—perhaps even likely—that the American military and its civilian, neo-conservative leadership reacted with derision to the obvious military weaknesses of America’s continental allies, as Clyde Prestowitz has since claimed. But it is less plausible that they took such strong offense because of it as to bring on the European-American rift.26 Ten days after September 11, the Europeans also came up with a European Council Action Plan against AlQaeda terrorism which promised judicial cooperation, measures to ensure international flight safety, in and from Europe, and to find and interdict the channels of terrorist funding. National police administrations and investigative forces in Britain, France, Italy, and Germany—where many of the hijackers of 9/11 were recruited—and other European countries subsequently went to look for, arrest, and prosecute the terrorists in their midst. They soon produced scores of suspects and dozens of suspected AlQaeda cells. They pursued this task generally on the strength of their own experience with terrorists and criminal gangs and in bilateral cooperation with American law enforcement agencies rather than through coordinated European action or channels.

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There have been few American complaints about European cooperation except, in some cases, objections to the punctiliousness with which European courts and law enforcement followed their respective procedures of due process and constitutional safeguards of the rights of the accused.27 Some European authorities, especially the heads of the German criminal police and constitutional protection services, on the other hand, complained that their American counterparts at the height of the European-American break—perhaps from September 2002—treated them rudely and, “in a childish pique,” even stopped cooperating for a while. By the time of the American president’s State-of-the-Union speech to Congress in late January, 2002, it had indeed become obvious to the Europeans that the targets of America’s post-9/11 wrath had shifted to the axis of evil: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, all three suspected of developing nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD). By this time the war in Afghanistan had long completed its first objective, the capture of Kabul and overthrow of the hateful Taliban/AlQaeda regime. The Afghan provinces, however, remained largely out of control, in the hands of war lords, criminal gangs, and the drug trade. The zealots of the Taliban still survived or revived in remote areas of the country and of Pakistan where fundamentalism and tribalism gave them sustenance. European peacekeeping and police forces and reconstruction efforts by nongovernmental organizations were doing their best, at least in Kabul, to complete the process begun by the American military of establishing a new regime for this troubled land. Europeans had wholeheartedly backed the war in Afghanistan and against the AlQaeda terrorists. But the turn towards an invasion of Iraq, “regime change in Baghdad,” and the new American imperial designs for the Middle East deeply troubled them. The quasi-religious phrase of the “axis of evil” drew cynical derision from many who had once taken a dim view of President Reagan’s phrase of “the evil empire,” the Soviet Union, 20 years earlier: To them the American revival tent conjuration of spiritual evil was inappropriate to the nuances of international politics, and some also objected to equating the reformists in Iran to the other “evil ones.” Among other things, Europeans also picked up the internet joke about how other bad regimes in the world—it mentioned Libya, Syria, Myanmar—had jealously protested that they were an axis either “just as evil,” or almost as evil, and deserved honorable mention in the president’s speech. Some European writers also looked askance at the evocation of the old “axis” of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and militarist Japan of another era. The uneasy German reaction to a new war in the Middle East was not limited to the confusions of pacifism in the Red/Green government in Berlin—the first German government since 1945 that had actually sent troops “out of theater” to the Balkans28 and now to Afghanistan. It could also be found among the Christian Democratic opponents of Schröder and Fischer. One contributor to a Christian Democratic monthly, for example, grappled earnestly with the long-range strategic reasons why Germany should worry about Saddam Hussein’s regime, his 1990 lunge for control of Middle Eastern oil, and his presumably continuing development of WMD “regardless of whether or not there was a link to AlQaeda.” But even this conservative writer balked at giving a blank check to President Bush’s Iraq strategy: “Loyalty [to Nato and the US] cannot be synonymous with blind obedience, and it is natural to combine the pursuit of common interests with preconditions.” The writer went on to warn that a campaign for “regime change” in

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Baghdad might cause the Iraqi dictator to lash out with Scud rockets laced with biological and chemical weapons at Israel where Sharon’s government was sure to retaliate with nuclear arms, touching off not only Middle Eastern escalation but a world crisis with major impact on Europe and Germany. The contributor criticized the Red/Green government for its “reckless rejection” of solidarity with American aims, but argued instead for a merely conditional solidarity which would have made German support for the war contingent on (1) continued refusal by Saddam to cooperate with UN demands, and (2) limiting a military attack to the regime’s military installations, and not regime change.

German opinion polls in 2002 As Germany approached the parliamentary elections of September, 2002, which would decide whether or not Schröder’s government would continue, the public opinion polls revealed the increasing nervousness about the new American belligerence towards Iraq. The pollsters, for example, asked the voters29 which issues they thought were “the most important themes” of this election year: In April, 2002, “terrorism and war/peace” came in fourth with 9 percent, after mentions of unemployment (71 percent), the economic situation (14 percent), and immigration (13 percent). With a stagnating economy and skyhigh unemployment, the result was hardly unexpected.30 Needless to say, Germans did not connect Saddam Hussein with 9/11, but they did worry about the AlQaeda terrorists in their midst and possible attacks on German targets. An AlQaeda-related group, Abu Sayyaf, in fact, had seized a group of German tourists for ransom on an Indonesian island and, later, a bus with German tourists was blown up, presumably by AlQaeda-connected plotters, next to the ancient synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba. There had been other threats, but none connected with Iraq. The election campaign had advanced to the stage when the opposition CDU/CSU had presented a strong candidate against Schröder, Bavarian governor Edmund Stoiber—in the German parliamentary system, chancellors (prime ministers) are not directly elected, but represent a majority coalition in the Bundestag (lower house of parliament)—and the polls had been running against Schröder for three months. Personally, Schröder still commanded great popularity, but his Red/Green coalition ran as much as 10 percent behind the opposition coalition of CDU/CSU and Free Democrats (FDP). These dismal prospects for the government continued until August, when a new crisis, the catastrophic flooding of major rivers in the eastern part of the country, temporarily overcame the salience of the war and terror issue, just as the campaign moved into its “hot phase,” the last six weeks.31 The chancellor was widely credited with having made the most of his opportunity to show leadership against the rising waters, especially in the east where both his SPD and the Greens were weak. Eventually, the Elbe and other rivers receded, but just in time, a widely reported saberrattling speech of Vice President Dick Cheney (August 26, before the Veterans of Foreign Wars) once again gave center stage to the question of German participation in a possible war in Iraq. In the second week of September, just before the date of the elections (September 22), the pollsters asked their respondents whether German troops should participate militarily with the US, and they answered: (1) yes, in any case (4

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percent), (2) only with a UN mandate (45 percent), or (3) under no circumstances (50 percent). The response must have dismayed Washington deeply, for even the CDU/CSU respondents opted only marginally more for going with the US than did the adherents of the government coalition. Among the Christian Democrats, only 6 percent were ready in any case, 59 percent only with UN backing, but 33 percent under no circumstances.32 Of the SPD and Green followers of the government, only 2 percent would follow in any case, while 37 percent insisted on UN sanction, and 60 percent would not go under any circumstances. Worse still for Washington hawks who were openly courting the German opposition team, the Schröder coalition won by a whisker even though its popularity soon began to fade. Of the two coalition parties in the government, the SPD had lost substantially (47 seats in the Bundestag) and would not have been able to hang on, had the Greens not gained eight more seats since 1998.33 The newly elected government naturally reverted to its earlier antiwar position while a disappointed President Bush refused to issue the congratulations customary on such occasions and blamed Schröder personally for “having deliberately encouraged anti-Americanism for the sake of getting reelected.” It is worthwhile reconstructing the situation of the German cliff-hanger elections of September 22, 2002—some German reporters even compared them in dramatic impact (but without a hint of doubt about their propriety) to the American Florida elections of 2000 which were not decided until seven weeks after the balloting34—and the heated domestic and international commentary about them. The loser by a hair in the contest for chancellor, Edmund Stoiber (CDU/CSU), had attacked Schröder in the election debate (the “Berlin Round”) for having “opened the floodgates for anti-American sounds,” isolated Germany in Europe, and “damaged German-American relations.” More importantly, he left no doubt about the massive economic, especially unemployment, problems awaiting the new government. Schröder for his part had no apologies for his refusal to support German military participation in Iraq. German media comments also emphasized the mounting economic misery ahead: even more unemployment, rising healthcare burdens, huge deficits, and the threat of a reckoning in impending state elections, mostly without reference to German-American relations and the likely war in Iraq. Journalists particularly stressed that it was the Greens and the popular Fischer himself who had saved the government of Schröder, a chancellor who had often seemed dismissive, almost “embarrassed” about his coalition with them. The French press, especially Les Echos and Le Monde—“Joschka Superstar”—also called Fischer the real winner of the elections and surmised that Chirac might see a special opportunity in the political weakness of the new German government which might lend itself to French manipulations in the pending battles in the EU. A German government in conflict with Washington was likely to seek the support of France. Russia’s inscrutable president, Putin, seemed to harbor similar thoughts—that a Germany far from America’s apron strings might lean towards Russia—as he warmly congratulated Schröder. Observing this turn of events, I strongly felt that Schröder of course should have sent Bush and Cheney two dozen roses to express his gratitude for his unexpected and timely rescue. Two months later, in December, 2002, even though the president had obtained Congressional endorsement and a somewhat ambiguous Security Council resolution for his plans, 53 percent of Germans still did not want their country to participate “under any circumstances” in a possible war in Iraq.35 An unforgiving Washington hereafter adopted

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the formula: “Punish the French, ignore the Germans, but coddle the Russians” for obstructing the American pursuit of war in the Middle East. No congratulations, by the way, ever came from the White House where the incumbent felt personally betrayed, he hinted. American media voices and Bush administration officialdom shared the president’s anger and distrust. Faced with German public opinion polls and later with French ones—though the Bush administration claimed a low regard for such polls—American critics of Europe jumped to the conclusion that it must all be due to European anti-Americanism. In Germany, France, Britain, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe, meanwhile, the media all counseled the new Schröder government to seek reconciliation with Bush and the Americans. Some already claimed to see concrete signs of German efforts in that direction with regard to details of the common war against international terrorism which neither the German nor the French government ever renounced—it was only the turn to Iraq that they rejected. Curiously, a perusal of the German and European media of late September, 2002 already reveals a striking consensus that an American invasion of Iraq was definitely in the offing, quite contrary to later claims by Bush and Colin Powell that the decision to invade Iraq came much later: either only after the dubious Iraqi report of early December on Saddam Hussein’s WMD, or even as late as March, 2003, just before the invasion, as the president himself was to say.36 The cues for the earlier certainty mostly came from the US where, for example, the New York Times had released detailed, if classified, Pentagon plans for the invasion and the government had just issued a new 31-page document in praise of preventive action in the war on terrorism, declaring the previous doctrines of containment and deterrence “dead.” In future, unprecedented American military might “in defense of freedom” would smash international terrorism before it could reach the shores of the US. The support of the UN Security Council—Resolution 1441—for this purpose was appreciated, but the US would go it alone if UN cooperation was not forthcoming. An exasperated Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov vainly protested that force should never be used without UN authorization. The European press also reported the bitter testimonials of the American ex-UNscom inspector David Kay who advocated forceful regime change in Iraq, because from past experience Saddam Hussein simply could not be trusted to abstain from the use of his WMD, or from “playing his old games” with a new set of UN inspectors. It was a tune repeated with emphasis by Vice President Cheney and others. The Iraqi dictator had already accepted the return of UN inspectors at the time, but was opposed to any new UN resolution that would demand more intense cooperation on his part. Kay was a major voice in the Bush administration advocating invasion, until the war was over and he, with a much larger team of inspectors and military force behind him, had had ample opportunity to search for the WMD. He found none and finally admitted that “we were wrong all along.” Thus there was general acknowledgment of the menace of Saddam Hussein allegedly confirmed by a bevy of major intelligence agencies from Russia and Israel to France and the US—and a sullen conviction that war was indeed on its way.37 But the Germans, at least, did not want to be in it while the French were still debating the pros and cons of military action.

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Is anti-Americanism behind it all? “No one likes us [Americans],” the conservative Washington pundit Charles Krauthammer began his essay in Time magazine with the pout of a wall-flower teenage girl and he claimed that—despite the universal expressions of heartfelt sympathy after the September 11 attacks—“this pro-American sentiment…never existed.” This is surprising commentary about a people whose popular culture in the form of movies, television, and music has been the odds-on favorite all over the world and whose individual charms and personalities have drawn admiration and affection wherever Americans go.38 Krauthammer was particularly critical of the assertions of Democratic presidential candidates that the Bush administration somehow “squandered the international wave of sympathy and solidarity, especially in France and Germany and among ordinary Europeans” for going “to war to avenge our dead and prevent the next crop of dead,” a linkage between Saddam and 9/11 for which even the president in a press conference declared he could find no evidence. But let us look into the question just how much European anti-Americanism can be blamed for the estrangement between Europe and America. This is an empirical question for which we should be able to find factual answers once the nature of the concept has been clarified. To start with, if the word anti-Americanism is to have any meaning, it must denote a strong dislike for all American nationals, for things American, and for the nation as a whole and as a symbol. It cannot be focused only on particular policies of the US government—such as imposing a high tariff on steel—or on the activities of particular American individuals or corporations abroad, for example the pursuit of profits. A typical if obscure example of such policy-related anti-Americanism was the widespread resentment in Greece of US support of the takeover and rule of a military junta there (1969–1974). Greek anti-American prejudice resulted not only in several assassinations of prominent American officials there by a local terrorist organization, “November 17,”—the date the junta brutally suppressed a student protest in 1973—but also in lax prosecution and broad sympathy for the terrorists, at least until the trial and conviction of 15 of them in 2003.39 To be sure, the distinction between general prejudice and policyrelated enmity is not always easy to draw and opponents of an American policy, of course, try to exploit anti-American prejudices whenever possible. But it would help Americans to understand instances of foreign hostility if they were more aware of all the actions abroad by the American government or American corporations that may indeed cause angry reactions. We should also consider the common resentment felt by all smaller neighbors towards large, dominant nation-states or empires. “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States,” sighed the Mexican President Porfirio Diaz a century ago, and similar sentiments have been heard in Canada, Central America, and Cuba. The smaller neighbors of Germany, upon German reunification, have been no less apprehensive, and the neighbors of China, Russia, and India all know of the hazards of sleeping next to an elephant—especially one that in the recent past has gone on a rampage like Germany in 1914 and 1939 and Russia in the 1940s. Uneasiness about incursions and impositions on the part of a powerful neighbor also may seem hard to separate from the general

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prejudices described above. Still, it is hardly the same to say, in the manner of Krauthammer, that “the world hates us for our wealth, our success, our power”—or for Bush to claim we are “hated because we are for freedom”—and to take umbrage at the natives’ resentment when rich Germans buy up desirable Danish or Swiss real estate. But we should also emphasize that the imperial nations of great empires of the past—Great Britain, France, Russia/Soviet Union—wasted little time worrying about their popularity with peoples under their control. Only Americans, as Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed 170 years ago, seem to have this overwhelming desire to be liked by foreigners even as they go about their business abroad. Or, to cite the highly respected foreign policy expert at the Centre d’Etudes et des Recherches Internationales in Paris, Pierre Hassner, as he put it in a recent interview regarding the war in Iraq: “The Americans don’t understand the outside world which to them is a little like the planet Mars—they can’t understand anyone not liking them unless he is evil.”40

French anti-Americanism How much of the European-American dissension can be explained simply by such a generic prejudice as anti-Americanism, as distinct from policy disagreements or a sense of being oppressed by what is today the only surviving super-power? Krauthammer and other neo-conservatives typically like to fudge these distinctions when they speak of “envy for America, resentment of our power, hatred of our success” or “self-loathing—by people [who]… having failed at [modernity]…find their one satisfaction in despising modernity,” rather than mentioning the specific issues, such as environmental policies (Kyoto) or the disparagement of institutions of international law and order that critics of the Bush administration have complained about.41 But there should be no doubt that antiAmericanism does play a role. From the very beginnings of the American republic, a French survey concludes wryly, the French have exhibited both strong pro-American and anti-American attitudes, sometimes both by the same person who was of a divided mind about the inspiring challenge to the progress-minded of the world that the then still tiny and geographically marginal republic presented.42 Of course, America was very different then from the America of today—most of all liberal and not conservative—and France too has changed fundamentally since the revolution of 1789, along with the views of America expressed in French popular literature, on the streets, and in public opinion polls. French books on America today range from the odious Thierry Meyssan’s L’Effroyable Imposture and nightmarish visions of American urban modernity—for example Georges Duhamel, Scenes de la Vie Future—to serious discussions of the long tradition of cultural antiAmericanism, such as Philippe Roger’s L’Ennemi Américain and Pierre Hassner and Justin Vaisse, Washington et le Monde, about the debates between Paris and Washington over the war.43 Hassner succinctly compares the arrival of George W.Bush and his neo-conservatives with the foreign policies of his predecessor, President Clinton: Under the latter, US foreign policy was “as multilateral as possible,” but unilateral when necessary, as for example with Yugoslavia and Kosovo. President Bush’s policies, on the other hand, are as unilateralist, even imperial, as possible until circumstances may force the US back on a multilateral course, for example when Tony Blair and Secretary Powell—aware of the international resistance to unilateral military

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action—persuaded Bush to return to the UN Security Council for international legitimacy. In the meantime, antagonisms had soared and tempers flared, and public opinion polls revealed more the heat of the moment than the light of reason. At the end of January, 2003, the “letter of eight” (discussed below in Chapter 2) in support of Bush’s war policy was the first cannon shot across the bow of the recalcitrant “Berlin-Paris axis,” a “diplomatic media coup” of the first order, according to the conservative (but hardly proBush) daily Le Figaro. The newspaper contrasted the counter-axis of the British Prime Minister Blair, the Spanish Prime Minister José Aznar, his Italian equivalent Silvio Berlusconi, and several East European governments—all New Europeans in the bitterly resented words of Secretary Rumsfeld—with the public opinion polls against the war in all eight countries of the letter. The figures should have been enough to discourage any democratic politician:44 Great Britain

68 percent

Italy

78 percent

Denmark

79 percent

Hungary

71 percent

Portugal

72 percent

Poland

63 percent

Spain

77 percent

Czech Republic

61 percent

To be sure, the antiwar polls were even higher among the French (86 percent) and Germans (87 percent), but the message was clear and hardly needed to be reinforced by the explosion of massive street demonstrations, especially of young people, throughout European cities. The French polls also revealed as many as 44 percent who said they were ready to demonstrate against the war, and 47 percent who were prepared to donate to humanitarian associations engaged in the Middle East. In the same survey, 31 percent said they would buy the goods of “companies engaged against the war” while 18 percent threatened to boycott American merchandise in France.45 For greater depth, the SOFRES SONDAGES polls added a generational dimension for France, since some observers had begun to speak of an anti-Bush generation of 15–25-year-olds. Of course, we must not assume that the world is totally preoccupied with the US or that French men and women might not, on occasion, take cover behind expressions of indifference towards America. When young French were asked, for example, if the rise of President Bush made them feel “more sympathy” or “less sympathy” for the US, a large majority (58 percent) responded “neither,” though the rest did divide into 25 percent with less sympathy and 16 percent with more sympathy for America. This was one of the rare attempts to tie the French reactions to a policy-related figure. Another question probed the psychic mobility of the young, a measure of sorts of their provincialism and xenophobia. When asked if they would like to live in the US, an amazing one-fourth said “yes”; one-third of the young would like to travel there, and 40 percent responded positively to the thought of studying in the US. If this is an anti-Bush generation, it shows little animus to America as such, in spite of the wave of anti-French hatred in the US at the time.46

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Images of America French images of America are dominated by “the power”—56 percent named this as a characteristic—by social inequality in the US (42 percent), and, in equal parts, “violence in” and “the riches” of America. More specifically regarding the dissension over Iraq, French respondents were asked what they thought of the criticism that France had not “shown solidarity with the US.” As many as 57 percent said it was “not justified at all,” and another 22 percent that it was “rather not justified.”47 Even more revealing was their opinion as to what was “the principal reason” for the American intervention: “Access to the oil,” replied 53 percent and “to impose American domination on the Middle East,” another 21 percent. Only 14 percent even accepted Bush’s stated objective of regime change in Iraq, and a diminutive 2 percent believed he wanted to “promote democracy in Iraq.” Long-established enmities towards the British also played a role in the polling when, for example, respondents were asked whether they “approved of the position of” President Chirac regarding Iraq—84 percent said “yes,” 13 percent “no”—or of Tony Blair (11 percent “yes,” 80 percent “no”), or of George W.Bush (10 percent “yes,” 87 percent “no”). There was no question of what they thought of Saddam Hussein: 83 percent called him “a dictator.” Unlike in the US, only 12 percent considered him “an ally of Osama Bin Laden,” which still does not necessarily imply Saddam’s being an accomplice in the 9/11 attacks on the US. On the other hand, 3 percent called him “a hero, for resisting the US.” There is of course a large Muslim minority in France—five million, including recent immigrants—who were part of this sample and may well see Saddam as the victim of Christian crusaders. But on balance, there is only about one out of ten who seems to be siding with the US. Eighty-some percent opposed the war without necessarily siding with Iraq.48 In the end, did the French regret their obstruction, especially after the neoconservative Deputy Secretary of Defense, Wolfowitz, threatened—still in April, 2003—that France would have to pay for its opposition to the war? L’Express International weighed the pros and cons: On the one side, there was President Chirac, the leader of the camp of peace “who had isolated France in the world,” and who now, at the end of the war, “must be searching for paths of reconciliation” with Washington. At least he was still defending the rule of law and international legality and global multilateralism—working through the international community as represented by the UN—in the opinion of the editors. On the other side, there was George Bush and his unilateral crusade of preemptive war against Iraq, inspired by religious messianism: He was appointed by God himself to fight against the axis of evil.49 For the far more secular Europeans, the dubious image of the religious crusader stands out and makes President Bush appear as either a religious crank or, worse, a hypocrite trying to steal the oil under religious pretenses. The memory of the medieval crusades to “win back Jerusalem from the infidels” is an embarrassment to today’s Europeans and an absolute horror to the Muslims of the Middle East, both quite aware of the very un-Christian atrocities the crusaders committed under religious pretenses. Nine weeks later, the postwar scene in defeated Iraq had darkened and Tony Blair in London had begun to fight for his political life against charges that his team had “sexed

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up the intelligence” regarding Baghdad’s weapons of mass destruction. Even the White House was under pressure from the US Senate to solicit European and Nato support for coping with the catastrophic shortages of water and power in Iraq, and its anarchy and insecurity in the streets. The indomitable French foreign minister DeVillepin promptly spelled out the French conditions for accommodating the American request for assistance in Iraq and there were no regrets about French recalcitrance about it: To overcome “the visceral resistance of Iraqis” against a foreign occupation, the “restoration of full Iraqi sovereignty was essential”—he was not clear what this would entail. But “French assistance would have to be in the framework of a UN peace force, under a precise Security Council mandate and thus deserving of the support of the international community.”50 This was the same man who had said in an interview: “Let us not deceive ourselves: The choice is between two [different] visions of the world.” Le Figaro commented: “The French and the Americans have overcome the blockage of the Iraq crisis,” but at the basis the differences remained: “The US stands accused by France of abusing its power by trying to conduct world affairs unilaterally…Paris is suspected by Washington of having turned Europe against America. The [mutual] distrust is still alive and the consequences of the transatlantic crisis will no doubt be long-lasting.”51 Is this anti-Americanism or simply the echo of earlier, principled disagreements? When De Villepin was asked if he did not think France had been “too assertive over Iraq,” he shrugged: “How can one accept the idea that preemptive action should become the rule on the international stage?” Iraq was a question not only of war and peace, but also of the rules at the “foundation of the new international order…Our conviction is that it must be organized on the [UN] principle of collective responsibility.” When the Figaro interviewer reminded him that this “French boldness” (audace) had been punished by the US with a “degradation of bilateral relations,” the foreign minister said dismissively that this was not really the case: “We still cooperate like allies and friends regarding terrorism, proliferation (of WMD), regional crises, organized crime, human rights.” And, again, the problem is not between France and the US, but in knowing what kind of a [post-Cold War] world we want to live in…in a spirit of dialogue, [mutual] respect and partnership…Sometimes it is necessary to go to the brink over one’s principles. This is part of the rendez-vous with history.52

The difficult French It has often been pointed out that what Americans regard as difficulties with the French are hardly new. Similar spats bedevilled Roosevelt and Churchill in World War Two and played a considerable role in the Anglo-French disputes under Charles De Gaulle in the 1950s and 1960s. Some commentators even take it all the way back, tongue in cheek and via the French comic strip Asterix, to the rebelliousness of the Gauls against the Roman empire. When I was still teaching French politics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, I used to tell my students: When God made America so perfect and wonderful, He had second thoughts regarding how it might become conceited and lose its way. So He created an ever-present antidote, the French, who can always be counted on to put us

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down and spit in America’s face. It is better than fawning on us as so many countries seem to do. Respect them for their feistiness in the face of centuries of Anglo-American hegemony. The philosophy behind the French resistance to the American “hyperpower” deserves attention—the term was coined by ex-foreign minister Hubert Védrine to connote “something grander and more encompassing—both in hard [military] and soft [economic and cultural] power—than the Cold War military might of one of the two superpowers of that day.” Védrine never meant hyper-puissance as a pejorative or, God forbid, pathological term as it may seem in English, though it may remind us of our simile above of the European-American generational conflict: This is the curmudgeonly parent talking about the wayward child. Védrine is critical of the neo-conservative school of American foreign policy and calls them “neo-reactionaries” who would like to revert to pre-Clinton policies towards the world. Contemporary French policy towards American hegemony also shows the influence of another French intellectual, Emmanuel Todd, who in his book Après l’empire (After the Empire) diagnoses the impending “decomposition of the American system” as the long slide from its hyperpower days of 1945. American decline, according to Todd, also manifests itself in falling behind the democratization of the world around us and in the rise and fall of “fictitious capitalization”—as in financial scandals and “bursting bubble bankruptcies” like Enron. In its onset of decomposition, writes Todd, America is also trying to institutionalize a “state of permanent war”: The targets of its violence are really the products of the process of modernization, especially among the countries of the Muslim and Arab world. Védrine, in his review of Todd’s work, finds all this a bit exaggerated, especially regarding the predatory economic role of the US. He concedes, however, that the widely cited and translated Todd may have put his finger on some current paradoxes and contradictions of America. He would not endorse Todd’s vision of decline and of “an America unable to master a world that is too large and strong in all its diversity.” Védrine’s reservations instead point to the current American Republican leadership and its belief in manifest destiny; it is devoted to unilateral action—and open to multilateralism only when this suits its purposes. Under these circumstances, he asks, how can France, the EU, Germany, even Great Britain remain faithful allies of this US?53 In a later article, Védrine spells out his views on America in greater detail. It is too much to expect of America that it would conduct itself like a normal member of the UN, given its disproportionate power. He describes the unilateralists behind Bush as “religious reactionaries,” including conservative Protestants and Jews, integralists (in the sense of integral nationalism), anti-abortionists, Puritans united in the belief that the US is a nation chosen for a mission by Providence. They are characterized by their “militarized thinking” in terms of preventive war and of defeating threats at their point of origin. Exasperated by Clinton, they also hated the Israeli leaders Yitzak Rabin and Ehud Barak and the Oslo Agreements. And while being strongly pro-Israel (in the Likud version), they hate the Palestinians and all Muslims and Arabs. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to them was considered a major threat to Israel which would rather surround itself with “friendly democratic states.” Védrine is under no illusion about the profound antiWestern rancor in the Middle East, a pro-Palestinian prejudice that places the solution of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict in the middle of the problems of achieving peace in the region (as most Europeans do also). Now if only the Bush administration broke with the Likud right

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wing—which rejects the idea of a Palestinian state—and guaranteed both such a state and Israeli security, it would receive the widest support from Arab, European, and world opinion.54 Europeans, according to the ex-foreign minister, see the triumvirate of Perle, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld as very strong [in Washington] but “crazy” (délirant). The European consensus against the war in Iraq, on the other hand, was quite heterogeneous and included many people who hope to turn the whole world “into one big Switzerland.” He blames much of the European misunderstanding of today’s political America on the failure in Europe to observe the transformation of the Republicans into a populist party, nationalist, flag-waving (cocardière) patriots, that developed right under European noses. This movement elected President Bush and “felt legitimated by 9/11.” By contrast, today’s Europeans have long left their pre-1945 nationalisms behind and have great difficulty relating to American nationalism and love of the military.55 Other critics of Todd’s book have spoken of his “salubrious iconoclasm” and reminded readers that in 1976 the same Todd predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union (which took another 15 years to oblige) and that in his book L’illusion économique he attacked the notion of global free enterprise. Another reviewer, the economist Jean-Luc Gréau,56 criticized the excessive consumption in the US, especially of energy, and pointed to his charts on rising American foreign exchange deficits, negative trade balances, declining real growth since 1990, inflation rates, and declining manufacturing productivity—all favorite targets of Todd’s theorizing. Gréau agreed that the United States, with artificially high interest rates (since Reagan), “covered” its deficits mostly at the expense of other countries, particularly through European and Japanese investors in American values, rather than by tightening its own belt.57 Yet another reviewer, Philippe Raynaud, wrote approvingly that Todd depicts an America that is at once conquering the present, “economically dynamic, diplomatically and militarily without equal, culturally of unquestioned hegemony, but also a colossus on feet of clay,” a weakened economy, a useless political and military power, and “a democracy of oligarchic degeneration.”58 Some Americans may not be pleased to read such criticisms “by foreigners,” least of all French intellectuals. But even they should really feel flattered to be viewed as so terribly interesting, evoking such brilliant intellectual debates—and this under a president who prides himself on never reading books or even newspapers.59

Have the Germans turned anti-American? Among Germans it is just as difficult to separate a basic level of antiAmerican prejudice from reasoned opposition to American policies as it is among the French. In Germany, too, there are old stereotypes dating back to the beginning of the American republic, although there was perhaps never anything among the Germans that matched the close association of French eighteenth- and ninteenth-century liberals, radicals, and revolutionaries with the American War of Independence or the shining light of the Declaration of Independence, not to mention the earlier French presence and rivalry with the British colonies in North America. There was, however, a substantial German immigration—which naturally drew the envy, criticism, and condemnation of people back home where neither the feudal powers nor other stay-at-home opinion would easily admit that their countrymen’s decision to emigrate to the New World was a good one.60

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The poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, politically quite conservative, wrote his famous lines “Amerika, du hast es besser” (America, you have it better) to say that it must be wonderful not to have to live under the spell of traditional, hypocritical, social habits of class-bound European society, but he would have been unlikely to endorse the American political clarion calls of 1766 and 1789. The big German exodus after the failed revolution of 1848—with its American-model Frankfurt Constitution61—brought to the US precisely those, hundreds of thousands, who were most favorably inclined towards American liberal political values and ideals. Their triumphant feudal and authoritarian enemies back home probably hated American liberalism because it resembled what they had subdued by force in Germany.62 And they were quick to add their social prejudices against ordinary people as well as images of social anarchy and primitivism. The twentieth century added to this divided vision the antagonism and violence of two wars in which Americans fought and decisively defeated nationalistic Germany. It also added exaggerated images of advanced industrialism and urbanism—familiar to Americans from movies such as Metropolis and Modern Times—that were supposedly developing in America and, by dint of “Americanization,” were threatening the social and cultural fabric of traditional German society. In the German rightwing imagination, in particular, these visions of Americanization merged with popular propa-ganda against cities like Berlin and the social impact of the Great Depression.63 Long after World War Two, this kind of rightwing propaganda against caricatures of American society—replete with signs of social disintegration—resurfaced among neo-Nazi groups such as the National Democrats (NPD) from the late 1960s to this day. But there was also a leftwing, especially socialist and communist brand of antiAmericanism that pictured America as a class dictatorship and plutocracy, in which predatory corporations—including some also active in 1920s Germany—were ruthlessly exploiting the workers. This very effective propaganda imagery particularly featured the denial of the elementary rights of labor organization by various means including “fascist goon squads.” It was a view quite familiar also among American labor and progressive groups at the time who could point to specific instances of violent suppression of unionism before and during the New Deal.64 On the other hand, German racists such as the Nazis eagerly embraced some of the American doctrines and policies of white supremacy and racial segregation—as in the criminalization of alleged miscegenation in the Nuremberg Laws of the 1930s—and adapted them to their anti-Semitic purposes and their idea of the master race. Leftwing anti-Americanism also resurfaced in the 1960s and 1970s in the form of polemics against American-owned “multinational corporations” and “neocolonial policies,” especially in the Vietnam era. This was and, to some extent, still is common currency among German extreme leftwing opposition groups, student radicals, and leftwing terrorist groups such as the Baader-Meinhof group. Today, some of it survives in the pillorying of American global free market policies and the pursuit of empire by the Bush administration, especially in extreme left parties such as the successor of the communist state party of Eastern Germany, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). In sum, German traditions of antiAmericanism have been around since the late eighteenth century and certainly in the twentieth century. But they never kept majority opinion from identifying with true American leadership, from the Berlin airlift through the Cold War years and beyond.

2 ALEA IACTA: HOW DID THE RIFT HAPPEN? When two worlds clash and then part company with such strong emotions and recriminations, it is almost impossible to find a reasonably factual common ground from which to describe just how the two broke up—unless we find an uninvolved third party for an objective point of view. One year after September 11, 2001, the British weekly The Economist had an issue with the twin towers of the World Trade Center on the cover and the word REMEMBER in bold type over the picture. Inside, the editors wrote: Remember not only the attack but also what did not happen in the aftermath: “America has not turned in on itself, seeking to hide from a hostile world; rather, its international engagement has been invigorated.” Public opinion surveys in Europe and the US indeed showed majorities in favor of action against Iraq but only with the support of the UN Security Council. But the straws of dissension in the alliance were already in the wind and, half a year later, American and British troops were plunging into Iraq over the acrimonious objections of their West European allies. To quote Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, he could see a European-American partnership “heading for destructive separation.”1 After the war itself had been concluded, many observers and the principals came to wonder—especially in the light of hostile miscommunications and misperceptions between America and Old Europe—just exactly when and how the die was cast. To answer these questions, the Financial Times commissioned several top reporters to interview people, search files, and investigate as best they could how it all happened. The result was a five-part series which solves many puzzles although the editors appear to have been notably reluctant to cast the blame on anyone in particular. While most accounts time the breakdown to January of 2003, we need to remind the reader briefly of what went on before that point: First, of course, there was the “axis-ofevil” statement in the president’s State-of-the-Union address to Congress at the end of January, 2002, which named Iraq along with Iran and North Korea as countries illegally preparing WMD programs. Then the talk of “regime change” in Baghdad raised European eyebrows because Europeans were far from convinced that Saddam Hussein had had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. Finally, Vice President Cheney, at the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars on August 26, 2002, orated: “Saddam has perfected the game of cheat and retreat and is very skilled in the art of denial and deception. A return of UN inspectors would provide no assurance of his compliance with UN resolutions.” The rejection of UN inspections, the main device envisaged for disarming the Iraqi dictator, triggered statements of surprise in many quarters and caused Schröder, in the midst of his reelection campaign, to speak out in spite of earlier promises not to. A counter-campaign of Tony Blair, the State Department, and former advisers of Bush Sr then persuaded a reluctant President Bush to return to the

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UN Security Council for authorization of inspections to locate and destroy the WMD. Council Resolution 1441 obliged Saddam to cooperate with the inspectors or face harsh measures. He had expelled the UN inspectors in 1998 and promptly was “punished” for it by President Clinton with a bombing campaign. Obtaining Resolution 1441 required weeks of intense negotiations until it was passed unanimously. The Europeans were rather skeptical of Bush’s sudden championship of past UN resolutions—Saddam had ignored or violated more than a dozen and the president presented himself as the avenging angel behind these disrespected UN orders—but a reluctant Chirac eventually agreed to Resolution 1441 and even persuaded Syrian President Bashir Assad to go along. The resolution itself was a little vague on the consequences of non-compliance, but left no doubt about Saddam’s obligation to reveal the present state of his illegal armaments, nuclear, biological, and chemical. The Iraqi dictator then let in the inspectors, led by Hans Blix and Mohammed ElBaradei, but his voluminous December 8 report on his WMD was found wanting by both American intelligence and by Dr Blix, thus setting the stage for Europeans and Americans to disagree over what to do next.2

Two steps forward, one back In the meantime the Americans were creating facts on the ground that no diplomatic tussle could ignore. An Anglo-American military buildup had begun to amass troops and equipment for an invasion of Iraq. The logistics of threatening military invasion in distant Iraq made it inevitable that the preparations had to be made far in advance, and there is no doubt that without the presence of these troops, the inspections would not have gone half as well. It was so persuasive, we learned much later, it even induced Saddam to attempt a near-surrender to the Americans through (of all people) Richard Perle, one of the heads of the neo-conservatives who happened to be in London—anything to avoid an invasion—but to no avail.3 The troop buildup also convinced critical Europeans in January/February that President Bush would go to war “no matter what,” even though he himself would not admit that he had indeed decided to go to war until March of that year. There were a number of misleading cues and escalating reactions that January among the allies. As recently as December, 2002, Commander-in-Chief Chirac had sent an emissary to the Pentagon to explore how a force of 15,000 French troops might fit into a military coalition and in early January he reportedly told the French army to be ready for this. But the French foreign ministry, according to Robert Graham and James Harding of the Financial Times, thought that the US had decided early in the month to proceed alone with its military plans. De Villepin had been briefed about US intentions by the French security chief, Gerard Araud, the first week of January, he claimed, and he said: “We could not but fight a rearguard battle [against the American rush to war].” Chirac’s diplomatic advisor, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, learned it while visiting US National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice on January 13, as did Villepin, again, when Secretary Powell called on him on January 19.4 The next day was the day that Villepin allegedly ambushed (“sandbagged”) Powell at a UN foreign ministers’ meeting on international terrorism. At that time, Gourdault-Montagne argued that going to war would destabilize the Arab regimes of the region and potentially recruit many more activists for AlQaeda which still had not been convincingly “linked” to Saddam Hussein. British Foreign

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Secretary Jack Straw insisted that the odds for military action were no better than 40:60 and the German government clung to the UN inspections process. Rice, however, said that only the fall of the Iraqi dictator could now resolve the crisis. The neo-conservative Assistant Secretary for Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, reportedly confided to GourdaultMontagne that the Pentagon preferred to “get on with it” before the weather in Iraq became too hot for military action. In a press conference, Villepin finally dropped the other shoe and declared: “We [France] will not associate ourselves with a military intervention that is not supported by the international community.”5 As the Financial Times reporters observed, Chirac and Schröder had not made a prior agreement to oppose the Anglo-American juggernaut and, in fact, had at times suspected each other of caving in to American pressure. But the Germans had taken a definite stand by September, 2002, and this must have encouraged the French president to count on them—and Russia—for a counter-alliance to stop the American lunge past the Security Council. Fortunately for the plotters, January 22 was the 40-year commemoration of the Treaty of Franco-German Friendship, a product of the 1963 cooperation between President Charles de Gaulle and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer,6 and it brought the two heads of state together for anniversary festivities in Paris. The meeting had been prepared for months by civil servants to work out common EU policies quite unrelated to Iraq (EU farm policies and the drafting of an EU constitution). But now, at the public ceremonies of this Elysée treaty, they declared: “War is always an admission of defeat…the worst of solutions. Hence everything must be done to avoid it.” The next day, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld—the “secretary of offense” to his critics—drew his infamous distinction between the countries of the “Old Europe,” those opposing the American thrust into Iraq, and a “New Europe,” America’s allies, in particular East European governments, but also Britain, Denmark, Spain, and Italy. The coinage, spurious as it was, drew furious responses from Old Europeans who probably read into it a lot more than Rumsfeld actually meant to convey.7 It was no surprise that East European governments—as distinct from their publics who were heavily opposed to war—tended to identify more and expected all kinds of advantages from the US. They may also have felt some resentment towards the dominant EU states France and Germany. British and Spanish leaders reportedly were irked by French and German posturing as the “founding fathers” of the EU at the fortieth anniversary.8 Probably none of the Europeans had taken the impact of the September 11 attacks quite as seriously as the American public which, at least in the east of the country, still felt most foully assaulted and seemed to need to lash out at an enemy beyond Afghanistan.

Russia, Eastern Europe, China Other permanent members of the UN Security Council, such as Russia and China, also voiced strong objections to rushing into military action against Iraq before the inspections had run their course. Like France and nonpermanent member Germany, they had voted for Resolution 1441, which is to say that they were certainly no defenders of the Iraqi dictator but wanted him disarmed. Russian President Vladimir Putin was concerned far beyond the vast sums Iraq owed Russia in foreign debts and oil development contracts, the Russian motives the neo-conservative advocates of war like to belabor. Putin was

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genuinely alarmed by Washington’s unilateralism and hostility to the UN, but also worried that the US might not appreciate Russian sympathy for the American reactions to international terrorism, as defined by Russia—in other words, the Russian fears of Islamic fundamentalism from Chechnya to Central Asia. He was also preoccupied, in view of impending Russian elections, with being viewed as too close to the US. The Chinese representatives usually go along with whatever the majority of the Security Council does, but may also have hoped to steer a cautious course between America and its own minority policies, including its relation to Taiwan. Reverberations also occurred in the Middle East where Arab nations opposed open hostilities against Iraq. Even in “friendly” Kuwait and Jordan, it was only the governments that were willing to go with what the public widely viewed as “Christian crusaders.” The government of Turkey, an ally and Nato member, wanted assurances from the alliance in Brussels that, in case of war, it could count on Nato protection against Iraqi rocket retaliation. To the great annoyance of Washington, Nato members France, Germany, and Belgium voted to block any such protection. Later, just before the war, Turkey’s newly elected parliament voted decisively against permitting the American military to move troops across Turkish territory into northern Iraq.9 The second scenario in which the open break between Old Europe and America was staged was the appearance in the Wall Street Journal and major European newspapers of the “letter of eight,” a declaration of solidarity with the US that had been secretly promoted by Spain and Britain and gathered further signatures from Poland, Hungary, Denmark, Portugal, Italy, and the Czech Republic. The letter was reportedly the brainchild of Mike Gonzalez of the Wall Street Journal, Europe staff. At first it was received without enthusiasm in London and Rome until Spanish Prime Minister José Aznar began to promote it.10 As Rumsfeld had said dismissively about the Old Europe, “the center of gravity [of Europe] is moving east.” The letter stressed the common values of the signatories and insisted that “the transatlantic relationship must not become a casualty of the [Iraq] crisis.” It also spoke of the September 11 attack and of the WMD mentioned in Resolution 1441. The letter of eight gathered further momentum when an ex-banker, ex-CIA functionary, and confidant of East European candidates for Nato membership, Bruce Jackson—a friend of neo-conservative hawks like Perle, Cheney, and Wolfowitz—added a stronger “letter of 10,” the Vilnius letter, signed by ten other East European governments. This letter proclaimed, among other things: “If France and Germany think they can run Europe or set up their own alliances, then so can we.” The Vilnius letter elicited strong reactions from Old Europeans like Chirac who commented, in an adaptation of the old Roman saying—Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses (if only you’d kept your mouth shut you’d still be considered a wise man)—that they should have kept quiet instead of being so forward. The two letters were timed so as to appear just before a Congressional vote to admit seven of the candidate states to Nato, and before Secretary Powell was to speak before the Security Council to present his “compelling evidence” and obtain more specific authority for military action in Iraq (February 5).11 At first, in the Financial Times interpretation, the contretemps between Washington and the Paris-Berlin axis was marked by personal frictions and misunderstandings. But the “subsequent deterioration” of the relationship “was deliberate—and orchestrated with Washington’s knowledge” if not instigation. Washington admitted knowing and was gleeful about the letters, but claimed it had not been involved. Neither Chirac nor

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Schröder were notified, and neither were the EU presidium (Greece) nor the EU foreign policy representative and former Nato chief, Xavier Solana—who had just obtained the signatures of 15 EU members on a petition to the UN to continue the weapons inspections—until they saw it in the media. Of the conspiring New European nations, only Bulgaria had the decency to be concerned and to show the letter to French diplomats. The whole “poison letter affair” (Financial Times) may be regarded as a fraternity prank, say of Yale University frat boys from rich families, but it hit the EU like an explosion, not because of the content of the letters but because of the manner in which they had been passed around and endorsed. There were shouting matches at a subsequent Nato seminar in Munich (February 8–10) where, for example, the German foreign minister Fischer passionately implored Americans to comprehend that in a democratic Germany it was simply impossible for an elected government to act contrary to overwhelmingly negative public opinion. De Villepin cancelled a London dinner with his counterpart, Jack Straw. Solana expressed his sense of betrayal by prime ministers like Aznar and Berlusconi. Although it may not have been intended that way, in many European quarters the poison letter plot was seen as an American intrigue to split the European community. There were rumored threats to retaliate against those signers of the letters who still longed for admission to the EU. The conspiracy of the New European states certainly brought France and Germany closer together, but it also had another interesting effect: It induced Russia’s Putin to visit first Schröder and then Chirac to form an anti-war coalition of world-wide support. Chirac quickly shifted from criticism to support for Putin’s policy towards Chechnya and praise for his referendum plans for that tormented land. To the Vilnius 10 and some of the signers of the letter of eight—Poland, the Czech Republic—this resurgence of their old nemesis Russia and its diplomatic overtures to Germany must have seemed ominous.

A second Security Council resolution? In the meantime, Blair’s government had persuaded the Bush administration to go for a second Security Council resolution to specifically authorize military action in Iraq. Some observers thought that the wording of Resolution 1441, which threatened “serious consequences” for non-compliance, already covered this matter. But Iraq was cooperating after a fashion with the inspectors and, in the end, offered even greater intrusive opportunities to stave off an invasion. The casus belli was hardly obvious; the anti-war coalition certainly did not accept it. A disgruntled Chirac, whose vote for Resolution 1441 had been combined with a call for a second resolution if needed, had changed his mind: now he thought it was unnecessary. Worse, Blair found President Bush less than eager to obtain further UN endorsement. The White House rightly feared that such a quest might reveal, even dramatize, the weakness of the wider claimed Anglo-American coalition. As the president put it obliquely in a press conference: “Should the UN decide to pass a second resolution, it would be welcomed as yet another signal that we are intent on disarming Saddam Hussein.”12 Perhaps Blair and Bush had reason for optimism. Saddam’s December report had seemed so obviously flawed and even Dr Blix and his inspections team had condemned

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the Iraqi dictator for some non-compliance with No. 1441. But it was an uphill struggle against the negative positions of veto-holders France, Russia, and China—and the opposition of Germany and Syria. On the Council only the US, Britain, Spain, and Bulgaria were for a second resolution. Undecided Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico, and Pakistan immediately came under pressure from France or the US. Washington had hoped at least to rally a respectable majority of all current Council members—to juxtapose to the veto of France, China, and Russia—but could not even persuade its client states, Pakistan, Chile, or Mexico, to support its resolution. In its petty way, the vengeful Bush administration lashed out most at Mexico, President Bush’s erstwhile bosom friend, by canceling the Cinco de Mayo party on May 5 at the White House.13 France reportedly telephoned the heads of all of the francophone African states and, with the help of South African President Thabo Mbeki, also got to Angola with the message not to support the Americans despite all the usual bribes and threats from Washington.14 Suddenly even the super-power clout of the US which could, of course, promise trade advantages or threaten to cut its present foreign aid, or increase it, seemed to have lost its power. A part of it may have been the spectacle of the fraternity prank of the two East European letters. Maybe the lesson for the US was: you can have your fun with a divisive prank that makes everyone angry, but at the next occasion you may have to pay for it in frustration and embarrassment. Secretary Powell’s brilliant speech at the Security Council, which was supposed to start the campaign for a second resolution, also had mixed results after he seemed to have no new “smoking gun” and instead spiked his presentation with “sly digs”—Inspector Clouseau of the Pink Panther film stumbling about in the dark. A week later (February 14) Dr Blix caustically discredited some of Powell’s evidence of Saddam Hussein’s WMD. Still worse, another round of huge peace demonstrations was unfurled all over the world, including in Washington and London. The London demonstration of February 15 against the war and against Bush and Blair was reportedly the biggest the city had ever seen, with a million and a half people on the march. The president, of course, might characterize the vast masses demonstrating against him in his own country, in Washington, New York, and hundreds of other American cities as mostly Democrats who would not vote for him in any case. But Blair, who was facing a critical Labour Party convention in Glasgow at the time, must have recognized that his demonstrators were mostly his Labour voters and that he could not survive politically forever on the support of the Conservatives in the House of Commons. He already faced growing opposition in his own party in the Commons and in his cabinet, including the first resignation from the government. Very large peace demonstrations also took place in Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Rome, Madrid, and other cities, both New and Old European, and elsewhere.15 Meanwhile the undecided Council members continued to hold out, despite threats and blandishments. They saw no obvious signs of Iraqi non-compliance and viewed at least some of the Anglo-American proposals with growing skepticism: One was a proposal of Jack Straw that Saddam go on Iraqi television and swear that he had complied with Resolution 1441, coupled with the by now familiar demand that Iraqi weapons scientists be made available for interrogation—preferably outside Saddam’s reach—by the AngloAmerican coalition. Months later, after the search for WMD in postwar Iraq had failed to turn up any persuasive evidence, well-intentioned journalists like Thomas Friedman asked in desperation: Why couldn’t Saddam have told us emphatically that he no longer

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had WMD? He did, but no one would listen to him. In the weeks before the war, governments resisting the military onslaught were to plead that the UN inspectors be given more time, maybe months more, a solution evidently quite unacceptable to the US and Britain. Former UN inspectors and the present chief inspector, Blix, endorsed this choice until the UN inspections were ignominiously pushed aside and the dogs of war were unleashed. Four weeks before the bombs began to fall, the French ambassador to Washington, Jean-Davide Levitte, urged President Bush to withdraw the second resolution which was now before the Council: It would “cause unnecessary diplomatic damage” by putting the legality of the military action in doubt regardless of whether or not it was passed by the Council. The White House ignored this sage diplomatic advice. On March 5, then, the French, German, and Russian foreign ministers met in Paris, determined not to let the American-British-Spanish resolution pass. President Chirac, on French television, made an ambiguous veto threat, saying among other things: “Opposerons quelles soient les circonstances”—loosely translated “we will oppose [the resolution] whatever may be the circumstances.” The statement was later labeled as “taken out of context” by official French sources which said that Chirac only meant “if the resolution made military action automatic.”16 Now a desperate Blair called this veto threat “an unreasonable block,” and vowed that France would be “punished” for it. In spite of his prodigious efforts, he could not deliver the Chilean vote, nor could Secretary Powell deliver Pakistan, Mexico,17 or Chile, for that matter. The resolution was dead in the water. Now the war coalition of Bush, Aznar, and Blair gathered for a summit meeting in the Azores (March 14) while the coalition troops waiting in Kuwait cut their first breach into the barbed wire barring their way into Iraq. Bush unceremoniously sent Blix and his inspectors home and declared a 48-hour ultimatum for Saddam Hussein to get out of his own country. Saddam, of course, did not and the war began (March 19) with the bombing of a suburban Baghdad residence where faulty intelligence had suggested he was.

Why they did not follow Bush While no one else may have given quite such a detailed, blow-by-blow account of the crisis in the alliance as the Financial Times, there were a number of efforts at analysis of what went wrong between the US and its Old European allies and why. Many assessments focused on the bossy tone of President Bush, the “toxic Texan”: When he “adopts the punitive tone of a Texas sheriff…he inadvertently serves as AlQaeda’s finest recruiting officer,” wrote one British journalist, Michael Prowse. He reminded his readers that “part of the US genius in the decades after 1945 lay in its ability to get its way while not appearing to dominate other nations,” and it accomplished most of this through international proxies, the IMF, the World Bank, and the UN. We might add the regional alliances, such as Nato, Cento, Seato, Anzus, and others.18 Chirac himself, one month after the war, confided that “the hostility coming out of the US against my person saddens me [but] I don’t lose much sleep over the chattering of a few people.” He reminisced fondly about his youthful days when he worked for Anheuser-Busch in St Louis. He liked America and the Americans, he said with a smile. But “a war which lacks legitimacy does not acquire legitimacy just because it is won.” He proceeded to spell out

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his vision of the international order: “We have a vision of the world based on the view that war should not be used to settle a crisis which can be resolved by other means. War must be the ultimate resort. The world obliges us to seek a consensus when we act; and not to act alone. The US has a vision of the world which is very unilateralist.” But Chirac would not apologize for his intemperate rebuke to the East Europeans “who did not even consult us, and we had to learn of the letter through the newspapers.”19 Secretary Powell was also sulking and licking his wounds after what had clearly been a failure of diplomacy all around. As he put it at a foreign ministers’ meeting in Paris: “The US is not ready, in public at least, to forgive and forget so quickly.” He did not say whether this would be any different in private.20 President Putin, during a television question-and-answer session months later that was part of his reelection campaign, said: “We are not interested in the US getting defeated in their struggle with international terrorism because we are partners…in that struggle. As regards Iraq, it is another topic. There were no international terrorists there under [Saddam] Hussein.” He became philosophical: Throughout history, “great countries, empires have always suffered from a…sense of invulnerability, the feeling of grandeur, of always being in the right. This…very much hindered the countries claiming to be empires. I hope…that this will not happen to our American partners.”21 The transatlantic alliance, concluded the Financial Times at the end of May, was perhaps the biggest casualty of this war, and it had still been more or less intact on November 9 when Resolution 1441 was unanimously passed by the Security Council. The UN, Nato, and the EU had all been damaged by the Euro-American rift over Iraq. On March 20, a “new world order” had begun, based on American military power. The attack on Iraq had been carried out in the name of UN credibility, but without the endorsement of the UN Security Council. Secretary Rumsfeld’s boast of having assembled a “coalition of the willing” of 50 nations was hollow, however.22 The worst liabilities had been the personal antagonisms among the principals: Bush, Schröder, de Villepin, Rumsfeld, and Chirac. The goals at issue here were not just a “war for oil,” or to avenge the assassination attempt against Bush Sr, but US security [from WMD in terrorist hands], the future of the Middle East, and [the introduction of] ill-defined freedom and democracy there. In the opinion of the editors, the European-Russian opposition also was not just to protect debts and lucrative contracts in Iraq, but constituted opposition to American hegemony and unilateralism. The overblown moralism of Bush against the evil dictator, or of Chirac defending international law and the UN, were no more helpful than the dramatic grandstanding of all at the Security Council meetings and other venues. Finally, there were the destructive attitudes: Take it or leave it, for us or against us—or you’re “irrelevant” because we are going ahead anyway.23 The German journalist and respected foreign policy expert Christoph Bertram had an analysis which also reflected a German perspective. He blamed Bush for the impasse but thought that Chirac had overplayed his hand. Schröder’s earlier position on the war had hardened because of the “overreaction of Washington.” Schröder “unwisely refused” to send German troops to Iraq back in August of 2002, a month before the German elections. But it had been Germany—not Spain, Italy, or Poland—that provided major military support to America, before and during the Iraq war: air space, guarding US military installations and bases, a special unit in Kuwait to identify the presence of

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biological and chemical weapons, and help with the war on terror. But, according to Bertram, there were also complaints from the German side, such as resentment at being forced by Washington to choose between Berlin’s European allies and the US, the “forme or against-me” posturing and the good cop/bad cop routine that Powell and Bush practiced on the Germans.24 Jackson Janes, an American political scientist specializing in German politics, also described the frustration of German politicians, because in Washington under Bush, “everything is benchmarked according to whether allied governments are willing to comply with US policy priorities.” Some in the Schröder government expressed a desire to rebuild the transatlantic alliance but voiced astonishment at the pettiness of US tactics and the undisguised wooing of the Christian Democratic opposition (which is not exactly pro-war either).25 To come back to Bertram, Germany was unlikely to become an American “vassal” or to abandon its decided preference for the EU over Nato. Seeing the US using Nato “like a toolbox” from which to pick and choose tools at will, in fact, rekindled the German, French, and Belgian interest in creating a European defense force, increased logistical capacity, a rapid reaction force for intervention outside the Nato theater, and national efforts to update defense.26 President Chirac, the French Chef des Armeés and advocate of military modernization, had decreed a general “mobilization of defense” back in mid-2002, involving the updating and refurbishment of old equipment and raising the defense budget by 11 percent. Rumor had it that the equipment and trained staff of five old regiments had to be cannibalized to outfit one new regiment.27 As the Eurocorps in full splendor marched down the Champs-Elysées on July 14–120 French, German, Spanish, Belgian, and Luxemburger soldiers headed by a German general (Holger Kammerhoff)—Figaro editor Charles Lambrosini commented acidly: “In the new world of George W.Bush, America is in charge of war, and Europe of postwar [arrangements]. But the postwar failures of the GIs in Iraq do not a doctrine make.” Germany, he explained, as compared to its Cold War eagerness to keep up its defense, “has the most deficient armed forces in the alliance, with superannuated equipment and very low levels of defense expenditure.”28

What was the purpose of the war? Whether an alliance works or does not, in case of war, of course depends on whether the allies are agreed on the purpose of the military action, self-defense, retaliation, imperial designs, ulterior motives, or whatever. “The American defense escalation has a legitimate motive,” Lambrosini emphasized. “Since September 11 they feel they are at war. But the euphoria of victory will soon give way to President Bush’s discovery that he needs the allies to escape the stigma of an egotistical conquest.” This last thought was also echoed by the editors of the Financial Times.29 But the underlying question of all the debate over whether or not to follow Bush’s call has always been what was the real crux of making war against Iraq at this time and in this manner. At least five reasons have been cited again and again since the basic decision seems to have been made. One, the presumable link between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11, was never accepted by anyone outside the US, and thereby the otherwise legitimate reason of retaliation went by the boards.

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Two more had some credence among the developing anti-war coalition because they could not know at the time that the coalition forces would never find the WMD stock piles, any programs for their development, or evidence that they might be given to international terrorists for attacks on Western countries—which would have been another legitimate reason for war, self-defense, and is mentioned in the UN Charter (Article 51). It was the basis for the unanimous approval given to Resolution 1441 to disarm Iraq. The second reason with some non-American support consisted of the inchoate plans for democratizing Iraq and, potentially, the entire Middle East. President Bush did not mention this prominently at first although it was known to be part of the neo-conservative agenda and reappeared after the war through the backdoor when administration sources and media began to emphasize what a monstrous dictator Saddam had been. Many European critics viewed these arguments with skepticism because they seemed to be a bait-and-switch maneuver to make up for the inability of the coalition forces to produce any significant evidence of the “link” or of WMD.30 But they also regarded democratization as an unrealistic goal in the light of Middle Eastern traditions, the multiethnic nature of Iraq, and the likelihood of helping Islamic fundamentalists to take over the present conservative (and repressive) regimes of the region, for example in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The major postwar problems of Iraq, in particular the Sunni resistance, but also the pervasive insecurity of the country since the fall of Saddam, have confirmed European skeptics who have had their doubts about the Bush administration’s devotion to democracy and Bush’s own democratic legitimacy. As one exiled Iraqi put it: “Are they going to take the US Supreme Court to Iraq to help them throw critical elections?” At worst, the critics viewed the democratization scheme as a smokescreen for America’s real intentions in the Middle East, allegedly to help Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Likud party to establish friendly, supposedly “democratic” neighboring states.31 The final two reasons for the war were widely perceived but hardly accepted as legitimate by America’s European allies. One was the American desire to control the oil reserves of Iraq and, by implication, the entire Middle Eastern oil supply for the West— including such countries as France and Germany—which had been used by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to blackmail the West so successfully in the 1970s.32 Here too, neither the Americans nor their European critics seemed to have known in what desolate condition the Iraqi oil industry really was—even without any substantial sabotage by Saddam’s minions—and that multibillion dollar investments would be needed to revive it to prewar levels, not to mention its full potential. Europeans did not deny that breaking up the OPEC cartel would be of benefit to them, but distrusted the blatant possessiveness of the Bush administration and its close friends in the oil industry. The original plans to finance Iraqi reconstruction directly from oil revenues and to reserve reconstruction contracts to close corporate friends such as Halliburton and Bechtel were seen as confirming these perceptions. To be asked to spill “blood for oil” in any case made for sensational anti-war propaganda. The fifth reason seemed even less legitimate: revenge for Saddam Hussein’s 1993 attempt to assassinate the president’s father, George H.W.Bush. Europeans were well aware of this likely motive but it further lowered their respect for President Bush, and reinforced their stereotypes of the “Western cowboy” using his office to carry out a private vendetta at the cost of the lives and good health of thousands of American soldiers—not to mention the requested allied troops and thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians—and many tens of

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billions of public treasure. The president’s gloating at the time of Saddam’s capture and his suggesting the death penalty further reinforced the idea that this vendetta was the chief reason for rushing into war. With so little, or only partial, agreement among the transatlantic allies on the reasons for going to war, it is no wonder that the alliance did not hold up. Once the war was completed, on the other hand, two new reasons claimed European attention for cooperating with the US: Picking up the pieces in Iraq—if this could be done under UN auspices and without too much interference from the Pentagon—and healing the breach in the alliance.

German public opinion polls in 2003 As we saw in Chapter 1, German foreign and defense policies had their vacillations through the 1990s, though they were not between pro- and anti-US positions but rather between military involvement and non-participation—beyond membership in Nato and OSCE and for whatever reason—“outside the European theater” in common challenges such as ending the civil wars in the Balkans. The Schröder/Fischer government actually did break the long spell of military abstention in 1999 (Kosovo) and 2001 (Afghanistan), both times as active allies of the US. But when the war against international terrorism became an American crusade against the “axis of evil,” the thin popular support of the Red/Green government began to veer away from the Anglo-American initiatives and the rift between America and some of its European allies opened up. Let’s take a look at how the German public reacted to the actual break in early 2003. Public opinion researchers often like to capture changes in the public mood (or the relative salience of an issue) with summary questions such as “What is the most important theme in German politics today?” In a January 20–23, 2003 poll, concern about the impending war with Iraq thus suddenly became the “second most important theme,” with 23 percent, ahead even of the dismal economic situation of the country (20 percent), though far behind unemployment. While massive antiwar demonstrations exploded everywhere in the West, the popular majority opposing German military participation spiked to 59 percent (from 53 percent in December). Only 12 percent approved of such an undertaking and another 26 percent were willing to support it with matériel and money—in spite of the massive federal budget deficits in Germany. And one could hardly say that followers of the chief government party, the SPD, were far more negative on Bush’s war, or that those of the main opposition, the CDU/CSU, were notably more inclined to side with American military action without further UN sanction. The “not at all” response among the Christian Democrats, at 47 percent, was only 12 percent lower than the average. Only 18 percent were prepared to send troops and 32 percent matériel and money. SPD adherents exceeded the average “no” rate by a mere 8 percent (for a total of 67 percent) and only 5 percent agreed to supplying soldiers. Of the pacifist Greens, 79 percent were against supplying troops.33 On a question regarding the other storm in the Nato waterglass, whether German soldiers should go and protect Turkey in case of war against a possible Iraqi rocket attack, the German public was almost evenly split (46 percent “yes” and 48 percent “no”), and again the partisans of either side differed merely 5–6 percent from the average. Even the Greens who often speak up for the Turks and other German minorities were evenly split (48 percent:48 percent). There

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could be no doubt about the reaction of the German public towards America’s rush to war: There was a wave of surging popular fears, and also signs of further Franco-German solidarization against the “war-monger” Bush. At this point also, the independent newsmagazine Der Spiegel reflected and probably aggravated the deeply rooted German anxieties about bombing campaigns in the midst of innocent civilians. It featured a cover story about the World War Two air war and the 600,000 German civilian deaths, including 80,000 children. There were dramatic pictures and narrative on some of the major Allied incendiary bombing raids and deadly firestorms of 1943–1945 in Hamburg, Dresden, and Berlin.34 A week later, another Spiegel cover story focused on “Blood for Oil: The Real Crux of Iraq,” with glimpses of British, French, and American oil history in the Middle East. The magazine particularly reviewed the pre-history of the Gulf War of 1991: How Saddam Hussein’s financial troubles and frustration with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia led him to seize Kuwait, while the American counteraction aimed at protecting the oil fields of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and hence at restoring regional stability. Der Spiegel was puzzled at the motives of President Bush Jr but prominently mentioned personal revenge for Saddam’s attempt on the life of Bush Sr and the links to the oil industry of the entire Bush administration. The feature quoted approvingly a statement of the former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali: “Baghdad [now] is no threat to its neighbors and even less to the US… Bush wants war at any price. He is totally indifferent about whether the UN inspectors find any WMD.” The oil was at least “an important goal for the American president” and hence his motives were no different from those of old-fashioned colonialism. Chancellor Schröder, in an interview with the magazine, denied ever having used the phrase “military adventures against Iraq” with regard to Bush’s initiatives but only with respect to the war on terrorism. This statement seemed to imply that he did not believe the war on terrorism required or justified any “military adventures”—which could be worse: “There is no doubt that [Security Council] Resolution 1441 must be fulfilled [but] we will not participate in any military action, but do everything to avoid war.”35 So there it was, a declaration of German intent parallel to those of Villepin and Chirac, though it mirrored the conflict between loyalty to the US, commitment to the UN system, and the clear popular mandate against military participation. While the American and British military buildup continued, the crisis came to a head at the end of January—the 22nd being the day of the Franco-German Friendship treaty of 1963 and the 27th the day Dr Blix would report the findings of his inspectors. There was no lack of verbal overkill, ranging from American headlines about “the axis of cowardice” (New York Post) and “the war lords of the Pentagon” (Time) to bilious pronouncements of French parliamentarians, including the revelation that Bush’s team had “totalitarian spirit” (ex-minister of culture Jack Lang). This was also the time when “Rummy Rambo” (as some headlines in Europe called Secretary Rumsfeld) coined the label of “Old Europe” for France, Belgium, and Germany in response to a question from a Dutch television reporter and added that they were “of no importance.” Rumsfeld’s adversary, Secretary of State Colin Powell, did little better when he described himself as having been “sandbagged” by a UN foreign ministers’ meeting on terrorism which was “really a court session on the American obsession to get everyone signed up for this ‘justified and necessary’ war against Saddam Hussein.”36

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German suspicions about Chirac There was also some German resistance to the French claim to a monopoly on opposition to US imperial ambition. As Der Spiegel put it, “Chirac thinks that only he can stop Bush’s war” and is staking a claim to European leadership that is so reminiscent of the days of President Charles De Gaulle more than 30 years ago. Some German media opinion, at least, saw Chirac as the winner by default of four out of five French votes in the May (2002) elections when his chief opponent, former premier Lionel Jospin, was edged out on the first ballot by the radical right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, leaving the voters with the dubious choice between “the crook (Chirac)” and the “fascho.” The resulting huge mandate may well have gone to Chirac’s head, in the opinion of German media observers.37 Schröder had tried to get Chirac to commit to the German side since the end of July, 2002, but the French preferred to keep their options open, encouraging the suspicion on both sides of the Atlantic that they might still jump on the American bandwagon. German leaders feared a secret deal between Washington and Paris to bring this about at the last minute. But now the French president was planning to stop Bush Wild-West-style—on the day that Blix would report, probably not having found the “smoking gun”—and when France would preside over the Security Council. Back home, Chirac’s main opposition in the National Assembly, the Socialists (PS),38 were urging him to use the French veto if he could not bring about a debate on a second UN resolution authorizing (or not) military action against Iraq. Reportedly they also wanted him to prevail upon Saddam not to provoke American action by an uncooperative attitude. France stood ready to block America’s rush to war in the Council and, together with Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg, also stopped Nato from offering Turkey protection—on the theory that the decision to go to war had not yet been made. Throughout January, 2003, Schröder was mired in domestic problems and postelection blues, unable to stop the erosion of his popularity at home—not because of the transatlantic rift but in view of the high unemployment rate and a surge of leftwing dissent in his own party. According to Der Spiegel, he still hoped that President Bush would consult him regarding the war option and hence avoided “theoretical discussions about Iraq.” Foreign Minister Fischer, who had opposed the US war plans since February, 2002, soon grew alarmed at the escalation of the situation. Back in September, 2002, Bush had reportedly asked him: “When is this goddam [German] election campaign going to be over?” But Fischer still balanced his responses, grumbling that “the coalition against terror is no license for invading just any country.” Yet he was also shocked to hear Schröder, at the height of the electoral campaign, reject German military participation even if the Security Council approved.39 Late in January, 2003, the “letter of the eight mercenaries (Liberation)” arrived but, at the same time, the polls indicating the large antiwar majorities (around 80 percent) throughout Europe strengthened the back of the German government: Better yet, the EU Constitutional Assembly felt provoked by what it took as an American effort to divide Europe on defense and foreign policy, in fact to sabotage its work on a Common Defense and Foreign Policy (CDFP). It unanimously condemned the American hegemonial thrust and wrote a European Security and Defense Union into its EU constitutional draft, along with a statement of “solidarity in the face of terror.” Cautious expressions of support also came from Russia and China. In a press interview, ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt weighed in with the suggestion that, perhaps,

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Rumsfeld had done Schröder a favor with his jibe about an Old Europe. But he expressed alarm that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were driving the crisis beyond the point of no return: “A good half century after World War Two, Auschwitz, Dresden, and Stalingrad, the horror of war is greater in Germany than in any other European country.”40 As the world spiraled down to military action in the Gulf, German opinion polls went from bad to worse for President Bush’s crusade: Between early (3–6) and late (17–20) February, the percentage of Germans listing war and peace as “the most important theme of the day” more than doubled, from 20 percent to 45 percent (but was still topped by unemployment at 67 percent; it had been 76 percent). A total of 50 percent were against any contribution to Bush’s war—14 percent for sending soldiers and 33 percent matériel or money—which was not much changed from January. But now there was a new question measuring German respect for foreign statesmen—all well-known names to this public. Among them, Chirac received the highest score, nearly as high as that of Germany’s most popular politician, Joschka Fischer, followed by President Vladimir Putin. George W.Bush received the lowest rating, a level of unpopularity not reached by any German politician in the last 25 years. This was hardly the product of a diffuse antiAmerican prejudice. Tony Blair also had a rather negative rating, about as low as that of his friend Schröder at his nadir. Even among adherents of the opposition CDU/CSU, the ratings of Bush and Blair were extremely negative, a sign of the anger felt in the German public at large.41 At the same time, some regrets or at least alarm at the deterioration of GermanAmerican entente also began to kick in: Not only did two-thirds now regard GermanAmerican relations as “bad,” but 44 percent (58 percent among Christian Democrats) blamed the policies of the German federal government for “seriously endangering the German-American partnership.” However, a majority of the respondents (53 percent)— including three-fourths of Schröder’s SPD followers—did not think so. Evidently, they believed that the American demand to plunge into war (especially in its peremptory form) was so “out of line,” it seemed incredible somehow that a German refusal might “poison German-American relations,” to speak with Condoleeza Rice. When the Germans were asked which foreign partner was “a more important ally” for them, France or the US, again a majority (53 percent) replied “the US,” only a little less than in October, 2002 (56 percent) or October, 2001 (58 percent), right after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.42 Among close friends and allies, to para-phrase various German sources, one ought to be able to say “no” without serious repercussions, at least this was the German belief.

Hubris goes before a fall In the meantime, Secretary of State Colin Powell had given his dramatic speech about the WMD before the Security Council, the case for going to war, and he had added a few unflattering remarks about the team of UN inspectors—the Pink Panther’s Inspector Clouseau stumbling about in the dark. The debate had turned to whether or not to wait further for them to find what American and British intelligence insisted was there, stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, or just how much longer to wait before taking action. Mohammed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency

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had already indicated that it was unlikely that any nuclear materials would be found despite Bush’s mention of Iraqi purchases of yellowcake from Niger in his State-of-theUnion speech. Rolf Ekeus, the former UN head inspector up to 1998, again emphasized that not having found anything was not conclusive evidence—either that there were no WMD or that they were hidden too well, as alleged by Washington; they might still be found—and that the American intelligence figures about Saddam’s chemical and biological stockpiles were pure speculation. In any case, the opposition to the American plan in the Security Council wanted to give the inspectors a lot more time, while the Anglo-American leaders did not. To this end, France and Germany even prepared a new plan to make the inspections shorter and more effective, namely by doubling or tripling the number of inspectors and adding aerial surveillance by French Mirage planes.43 It is easy now with the benefit of hindsight—the failure of David Kay and his American inspectors under the US occupation to find the smoking gun—to smile at the Security Council debates just before the war. Neither Bush in the White House nor the Anglo-American coalition forces cooling their heels in the ever-hotter desert could wait any longer. Dr Blix cast well-reasoned doubts on Powell’s satellite pictures of alleged mobile biological laboratories and tales of imported aluminum tubes for use in nuclear reprocessing. Der Spiegel jeered that “almost every sentence [of the reports of Blix and ElBaradei]…was a slap for Bush.” There was no smoking gun except for the El Samoud rockets which slightly exceeded the range permitted to Iraq under the sanctions regime. Der Spiegel had an issue entitled “On Divine Mission,” showing crusader Bush before an illuminated cross and quoting from his oration:” the only choice [for the UN] now is between saying yes to the war or fading into an insignificant debating club in history.” However distorted might have been the meaning or the translation, these were extremely damaging words in the eyes of the German media and public, reminiscent to some of the fascist (Italian or German) anti-League of Nations and anti-parliamentary rhetoric of another day. My point here lies in describing the interpretation and perception of American diplomatic missteps in German eyes, not in ignominious analogies. In similar fashion, the crusaders’ image was all-too-evocative of Nazi propaganda posters aiming at the German World War Two invasion of the communist Soviet Union, the fortress not only of an alien faith, communism, but of the alleged world Jewish conspiracy behind Soviet communism.44 The Christian character of the image was no relief because, unlike in the US, it made most Europeans—not to mention Muslims—very suspicious. Both French and German media evince little trust in the disavowals of President Bush that this was not a crusade against Islam, in fact not a crusade in the historical sense. Der Spiegel, for example, was very explicit in its description of the Christian fundamentalist attitudes behind the president’s threat of war against Iraq: It pointed out the peculiar mixture of pursuing American national interests with the Christian biblical Utopian strain in US foreign policy, in other words tying national and economic egotisms to a “war for Christian altruism” and Armageddon. In the meantime, furthermore, the notorious statements of the American anti-terrorism official and crusader, Lieutenant General Boykin, about his personal Christian crusade against Islam and AlQaeda—and the fact that Boykin was never reined in by Bush—seemingly confirmed the world’s stereotypes about Bush’s crusade against Islam.45

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How did the German public react to America’s Iraq policy in the last week before the war? According to the polls, Schröder’s angle on Iraq gathered an impressive 69 percent while 27 percent rejected it. When they were asked what elements were needed to improve German foreign policy in general, 49 percent named “European solidarity,” probably in response to the letters of eight and of Vilnius. Only 9 percent opted for more “rapport with the US.” Another 37 percent thought that it needed “moral criteria,” without further explanation. This surely did not refer to what Bush and American evangelicals insisted on calling “moral values,” since Germans appear to see little merit in Christian crusades and none at all in bombing and war. The next question asked whether Germans “should not still be grateful to the US for its defense partnership in the long years between 1949 and German unification (1990).” 62 percent replied “no”—67 percent in East Germany which was of course a separate state until 1990. The question “Is the US a guarantee for peace and security?” garnered only 31 percent ayes, down from 48 percent in April, 2002. There was in fact a response of sorts to Bush’s axis of evil speech of early 2002 which pointed a finger at the alleged troublemakers of the world: When respondents were asked “From which country comes the biggest threat to world peace [now]?” 53 percent answered “the US,” 28 percent “Iraq,” and 9 percent picked North Korea which by that time was widely seen as a far more plausible nuclear rogue state than Iraq. A statement to the effect that “the US only follows its own interests with its international crisis interventions,” found the approval of 76 percent of the German sample (up from 65 percent in 2002). This statement of course demonstrates a contrario also the concept of international leadership and how the Germans view it in contrast to the perspective of Washington: A would-be imperial power has to be perceived as not just “acting in its own interest,” and perhaps should consult with its allies before demanding their loyal followership.46 At this point, the French, Germans, and Russians had prepared a joint declaration for the Security Council which Chirac presented: “There is still an alternative to war and…we shall provide every opportunity for the peaceful disarmament of Iraq.” Putin further elaborated on this alleged “consensus among UN members,” while the Wall Street Journal fulminated that Chirac was “the mouse that roared” and “a pigmy Jeanne d’Arc with a bald pate.” The weekly US News and World Report vowed punishment for the countries that “stood on the side of Saddam Hussein.” There was even a website with a long list of French brands and businesses for Americans to boycott.47 But this was not how Europeans saw President Chirac. Even the otherwise irreverent Spiegel magazine was awed: In an issue entitled “The Emperor of Europe,” it reflected upon the new Chirac, “a concentrated, circumspect statesman…of world-wide moral stature,” since an estimated 10 million protesters in 600 cities (including many in the US) had marched against the war and against Bush’s unipolar world. The new stature of the French president obviously owed much to his heroic stand against the proverbial 800-pound gorilla, President Bush. Chirac also no longer saw a need now for the US to obtain a second Security Council resolution—in other words he wanted the Anglo-American military action to proceed without one if London and Washington insisted—which France would have to veto:48 “Iraq today is no real and immediate danger,” he declared and hence the UN inspectors should be permitted to proceed without any deadlines. Chirac was quite ready to admit, however, that it was the military muscle that Bush had

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put behind the inspections that made them so effective. Here he quoted Blaise Pascal: “Without power, justice is helpless.” The German newsmagazine also interviewed Emmanuel Todd—whose book had long been translated into German—who proclaimed that unilateral hegemonialism is dead,” and that America had suffered a devastating defeat: “Bush is afraid of looking ridiculous if he retreats now… It is no heroic achievement for a highly armed country of 290 million to attack a state of 23 million that is already totally worn out [by wars and sanctions and]…has hardly any effective military forces left…and a population consisting to 50 percent of children and young people.” Military might alone could no longer dominate the world. Todd gave little credit to President Bush’s claim to be bringing democracy to the Middle East which, in his opinion, was contradicted by his treatment of the UN and of the international community: “I believe that this US government has a broken relationship to democracy.”49 The failure of the last-minute Anglo-American efforts to obtain Security Council sanction for its military plans, given the president’s earlier show of disdain for the UN, was pre-ordained. In spite of determined efforts, the American cause found no further converts among Council members who evidently preferred to “fade into an insignificant debating society in history,” in his words. German media reactions, for example, were obvious from the succession of title pages of Der Spiegel in March, 2003 alone: “Operation Rambo” on US special operations units (March 3), “The War of the Diplomats: Behind the Façade of the World Security Council,” on how the US tried unsuccessfully to coax, bribe, and pay for additional votes on the Council (March 10), and “The Self-Conceited World Power,” on American imperialism (March 17). In the second March issue, the magazine told how European diplomatic insiders put the crux of the matter, talking of a “crazy junta that had taken over in Washington.” A victory of Bush would signify the end of international law and of collective security under an international organization. In fact, it “might kill the UN.” Unlike the governments whose tongues are tied by considerations of prudence and by the need to avoid foreclosing possibilities of future cooperation, the media spoke freely. Der Spiegel also contrasted the American defense budget (2003) of $329 billion to those of Russia (65 billion), China (47), Japan (40), Britain (35), France (34), and Germany (28), and posed the question if perhaps the US had bitten off too much. Under these circumstances, the editors felt, Germany’s partnership with France was “absolutely crucial” for German foreign policy in Europe.50

The ghost of the killing fields The German polls soon showed popular reactions to the American rush to war in greater detail. Back in 1990/1991, young German peace demonstrators had marched with signs “Ich habe Angst (I am afraid),” even though the Gulf War that was about to unfold was thousands of kilometers away.51 This time, about half the respondents (49 percent) said they felt fear at the thought of a war in Iraq, but the fear was especially high among women (62 percent) and East Germans (58 percent)—half did not. The same percentage feared terror attacks in Germany as a consequence of the attack in Iraq; again half did not. Remembering the awful killing fields of World War Two, and the air raids and

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massive refugee streams—among others, about 10 million ethnic Germans fled Eastern Europe—many must have thought what one German far too young to have lived through it in 1945 asked me (who had): “What damned fool would want to unleash a bloody war if it could at all be avoided?” When they were asked who bore most of the responsibility for this war, 49 percent of the respondents again pointed to Bush and the US (but especially to Bush himself), 26 percent to Saddam Hussein—probably still believing at the time that he had WMD, was involved in 9/11, and was an immediate danger to Israel—and 9 percent blamed both. The Schröder government’s policy received the support of three-fourths of the respondents for its stand, including just about all of its partisan adherents and a strong majority of Christian Democrats (57 percent). The CDU/CSU opposition had presented a somewhat confused position—not wanting to back such an unpopular war but trying to avoid a complete break with the US—but it received only 20 percent of popular support and less than half (39 percent) of the support of its own partisans. A total of 68 percent of the national sample rejected the opposition stand, including half (49 percent) of the Christian Democrats who evidently did not perceive this as a partisan issue. As the war wound down in April, Der Spiegel warned that “America’s attack could be called a preemptive war only if the biological and chemical weapons, whose alleged presence was the justification for the war, are actually found. But it was still a violation of international law,” because it was not sanctioned by the UN. And the magazine noted the recoining of the rhetoric from “the war on terrorism” and “disarming Saddam Hussein” to a “campaign for freedom.”52 The German public too had a strong sense of right and wrong: 84 percent (89 percent of German women, 77 percent of men) thought it was “not right,” under the circumstances, for the Anglo-American coalition to resort to war. Only 13 percent considered it “right” (7 percent of women, 19 percent of men). An ample majority—78 percent of Social Democrats (SPD), 82 percent of Greens, 47 percent of Christian Democrats, and 63 percent of Free Democrats (FDP)—believed that it was a violation of international law (UN law). The vast majority of the German public obviously considered Bush’s rush to war dead wrong and contrary to law. An equally large majority also thought it was stupid: Although 69 percent expected that the US would, of course, be victorious, 84 percent (including 79 percent of Christian Democrats) believed that this would not produce a lasting peace in the region. By this time, the CDU/ CSU adherents in the population outnumbered those of the SPD two to one. If President Bush was hoping to attract the future support of Schröder’s opposition—he had made some moves in that direction—he was quite deceiving himself.53 The end of the war they could not stop brought different perspectives and some surprising changes in German public opinion. One was the relative upsurge of Peter Struck, the little-known Defense Minister of Schröder who had gracefully endured the childish snubbing by Rumsfeld on several occasions. The chancellor himself, otherwise at the nadir of his popularity, received a modest upsurge in tribute to his standing up to American bullying. He certainly needed it for, in the opinion of his countrymen, now he could command only the support of about one-fourth of his SPD adherents (24 percent) while 69 percent did not “fully stand behind the chair of their party.” This extraordinarily low level of support, in a country ruled by strong parties, reflected the party’s reactions to a series of centrist domestic reforms proposed by Schröder at the time and opposed vigorously by the trade unions and other leftwing Social Democrats.54

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Regarding the war in Iraq, however, nothing much had changed: 78 percent still felt that the Anglo-American military action was “not right”; only 18 percent thought that it was. But now the attention turned towards postwar problems and one out of four respondents (28 percent) was prepared to support the sending of German peace-keeping troops, if only under a UN mandate. In all, 13 percent favored a financial contribution to the rebuilding of the country while a bare majority felt that Germans should be involved in humanitarian assistance in Iraq. About twice as many men (38 percent) as women opted for sending troops, and younger men more often than older men.55 If at this stage the relations between the two governments had been friendlier, this limited willingness to send peace-keeping troops might well have resulted in such an action. The American side, however, continued to begrudge the earlier contretemps and—the need for allied support not being as obvious in April as later in August and September—the opportunity for cooperation was missed. But soon, in the light of the desolate state of postwar Iraq, the surging of lethal attacks on coalition troops, the UN, and relief organizations, and new disagreements, sending German peace-keepers became a less attractive choice. The opposition to sending such troops, curiously, remained at about the same level as that to sending combat troops before the war: In July and August of 2003, still, nearly half the respondents (47–48 percent) under no circumstances wanted to see German soldiers in Iraq. Figures of 45 percent and 43 percent, respectively, would have made their approval contingent on UN backing and only 6–7 percent flatly supported it—and this while nearly two-thirds (62 percent) continued to think that having German troops in Afghanistan was “the right thing to do.”56 To be sure, the Schröder/Fischer government was preoccupied with its losing battle over domestic reforms, but there is little doubt that with a sincere effort to give the UN a leading role in Iraq, the Bush administration could have gained German peace-keeping cooperation there too.

A chronology: ten steps towards the rift A brief, chronological overview over the deterioration of relations between America and Old Europe may clarify what happened when and what seems to have caused what -post quem propter quem. At the same time, we might use the measure of international power made popular by Joseph Nye to assess whether American hegemony in the world and particularly within the Western Alliance has changed appreciably during the years before and after 9/11. We start with a first phase, the period prior to President Bush’s term of office: The period of American leadership at the end of the Clinton years has been subjected to a lot of criticism by neoconservatives, some of it self-serving and some of it probably justified. As the bipartisan commission on the developments of 9/11 has pointed out again, the Clinton administration failed to go after AlQaeda and Bin Laden even though it had come to realize what a menace they weres to US interests around the world, at least since the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa. It did react to those events by bombing raids on an AlQaeda training camp in Afghanistan and on what was believed to be a munitions factory in Sudan, admittedly a weak and poorly aimed response on top of earlier failures such as in Somalia at the very beginning of Clinton’s term. We need to remember, however, what the domestic climate of opinion was in 1998 when conservative Republicans in Congress and the federal judiciary, led by Newt

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Gingrich, Henry Hyde, and Kenneth Starr, made their final assault on Clinton—after six years of trying to impeach him for various causes: Whitewater, the suicide of Vincent Foster, and allegations reaching back into his years as governor of Arkansas. The vengeful mob did impeach him at about the time of the embassy bombings, bending the Constitution to their purpose,57 and his weak retaliatory actions towards AlQaeda were met in the US with howls of “Wag the Dog,” as if the threat from AlQaeda was made up by him to distract his critics from his domestic troubles. There can be little doubt, however, that in Clinton’s day, American power and hegemony was at an absolute peak in Joseph Nye’s terms. Its military muscle—despite the usual complaints from an ever-hungry Pentagon—was as overpoweringly strong as the various neo-conservative manifestos later claimed, measured by the size of the defense budgets of the 18 or so biggest powers in the world: The American military expenditures alone were bigger than those of the next 17 powers, including our principal allies and Russia and China. American economic hegemony was never quite on a par with its military hegemony after the end of the Cold War, but in the Clinton years, extraordinary economic growth had broken through the perpetual budget deficits and produced a level of economic strength unrivalled in Europe and Asia. The hegemony of American popular culture around the world, including in Muslim countries—where it was a bone of contention for the mullahs and the older generation—finally, was extraordinary. Pre-Bush American leaders such as Clinton and Bush Sr, however, preferred to exercise international leadership mostly through international alliances and organizations, most of which were American creations to begin with. Ten steps towards the rift between America and Old Europe 1 Before President Bush: An apogee of American power and leadership. 2 2001 up to 9/11: Seeds of tension as US unilaterally rejects Kyoto, disarmament treaties, and the treaty for an International Criminal Court. Disdain for the UN and international law. 3 9/11: Germany and France (and the world) respond with solidarity, help in Afghanistan and with terrorism cells in Europe. 4 “Axis-of-evil” speech (State-of-the-Union address) before Congress. Talk of “regime change” in Iraq. Europeans mystified by Bush’s switch to a new enemy. 5 German election campaign brings out basic disagreement. August/ September, 2002: Saber-rattling speech by Cheney and éclat between Bush and the Schröder/Fischer government, soon reelected. 6 October/November, 2002: Bush is persuaded to “go back to the UN,” wins a resolution of Security Council to force Iraq to readmit UN inspectors looking for WMD. US Congress authorizes military action if needed. 7 December 2002: Dubious Iraqi report on WMD. US accelerates pace of military buildup while UN inspectors begin searching for WMD. 8 January/February, 2003: US gets impatient with UN inspections. France becomes suspicious of US and British plans to resort to military action. Huge peace demonstrations everywhere, including Washington, New York, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin US builds a “coalition of the willing” in the face of European popular

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resistance. Letters of “eight” and of “ten.” 9 March/April, 2003: Push for a second UN resolution fails in the face of refusals by France, Russia, China, and others. Invasion begins and Iraq is conquered in three weeks. 10 After April, 2003: Bush’s photo opportunity with banner: “Mission Accomplished.” Iraqi postwar chaos begins: looting, insecurity, services, growing insurgency while Halliburton and other “carpet baggers” try to profit. The second step, the gestation of the rift, names the issues of tension, but not the wellestablished neo-conservative track record of more than a decade during which it generated such manifestos of unilateral pursuit of American empire as the Project for a New American Century (see below) or the rumors that the Bush administration planned to invade Iraq from its first day in office, long before 9/11. The third step consists of the impact of 9/11 on the US and the warm response of France and Germany and their participation in Enduring Freedom and in the war on the terrorists at home. It does not mention the evidence that, again, the Bush administration was preoccupied with attacking Iraq and not AlQaeda, or completing its under-taking in Afghanistan, and that it showed contempt for the technological and logistic weakness of European allies. The fourth step is the overt change of targets in the president’s State-of-the-Union address and later talk of regime change in Iraq, which surprised Europeans who had also expected emphasis on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the key to tensions in the Middle East. The fifth step, with the German election campaign, made the disagreement with Washington obvious which, curiously, the French election of the same year had not. Cheney’s speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars more than any other factor brought out the popular and partisan German dissent. Step six has Bush “going back to the UN” in response to pressure from advisers to his father and from Colin Powell. With everyone quite certain of the presence of the WMD, both Congress and the Security Council support renewed UN inspections buttressed with the possible use of force. The US had been building up an armed force for invasion and, as it gets more impatient with the inspections during step seven, now accelerates the pace of the buildup. In step eight, the French seriously begin to balk at Washington’s haste—they were already reluctant to back the UN Security Council resolution—while huge peace demonstrations erupt all over the world. The US gathers a “coalition of the willing,” in part by enrolling East Europeans unhappy with France and Germany regarding Iraq, but also the EU. Step nine witnesses a last, abortive attempt to get a second UN Security Council resolution to authorize the use of force in Iraq. War and victory in Iraq follow swiftly. Step ten features the triumphal Bush appearance on an aircraft carrier, and then things in postwar Iraq begin to fall apart disastrously. This chronology in short steps clearly shows which side triggered the EuropeanAmerican rift though it is probably true that this was not the biggest such dissension since the 1950s. Other confrontations, and especially the Vietnam era bear that distinction. But there are other questions: For example, did the war in Iraq enhance or diminish American power and leadership? With reference to Joseph Nye, again, it would appear that American military power was lessened, in part because Washington became bogged down in Iraq, fighting both terrorism and the nationalist insurgency on several fronts at

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once, in part because of the high cost of the war—an estimated $160 billion so far—and the significant manpower problems resulting from it. The great damage to the American image resulting from the disclosures about torture and the discussions at the highest level of whether the Geneva Conventions applied to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo diminished the ability of Washington to inspire and lead. American economic power has also fallen from its high perch as the expected Clinton surplus of $5.8 trillion turned into deficits amounting to $5 trillion. Burgeoning trade deficits and a very anemic dollar indicate a lessening of economic clout abroad. Even the hegemony of American popular culture has been diminished by high-profile scandals such as the prison abuse in military detention and the unpopularity of President Bush, particularly in Muslim countries. President Bush’s leadership style has not made it easy to maintain alliances: It seems too selfcentered, self-righteous, and egotistical to attract followers, or to retain friends. The result has been a falling off of clientele—also among the coalition of the willing—and a lessening of trust among old allies, with the conspicuous exception of Tony Blair, but not of the British population at large. What could have been a mighty new fellowship gathered trustingly around Bush Jr has become a wary old fraternity held together mostly by expectation of shared loot.

A turning point? Instead of mutual inspiration, German and French attention after the war was drawn at an early point to what looked suspiciously like a predatory operation of a few wellconnected US corporations—like Halliburton and Bechtel. Vice President Cheney had been the Chief Executive Officer of Halliburton, and Bechtel had been close to the Republican leadership for many decades. To make matters even worse, and perhaps to resemble more closely the corporate scandals in America, the inspector general for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, Stuart Bowen, recently released three auditors’ reports that demonstrate the extraordinary carelessness with which CPA has failed to control over $9 billion in international aid. Halliburton and other firms took advantage of these lapses in management, for example, to house unauthorized lowly employees at a luxury hotel in Kuwait City and to spend astronomical sums on laundry and other services. As the American and European media reported, the Bush administration gave all authority over Iraq’s reconstruction to the Pentagon and its friends, which cut out the State Department and Nato, and directed the governmental aid agencies to give the first multi-billion reconstruction contracts—without open bidding or competitive bids—to a few favored American firms that also had been heavy campaign contributors to Republican candidates. These contracts at first were expected to be paid for with future Iraqi oil revenues58 and, as the president pointed out, countries that had not helped to conquer Iraq—that were not “ready to shed their blood”—would be excluded from all bidding. In other words, as it was understood throughout the world, the whole campaign against Iraq was not necessarily about freedom and democracy for Iraq and the Middle East, disarming Saddam Hussein’s WMD, or the war on international terrorism, but about getting Iraqi oil and oil revenues for the Bush dynasty and its friends, and some of it would even find its way into Republican campaign funds. George W.Bush himself, according to the Center for Public Integrity, received $1.4 million in campaign

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funds from the oil industry since the 2000 presidential elections, far more than any other politician in the US. International support was welcomed not as a cooperative effort to tame the evil Saddam but as a buccaneer campaign for loot—of which the lowly soldiers and reservists who had been ready to shed their blood, Anglo-American or allied, would of course get nothing. It was a crucial matter of interpretation and President Bush probably never understood how he had helped his widely accepted, original rationale for going to war self-destruct into a tawdry bit of cannon-boat diplomacy and buccaneering—while assuming that the allied democracies cared only about a share of the loot.59 In any case, the media of both Old and New Europe protested. Presidents Putin and Chirac spoke out in favor of entrusting the UN alone with the authority over Iraqi reconstruction and criticized the American view of Iraq as “a cake which a few states divide among themselves.” National Security Advisor Rice proclaimed once more that “only those who gave their lives and blood for the liberation of Iraq deserve the leading [postwar] role” in rebuilding the country, but she probably did not mean to distribute its presumable riches to the wounded British or American soldiers or their surviving families. By the beginning of 2004, the president once more insisted on publicizing his “blacklist” of countries that were to be excluded from at least the primary contract bidding because they had publicly opposed the war. He wanted to “punish” them even though some of them, such as Canada, had contributed substantial funds ($225 million) and others, such as Germany, France, and Russia were already subcontractors in Iraq—where much of the equipment in disrepair is of German, French, or Russian origin—and furthermore were contributing forces to American efforts in Afghanistan. Worse yet, the president’s dramatic rejection came on the eve of a major trip of his emissary, former Secretary of State James Baker, who was commissioned to persuade these same governments to forgive all or most of the foreign debt burden that held back Iraqi reconstruction. Needless to say, this major gaffe led to embarrassing corrections and corrections of corrections of earlier presidential statements before the dust would even settle. Iraq was soon revealed to be in a state of anarchy and chaos, without functioning services of water, electric power, food, and police. Chancellor Schröder at this point reportedly sought a rapprochement with Washington. He was ready to contribute money and even German troops, but at first drew the line at forgiving Iraq’s foreign debt to Germany. The three “forces of obstruction,” as Washington dubbed them, Chirac, Schröder, and Putin, had a summit of their own in St Petersburg—at which the city happened to celebrate its 300th anniversary—to discuss the debt question, among other things.60 The military superiority of the US still had a match of sorts in Russia, at least in the number of intercontinental missiles with nuclear warheads and dreams of reviving its vast military potential. In population, both China and India were far larger than the US. Both China and Russia viewed the American move into Central Asia with great suspicion. The huge foreign debt of Iraq, too, was supposed to come out of future oil revenues and so was a multi-million dollar claim against Iraq by American Gulf War veterans of 1991—who had been tortured and mistreated in Saddam’s prisoner-of-war camps—which the Bush administration promptly squelched even though it had court sanction. The chancellor reportedly insisted that he never meant to forge an antiAmerican alliance, not even a Franco-German axis, but hoped instead to bring everyone back together.

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The immediate end of the war seemed indeed a time pregnant with significant new vistas and directions for the Western alliance. The US, at least in European eyes, seemed euphoric and possibly bent on further preemptive invasions in the Middle East, for instance into Iran or Syria, to bring about its vaunted democratic transformation. The Arab states were more hostile to the West than ever, with few exceptions. Europeans also worried about American economic pressure, including “talking down” the exchange value of the dollar in order to transfer at least some of the cost of the Iraq war to them.61 The signing of the expansion agreement of the EU in Athens was about to turn a united Europe, including most New European states, into a huge market of 450 million customers and a GDP of 11 trillion euros—easily an economic match for the US though not yet as well organized and integrated. The disagreements over Iraq marred the mood in Athens where furious demonstrators insulted Tony Blair and José Aznar for having sided with the US. By this time, right after the war ended, Emmanuel Todd’s book about America topped all the bestseller lists in Europe. His vision of the American colossus as about to topple over, by its sheer assertiveness, seemed to attract countervailing visions from all sides. Britain’s grand old Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, supplied his own vision of an America bent on world domination, but just as likely to over-dose on its own hubris. Even Henry Kissinger, the German-born former Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford—and a Metternichean conservative who preferred the old alliance games among sovereign states to the pursuit of empire—expressed his negative view of the neo-conservative cabal in Bush’s foreign policy. At this point the world could have turned in any of several new directions.62 Did one of these directions point towards the reconciliation of Schröder and Bush? Der Spiegel thought a rapprochement was gathering momentum. But Schröder did not call Bush—reportedly he was not a man given to telephone conversations—and there were new, mutual suspicions, for example about a Franco-German meeting regarding European security arrangements. Perhaps Schröder and Bush had needed something like a hotline all along to defuse potential conflicts and misunderstandings before they got out of hand. There were hints of popular regrets about the German-American falling out.63 Foreign Minister Fischer’s reconciliation mission in Washington—“Mission Impossible” to the newsmagazine Der Spiegel-was a test case of frustration with the belligerent defensiveness of most of the principals in Washington: Both the administration and the US Senate wanted German troops in Iraq for “the war after the war,” but the German emissaries were not to rehash the reasons for going to war in the first place. The president had meanwhile come under fire for the matter domestically, for having deceived his own people, the allies, and world opinion with exaggerated propaganda stories about the WMD stockpiles of Saddam Hussein, the principal reason for going to war. When none could be found, the stories appeared to have been manipulated or simply false to begin with. And now the Nato allies Germany and France were requested to share the burdens of managing postwar Iraq, “but without a shadow of criticism or debate about the reasons for the invasion.”64

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The full reality of postwar Iraq The chancellor had told his foreign minister to turn the other cheek, but Fischer’s Greens party leaders in cabinet and parliament, and some others were outraged. One prominent SPD leader, Heidemarie Wieczoreck-Zeul—once known as “red Heidi” and now at the head of the Ministry of Economic Development Aid—told a special party meeting in June: “The Americans were never interested in WMD, only in the oil.” Some critics believed that the US wanted to hand off Iraq like Afghanistan, to “get out and leave the heavy lifting to others.” Fischer was instructed to try to turn the US occupation regime into “a legitimate transitional government,” legitimized by the UN which could then ask Nato for peace-keeping troops. Under this formula, some German troops might actually go to Iraq, but Defense Minister Struck cautioned that Germany’s military reserves were already stretched thin—with 8,500 soldiers and specialists committed to the Balkans and Afghanistan. Fischer’s mission of reconciliation found an arctic climate in July in Washington, though he spoke with a score of Senators and key personnel. He had wanted a more specific UN authorization for peace-keeping troops than Resolution 1483 which Secretary Powell thought sufficient cover. The full reality of the American situation in postwar Iraq begin to sink in in Germany as Der Spiegel described it in an issue entitled “The Never-Ending Blitzkrieg: How the US Lied to the World, Defeated a Tyrant, and is Now Stuck in a Guerrilla War.” The magazine also put out a book about the Iraq war and serialized it in its pages.65 The book prominently mentioned the false story about the alleged Iraqi purchase of yellow cake in Niger, an important ingredient of nuclear arms production, and how it found its way into President Bush’s 2003 State-of-the-Union speech to Congress, the American public, and the world. Like many an Iraqi civilian talking about the breakdown of public services— “you Americans are a superpower but unable to restore the flow of tap water in Baghdad?”—the Der Spiegel book contrasted American military superiority with its apparent limitations. Washington’s triumphalism before the war was as embarrassing, it said, as its seeming weakness afterwards. The Niger story was an example of how Rumsfeld’s Pentagon selectively picked alarming items from cautious intelligence reports, or “sexed them up,” as the British media put it. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, “have wanted this war since 9/11,” and to them “the weapons of mass destruction were just a propaganda trick” to engage the American people’s support for the war. The magazine was particularly critical of the idea of “war being a relatively riskless means of politics,” citing the likelihood of tens of thousands of innocent civilian casualties—which in this case did not materialize.66 But it concluded that “the peace in Iraq must be won regardless of our opinions on the war.” In an interview in the magazine, the octogenarian former German President, Richard von Weizsäcker, said about the EuroAmerican rift: “We need to understand that we can only cope with the challenges of the world together. America can conduct any war by itself but cannot achieve order and development, nor create peace, without us. Our future therefore lies with a strong, influential partnership.” Behind these reactions lies the widely shared commitment in Germany and France to multilateral institutions like the UN, the EU, and the international courts. When Germans

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say that something in international affairs is “right” or “not right,” they mean this in terms of international and treaty law, solemnly agreed to and, in most cases, enforceable by resort to the courts and groups like the World Trade Organization (WTO). This European “juridification” of the international order and international “institutionalism” contrasts sharply with the new Anglo-American “realism” and pragmatic attitude towards international disputes. Where Anglo-American statecraft may judge that a particular conflict situation can only be resolved by military force—which may be true, as in the case of disintegrating former Yugoslavia—continental Europeans may fear that force will only escalate existing imperialistic/nationalistic struggles, for example of Serbs against Croats, or both of them against the (once Ottoman and then Bosnian or Kosovar) Muslims. The adoption of neo-conservative and unilateral imperialism by the Bush administration brought the disagreements to a head over the Middle East where European multilateral attempts such as the Oslo Agreements had clashed with the determination of Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to “resolve” the Israeli-Palestinian dispute—and preserve the Israeli settlements on the West Bank—by military force alone. The almost exclusive concentration of President Bush on military action—some of his detractors called it “chicken hawk war games” or playing with his military toys—aggravated the transatlantic dissensus on means and ends to the breaking point. For their own parts, Schröder and Fischer—and Chirac—time and again tried to bring the UN and international methods of conflict resolution back into a central role, often assisted also by Tony Blair and at times even by Secretary Powell. From the day they took office in 1998, the German leaders had bent every effort towards exhibiting foreign policy “continuity” and “reliability” after 16 years of Helmut Kohl’s “partnership in leadership” with Presidents Reagan, Bush Sr, and Clinton. But those were simpler times and with Bush Jr came new challenges presented in his notably confrontational manner. Pacifist and internationalist at heart, Schröder and Fischer responded to the atrocities of Kosovo (1998) and the terrorist assault of 2001 on the US with military force, declaring this choice to be the “great exceptions” to their original course. In both cases there was considerable dissent in the SPD and Greens parties and in the cabinet.67 To attack Iraq “preemptively,” without convincing reasons, however, broke the camel’s back and the Germans reverted to their long-standing patterns of overriding concern with multilateral, collective security via the UN and a “Pan-European peace order” through the (still unarmed) Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Of course the German government had little choice in the middle of an election in which they would have to face the strains of public opinion described above. Since the Cold War had ended long ago, however, Germany could no longer be taken for granted by Washington.

The great unravelling The conquest of Iraq had been such a satisfying experience for the Anglo-American coalition forces and their well-wishers that one could hardly begrudge President Bush his triumphal photo opportunity of May 1, 2003, landing in pilot gear on a returning American aircraft carrier and addressing the troops under a banner reading “Mission Accomplished.” There had been few surprises except perhaps that Iraq turned out to be infinitely weaker than it had been in the Gulf War of 1991—the result of a decade of

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economic sanctions, no-fly zones, and regime deterioration. But was the “mission” really accomplished? Soon the administration strove to expunge all memory of this photo opportunity with the eagerness of the managers of the “memory hole” of George Orwell’s novel 1984. And it was not only the realities of postwar Iraq or the ever-increasing coalition casualties—soon approaching the number of 1,000 dead and thousands seriously injured, many times the numbers of the actual combat period, and not counting the Iraqi collaborators killed and wounded—or the inability of the Anglo-American forces to restore and rebuild essential Iraqi services in a lasting way. The so-called insurgency became ever larger and more organized and widespread in spite of frequent raids of its suspected strongholds by coalition forces. The controversial raids themselves, in fact, became major irritants to the civilian population, especially invasions of mosques and of homes with females present. Efforts to build up Iraqi police and defense forces were beset by massive and deadly attacks on training programs and police stations. Thus the “liberation” soon turned into an oppressive occupation and, as the expected Iraqi cheering of the liberators died down (or had never materialized), the grim reality of near-civil war in the midst of violent ethnic or religious militias threatened occupiers, Western carpet-baggers, and Iraqi civilians alike. A hydra-headed insurgency consisting of ex-Baathists, Sunni militants, Shia militants, foreign fighters from Arab countries, and the ever more effective Ansar-ul-Islam of Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi drove the coalition forces behind fortified compound walls and towards the exit strategy they had neglected to prepare in advance. More deadly than Saddam’s armies in the war, and probably drawing also on the mysteriously vanished Republican Guard divisions, they made the most of their low-tech weaponry, their car bombs, and their roadside improvised explosive devices against coalition soldiers and Iraqi security forces, the most formidably high-tech army in the world. Perhaps the Pentagon leadership should have been reading up on the days when Iraqi nationalists—after fighting off their past Ottoman rulers—in the 1930s frustrated British colonial efforts to “bring democracy to Iraq” by means of a never-ending guerrilla war. Eventually, Britain gave up and Iraq gained independence of sorts (but never democracy) under nationalist, if increasingly repressive rulers. But Tony Blair and his advisers seem not to have learned from this debacle either, and neither did the private contractors and allied governments that sought quick profits in postwar Iraq. Insurgents or the wily AlQaeda systematically subjected them to kidnappings and threats of beheadings unless these firms or governments pulled out of the country: the Philippines, South Korea, Japan, and others. The inability of the coalition forces to maintain security under these conditions, finally led to the tell-tale tactical compromise of Falloujah in spring, 2004: Against the pride of the US Marines, the American forces finally turned over this hardcore Sunni resistance town to an old Iraqi general of Saddam Hussein’s who promised to keep the insurgents in line and moved in with Iraqi flags and marching music.68 At about the same time, in Baghdad’s Sadr City, Najaf, and Kufa, similar compromises had been struck with the Shiite radical cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr—after first threatening to “get him, dead or alive”—to persuade his large and well-armed AlMahdi army to withdraw, particularly from the holy shrines of Najaf and Kufa, rather than to engage the occupation forces. The coalition also prepared a plan for an exit of sorts from Iraq, the so-called “handover” of authority on June 30, 2004, to a new hand-picked interim government of Iraqis which would prepare a nation-wide election late in January, 2005. Although a skilled UN

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negotiator, Lakhdar Brahimi, with much fanfare, helped with the selection, the new Governing Council, like the old one—which was unceremoniously dismissed—was still chosen by the Americans. The long-time CIA retainer and collaborator Yiad Allawi became its prime minister. On his visit to the White House he was introduced by Bush to the press as the authentic “voice of the people of Iraq.” The Pentagon’s long-time, fairhaired choice for running postwar Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi, for his part had to endure the indignity of a house search and investigation for alleged ties to Iran. The new government and its police and national guard forces were supposed to enjoy substantial autonomy in running embattled Iraq—and taking most of the bullets meant for the occupiers—until an election in January, 2005 or earlier would create a legitimate government. However, the American military expected to have to stay in Iraq in full force, presumably to protect the interim authorities. The fortified coalition headquarters in Baghdad were to become the biggest US embassy (with a staff of thousands, probably including an army of CIA agents) for the entire Middle East. There was talk of a dozen or so military bases in Iraq. While the public winding down of the American presence in Iraq had its vexations, the Bush administration suffered far worse damage from a series of evolving major calamities that tended to turn upside down many of the assumptions on which its Iraq policy had been based. Some of them were obvious, such as the final admission, by exUNscom inspector David Kay, no less, that there had been no WMD in Iraq. Neither had there been any demonstrable link to AlQaeda before the war,69 although there could be no doubt that the coalition’s conquest of the country—including leaving the borders unprotected—and its chaotic and oppressive mismanagement of it brought in and recruited new terrorists by the thousands. Far more damaging yet, though not properly acknowledged in the American media in its full impact, was the effect of the bombing of the Madrid railroads by an AlQaeda-related Moroccan terrorist group. The large number of dead (190) and thousands of injured—Spaniards called it “our 9/11”—seemed bad enough. But the impact on the Spanish public on the eve of a major parliamentary election, and on the rather unwilling populations of most of the coalition of the willing countries was much worse. It was devastating. From the forging of that coalition early on in 2003, it had been assumed that all these countries would become solidly integrated into the Anglo-American campaign in time, even though most of them contributed only token forces, if any, and the vast majority of their populations was known to be opposed to the war. Now the question of their loyalty was raised anew and in dramatic fashion. Eleven million Spaniards responded to “their 9/11” by demonstrating in the rain against terrorism and their government’s policies. In the election to follow, they handed their ruling party, the Partido Popular of Bush friend José Aznar, an unexpected but spectacular defeat and voted in the anti-war and socialist PSOE of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. The “spinmeisters” of President Bush immediately claimed that Spanish voters had simply chosen to appease the terrorists— analogous to their earlier claims of Chamberlain-style appeasement in 1939—but the truth was obviously different. For some months already, Iraqi insurgents and foreign terrorists had indeed singled out the smaller forces contributed by the “coalition of the willing,” such as Italian policemen, Polish, Spanish, and South Korean soldiers, and civilian contractors from anywhere in a transparent effort to mobilize the large popular majorities against the war in those countries. In some cases (for example the Italians and Filipinos), they specifically sought

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to blackmail them into withdrawing their token contingents. In the case of Spain, apparently, the large anti-war majority in excess of 80 percent had not cared enough earlier to force their conservative prime minister from office over the war. But when Aznar responded to the horrendous mass murder in Madrid with a transparent manipulation of the investigation, pretending that the attack had been the work of the Basque ETA—he was known to be planning a campaign against ETA terrorists—and not AlQaeda, the voters (including many previous non-voters) rose in anger and defeated him soundly. The investigation left no doubt that the voters were right and Zapatero quickly brought home the Spanish troops (soon followed by those of Honduras and the Philippines, and others). For Spain it was a major sea change that brought not only the values of pacifism—and a culture of peace with emphasis on women’s rights and a dramatic reversal of centuries of Spanish machismo and violence against women—to the fore but a new emphasis on domestic well-being in place of the trumpets of war. It was an object lesson to other opportunist leaders of the coalition, far beyond the small number of troops involved, and had a major and immediate impact, for example on politics in Poland and Denmark. It may also affect the next elections in Britain and other countries of the coalition of the willing where war leaders have long ignored massive sentiment and demonstrations against the war. A little democracy can be a dangerous thing.

The Abu Ghraib prison scandal Another long-range development widely misunderstood in America in its world-wide impact was the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. The Abu Ghraib prison complex had been the very embodiment of the cruelty of Saddam Hussein’s murderous dictatorship which George W.Bush had allegedly sought to destroy—not the WMD or the claimed “link” to AlQaeda. On seeing the pictures (mostly taken by American guards), many US media outlets and representatives of the public were content to take the abuses depicted in the photographs as the reality to be deplored or defended—for example by Rush Limbaugh (“fraternity pranks”) or Senator Inhofe. From the president on down, they spoke of the misdeeds of “a few rotten apples” who had to be punished. These “disgusting abuses,” Bush said, “did not represent the true America,” but he clearly failed to insist on punishment for any but the lowliest “fall guys.” As friendly news magazines such as US News and World Report (July 20, 2004) described them, these abuses were the upshot of an unbelievable degree of military mismanagement and of crossed lines of command between, for instance, military intelligence and military police at Abu Ghraib. Yet we are still looking for the courts martial of the higher officers responsible, and for the dismissal of Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and of the high level Pentagon and White House lawyers whose false advice led to the disaster. But the more important questions raised by Abu Ghraib reached much farther: First of all, the public wants to know how widespread these and worse abuses—a US Army report admitted to as many as 97 deaths in military detainment—were, not just at Abu Ghraib and other military prisons in Iraq (such as Bucca and the Baghdad airport prison), but also in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo, and it wants also an account of the reality of abuse, never mind the pictures. It soon came to light (but was not widely reported) that abuse had indeed been ubiquitous, fatalities and permanent injuries frequent, and the

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inmates often mere innocent bystanders or protesters swept up in the streets.70 Once in custody, moreover, prisoners were often lost in the system, not interrogated for months, their files missing, their relatives unable to locate them or to establish if they were still alive. The enforcement personnel, from Guantanamo commander Gene Miller down to the sadistic “rotten apples” of Abu Ghraib, were often transferred from one scene to another, the last-mentioned from Afghanistan, where standards of military detention were even rougher than in Iraq. The second important question raised by the prison scandals had come up at the beginning with regard to prisoners at Guantanamo, especially citizens of Britain, France, and Australia. Allies and many other critical voices could not understand why the detainees there should not have any human rights whatsoever, such as access to courts and attorneys to test whether they were imprisoned with cause or by mistake. Many of the prisoners have been beaten and tortured, allegedly to extract information. But everybody knows that torture rarely yields any new information, only whatever the torturers want their victims to say. Torture also offends the deepest convictions of justice in Western societies and to bring it back under any excuse makes the America the world knew odious in everyone’s eyes. The attempt to be as tough as the terrorists, or even tougher, makes Americans seem no better than the murderous AlQaeda. And the critics are not persuaded by glib verbal formulas like “stateless enemy aliens” or “illegal combatants” any more than “terrorists.” To say that the terrorists were not willing to accord human rights to the victims of 9/11 either, is no excuse, especially if we block them from proving that particular inmates are not terrorists. And the excuse that, in the face of a burning fuse of a terrorist bomb, we need to extract the information to stop that bomb now, any way we can, and that we cannot afford to abide by legal niceties is eerily reminiscent of the legal theories in support of totalitarianism of another age: Back in the 1930s, Nazi lawyers at the highest level theorized that, since in a state of emergency, or of martial law, the executive has the authority to act to meet the crisis without the restraint of constitutional and civil rights, it always possesses such residual, unrestrainable police powers.71 Thus they made emergency powers into a justification of totalitarian police powers. A third major question arising from the prison abuses was whether the instructions for the guard-torturers—or the “atmosphere” in which torture for important information allegedly “got out of hand”—came from higher up in the military hierarchy, or from military intelligence. As one reader’s letter in the Los Angeles Times put it upon learning of the allegations: “Yes,” it was a case of “a few rotten apples,” namely Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, that were responsible for the prison abuse. Indeed, the disclosure of official discussions and documents at the highest level of the Pentagon and White House about the applicability of the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war to these military detainees (especially at Guantanamo) speaks of such an atmosphere of lawlessness at the very top.72 Again, the greatest damage does not even lie in the lawless torture of the bodies of the prisoners or their death. It lies in the moral diminution of the image of the US in the eyes of the world, particularly in the Western world. “If Osama bin Laden had hired a Madison Avenue public relations firm to rally Arab hearts and minds to his cause, it’s hard to imagine that it could have devised a better propaganda campaign,” wrote Philip Carter in the Washington Monthly. It took this hurtful scandal about a year to fully emerge and it weighs heavily on America’s authority to exercise leadership abroad. Who

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would want to get involved with the coalition forces in Iraq, knowing they use torture in their prisons? How can we expect future enemy countries to treat our officers and soldiers, if they should fall into captivity, if we do not even recognize the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war, or the international treaty against torture, both of which we signed? A third development that had been creeping up on Bush’s pursuit of the war on terrorism and postwar policy in Iraq is actually a bundle of closely related strains, driven in part by the presidential election year of 2004. Not only did the approaching reckoning embolden critics and encourage the formulation of alternative policies by his political opposition. It also led to a major resurgence of issues related to the president’s contested win in Florida in the 2000 elections, in other words the long-dormant question of his legitimacy as president. Stirred up in part by revived criticism of its cowardly surrender in 2000, even the Democratic leadership in Congress felt motivated to express belated doubts about Bush’s legitimacy. A new investigation of the infamous “felon purge” of Florida’s voter rolls—the removal of tens of thousands of names, mostly of Democratically leaning African-Americans, on the false pretense that they were convicted felons (see below)—and legal steps to prevent a repetition of this fraudulent maneuver in Florida or any other states made the shenanigans of 2000 poignant. Reminders of other Florida irregularities, for example that the top election official, Secretary of State Catherine Harris, had also been the George W.Bush campaign co-chair (with Governor Jeb Bush) were also aired along with examples of further states with the same conflict of interest, for example Michigan.

Critics of the war on terrorism The emergence of a viable challenger, Senator John F.Kerry, and the Democratic National Convention in Boston (July 26–29) generated many specific criticisms of Bush’s unilateralism and his botched wars in Iraq and against terrorism. At the convention, Senator Teddy Kennedy particularly scored the president’s disdain for the allies and “the opinions of the world:” “How could any president have…squandered the enormous flow of goodwill that flowed to America from across the world after September 11?”73 Bush’s rival in 2000, Vice President Al Gore, asked rhetorically: “Wouldn’t we be better off with a new president who hasn’t burned his bridges to our allies and who can rebuild respect for America in the world?” He aimed especially at Bush’s mismanagement of the war—regardless of opinions about its initiation—and its aftermath, and at “confusing Iraq with AlQaeda” in the war on terrorism.74 Kerry himself, in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations half a year earlier had spoken of Bush having “squandered that historic moment [after 9/11]…and rushed into battle… almost alone… But this administration did it the worst possible way; without the UN, without our allies, without a plan to win the peace.”75 Indeed, if we imagine that a second 9/11like catastrophe befell the US—God forbid—could we expect the world to rise to the occasion again as it did in 2001? Most frustrating for the president’s reelection campaign, his challenger and the Democratic convention refused to let themselves be pushed into a vulnerable “extremist” and simplistic anti-war position.76 While the Democrats proved uncharacteristically unified, moreover, the Republicans were just as uncharacteristically

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divided on a series of issues where they had come to disagree with the president, such as the mounting deficits of his administration. Worse yet, the Bush policy was further assailed by a passionate documentary film maker, Michael Moore, a persistent and very talented critic of the gun lobby (NRA) and of corporate abuses related to Bush. His movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, had won top honors at the Cannes film festival and attracted thousands of enthusiastic viewers in the US with his trenchant and amusing glimpses of presidential moments and intentions. There had already been a steady drumbeat of criticisms of obvious failures of the Bush administration’s war on terror before and immediately after 9/11 in the form of books by Richard Clarke, Paul O’Neill, Bob Woodward, and Anonymous, a senior CIA officer in charge of a detail tracking Osama Bin Laden in the mid-1990s,77 as well as informed media comments and disclosures by members of the intelligence community. Like others, filmmaker Moore again showed how the Bush administration had simply ignored the emphatic warnings of its predecessors and intelligence organizations about AlQaeda’s plans for attack on American interests abroad. Even fairly specific warnings in July and August, 2001 about possibly devastating attacks in the US fell on deaf ears until it was too late. Right after 9/11, some Bush initiatives in the war on terror—such as the Patriot Act and racial profiling of Arab visitors and Arab-American immigrants—were often pathetically ill-conceived to catch or neutralize any real terrorists. The entire Afghan campaign, some critics insisted, was in many ways inadequate, especially in the size of the American troop contingents and the funding for reconstruction of that unhappy land. There was also the strange story of how the Bush administration—against a background of many decades of close relations between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family78—had arranged to transport nearly 200 prominent Saudis, including 24 members of the Bin Laden family, by plane out of the country at a time when no American commercial flights were allowed. The Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar, dined at the White House only days after 9/11, the terror attack in which 15 of 19 hijackers had been Saudis. Bush never made any effort to explain these goings on though underlings have claimed that the airlift was designed to spare these worthy gentlemen the unpleasant searches and examinations to which other Arab travelers were soon to be subjected. One of the visible currents in the undertow of Bush’s reelection campaign was the 500-plus-page report of the 9/11 commission (the National Commission on the Terrorist Attacks upon the US), a bipartisan group that reported on its findings just before the Democratic convention. The president had originally opposed the creation of an independent commission on the antecedents and reactions to the 9/11 attacks, possibly because of the link between his and the Saudi royal family, fearing unflattering disclosures or worse. After several Congressional efforts and also attempts by Bush people to control the membership and output of such a panel, the independent 9/11 commission finally was established under co-chairs Thomas H. Kean, Republican exgovernor of New Jersey, and Lee Hamilton, a Democratic ex-Congressman and foreign policy expert. The commission report was released just before the Democratic convention which gave it added impact. In spite of its bipartisan, blue-ribbon composition and great efforts not to cast blame at the obvious culprits—some was also directed at the Clinton administration79—the report of the commission was bound to raise doubts about the Bush administration’s response to the threat, and this even without mention of the Saudi connection. The bulk of its original findings, indeed, came from some 1,200 interviews

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with US government personnel about their actions and inaction which were related to secondary accounts of the 9/11 plot and its background.80 The biggest blame, perhaps, fell on the intelligence organizations: The commission ended up recommending substantial reorganization, in particular forcing them to cooperate under one national intelligence director and with one national intelligence center to process all the information. The commission also had a dozen or so further, rather costly recommendations to tighten security at airports and other points of access to the US which would significantly inhibit customary freedoms to travel, the privacy, and perhaps the civil rights of Americans. The first reaction of the Bush administration to the report was rather negative, citing in particular a concern for American civil rights, a surprising objection from an administration that never recognized the concerns of civil libertarians about its Patriot Act of 2001 (see below). In fact, Bush has wanted to add further invasions of privacy and liberties with a Patriot Act Two. Cooler heads soon prevailed at the White House, as the administration, in a spectacular “flip-flop,” decided to embrace some of the commission proposals, such as the national intelligence director and center, though with some significant modifications.81 After all, the president’s challenger, Senator Kerry, had already pledged to accept and carry out all the recommendations even before the Democratic convention. The reaction of the White House was quite similar to its efforts to meet every plank of its opposition critics, such as calls for greater UN, Nato, or allied involvement in Iraq with quick, if token gestures of wanting exactly the same, or pretending that this had always been its preference. To top its reaction to both, the electoral challenge and the commission report, the Bush administration suddenly proclaimed a heightened (orange) state of terrorist alert—timed right after the Democratic convention when its Democratic challengers would try to carry their message to the country—and mobilized an army of guards around major financial institutions in three cities (and elsewhere), such as the New York Stock Exchange and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, D.C. Nearby roads, bridges, and tunnels were closed or blocked while the administration explained that new arrests of AlQaeda leaders in Pakistan had yielded very detailed and pictorial information on these and other financial centers which had evidently been gathered by AlQaeda terrorists for purposes of lethal attack with explosives. Naturally, there was great concern, even a certain amount of panic raised by these dramatic measures which were accompanied by unctuous statements by the president—“there is an enemy which hates what we stand for”—and vice president. But then it came to light that the evident AlQaeda “casing” of these financial centers had mostly taken place before or right after September 11, 2001—three years earlier—and that much of the pictorial material, maps, and floor plans etc. was freely available on the internet. Homeland Secretary Tom Ridge justified his orange alert with the recent intelligence warnings that AlQaeda was planning an attack just before the American election82—scheduled for the first Tuesday in November—but never explained why the alert was started on August 2. It was not made clear if the alert was supposed to be in effect for the entire three months until the elections. Ridge’s assistant told the media that AlQaeda was known to plan for its strikes years ahead, a potential threat one had to meet now, or it might be too late. The argument had an eerie resemblance to demanding a preventive strike on Saddam Hussein in 2002, because he might in future become an aggressor with his alleged WMD, considering his

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past conduct. Some American critics of Bush flatly accused him of blatant manipulation of the fear of terror for transparent purposes. Obviously, trust in President Bush had dropped to a low level. The report of the 9/11 commission, however, insisted that “America is safer today” than before 9/11 but “not really safe [yet].” European voices by this time had already formed a skeptical opinion of the entire Bush record as of the date of the “handover” of power to Iraq.83

3 THE DISTRACTED EAGLE Before we can get into the thick of arguments about what seems to be the nature of the distractions of the American eagle in foreign policy, we need to clarify some of the terms of reference in public discussion. Phrases like “unilateralism” and “multilateralism” are easily misunderstood unless they are related to more specific contexts in American history and world affairs. When Presidents Washington and Jefferson in their day expressed their aversion to “entangling alliances,” for example, they never meant to reject the young republic’s temporary alliance with France or any other temporary ally against the colonial superpower of the day, England. Like many a newly independent former colony today, they were wary of slipping into a new dependence upon another major or minor power. If the League of Nations or UN1 had existed around the year 1800, they might have been less unilateral and more trusting towards such a multilateral, postcolonial international organization than any single, selfish power. Nor are multilateralism and unilateralism a simple matter of the number of allies that are brought in or consulted before the US takes major action in foreign policy: Signing up Liechtenstein and the island of Mauritius for a “coalition of the willing” is not enough to make a policy multilateral, and being joined by Britain, Spain, and Italy may only create two alliances that disagree. Nor is multilateralism necessarily moral or saintly, as the participation of the US in various multilateral schemes of colonial exploitation, for example of China in the nineteenth century, demonstrates. A working definition of unilateralism, on the other hand, also has to exclude situations of self-defense in which a nation may defend itself against an aggressor or conqueror without any reference to allies or international contexts. Further exceptions to a simple multi-uni numbers game are the vast array of civil wars, rebellions, colonial liberation from an empire, and conflicts in which a minority province like Kosovo or a would-be Kurdistan struggles against a central state dominated by its deadly ethnic enemies. This is not to suggest that the terms multilateralism and unilateralism should be discarded altogether.2 They each make sense if they are taken in deliberate reference to a previously established opposite: When President Wilson, for example, strove to establish a system of international collective security, the League of Nations, among nations ravaged by World War One, in place of the pursuit of American empire by some of his predecessors and some of his own initiatives, this deserves to be called multilateral. It does not matter that the contemporary monsters of imperialism that he tried to tame were first an alliance of Central Powers, imperial Germany, the Habsburg empire, and Turkey, and then a congeries of US allies, imperial Britain, France, Italy, and others, all rather opposed to the imposition of self-determination and international law and order by the charismatic American victor. Wilson’s domestic opponents who eventually denied his brave new world the crucial American endorsement—and thereby probably assured the return of imperialistic power politics and World War Two—also were not really

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advocates of unilateral initiatives but American isolationists reacting to what they considered excessive involvement in the cauldron of endemic European conflicts. If Wilson’s scheme was multilateral against the context of the existing power politics, we can also give the label “unilateral” to the deliberate rejection by Bush policy-makers of the well-established multilateral processes and organizations of our time, collective security through the UN Security Council, a brace of international treaties of disarmament, international concerns about the environment, and of international adjudication and law itself. Occasional multilateral gestures and even concessions, whenever it suited their purposes, are little relief from the obvious conclusion, although we hope to return to this point later in this chapter.

The Wilsonian paradigm As we will see below, much of the international confrontation of 2002/2003 resulted from the clash of neo-conservative doctrines of American foreign policy with the prevailing Wilsonian principles and processes of international order that, under American hegemony since 1945, had been widely disseminated and accepted throughout the world. There is no need here to retell the history of President Wilson’s foreign policy from its antecedents in the Progressive legacy of which the Republicans Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, but also William Jennings Bryan and the antiimperialists, shared important elements in spite of considerable disagreements. Nor need we get mired in the details of how Wilson arrived at the plan to put international politics on the basis of multilateral negotiations within the specially designed League of Nations. What matters here is the 80-year-old message and how it has been received and understood by most of the nations involved in spite of its temporary abuse and eclipse under the pressure of such circumstances as the coming of World War Two and, after that, the Cold War. There have been attempts to hi-jack or modify the Wilsonian legacy, including neoconservative efforts to claim its championship of democracy all over the world—Wilson actually promoted national self-determination, not simply “democracy,” being well aware, as a political scientist, of the difficulties of democratization of newly liberated nations—while treating the United Nations, the central piece of Wilsonianism, with contempt. But in the meantime, the Wilsonian scheme (stripped of its messianic overtones of American exceptionalism) has become an institutional reality in the world, in spite of any flaws and occasional failures experienced, a community of nations meeting in the tall building on the East River, which cannot be ignored so easily. The whole world looks to this focal point in New York, even if stand-up comedians and journalists make fun of it and extreme rightwing groups like the John Birch Society and the Utah state legislature would like to “get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US.” Even great powers, not to mention small rogue states, cannot simply embark on an aggressive course anymore without encountering the critical opinions of the world and the voting power of other states in the Security Council. The big bullies of the world, of course, may believe that the UN does not have the military power to stop them, much as Joseph Stalin in his day (when told that the Pope took a dim view of his policies) reportedly asked: “And how many divisions has the Pope?” Even when the UN or regional associations of states such as the EU, the OAS, or the OAU cannot stop a

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powerful aggressor, there is usually a price to be paid in the long run for ignoring the critical reactions of the world community, a price exacted especially in influence and leadership, and perhaps also on the world marketplace. A brief look at the beginnings of Wilsonian multilateralism may give us a sense of the mature system of the present. When he was first elected president, Wilson was already identified with the movement to free the Philippines from the quasi-imperial rule of the US which had become its colonial master with the victory in the Spanish-American War.3 As president, he initiated the long and painful process of winning self-rule although the Philippines did not really become independent until 1945. Even self-rule or home rule is still very far from the attainment of democratic maturity which, by common (and Freedom House) consensus the Philippines still has not quite reached today. Shortly after World War One broke out in Europe (1914), President Wilson called for “a moral foreign policy” and, in a widely quoted speech (May, 1916), for “an international association of nations” as the cornerstone of a new system for settling international disputes and assuring peace.4 Reelected on a neutrality pledge and while facing domestic resistance to any preparations for intervention in Europe, he made a last offer to serve as a neutral mediator among the contending parties for a “peace without victory” and for the establishment of “a community of power” of the nations rather than pursuing the traditional chess game for the maintenance of a “balance of power” on the continent (January 22, 1917).5 When Germany remained unresponsive, apparently underestimating the American capacity to mobilize and enter the war in time, Wilson broke off diplomatic relations and Congress declared war, in April, 1917. There followed his famous Fourteen Points the following January, including again “a peace without victory” to end his “war to make the world safe for democracy.” The goal was to create a non-vindictive international order of peace—unlike the Treaties of Versailles and Trianon that the US allies Britain, France, and others were about to press upon the defeated Central Powers— and to put “a general association of nations,” the League, in charge of resolving future disputes and preserving the peace (Article 14 of the draft Covenant of the League of Nations). Wilson made the disastrous political mistake of not inviting Republican leaders to accompany him to the Paris Peace Conference or exploring enough substantive compromises with them—he did exempt the Monroe Doctrine and matters of US domestic jurisdiction from the authority of the League. By this time both houses of Congress had been taken over by Republican majorities and their opposition in the end proved impossible to overcome. A particularly sticky point in the Senate debate was Article 10 of the League Covenant which obliged the members of the League to come to each other’s defense the very heart of the idea of collective security. Led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the opposition insisted that such action be made contingent on Congressional approval and eventually denied the Covenant the required approval of two-thirds of the Senate. It is hard to think of anything more quintessentially American than this Wilsonian scheme for bringing law and order into the international anarchy of power politics. Of course it had its flaws, as people were quick to point out.6 In the US, Wilson failed to get it adopted owing to a combination of partisan pigheadedness and failing health, whereas in Europe and Asia, it broke down historically only before the unilateral assault of the new imperial drives of Japanese militarist, Italian fascist, and German Nazi provenance, beginning with the Japanese attack on Chinese Manchuria (1931) and that of Italy on

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Ethiopia (1934). But we must not overlook its extraordinary moral appeal to the human imagination, a hope for embattled and enslaved peoples after millennia of warlords and crusaders marching and conquering, an icon of international decency in a turbulent world: To “dream the impossible dream”—to help “unredeemed,” oppressed nations to gain autonomy—to stop the brute sword of the warrior from slaying the innocent and burning down whole cities. Among other things it could create a forum for world public opinion which then could effectively grant or deny legitimacy to major military campaigns, as Americans have just had an opportunity to learn the hard way in the case of Iraq. And far from disappearing along with its failures in Europe and Asia in the 1930s and 1940s, the Wilsonian concept of collective security has powerfully survived, especially in the countries that opposed the campaign for empire in Iraq, but also among all those who still believe in the mission of the UN, even among the “coalition of the willing.”

Follow-up under Franklin D.Roosevelt In the US, the defeat of Wilson’s League Covenant by no means led to a return to the imperial policies of William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt. The issue of the Covenant was not absent from the presidential campaign that followed Wilson’s debilitating stroke in 1919. Both the Democratic candidate, James M.Cox, and his running mate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, spoke (unsuccessfully) for its adoption, while the eventual Republican winner, Warren G.Harding, seemed almost afraid to voice his opposition. To be sure, Senator Lodge, Wilson’s nemesis regarding the League and one of the sponsors of the Harding candidacy, practiced no such reticence. Ten years later, as the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he still blocked American accession to the World Court, the Permanent Court of International Justice established under Article 14 of the Covenant to handle disputes between states and issue influential advisory opinions on questions of international law. This brings up a second topic we have not emphasized until now, international law and adjudication. Wilson’s overriding goal had been to bring not only democracy but also justice to international relations. By definition, international law is very different from the law and courts inside well-integrated nation-states where the powers of government are coercive and courts are the first device for enforcement. International law, by contrast, is mostly based on treaties and conventions voluntarily concluded and hence based mostly on voluntary compliance, a belief in law and legal obligation (pacta sunt servanda), but also on principles derived from previous court opinions (precedents), or from centuries of legal philosophical writings.7 In 1899, at the request of Tsar Nicolas II of Russia, an International Peace Conference was convened at The Hague, the Netherlands, in hopes of producing international arms limitation agreements. Already the seat of the Dutch government and highest courts, The Hague became the site of the Permanent Court of [International] Arbitration (also called the Hague Tribunal)8 and of a Second International Peace Conference (1907) and gave its name also to a series of international treaties and conventions on the laws of war, for example the prohibition of aerial bombardment, submarine mines, and poison gas, as well as the protection of noncombatant civilians and of neutral shipping lanes. Some of these new rules were violated

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at times by both sides in World Wars One and Two, but would it have been better not to promulgate rules of morality in war at all? The League’s World Court quickly won ratification, by 1921, and was eventually recognized by 50 nations, though never by the US Senate which insisted on all kinds of reservations from its jurisdiction. With the creation of the UN in 1945, the World Court became the International Court of Justice, of similar structure and procedure, and played a major role in the settlement of several important disputes. There were also instances when the US weaseled out of its obligations under international law by refusing to accept the jurisdiction of the court in particular cases, for instance when President Reagan, as part of his undeclared guerrilla (Contra) war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, had US forces mine the harbors of that country. Since 1945, especially since the adoption of declarations of human rights at the UN and EU levels, there has also been an ever-growing need for an international court that could address the complaints of individuals against governments, an International Criminal Court, the ICC.9 Although ratified by mid-2002 by no fewer than 76 nations, the ICC became an unfortunate example of the unilateral fury of the Bush administration which, at the end of June, 2002, in the UN Security Council, threatened to veto a routine extension of the UN peacekeeping mandate in Bosnia, unless UN peace-keepers from the US were granted blanket immunity from ICC jurisdiction. On the opposite side, shocked by this blatant blackmail attempt, were all 14 other Council members, led by Britain and France, who insisted that such an immunity grant was not only unnecessary but might strangle the court at birth. This indeed may have been the intent of Washington, whose UN ambassador, John Negroponte, had been linked to Reagan era Central American military atrocities, when he was an ambassador in that area. The commitment of the US to international peace-keeping—there were relatively small numbers of American soldiers in UN peace-keeping missions world-wide—was as much cast in doubt as was its sincerity in amending the ICC Treaty and commitment to international law itself. The US had already put plenty of loopholes into the widely popular treaty10 it never meant to sign, and concluded over 100 bilateral agreements with nations to exempt American soldiers and officers from ICC jurisdiction. The Bush administration argument that the ICC treaty was a typical example of “international agreements which could constrain America’s freedom of action” raised eyebrows around the world: “What actions does the US want to be free to undertake?” On the other hand, a remarkable example of how an international consensus on law can influence even the most recalcitrant people has just occurred in Belgrade—after an election gave the initiative back to Serbian nationalists: The Serbs decided to try the Serb officers guilty of genocidal persecutions of Croats in Vukovar in the 1990s themselves so as to keep the war crimes tribunal in The Hague from doing so. To get back to the 1920s, under Republican President Calvin Coolidge, there were not only further efforts, albeit unsuccessful, to bring the US under the jurisdiction of the World Court, but his secretary of state, the distinguished Frank B.Kellogg, advanced the Wilsonian legacy with his extraordinary Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928 to outlaw war altogether. Aristide Briand was the French Foreign Minister who had proposed the treaty in 1927; the two earned the Nobel Peace Prize of 1929 for it. The Pact condemned “recourse to war for the solution of international controversies” and was signed almost immediately by 15 nations, including Japan, Italy, and Germany—the three who soon

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became its most egregious violators with their wars of aggression. Eventually 62 nations signed up, including the US and Britain. It had no enforcement mechanism but was used, for example, to settle the 1929 Sino-Russian dispute over the Manchurian railroads. President Roosevelt also shepherded the Wilsonian legacy under the most difficult conditions when, in 1938, he began to speak out against international aggression and greed. He refused to recognize the conquests of the three aggressors and, though hampered by isolationism at home, built up an “arsenal of democracy” against the inevitable day when the US would have to engage them in defense of freedom and democracy. Mindful of Wilson’s blunder, he was careful to involve the Republican opposition, especially presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, in the decisions just before the American entry into World War Two. After the Nazi German takeover of France and the air war against Britain, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor revived the application of collective security: In the face of the imperialistic onslaught, the representatives of 26 nations met in Washington in January, 1942 to sign the Declaration of the UN and pledge themselves to the principles of the Atlantic Charter which Winston Churchill and Roosevelt had drafted at sea off Newfoundland the previous August. The Wilsonian concerns are obvious in their text: 1 The two nations [Britain and the US] would seek no territorial aggrandizement; 2 No territorial changes would be made except through the freely expressed wishes of the people concerned; 3 Sovereign rights and self-government would be restored to those who had been forcibly deprived of them; 4 All nations would have access to the trade and the raw materials of this world; 5 All nations would collaborate to bring about improved labor standards, economic advancement, and social security for all; 6 A peace would be established to assure for all men in all lands freedom from fear and want; 7 The seas should be free to all; and 8 The use of force would be abandoned and all nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression would be disarmed. It is worth noting that these principles not only opposed the aggressions of the three imperial powers, but that nos. 1–3 also had been, or were soon to be violated by the Soviet Union, during and after the war. Nos. 4 and 6–8 also in part contradict the policies of the present Bush administration. Once the war had ended with the rout of the three aggressors, delegates from 50 nations gathered in San Francisco to establish the UN as a potent organization of collective security against future unilateral aggressions and for facilitating decolonization.11 Like the League, the UN had a General Assembly but its Security Council was given real enforcement powers to carry on the difficult business of resolving international disputes and maintaining the peace of the world. Its authority to decide and intervene, it was hoped, would put the “teeth” into the operation that the League Covenant had lacked. Five permanent Council members (the US, Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China) were granted a veto to assure their cooperation, but circumstances conspired to keep the new multilateral organization from reaching its full potential: First

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of all, the rising conflict between the Soviet Bloc and the Western Alliance tended to distort all other conflicts and their settlement. It largely stymied its legitimate purpose of resolving regional disputes and stopping smaller aggressors, while at the same time making the paralyzed UN the focus of prominent East-West confrontations. Second, the greatly increasing number of new UN members, mostly ex-colonies, made for new divisions in the General Assembly that pitted rich versus poor, developed against developing, North versus South, and Israel against the Arab states. This, quite incidentally, diminished the weight of the coterie of US client states and of the modicum of US control over the UN. The net effect was that American interest in the UN waned, as also did American media interest, and the UN began to be either ignored and ridiculed—or demonized as a conspiracy to take over the US with the help of “the black helicopters.” It was no longer looked upon as a quasi-fraternal forum among formally equal “sovereign nations,” but strictly from the point of view of how it might be “useful” or “useless” for short-range American purposes, as indeed George W.Bush and his neoconservative advisers seem to see it. This is of course far from the point of view of President Bush the Elder who not only served as the US ambassador to the UN, but also enrolled the unanimous support of the Security Council and America’s allies in his 1990/1991 Gulf War and the UN sanctions and inspections policies to follow.

The George W.Bush approach In 2003 some American journalists actually raised the question of just what difference there was between the international consensus of 1991 on Iraq and that of 2003. Back in 1991, the consensus was to block Saddam Hussein’s reach for Kuwaiti and Saudi oil and get him out of Kuwait, but no one cited the brutal nature of his dictatorship as a cause for making war, even though he had used chemical weapons against his own Kurdish population and against Iranian soldiers in the Iran-Iraq war, rewarded the families of suicide bombers in Israel, and used the same “disappearances” and tortures against dissidents that were made a post facto reason for war in 2003—after the American occupation proved unable to find WMD in Iraq. The horrors perpetrated between 1991 and 2003, in particular the massacre of Shiites and further persecution of Kurds after the war, had not yet occurred in 1991. By 2003, on the other hand, the defeat, the northern and southern no-fly zones, and the UN sanctions and inspections regime had greatly weakened the capacity of the dictator to be a menace to his neighbors. Nevertheless, after expelling the inspectors in 1998, he might have started up development of WMD again. Hence, Security Council Resolution 1441 with unanimous consent was designed to compel him to readmit the UN inspectors and reveal his illicit armaments so they could be destroyed. The resolution, backed also by France, Germany, Russia, and China—who in the end refused to support the American invasion—threatened “serious consequences” if he did not cooperate. International legitimacy was lost only when the impatient Bush administration and its neo-conservative advisers sidelined the UN inspectors and brushed aside the Wilsonian objections of some of the members of his father’s administration, its old European allies, and three of the five permanent members of the Security Council. The loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the world, of course, did not stop the well-prepared

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military campaign but cost the Anglo-American coalition much international good will and vital postwar assistance in the midst of a hostile Middle East. More on this below. Where did all this unilateral ambition come from? At the beginning of his presidential election campaign, George W.Bush appeared completely overwhelmed by the requirements of foreign policy leadership. He seemed unable to name and recognize some foreign countries or their current heads of government, for example Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, with whom he was to have extensive dealings later on. In media interviews, at times, journalists would take advantage of his apparent ignorance and show him up as a most improbable choice of world leader. At this point, his managers sent in a team of experts to teach him, most of all the formidable Condoleeza (Condi) Rice, a University of Denver PhD in Soviet Studies and a very capable addition to the impressive foreign policy team that once advised Bush Sr throughout the critical years of transition of collapsing communism and the disintegrating Soviet Union.12 Candidate Bush Jr, who seemed to have lived through his father’s years as CIA chief, US Ambassador to the UN, and US president without picking up much international seasoning, proved a quick study and soon arrived at a state where he would no longer embarrass himself or the Republican team. It remains open to question, though, whether he ever completely overcame his initial sense of insecurity, for which he compensated with brash language,13 or whether it made him more gullible for the siren song of the neoconservatives.

From humility to bellicosity When the presidential election campaign began, George W.Bush gave his only major campaign speech on foreign policy at the Reagan Presidential Library (November 19, 1999) where he spoke of a policy that would reflect the American character with “the humility of real greatness.” His emphasis on humility was very well received even though there seemed to be a critical edge in his speech directed at his predecessor, President Clinton—at the same time that Bush spokespersons tried to project an image of manliness vis-à-vis the allegedly feminine character of Clinton’s “fuzzy internationalism.” Humility could also be taken as a charming reflection of Bush’s inexperience and uncertainty in his foreign role which was not unusual among newly elected presidents such as Carter and Reagan. The word humility cropped up again repeatedly in his speeches and in his debut at the State Department within a month of his inauguration when he told the diplomats of his hopes of turning American preeminence into “generations of democratic peace” and of projecting American strength in the world “with purpose and humility.” What a surprise to the foreign policy community in Washington and abroad when this humble approach suddenly turned into what Foreign Affairs editor James Hoge called “schoolyard bellicosity.”14 Suddenly, the new president had nothing but harsh words for Russia and especially for China—demoting it from “strategic partner” to “competitor”— and refusing to resume diplomatic initiatives with North Korea despite the intercession of prominent East Asian experts of both parties to the contrary. He also rejected out of hand the negotiations over global climate control (the Kyoto Protocols) and brushed aside any doubts regarding the future of antiballistic missile defense (NMD). Presidential speeches, of course, are written by advisors and speech writers. Was this the voice of the neo-

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conservative group or of the eminence grise, Dick Cheney, who seemed to steady the new president’s hand in everything? It was hardly the voice of humility and it spoke with such undiplomatic edge, for example telling Russia that “it was not so important anymore” and that its views might not be taken seriously.15 European leaders were particularly shocked at the brusque treatment of South Korean President Kim Dae Jung—the initiator of the “sunshine policy” of rapprochement between the two Koreas—during his March, 2001 visit to Washington. They hastened to mediate, so Jung’s overtures to Kim Jong II would not collapse. There had been little indication of substantive foreign policy commitments during the campaign. Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, of course, kept hinting that Bush lacked the experience to be a leader of the free world but this message was lost among their contest over domestic issues.16 Gore called for “a new security agenda” that would anticipate international problems before they turned into crises, probably to counter Republican criticisms of Clinton’s ad hoc crisis politics in foreign affairs. He suggested that Bush was “stuck in a Cold War mind set” and unaware of the new global realities beyond a classic security agenda of “war and peace among sovereign states.” The Bush campaign responded that their candidate had made clear he would pursue a “distinctly American internationalism,” whatever that meant. Criticized regarding China and Russia, Bush campaign spokespersons merely repeated that Bush had said he did not view Russia as an enemy and that China was, indeed, a competitor. They preferred to ignore Gore’s emphasis on bolstering transatlantic ties and American relations with the EU. When Gore attacked Bush for endorsing the Senate’s rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1999, the architect of that rejection and embodiment of extreme rightwing policies in the Republican party, Senator Jesse Helms (N.C.), himself responded that he would block any new arms control agreements Clinton might still produce during the remainder of his term. Bush, in his Reagan Library speech, had called that treaty not verifiable and unenforceable, and said that it would not stop nuclear proliferation.17 Even if Bush himself did not respond to the issue, Condi Rice, at a lunch with reporters in Washington, was all the more emphatic about overcoming global and especially European resistance to National Missile Defense (NMD—Star Wars): “It’s a new world,” she was quoted as saying. The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty is an artifact of 1972. It’s getting time to think differently about this.” She brushed aside the scientific controversy—most scientists believe anti-ballistic missile defense has as yet to prove that it “works”—and the European resistance to the whole idea: European leaders such as former NATO chief Xavier Solana fear that NMD would be the first step in the decoupling of the transatlantic alliance and a major block to cooperation with Russia and China in future arms control.18 Even President Clinton seemed to give NMD a qualified endorsement, but in actual fact had put it off until his term ended. There were also glimpses of a new China policy that featured India, which had just become another nation of one billion, as a counterweight to China, a country of human rights violations and “sponsor of forced abortions” in Asia. Bush’s speech called India a potential force for “stability and security in Asia” and other members of his foreign policy staff appeared to agree. The campaign also brought in Latin America, in particular Mexico, where Bush had more background. He went to meet the new president, Vicente Fox, and promised to establish a special relationship with Mexico. This was one area of strength and he developed several specifics he promised to pursue if elected: drug

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interdiction, debt relief, and a Free Trade Area of the Americas. Condi Rice seconded with a message that Latin America “is of central interest to the US.” There were reminders that, even while he was governor of Texas, the trade relations with Mexico were very active—41 billion dollars in US exports in 1999. Governor Bush also cultivated good relations with Latinos in the US, at least until Mexico and other Latin American nations annoyed him in 2003 by not supporting his second UN Security Council Resolution for invading Iraq. Finally, candidate Bush forcefully made a case for improving the morale and readiness of the armed forces which, he said, had been “overdeployed [abroad], underpaid, and undertrained” under the Clinton-Gore administration. It was a good pitch to make in Southern and Western states and the bottom line aimed at substantial increases in the defense budget.19 Election campaigns between two contenders naturally tend to emphasize points that divide the two and avoid giving offense or unnecessary alarm with premature war cries. Robin Wright, writing for the Los Angeles Times, repeated approvingly a juxtaposition between the two candidates made by the otherwise more judicious Fareed Zakaria of Foreign Affairs. Zakaria credited Bush with a “pragmatic, problem-solving perspective” and Gore with “a messianic approach” to foreign policy. Neither one, Wright opined, wanted the US to serve as the world’s policeman or favored isolationism or protectionism. Without tipping our hand to Gore, it is easy now to ascribe to Bush the [Christian] messianic style, the globocop role, and at least the protectionist inclination— for example with steel tariffs, agricultural and tax subsidies—that Wright exculpated him from or ascribed to his opponent. But after these miscues, she also pinned down what turned out to be significant once Bush got into office: Unlike Gore who wanted to cooperate with the UN and pay America’s overdue financial support of it, Bush took a Helmsian stance: He demanded further UN reforms and a lower level of dues for the US. He would rely on the UN only to “stop genocide” (while threatening to pull out of Kosovo) and never put American troops under UN command. Most important, Wright said, “Bush emphasizes unilaterally asserting American interests”.20 Of course, Bush would not be the first president who after inauguration turns out to be far more aggressive than his campaign rhetoric would have allowed anyone to predict. Still, we may ask what happened in the first 100 days of George W.Bush, during the proverbial “honeymoon period” granted to most new presidents.21 As The Economist later wrote, “George Bush came to the White House as the ‘accidental president,’ the victor by the narrowest of margins in a disputed election. But in his first hundred days he proceeded to govern as a radical conservative, pushing through an enormous tax cut and education reform at home, and dispensing with the Kyoto Protocols, the anti-ballistic missile treaty and much else.”22 The Economist was not alone in this observation. No less a person than Bush’s predecessor Clinton pointed out quite drily that the close election of 2000, if it gave Bush a mandate to govern at all, should really be interpreted as one close to the center of the political spectrum. Instead, Bill Clinton said, his successor’s policies from the first day—when Bush delighted in counter-manding many Clinton policies, for example American financial support for family planning agencies abroad and many environmental initiatives—had gone in a radically conservative direction the electorate had not meant to legitimize. Another glimpse of early Bush cabinet meetings came from the reminiscences of the dismissed Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill.23 The former secretary, long known for his integrity and candor, gave a devastating picture of how

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policy decisions were usually arrived at in the new administration: He described a strangely ideological atmosphere without real debate of policy options. Cabinet members either did not need to exchange a word about preconceived choices or simply gave brief ideological justifications only, like Cheney in defense of the second giant tax cut: “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter,” a statement that must have made Adam Smith jump in his grave. The president is described as strangely silent and detached as if afraid to ask or engage obvious questions. O’Neill also surprised his readers with the observation that the cabinet discussions seemed to anticipate an American war in Iraq, half a year before 9/11 and two years before the world was actually faced with the choice between UN inspections for WMD in Saddam Hussein’s hands and such a military option.24 Because of his stature and reputation, O’Neill’s disclosures made quite a splash with his book, although critics naturally pointed out that he might be a bit biased for having been unceremoniously fired after losing what must have been a real policy debate, over the second tax cut. The American media made little of the issue which, in view of their dependence on a handful of giant corporate conglomerates, is perhaps not surprising. The more thoughtful parts of the public began to take a closer look at the group of unelected neo-conservative advisers who had moved into important positions in this administration, in particular on the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board. Key persons among them had held important jobs in previous Republican administrations going back to Presidents Nixon and Ford, but particularly Reagan and Bush Sr, although they were not making American foreign policy then. Under Nixon and Ford, America’s policies abroad were tightly controlled first by the president himself and, second, by the redoubtable Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Neither of them had any need for neo-conservative advisers to instruct them in Realpolitik. The Reagan administration was a different story in that “the 9–5 president”—as some of his detractors called him—had little in the way of foreign experience or a foreign policy agenda besides a few glittering ultra-conservative generalities of little concrete bearing, such as calling the Soviet Union the “evil empire.” There seemed to be no grand Reaganite vision of America’s role in the world. His anti-communism led him into a secret diplomacy of sponsoring rightwing dictators and murderous guerrilla movements in Central America and finally culminated in the strange Iran-Contra conspiracy investigated and exposed in the Walsh Report. There were predictable accusations of human rights violations against the Soviet Union while American-financed rogue generals were engaged in massacres of thousands of Indian villagers in Central America, including women and children. When finally the president staged his famous photo opportunity before the Berlin Wall, calling for Mikhail Gorbachev to tear it down—a scene greatly beloved by Republican campaigners and pundits—neither the Soviets nor the European allies of the US ever thought seriously that this alone could have brought down the totalitarian Soviet dictatorship, or even just the Wall.25 Reagan’s subsequent encounter with Gorbachev at Reykjavik and their surprising agreement on global disarmament, however, was truly a major landmark in the winding down of the Cold War: The two sides convinced each other of their peaceful intentions and, in the end, the Wall really came down, though not exactly because Gorbachev, “the great undertaker of the Soviet Union,” as some Russians dubbed him, tore it down. Still, the Reagan presidency, as a genial façade for powerful interests, an age of greed and unrestrained

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business deregulation behind the revered Great Communicator may well have supplied a template for the presidency of Bush Jr.

The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) Right after New Year’s Day, 2004, the brilliant David Brooks had an op-ed piece in the New York Times in which he labored mightily to dispel what he claimed were paranoid, perhaps even anti-Semitic allegations that “a sort of Yiddish Trilateral Commission” of neo-conservatives had taken over US foreign policy. He named “Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and William Kristol and a bunch of neo-conservatives” at the Weekly Standard (his former journal), being understandably careful to leave off Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Josh Bolton, and others from this conspiratorial “neocon” list which, according to him, was a recurrent target of the Asian and European press: “Every day, it seemed, Le Monde or some deep-thinking German paper would have an expose on the neocon cabal, complete with charts connecting all the conspirators.”26 Brooks also omitted the fact that at this point—when President Bush had to face reelection and had backed away from the tatters of neo-conservative foreign policy in Iraq and the disasters of associated economic policies—he was but one of a number of neo-conservatives scattering to the winds and insisting that there never was or is such a thing as neoconservatism. Michael Lind, of the New America Foundation, a former Weekly Standard staffer and a reviewer of Richard Perle’s latest book, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terrorism, has drawn up more than enough of a genealogy of the neo-conservative family, including its links to the Rupert Murdoch-owned media and conservative thinktanks and foundations.27 But, contrary to Brooks and other refugees from neoconservatism, the point is not whether the neocons formed a “conspiracy” or whether this conspiracy has been very cohesive. Instead, we want to trace the ideas behind President Bush’s imperialist and unilateralist foreign policy—it is improbable that, as Brooks insists, “Bush formed his conclusions independently”—though not all the way back to the tough-minded anti-Soviet liberals of the 1970s such as Senators Hubert Humphrey and Henry (Scoop) Jackson.28 President Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, tellingly placed the “denigration of the Atlantic Alliance in favor of a new coalition of the willing” at the door of the neo-conservative launching of “a strategic coup de main to alter America’s fundamental geopolitical priorities.” We shall be content to start with the confused post-Cold War attitudes and some politically engaged Americans’ perfectly legal and understandable search for a new compass to action in the world. As Condoleeza Rice put it in the opening sentence of her Foreign Affairs article during the campaign of 2000: “The US has found it exceedingly difficult to define its national interest in the absence of Soviet power,” the familiar lodestar of the enemy of the last 40some years.29 The emergence of an alternative foreign policy and foreign policy elite appears to have started under the elder President Bush at the time when the Soviet empire began to disintegrate, leaving the US the only superpower standing. Bush Sr delivered his major foreign policy address in this direction the same day that Iraq invaded Kuwait, August 2, 1990. His Defense Secretary, Dick Cheney, then assembled a group to discuss post-Cold War perspectives; his current successor Rumsfeld, and Rumsfeld’s aides Wolfowitz and

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Lewis Libby were part of that group, as was Zalmay Khalilzad, the author of a book about it, From Containment to Global Leadership (1994). Khalilzad’s book was very forthright about what Bush Sr spokes-persons wanted to keep behind a polite veil, the unilateral pursuit of American primacy without deference to any other power. A version of the resulting plan was leaked to Time magazine towards the end of the election contest between Bush Sr and Clinton. The plan looked forward to a period of American hegemony in which the US would prevent any other power from challenging its preeminence. The final defeat of Bush Sr, in 1992, at first seemed to scatter the Cheney group, but then it reassembled during the crisis years of Bill Clinton with a manifesto, the 1997 Project for a New American Century (PNAC). In addition to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Libby, its Statement of Principles was signed by such past and future Republican notables as Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Vice President Dan Quayle, and Congressional star Vin Weber. The Statement proposed: (1) increased defense spending and modernization of the American military to carry out the global American responsibilities of promoting the Pax Americana; (2) strengthening ties to democratic allies and the promotion of political and economic freedom abroad; and (3) the assertive preservation and extension of an international order that would support American security, prosperity, and principles. The statement called this “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.”30 In 1998, PNAC was the driving force behind the drafting and passage of the Iraq Liberation Act which Congress passed at the height of the efforts to impeach and remove President Clinton on constitutionally dubious grounds—the infamous “coup attempt.” When Saddam Hussein took advantage of the internecine conflict in Washington and ousted the UN weapons inspectors, Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act and also unleashed bombing attacks on Iraq. Clinton’s endorsement of the Iraq Liberation Act has repeatedly served the Republican hawks in Congress and the administration as an alibi, enabling them to claim that “regime change” in Iraq was really Clinton’s idea and his successor Bush was merely following up. In 1998 PNAC even sent the president a letter urging him to send troops to Iraq and overthrow Saddam. The PNAC also directed millions in public funds to an anti-Saddam group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), headed by Ahmed Chalabi, a banker and fugitive from Jordanian justice,31 but also the Pentagon’s choice to head up a postwar Iraqi government, before he fell out of favor and was accused of collaboration with the government of Iran. Then came 9/11, and the first public reaction of President Bush, in his September 20 speech to Congress, emphasized only the war on terrorism, even though Wolfowitz had reportedly proposed that the US immediately move against Saddam Hussein. But this was hardly Bush’s last word, not to mention the plotting of neo-conservatives, and in his State-of-the-Union address he listed Iraq first in the “axis of evil.” Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute, in an article in the Weekly Standard, soon talked about the need for regime change in Iran and Syria as well, although he thought that, presumably after US troops had been massed in the Middle East, or after they had conquered Iraq, the two neighboring regimes might fall without the use of force. Other neighbors, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and even Egypt, would also feel the weight of the American presence.

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In his West Point speech, the president made clear his new approach to “preemptive action”—not to be confused with preventive (long-term) action—against any “enemy” who seemed to have the “intent” and the capacity to produce WMD: As Noam Chomsky and other critics have pointed out, this formulation is highly subjective and could apply to half the states on the globe. Designating an enemy, more ominously, involves a sudden shift to demonizing propaganda, whether it is aimed at Iraq or Nicaragua. Writing in the New Yorker in April, 2002, Nicholas Lemann had also discovered an uncommitted defense budget item of $10 billion in “contingency funds for further operations in the war on terrorism,” which was probably reserved for Iraq. From what he learned, Lemann expected the enormous troop buildup to begin in the late summer or fall of 2002 while Bush would jawbone Congress and the allies about the intolerable threat of WMD in Saddam’s hands. The resistance, for example, coming from Arab governments and the media in the Middle East, experts told the administration, would probably melt away once they saw the American determination to get rid of the Iraqi dictator. If we think back on the early German and French reactions, we can readily see how these two countries must have felt intimidated by the American steamroller. The brief detour to the UN Security Council for Resolution 1441 thus gave little relief to those who by the end of the year 2002 thought they were on an Anglo-American run-away train.32 If Dominique de Villepin in January, 2003, thought that Washington’s decision to go to war had long been made, he was exactly right or, if anything, slow to catch on. The rest was simply a deceptive American campaign of hatred against France, pretending that the decision to go to war had not been made long ago and that the mission of the UN inspectors under Resolution 1441 was for real. In the months before the war, PNAC also created the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), a propaganda group to enlighten Americans via cable news on the need to invade Iraq. CLI consisted of PNAC members who had since become prominent figures of the new administration, including Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security, John Bolton, about whom Clyde Prestowitz relates the story of his solemnly informing a UN conference on banning the trade in small arms—which fuels revolutions in many less developed countries and kills or maims millions of civilians—that the US was barred by its own constitution from supporting a treaty curtailing such trade. Bolton evidently argued that the obstacle was the Second Amendment which protects “the right of the people to keep or bear arms” for state militias, eighteenth-century-style. It is an old if widely believed piece of constitutional fiction of the NRA that this part of the Constitution is a protection of an individual right to own arms.33 Another was Bruce Jackson, the chair of PNAC, former Lockheed-Martin vice president and head of the 2000 Republican platform subcommittee for National Security and Foreign Policy whose section of the party platform specifically called for the removal of Saddam Hussein.34 The reader may also recall his name from the 2003 efforts to sign up East European recruits to the “coalition of the willing.”

Rebuilding America’s defenses It is the goal of PNAC to transform America, the sole surviving superpower, by increasing its military strength, into a global empire. In September of 2000, PNAC

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released an elaborate report entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, which demanded an increase in the already bloated defense budget of about one fourth— exactly the figure that Bush’s first post-9/11 budget allocated to defense—and spelled out four core missions for the American military. The report declared that this was “an unprecedented opportunity” for global American leadership based on military preeminence: There was “no immediate greatpower challenge,” the country was blessed with “wealthy, powerful and democratic allies” and “in the midst of the longest economic expansion in its history,” and “its political and economic principles” were universally embraced. One of the core missions was for the forces to fight and “win multiple simultaneous large-scale wars” while still able to respond to contingencies in regions where the US has no bases. The point was not just to be prepared for two major wars as the US was during the 1990s, but actually to fight wars in such a strong manner (with “shock and awe”) as to convince the world of American invincibility. There were shades of the Reagan-era Committee for the Present Danger (recently revived) which, among other things, had shocked Europeans with its insistence that a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union—presumably on European soil—was “winnable.” A second essential mission was to perform “constabulary duties,” playing globocop in critical regions for which purpose the permanent bases had better be moved to Southern Europe, South-East Asia, and the Middle East, a shift which readers may associate with Secretary Rumsfeld’s 2003 perceived “threat” made against Old Europe to move American bases from West Germany to Eastern Europe. Furthermore, the report called for bringing “the international commons” of cyberspace under American control.35 Written in September, 2000, just before the controversial election and Supreme Court fiat (see Chapter 5, below) carried George W.Bush into the White House, the report was of course very critical of how, in the opinion of the authors, President Clinton had failed to update and fund expansion of the American military to their satisfaction. The reader may be reminded of how European governments, under the gun of EU budget caps but to the dismay of people like Cheney and Rumsfeld, had stinted their military upkeep. The report’s list of authors includes Wolfowitz, Libby, and William Kristol, along with representatives of military schools, strategic research institutes, and the defense industry. The report also describes CIA information to the effect that “a number of regimes deeply hostile to America—North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria—already have or are developing ballistic missiles” threatening the US or their neighbors. Clinton’s reliance on traditional diplomacy and arms control treaties (rather than the development of an American anti-ballistic missile system, NMD), it argues, did not obtain international security against these rogue states, three of which President Bush 15 months later called the “axis of evil”. Actually, President Clinton had considered an anti-ballistic missile defense system against possible ICBMs from North Korea which, by 2005, might be capable of such a threat. Rebuilding America’s Defenses called for a “revolution in military affairs,” a transformation building on the “capabilities acquired during the American defense buildup of the 1980s,” that is with the enormous increases in defense spending—by a factor of two-and-a-fourth in eight years—and defense research of the Reagan presidency. It would probably emphasize precision weapons, increased fire power, and logistics, particularly the capacity to airlift large equipment anywhere on the globe. To calm European fears, this military revolution should not “decouple American and allied

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interests” by solely pursuing “capabilities for projecting force from the US…[without] forward basing and presence,” since that might “trouble American allies.” The authors warned that this military transformation “is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.”36 A short time after Bush’s axis-of-evil speech, in March, 2002, a secret US Nuclear Posture Review report was leaked to the press. It rearranged American strategic thinking with regard to the use of nuclear weapons. In essence it revived the role of nuclear weapons, including for offensive purposes for all kinds of targets, land armies, especially bomb-proof bunkers, and named target countries, adding Russia, China, Syria, and Libya to those of the axis. It rejected the agreements made in 2000 between Clinton and Putin regarding a rollback of nuclear force levels as “irrelevant”—like other disarmament agreements, for example the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty that stood in the way of NMD— and indicated its readiness to resume underground testing, for example of new small nuclear arms. The alarmed Chinese government indicated that now it too would have to raise its strategic nuclear arsenal, especially missiles capable of hitting the US mainland. Russia, for its part, came to a new agreement with Washington, the Strategic-Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT), as a result of which the US promised not to destroy its warheads to be eliminated, but only to put them in storage—in case they might be needed. Instead of the years of American-led international efforts to assist Russia financially and otherwise with destroying its vast number of excess nuclear missiles, Washington now encouraged the Russians to store them. This of course left them vulnerable to theft, secret sale—in short, to the uses of terrorists. Bush also halved the amount previously committed to the destruction of Russian warheads. It was a long way from the 2000 commitment of Russia and the US to move towards the “total elimination” of nuclear arsenals by means of “13 practical steps.” The impact of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon further reduced American desire to scale down nuclear levels, or so it seemed, even though those attacks neither involved nuclear weapons nor could they have been stopped by the use of such weapons. The great shock of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, in a manner of speaking, was that new Pearl Harbor, especially since the terrorists succeeded precisely because the US was not the kind of compact, well-defended system that would have made it difficult for enemies to come close enough to deliver a devastating blow. Among the defensive mechanisms of American democracy against a takeover by an imperialistic power elite or the military is also its extraordinary fragmentation, its checks and balances not only in government but throughout society, its quasi-anarchic resistance to organization and control by anyone. But now, after experiencing another Pearl Harbor, most Americans seemed ready to discipline their sprawling lives and activities and to rally against a hidden foe who might strike again soon. The coming of Bush to the White House and, soon, the consolidation of Republican power over the judiciary, both houses of Congress, and the whole military-industrial complex, highlighted an awesome accumulation of power even before it was projected into the world. Some conservatives might think the United States was beginning to look more like the Soviet Union in the days when the Communist Party and KGB had complete control of everything, and terrorism against the system was impossible. The comparison of the totalitarian concentration of power under US Attorney General John Ashcroft’s direction (see below)

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with the Soviet dictatorship of another day is not far-fetched, even though its fearsome power has so far fallen mostly on Arab-Americans and Muslims visiting the US. Unfortunately, from several official investigations it is also clear that the Bush administration could have been forewarned about 9/11 and, possibly, have avoided the horrible slaughter of the innocents. The failure to ward off the blows seems to have been, first of all, based on the egregious failures of the major US intelligence organizations to communicate with each other and even within themselves. The fabled national FBI headquarters bungled well-conceived warnings by its agents about suspicious flight training plans of some of those who became the hi-jackers of 9/11. The CIA, too—that great menace of popular movements and democratic leftwing regimes abroad for half a century—apparently managed, for example, to lose track of what turned out to be the pilot Al-Shehhi, of United Airlines flight 175 headed for the South Tower of the World Trade Center. He was a close associate of presumable ring leader Mohammed Atta and other AlQaeda terrorists in Hamburg. German intelligence had passed relevant information on Al-Shehhi to the CIA more than two years before 9/11, but the intelligence organization lost the track. Worst of all, the CIA and FBI were in a state of war with each other—like the Pentagon and the State Department—which kept them not only from cooperating but even from communicating on the subject of international terrorism. This picture of bureaucratic disorganization and non-communication continued throughout federal agencies from the other intelligence organizations, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the Transportation Safety Administration, the Commerce Department, the control of shipping and harbors, and, of course, to the sprawling military itself. It would not be reasonable to blame the new president for these weaknesses and gaps in the structure which made it so easy for the terrorists to perpetrate their plans for 9/11. But President Bush later made things worse by withholding information and cooperation from investigating agencies, and frustrating their legitimate desire to get to the bottom of the failures leading to 9/11.37 Evidently tormented by what critical observers might say, he first interfered with a Congressional investigation of the 9/11 attack and its report and then unsuccessfully opposed the creation of an independent commission which, with support from the survivors and families of 9/11 victims, proved unstoppable. Worse yet, the penchant for secrecy in his administration, however pointless and exaggerated, seemed to combine with a pervasive fear of disclosing activities or connections—for example the close ties of the Bush family with Saudi Arabian elites and even with the extensive Bin Laden family. He seemed in mortal fear of his life when he was flying around the country from Florida at the time of the 9/11 attacks, instead of straight back to Washington D.C. He appeared furtive when he had little to fear and unnecessarily secretive when he probably had little to hide.38 From a very different vantage point, that of a perennial Cassandra of American predicaments, John W.Dean, a voice familiar from Watergate days, weighed in to show the direction of the imperial posture underlying these developments. To Dean, the 9/11 attacks were “not a transforming event” for Dick Cheney, but they confirmed his view of the world straining towards perpetual, Hobbesian war and how the US would have to meet this struggle. Long the solid rock behind the weak façade of President Bush, he now assumed de facto command, making the president appear strong and decisive and taking control of national security policy in his own hands. He and his past Undersecretary of

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Defense for Policy, Paul Wolfowitz, had plans dating from the Defense Policy Guidance report of 1992—right after the first Gulf War wound down without an invasion of Baghdad—for American hegemony in the world which could now be revived. One recurrent theme was the further strengthening of the military, another regime change in Iraq, and perhaps in Iran and Syria as well.39 Through an elaborate structure of “secret government” (Dean), Cheney and his neo-conservative team in government and media steered the US towards his goals and, in effect, away from an effective war on terrorism in spite of all the warnings about the threat of terror attacks—a number of them, of course, had already assaulted American assets: the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, the American embassies in East Africa; and Bush had been warned again and again about Osama Bin Laden and given concrete advice, for example, by the Rudman-Hart Commission,40 which he ignored along with all advice from the outgoing Clinton administration.

Post-9/11 imperialism While many media pundits asserted that, after 9/11, the world would never be the same again, and American foreign policy would now be shaped by the war on international terrorism, the actual response of the Bush administration was rather more ambiguous, at least as seen with the benefit of hindsight: It is true that President Bush, ever since 9/11, frequently referred to it and swore to bring “the evil-doers” to justice. But there was also a different strand to his new image as “the war president.” His new National Security Strategy of the US, released September 20, 2001, closely followed the Rebuilding report of 2000, frequently describing America’s new role in the world in the same phrases. Bush at first resisted the ubiquitous calls for closer examination of exactly what had transpired before and after the attacks of 9/11, as if afraid of what such an investigation might reveal, such as his notable inattention to all the pre-9/11 warnings, as his counterterrorism adviser Richard A.Clarke has testified.41 When Congressional committees carried out investigations anyway—in part driven by groups of angry survivors of the disaster at the World Trade Center—he insisted that parts of the committee reports be kept from the public, probably those dealing with the close personal and business relationship between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family, Saudi Arabia being the country of origin of 15 of the 19 hi-j ackers of 9/11. Bush was unable to do the same with the independent, bipartisan commission of Thomas H.Kean and Lee Hamilton, whose report became public in July of 2004 and became an instant bestseller, outselling all the potboilers of current fiction and non-fiction. The Senate investigating committee had already poured scorn on the claims of a link between Saddam Hussein and the hi-jackers of 9/11—claims repeated again and again before the “political base” of President Bush as recently as the 2004 Republican election campaign—and demanded unsuccessfully to see the CIA documents on the WMD that the latter had shown the president.42 The release of the final report of the 9/11 (Kean-Hamilton) commission was so carefully timed, just between the two presidential conventions, and calibrated with partial news releases at intervals, that it could not be ignored by those in charge. One preliminary leak of a major proposal of the commission, the creation of an anti-terrorism Czar, or Director of National Intelligence over all the 15 intelligence operations, for example, was sure to

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draw the ire of the CIA and the Pentagon—which until then controlled the National Security Agency (NSA), the Defense Intelligence Authority (DIA), and the National Reconnaissance Office (spy satellites)—which feared the loss of their crucial budget control over these activities. Opposition candidate Senator Kerry promptly adopted the whole list of the commission’s proposals and even the president signaled his approval without specifying any details such as who would hold the purse strings. Next to the obvious target of Afghanistan, however, broader strategic objectives were soon under discussion, aside from the fact that both Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld reportedly called for invading Iraq right after 9/11, and, in fact, a large part of the funds approved for invading and conquering Afghanistan43 was actually transferred to the project of invading Iraq instead. In the larger strategy Iraq was not targeted as an alleged accomplice of Osama Bin Laden or as the first of the axis of evil countries and an easy mark because of Saddam Hussein’s terrible reputation even among Arab nations. Its new role was as a “tactical pivot” of a permanent American presence in the oil-rich Middle East. Conquered in a “spectacular war” and stripped of its WMD, if necessary, it might even become a colony or client state full of American bases that would dominate the entire region.44 The plans for the Green Zone in Baghdad, that so far housed mostly the American military headquarters and is expected to become the biggest American embassy in the Middle East, with 1,700 employees, not including the spies, tell the story beyond the Iraqi civil wars. Mars, the Greek god of war, controls the future and its two moons, Phobos (fear, shock) and Daimos (awe), may continue to cast their spell from Egypt to Afghanistan, perhaps even as far as North Korea where Kim Jong II was indeed watching the invasion of Iraq with trepidation. Mars also promises lucre or, in contemporary terms, oil profits for old friends (like Cheney’s Halliburton or Schultz’s Bechtel), and of course for the entire defense industry and, from there, plenty of campaign funds for Congress and the president. Empire is supposed to pay and imperial governments rarely have to worry about debt, inflation, or budget deficits, at least not in the short run.45

Ethical nuances of the decision to go to war Most commentators on the Anglo-American pursuit of war in Iraq make ethical judgments, and we should also address the nuances of the policy options involved. While many people, especially in journalistic shorthand, have simply spoken of being “for the war” or “against the war,” such a pacifist/bellicist dichotomy obviously fits only one section of the public, here and abroad. In Europe it was especially among the Germans— who remembered the killing fields of World War Two—that the pacifist element was strong, much less among the French and other publics that in public opinion polls and in local government resolutions were speaking “against this war.” It is remarkable that the churches in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, the guardians of morality, were emphatically against it. Even in the US, nearly every church and religious body, save the Southern Baptists—and a curious collection of so-called “Christian Zionists” such as Pat Robertson and his followers, also orthodox sympathizers of the Israeli Likud party—were flatly opposed to the war. The Pope in Rome, moral shepherd of hundreds of millions of Catholics around the world, including those in the US, left no doubt about his opposition

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to the American drive to war. Catholic doctrine also knows the carefully circumscribed theory of the “just war”:46 Bush’s crusade against Saddam Hussein clearly did not qualify as a just war. But the reborn Christian President Bush, who otherwise claims to be motivated by religious ethics and concerns, paid no heed to the clear voices from the pulpit and the altar. It is clear that, had this been a clear case of self-defense against an imminent danger, secular governments would have had no right to refuse to protect and defend the lives and property of the people they were instituted or elected to govern. Only ministers and priests, who have little power to protect lives and property anyway, can concentrate on saving souls. But it is also quite likely that it was the sudden rush to war or the exaggerated “spin” of the intelligence on which it seemed to be based by Bush, Blair, and others that seemed to provoke many into supporting the pacifist resolutions. Many people, here and abroad, came to be suspicious of the reasons given for the sudden rush to war, such as the imminent nature of the threat “in the form of a mushroom cloud” (Bush), “triggered within 45 minutes” (Blair)—whose intelligence reportedly came from a decade-old master’s thesis of the Monterey Institute of Foreign Affairs in California— or the president’s claim that Iraq had sought to buy radioactive yellow cake from Niger, not to mention the alleged “linkage” between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. At the other end of the spectrum of motives lies the militarism and ruthless pursuit of empire as we have sketched it above. Covering it up with hypocrisy, deliberate lies, or evasive formulas such as that the WMD stock-piles of Saddam were merely “a bureaucratic convenience” (Wolfowitz), can make the excuse morally even more outrageous. For President Bush and his team to put a label of “moral leadership,” or a Christian crusade, upon his pursuit of war in Iraq rather surpasses all ethical understanding. It is useful, however, to draw distinctions between different kinds of WMD to get a balanced view of this particular argument, the need to disarm Saddam Hussein of nuclear, chemical, and biological mass weapons. Fifty years of Cold War have left the planet and, in particular, the US and the former Soviet Union, littered with some of the ghastliest arms ever designed by man to unleash upon his enemy. There was a consensus among world leaders and intelligence organizations, at least back in December of 2002, that Iraq probably had such weapons and that the dictator had to be disarmed because he was capable of using them. That Saddam had nuclear weapons in any state of completion and readiness was taken off the list by Mohamed ElBaradei of IAEA at an early point after Dr ElBaradei had convinced himself that they had all been destroyed. None of the facilities that had been pinpointed on pre-1998 visits had been rebuilt or refurbished, even though postwar American military bumbling had disclosed (and not secured) piles of radioactive materials in metal cans that were pilfered by villagers and their children who only wanted the metal cans to store water. This horrendous carelessness conjures up the depressing scenes of Russian and American victims of nuclear tests and accidents, children deformed or retarded and adults dying slow deaths from exposure to radiation.47 Chemical weapons such as Saddam Hussein had used on Kurds and Iranian soldiers— “yellow rain”, mustard or sarin gas, or other gassing that had already been outlawed by the Geneva Convention after World War One—seemed the most plausible to be unleashed on the invading armies which desperately girded themselves in protective suits in spite of the desert heat—or used on civilians or neighbors like Israel or Kuwait. It was

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probably naïve of Bush and Blair to nurture the image of large stock-piles lying about when in fact rather small and easily concealable amounts and dual-use chemicals such as fertilizers might be enough of a lethal menace. The attitude of the Bush administration towards the Chemical Weapons Treaty which seeks to outlaw trading in such deadly materials—regardless of whether this would also restrict the American chemical industry—was no help, even though none were found in Iraq. Biological weapons, like anthrax or bubonic plague, again are a very different category which may take some time to be effective. A 2001 scientific simulation of a smallpox attack on the US, “Dark Winter,” chaired by ex-Senator Sam Nunn, showed that the US is critically short of vaccine, trained personnel, adequate public health infrastructure, and public enlightenment to deal with such a threat.48 The possible revival of epidemic diseases long believed under control is a particular menace because vaccines and other measures of control have long been mothballed, lost, or forgotten. Obviously, the whole lot of these WMD is a tremendous threat to the well-being of humanity. To use it in such blatant fashion for scare propaganda, however, and to dismiss the experienced UN inspectors in such a high-handed fashion was unlikely to convince a skeptical public. The vast majority of sentiment regarding participation in the Anglo-American invasion could be found, by degrees and stations, somewhere between these extremes of pacifism and empire-mongering. Large majorities in America and all European countries, including France and Germany, were neither opposed to all wars nor as much in the thrall of militarism and empire as President Bush and his neo-conservative advisers may have wished. They believed the all-too-plausible accounts of the WMD, but wanted to put the disarmament of Saddam Hussein, if necessary by military force, under the legitimate authority of the world community via the UN, and not just the US. Depending on just how much they believed that there was an immediate danger and a link between the Iraqi dictator and the attack of 9/11, they differed in their eagerness to follow the president’s leadership. President Bush’s challenger in his reelection campaign of 2004, Senator John F.Kerry, typically explained that he had voted for the Congressional resolution of October 2002 authorizing force towards Iraq because, at the time, he believed that Iraq had WMD.49 Each of these groups claimed an ethical justification for its stand, but they were nuanced depending on its state of information and understanding. Similar degrees of ethical rationale, moreover, continued after the war as the state of information available changed: The militarists and imperialists were stirred by the swift military triumph, the superior weaponry, and the patriotic media images of sleek fighter planes and heroic young soldiers. They took comfort in the president’s photo opportunity in combat pilot uniform on the aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, and under a banner proclaiming: “Mission accomplished.” They probably identified with it even after the president in embarrassment distanced himself from it, evidently sobered by the neverending postwar problems and the killing by Iraqi “insurgents” of six or seven times as many American soldiers as had died in the war. Later, with the capture of Saddam Hussein, they latched on to the new Bush slogans “the world is better off…and the US safer without Saddam,” a furtive reinsertion of the alleged link between Saddam and 9/11, when, in fact, turbulent postwar Iraq had become a major breeding and recruiting ground for AlQaeda terrorists. Those insisting on a role for the UN in the preparations for war continued to hope against hope that it might be included prominently in the reconstruction of Iraq. They

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were angered by the refusal of Bush and the Pentagon to yield real authority for this purpose, although they must have realized that international legitimacy, once spurned so dramatically, would be difficult to reinsert into a process in which the Iraqis would have to play a major role, their own progress towards self-government. They must also have watched with growing dismay that the main justification for the war, the WMD, had disappeared or never been found. These groups and, especially, the pacifists must also have been riveted by the tales of suffering of the Iraqi civilian population during the war and in the chaos and anarchy of the postwar period. By the time of the 2004 US elections, the number of Iraqi civilians killed as a result of the American invasion was estimated at 170,000—with perhaps five or six times this number seriously injured or maimed. The number of Iraqi soldiers killed, and later insurgents, is not known.

The lure of empire The shattering impact of the events of 9/11 and the launching of imperial policies derived from PNAC produced lively discussions and some new contributions to the literature on empires, many reflecting the lure of empire. To quote former UN Undersecretary General Brian Urquhart, “the US’ newly proclaimed unilateralist doctrine of preventive or preemptive war, with no tolerance for potential military rivals, would have seized the world’s attention even if Washington was not already acting on it.”50 One writer on the subject of empire commented that it had suddenly surfaced in mainstream discussion rather than remaining the old leftwing rant about the US aspiring to global dominance. He pointed to features and cover stories, such as by Michael Ignatieff in the New York Times magazine (January 5, 2003) and in US News and World Report, and mentioned in passing that even histories of the British empire had suddenly become fashionable again. Niall Ferguson’s Empire, a book and popular television series, was a big success, even though its attractions seemed to lie as much in chatty anecdotes and personalities as with trenchant analysis—although Ferguson leaves no doubt about the dramatic differences between the old British Empire and American dreams in that direction.51 Among the better-known authors on the subject, University of California political scientist Chalmers Johnson, in his latest book, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, set a high mark for exposing the realities behind the glittering lure of empire. He repeated some of the dramatic arguments famous from his earlier book, Blowback, namely that much anti-Americanism and even the terror of 9/11 came from hostile reactions to earlier US imperial projects—such as the US military presence in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf which so infuriated Osama Bin Laden. There is a lot of truth to this thesis although the opposite side of the coin—why many American imperial designs did not generate antiAmerican violence or terrorism—has never been investigated. In other words, blowback may be a very complicated process which we have not yet fully understood even though there are, by now, at least a dozen excellent studies of the kind of militant Islamic faith that sent the hi-jacked planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/11. Johnson also describes the farflung chain of American bases and listening posts all over the globe, 725 bases abroad with 255,000 soldiers in the wake of the Cold War and at the time of 9/11 which alone, in his opinion, would incline the US towards imperial ventures such as the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.52

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Andrew J.Bacevich, in his American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy, makes a similar claim: the empire has long been there and so has a sense of imperial mission to bring the blessings of American freedom to the rest of the world. The US should at least work on being a benevolent super-power and really deliver on its promise of spreading liberal democratic civilization, but of course without the use of force. Another social scientist, Robert Jay Lifton, who is well known from his psychological analyses of authoritarian politics, also has a new book out, Superpower Syndrome: America’s Confrontation with the World.53 The syndrome manifests itself in the American reaction to “the murderous events of 9/11 [which] hardened the [American] sense of entitlement [to cosmic dispensation to proceed towards the American destiny] as nothing else could have…the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon rendered us an aggrieved superpower, a giant violated and made vulnerable, which no superpower can permit.” The hollowness of the American imperial plans for the Middle East becomes obvious, however, when we look at them with Middle Eastern eyes: As Rashid Khalidi, one of the foremost contemporary experts on the subject, has pointed out, Iraqis and other peoples of the region perceive US plans and actions mostly in terms of their own recent history as objects of British and French imperialism and oil-oriented American activities. Contrary to neo-conservative claims that Islamic terrorists have attacked the US because of what its stands for—freedom and democracy—Khalidi reminds the reader that until recently, Arabs admired America precisely for this legacy which they would like to call their own. The terrorists and their well-wishers hate the US for its overwhelming hypocrisy about freedom and democracy, and this especially regarding the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, American support for Middle Eastern dictatorships, and now the brutal invasion and occupation of Iraq.54 British and British-trained academics made particularly profound contributions to the American imperial debate. The acclaimed sociologist Michael Mann55 felt motivated by the Anglo-American imperial spree between October, 2002 and April 2003 to dash off a critical account, Incoherent Empire. As he explained in a lecture in Santa Barbara, Mann believes that the age of empires is past and that this is, emphatically, still the age of nationalism and of national movements such as the Palestinians and the Iraqi Baathists (though the US and most of Europe appear to be beyond nationalism, if in different ways). He regards the recent American attempt at empire as incoherent because American superiority is only military, based on high technology and smart weapons which provide for great destructive power against less developed foes such as Afghanistan, Iraq, or other rogue states. Earlier colonial empires in their day also started with superior firepower, although they did not share the peculiar American concern with their own casualties which makes a Vietnam-like “quagmire” a death trap for American imperialism—as Osama Bin Laden argued for reasons of his own. Earlier empires also had far more economic superiority to feed the imperial war machine and pay for the repression of colonial peoples than the US whose taxpayers, by Mann’s calculation, will have to pay about $150 billion more a year, and this even if there were no danger of foreign investors withdrawing their dollars from the shaky American economy. Given the reluctance of American taxpayers to part with their money—after 20 years of Republican indoctrination—for any purpose, no matter how noble, we may add, this is indeed a formidable barrier for imperial ventures.

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Ideologically, Mann believes, the American imperial quest is even weaker: It has fatal religious (anti-Islamic) overtones—all too obvious to Arab-Americans and Muslim visitors to the US under Attorney General Ashcroft’s rules—and runs against the current of our age which favors the rise of the less developed south, including populous China and India, over the north of the globe. In Mann’s view, the postwar occupation of Iraq has been a terrible disaster, most of all the failure of the US to maintain order without which democracy is unlikely to flourish. Unlike earlier imperial quests and even the expedition into Afghanistan where the Northern Alliance of war lords helped to win and to achieve a modicum of stability, with Iraq America failed to secure the assistance of powerful local turncoats or allies in the Middle East in exchange for the illusion of grateful Iraqis cheering their liberators. The American presence will more likely stir up more Iraqi nationalists and more Islamic terrorism than accomplish its mission, because Muslims world-wide are well aware—thanks to modern communications, Mann argues— that Bush’s soldiers have already killed about 10,000 Afghan and 15,000 Iraqi civilians, and have been holding another 600 Muslims as prisoners with no rights at Guantanamo, Cuba, and hundreds more elsewhere in military detention.

Alternatives to American imperialism Another major British scholar on the subject, Mary Kaldor of the London School of Economics, often refers to the work of Mann and of an American historical sociologist, Charles Tilly, on the development of European nation-states.56 One thesis of hers is that, disregarding the doctrines of Clausewitz, military capabilities alone do not simply equal actual power, at least not for shaping the international order. Thus, American military clout is no match in the long run for the soft persuasive power of cosmopolitanism, or the growing “global civil society.”57 All-too-aware of the increasing destructiveness of modern weaponry, Kaldor believes that the very nature of states and their wars is unraveling along with their borders, and this along several routes. There has been a mushrooming of relevant peace and human rights movements; and war is being juridified. A kind of privatization of war is occurring, as the tax base, the public spending behind traditional war-making activities, has eroded. There are “civil wars” across national boundaries, and foreign and “internal wars” can no longer be separated. Victory after war signifies not just military control over the territory of the losers, but political control, and it is often secured by terrorizing civilians, by the deliberate destruction of religious and cultural symbols, or by “ethnic cleansing “as in Yugoslavia.58 As Mary Kaldor related during a lecture in Santa Barbara, there have been huge and striking differences between how the war in Iraq was depicted on Fox News television in the US and how the European and Middle Eastern media saw it. Americans are generally unaware of how much their media lie to them. Kaldor contrasts the excesses of imperial conquest and violence to “the European tactic of substituting multilateral rule-making” ever since the beginnings of European integration against the old penchant for unilateral wars of European history. This is “the Kantian peace process”—reference Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace—and it does not necessarily require the coercive internal order typical of the modern European state in its infancy as described by Tilly.59 This peace process, absent violent imperial intervention,

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will eventually establish a world order of peace and understanding, given human rationality and tolerance among religions and nations. It may arrive at democracy at the home rule level, but no one will be forced to adopt that either, least of all in its imperial, Anglo-American redefinition. Kaldor’s engaging tune has overtones of the “violence-free society” that the German Greens party has been demanding for two decades, but also of the “culture of peace” program long proposed by people with UNESCO to overcome the pervasive militarism, male chauvinism, and propensity for violence of contemporary societies.60 Americans may also be reminded of Thomas Jefferson’s words of the coming of “an empire of liberty,” but one achieved emphatically without the use of force. The neo-conservative antidote to Kaldor’s wondrous siren song is the writings of Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment of Peace who, in a much-quoted essay—in the US and Europe—addressed what he regards as the basic principle of disagreement between Europe and America. An early associate of the Cheney-Wolfowitz team, Kagan made the profound discovery that the Europeans had turned “wimpish” because they were weak in military qualities and quantities and hence not up to playing the game of the big power interests which he perceived was being played by President Bush and his neoconservative team: “Europe [is] turning from [a concern with] power…into a posthistorical paradise of peace and relative prosperity.” He too cites Kant’s Perpetual Peace, but of course, negatively, as a utopia. “The US is mired in history,” he declared intriguingly and promptly served up a melange of historical glimpses of America and Europe quite at variance with the accounts of most historians. He evidently does not agree that President Wilson’s plan for a League of Nations meant to put an end to the disastrous game of great power politics that had preoccupied European states for centuries, and led them from war to ever more destructive war until the catastrophe of World War One. The US had to rush in twice, in World Wars One and Two, at great expense in American lives and treasure to make peace among these macho, warlike empires.61 What Kagan attributes to those wimpish Europeans, a preference for “a self-contained world of laws and rules,” habits of “transnational negotiation and cooperation,” and acting “through international institutions” is clearly the Wilsonian view, the foreign policy extension of American Progressivism, both Republican and Democratic. The League’s first stumbling steps were overwhelmed by a revival of precisely the kind of unilateral, imperial assaults by Japan, Italy, and Germany that neo-conservatives seem to like. The last of these, the German blitzkrieg attack on Poland in 1939, even resembled the Bush administration’s attack on Iraq, both in duration (three weeks) and with the “shock and awe” bombings by howling Sturzkampf (Stuka) dive bombers, as some elderly Poles still vividly recall. After World War Two, moreover, the US and its allies established precisely the kind of wimpish international order of rules and law courts, and institutions of collective security, such as the UN Security Council and General Assembly, that neo-conservative hawks find so restrictive of America’s freedom to act today. And Europeans indeed accepted, expanded, and refined this Wilsonian formula and, in 2002/2003, were defending it against the latter-day apostates in Washington. In what historical tradition, according to Kagan, could the imperial US be “mired,” if not the law of the international jungle? When the American republic was young and weak, did this make it internationalist rather than unilateralist? As one reviewer, Stephen Holmes, put it in The American Prospect, American military superiority has engendered “a

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warped lens distorting the way the Bush administration defines the direst threats facing the country,” leading it to neglect major problems in favor of easy pickings for the military.62 By the fall and winter of 2003, a lot of the infatuation with American empire seemed to have faded, in part because of what appeared to be an extraordinary series of postwar reverses and disappointments (see below), in part by the flight of the neo-conservative voices supporting the imperial spree of 2002/2003. Even the president seemed to give up on the earlier vast ambitions of bringing his ideas of American democracy to the Middle East: There was no more talk of widening the intrusion to Syria and Iran and, instead, intense concentration on “an exit strategy” from Iraq in the form of hasty plans to hand over political sovereignty to Iraqi authorities by June 30, 2004. This was the year Bush had to stand for reelection and the growing difficulties of America’s postwar occupation were more than likely to interfere with his chances to occupy the White House for four more years. Iraqis were skeptical and suspicious of American intentions, in particular the Shiite majority and its leaders who at first insisted on the “handover” being preceded by a democratic election—Grand Ayatollah Ali Huseini Al-Sistani was understandably suspicious of American manipulations and democratic pretenses, even though he was glad to chase away the Mahdi army of the upstart Muqtada al-Sadr the next summer— and then called on the UN Secretary General to determine whether it was true (as Paul Bremer had said) that elections were not feasible in time for the handover deadline. The American occupation seemed in too much of a hurry, after massive terror attacks on Shiite worshipers during high religious holidays, to question the deadline itself and its relation to the presidential election campaign. Given the inability of the occupation to provide security, the Shiites decided instead to rely on massive armed militias (Al Sadr and the Badr Brigades), and so did the Kurds with their pesh merga, while the occupation hit upon the belated and unwelcome idea of disarming them. In the meantime, Secretary General Kofi Annan agreed with Bremer but promised also to assist Iraqi authorities, meaning the American-appointed and possibly enlarged Governing Council, in holding such elections, perhaps in early 2005. But in the meantime, everyone battened down the hatches in anticipation of a lot more violence, possibly as threatened in an intercepted letter from Abu Mousa al-Zarqawi—presumably a mastermind of the Iraqi “insurgency” against the occupation—to AlQaeda, which called for fomenting hatred and strife among the ethnic and religious communities of Iraq. Whatever their origins, Baathist or AlQaeda, the insurgents were determined to block the occupation efforts to put Humpty Dumpty back together again after the Anglo-American troops had pushed him off the wall.

The trials of Job Ever since President Bush had finished his invasion—instead of proceeding within the constraints of the UN Security Council and of the support of Old Europe—a series of major failures and mishaps began to occur that were nothing less than the trials of Job, or the frustrations of Sisyphus. They seemed to mock him and to dismantle what had at first seemed like good planning for his purposes. To be sure, to begin, George W.Bush’s plan to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam without specific UN approval had not met with the

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support of his father, former president George Herbert Walker Bush and the elder Bush’s Secretary of State, James A.Baker, who after winning the Gulf War of 1991, for very good reasons refrained from going on to Baghdad to “finish the job,” as some people insisted: As Bush Sr and Baker pointed out then and have since repeated, the original, UN-supported Gulf War coalition would have collapsed immediately, with the allies leaving and US occupying forces being trapped for years in a ferocious Iraqi nationalist campaign of reacting to foreign occupation. They were obviously right. Furthermore, Iraq’s neighbors would probably have tried to push into the vacuum left by the fall of Saddam’s regime. Of course Bush Jr’s loss of the support of key European allies, as we have detailed in earlier chapters, was also in itself such a major failure and it suggested that the Bush administration never understood how and why it lost them. The president evidently thought that threats and bluster alone—as in the case of France—might whip them back into line. Another major blow occurred when, late in 2002, it became obvious that, rather than Iraq, it was really North Korea which had advanced nuclear development and confronted the world with this fact in an assertive way the US could not ignore. A year later, Iran also turned out to have advanced nuclear production and was not about to curb it. Libya, unbeknownst to the CIA, was quite advanced in this department, by courtesy of materials and nuclear knowhow from America’s ally, Pakistan. Muammar Khadafi, however, was willing to scuttle his plans and make peace with the West all by himself. At times the president must have thought that it was none other than his arch foe, Saddam Hussein, laying trap after trap of global ridicule for the Bush campaign. And indeed one of the first actions to doom the postwar occupation and make the success of importing democracy unlikely was shrewdly designed by the dictator himself. Saddam may well have realized that even the “mother of all battles,”—his own coinage for the military battle against the armed coalition of Bush Sr a dozen years earlier—could not for long save him from the Anglo-American war machine. A short time before the onset of war, therefore, he opened the gates of his capacious jails and released thousands upon thousands of Iraqi criminals, murderers, robbers, thieves, rapists, and every manner of malefactors—except for political opponents still languishing in the hands of his minions who had tortured and slaughtered so many of them. We do not know if the dictator knew or appreciated that one of the conceits of the American Secretary of Defense and his advisers was to conquer Iraq with as small a number of ground troops as possible. There had been fierce infighting in the Pentagon between Rumsfeld and General Shinseki, the highest army officer, as well as Army Secretary Tom White, over the size of the invasion forces. Shinseki and White preferred at least 400,000 soldiers, a figure which they believed necessary not only for the fighting but also for the many ancillary tasks of an occupation, such as policing, guarding installations, and controlling the borders, for example against an influx of foreign Muslim fighters. Rumsfeld insisted that half this number would be enough and got his way. Like his boss, he seemed to have expected nothing but grateful and cooperative Iraqis to have greeted and cheered their American liberators on the way to their Middle Eastern empire. He was also counting on the Iraqi police and armed forces to keep the population in line after the allied coalition had defeated or chased away the top of the Iraqi administrative and operational leadership. Instead, Iraqi officialdom down to the traffic police and local

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government had scattered before the allied onslaught, and anarchy and chaos reigned, completely unrestrained by a short-handed occupation force. The “Ali Babas,” as the natives dubbed them, completely took over Iraq’s cities and terrorized the population with impunity. It was a situation that should have been familiar to Soviet experts like Condi Rice: In most post-communist societies, too, the police were at first afraid to show their faces while criminal gangs of Ali Babas not only stole everything from formerly public enterprises but soon began to victimize private citizens and their businesses as well. To be sure, some of the looting of the first weeks—again as in many post-communist countries—was done by neighborhood “amateurs,” who after the long years of poverty and deprivation by sanctions and mismanagement could not resist taking what seemed salable of public property, including the furniture of ministries, telephone copper wire, plumbing, window frames and, of course, the luxuries of Saddam’s palaces in Baghdad and elsewhere. What American bombing had intentionally spared, infrastructural hardware, so to speak, was totally stripped by the Ali Babas while the undermanned occupation had orders not to intervene. Some allied military units, to be sure, went to great lengths then to rebuild schools and reequip hospitals, but even there, sabotage and other destruction ruined much of the positive efforts of Americans. And, in late 2003, amid attacks by Iraqi insurgents upon collaborators, a clueless Washington chose to shut off the funds for local rebuilding efforts for a while. The Ali Babas also pillaged the national museum, conservatory of music, and theater, and the universities and hospitals, stripping them both of cultural icons and of countless practical items that were not easy to replace. Occupation troops moved into the buildings of Baghdad University. Looters burned down the five-story national library, destroying priceless old manuscripts and documents, as well as public records of the city of Baghdad. Members of the White House Cultural Property Advisory Committee had made futile efforts to persuade the president to protect Iraqi antiquities. By the time systematic looting had attacked the priceless historical collections of Mesopotamian history, the artifacts of human and especially Western antecedents in the Baghdad National Museum and Library, it also became clear that much of it was carried out by organized crime, quite likely with the guidance and connivance of international art and manuscript collectors, fencing networks and their clients, and possibly also insiders on the museum and library staff. How would the neighborhood Ali Babas know what might be especially worth stealing and what vaults contained carefully locked away treasures of humankind? It was also discovered that some of the treasures had already been purloined by the Ali Babas in Saddam Hussein’s family and high muck-a-mucks for display in their villas and palaces. Educated Iraqis called both the Saddam crowd and the occupation that did not care enough to protect the culture and soul of their country barbarians of the lowest kind. In all this looting, the military occupation forces indeed looked the other way even though the law of the Hague Convention clearly holds the occupiers responsible for law and order following military conquest. It seems the height of irresponsible conduct to smash the security organization of another state and put nothing in its place. In the midst of international criticism from everywhere, Secretary Rumsfeld delivered some of his lamest comments: Democracy was “messy,” he said, and the looters were acting in the “high spirits” of recent liberation.63 Organized crime in Iraq, in any case, went on to protection rackets, kidnapping for ransom, and extortion and murder of every kind. Iraqi women who, unlike their Afghan sisters, had been among the freest, best-educated of the

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Muslim world, could no longer go out at night—in fact, hardly during the day—for fear of being kidnapped or raped. Schools required guards like those in Los Angeles and school children on their way to and from the school were no longer safe on their own. Shopkeepers and well-to-do professionals became the targets of extortion and kidnappings for ransom. Furthermore, almost from the date of Bush’s challenge of summer, 2003 to the first stirrings of Iraqi insurgency, “bring them on,” an everescalating wave of violence began to assault occupation soldiers and their native assistants and collaborators which soon rose to an average of two American deaths a day, and perhaps five to six wounded. Relatively low-tech weapons such as small arms, selfmade bombs, mortar rounds, and rocket-propelled grenades killed far more high-techarmed Americans than had died in the original combat period. Not unreasonably, many Iraqis blamed the American occupation for the pervasive lack of security, for endless breakdowns of the electricity supply and of drinking water in the summer heat of 2003, due to vandalism and massive thefts, problems that despite the incredibly run-down condition of the infrastructure and under the sanctions regime had not bedevilled them much before the fall of Saddam. Even the old oil facilities, almost the only existing infrastructure that the US military bothered to protect, had major problems supplying the Iraqi public with gasoline. The day-long waits and interminable queues at gas stations became another exhibit for a mismanaged occupation. If Iraqis had ever spent much time cheering their uninvited Anglo-American liberators, within weeks of the end of the war, they certainly would not do so anymore. Something funny—or not so funny from an Iraqi point of view—had happened on the way to Iraqi freedom and democratization. How could democracy flourish in such chaos and lawlessness? Would occupation guidance really offer a viable future for Iraq?

Mismanaging the occupation Even if Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld could blame on the dictator the release of the criminals and its disastrous consequences, what may have been even worse was the ongoing war within the administration regarding the conduct of foreign and defense policy: The inbred enmity between the giant Defense Department and the State Department led them to meet again and again on the battlefields of policy and, in the absence of a strong hand in the White House, interfere with each other in the most dysfunctional way. As in Senator Joseph McCarthy’s day, the State Department was looked upon as an ineffectual bureaucracy of effete snobs and intellectuals—or worse, wimpy, congenital multilateralists—who lacked the resolve of the military to cut off useless debate and to plunge ahead and attack somebody.64 The Pentagon, by way of contrast, was seen by its detractors as the epitome of mindless militarism—embellished by defense product advertisements, courtesy of the defense industry—and of ignorance in action. One example may suffice: About a year before the war in Iraq, the State Department assembled a task force of some 30 experts on many aspects of Iraq’s economy and society. Dubbed the Future of Iraq group, they were asked to produce a thorough and well-documented dossier, each on their special field of Iraqi affairs, its problems, role, and future. The resulting 3,000-page report described in great detail nearly all the

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problems, great and small, that in fact befell the occupation after the war and suggested ways they might be addressed. The Secretary of State handed a copy of the Future of Iraq Report to the top officials of the Pentagon who apparently consigned it to a dusty shelf, reportedly never even opening it. Like their commander-in-chief, these men of action probably looked down on reading books and reports. Besides, they may well have felt that they had already consulted with at least one Iraqi exile of their choosing, Ahmed Chalabi, and perhaps others as well. Still, one cannot help wondering if the botched occupation might not have gone better on many accounts, had the eagles of the Pentagon bothered to prepare themselves by reading the manual. Another one of these trials of Job might be called Paul Bremer’s folly. When the administration hurriedly replaced Jay Garner as the viceroy of postwar Iraq with Ambassador Bremer, it may well have thought it had to speed up what seemed to be a slow start of a poorly prepared postlude to the war; actually the military had kept General Garner outside Iraq too long because it allegedly could not guarantee his safety. But there was something else that the occupation forces had done, or rather failed to do, that turned out to have enormous consequences for the future. As the Anglo-American military moved to secure control over Iraqi territory, it found literally hundreds of large Iraqi weapons depots full of gear, rockets, ammunition, and explosives in varying condition. Some of them had still been earmarked and partly sealed by the UN inspectors—like AlQaqaa near the capital which became an issue in the 2004 campaign because it contained highly explosive contraband. Short of manpower and apparently without orders, the military forces failed to secure or destroy these depots and their contents. Given their orientation towards high-tech equipment and “smart weapons,” they may also have looked with contempt upon these relatively less sophisticated, even antiquated weapons that were often of Soviet or communist satellite origin (Czech, for example). Bremer, for his part, decided to disband the rest of the massive Iraqi army, leaving these trained and able-bodied men without a livelihood to feed their families. Many of them were probably Iraqi patriots who deeply resented the American invasion and occupation. It is hard to think of a more volatile mixture, the leftover weapons and explosives and the many angry men who knew how to use them—perhaps even to repair them and to jury-rig relatively primitive roadside and car bombs with the explosives. An underground sprung to life, armed quite effectively though not with fancy weaponry, while American analysts were still wondering how to interdict the financing of this insurgency, or whether the secular Baathists would really get along with an influx of religious extremists, such as AlQaeda. The insurgents not only killed six to seven times as many American, British, and other coalition soldiers as had died in the war, but took a fiendish delight in targeting Iraqi police, national guard training facilities and police stations, local officials, anybody cooperating with the occupation. They killed over 1,000 of them, not counting “collateral damage,” innocent Iraqi by-standers. They also blew up oil pipelines, water pipes, electricity grids that had barely been rebuilt by the occupation, and, crucially, the UN headquarters in Baghdad, with the loss of many lives, to make sure that it would not offer the US an easy way out.65 Their massacres of Shiite worshippers—hundreds killed and over 1,000 wounded in Karbala and Baghdad’s Sadr City—were particularly significant also because, for the ruling Sunni minority of about 25 percent, dictatorial rule had been the chief method for keeping the large Shiite majority under Saddam’s thumb, possibly the only way to keep

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them down. The old Sunni centers of Saddam’s rule, such as Falloujah, Baghdad, Ramadi, Samarrah, Tikrit, and others, were the first battlefields of the insurgency and they often became hotbeds for insurgent recruitment and hazardous territory for the Americans. The Kurds also came in for major suicide attacks at the headquarters of their two major parties—over 100 casualties. And all this was accomplished largely with the low-tech weapons and explosives the American occupation had ignored. By April of 2004, the coalition faced major uprisings, both of Sunnis, as in Falloujah, and of the Shiite militants in the form of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army in Najaf, Baghdad’s Sadr City, Kufa, and elsewhere in the Shiite parts—and was desperately looking forward to devolving the overwhelming security problems onto a nominally home-ruled government, after the handover of June 30, 2004. Even the handover did not protect the Americans from further insurgent violence. Some day perhaps, George W.Bush, like Richard M.Nixon, may want to write a book about his six crises (or more) and some of these blows of fate deserve top billing among them. No crisis, however, was bigger than the mysterious disappearance of the WMD about which Bush and Blair were so certain in the winter of 2002/2003. With the exception of the claims of a direct link between the attacks of 9/11—which no one outside the US believed and even President Bush eventually denied (though the rumor was carefully preserved for the faithful)—there was no cause of war on Iraq as persuasive and universally acknowledged as the presence of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical, and biological, in Saddam’s hands. Intelligence reports not only from the CIA and the British MI6, but also from Israeli, French, German, and other intelligence sources unanimously agreed that Iraq had them, even if some of the talk of “readiness in 45 minutes” and the use of 12-year-old information filched from an MA thesis may have been dubious. Even Drs Hans Blix and ElBaradei, not to mention earlier UN inspectors like Rolf Ekeus thought, as late as February 2003, that the presence of WMD had to be rigorously investigated. There can be no doubt that if they were there and as immediately threatening as believed, this would have been good reason for the US to go ahead and not wait for the UN inspectors to complete their assignment. Let us assume for the sake of the argument that President Bush honestly believed this to be the case and that his team’s interpretation did not just get fed “sexed-up” intelligence by a Pentagon spy organization or intentionally exaggerate the facts presented by the CIA and others—though many disputed this after the war—then he stands justified at the moment, if not vindicated in the end. Throughout human history, many wars have started on the basis of such errors. Of course, we know now that no WMD have been found and that even Dr David Kay, who had been so convinced of their presence, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 28, 2004: “We were all wrong.” Kay had been a UN inspector before and, unlike Blix and ElBaradei, now had a huge inspection force at his disposal and unrestricted access to all of defeated Iraq, including Iraqi scientists and army engineers. The president, Cheney, and Powell, not to mention the corps of the president’s advisers, now stood deeply embarrassed: They started a war that killed over 1,000 brave Americans and injured thousands more, not to mention the legions of dead Iraqi civilians, elderly people, women, children, and ordinary soldiers defending their own country against the “crusaders,” as they were told to do, or the vast expense of the war to the American taxpayer. Was this another fiendish trick of the arch villain Saddam Hussein to embarrass the great warriors of the White House and No. 10, Downing Street, London?

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There still is a remote possibility that the WMD evidence was successfully hidden or taken outside the country, perhaps to Syria. It seems rather improbable that Dr Kay’s final search did not even find any residue or remainder of what was probably still there in 1998. But it is rather unlikely that those who would have hidden or helped transport such unusual cargo would maintain their secret even after Saddam’s sons were killed and he himself was captured by the occupation forces. Instead, an intriguing new interpretation emerged which places the “disappearance” of the WMD into an agreeably “orientalist” context, right out of the stories of Sheherazade in “1,001 Nights”: With the rapidly disintegrating state of the Iraqi dictatorship—the abysmal condition of the Iraqi economy and even of the oil industry are further examples of what the conquerors evidently did not know before their invasion—Saddam’s generals and scientists apparently began to lie to him and to deceive each other as to the readiness of their secret weaponry in case of an attack. He himself may have been complicit in this fantasy mirage by intimidating his people and neighbors with a pretense of powers he no longer possessed, perhaps just another dictator of doubtful sanity. The insistence of the returning UN inspectors, backed up by Anglo-American arms, threatened this world of illusion. Whatever may have been its true goals, disarming Saddam Hussein or an AngloAmerican empire in the Middle East, the military campaign demolished the rest of the illusionary edifice. But continual, interrelated deceptions also have a way of drawing everyone into their spell: Whether Bush and Blair lied to their own people and to their allies in order to build their empire (as many Americans and Britons believe) or whether Saddam and his minions with their web of lies supplied the former with the illusionary pretext for unleashing a terrible war, matters far less than that this war actually took place and resulted in huge numbers of deaths. A phantom world of deceptions and illusion caused a vast amount of death, destruction, and misery. This was not a tale told by Sheherazade or dreamt by schoolboys in Britain or the US. Perhaps the religious leaders and pacifists who refused to believe any of these rationalizations and opposed the war on principle were right after all.

Unclear on the concept? Is there a way that would lead the US back from this path of the distracted eagle? Certainly, and in some fashion the Bush administration has already begun to back away from the foreign policy mistakes of its first years. To be sure, the president has not fired any of the neo-conservative advisors who gave him such ill-considered guidance, though some have already faded away. He has come back to the UN on a number of issues, particularly involving the American exit strategy from Iraq—courtesy of the UN’s Lakhdar Brahimi and the Iraqi elections to follow. In the meantime, however, and especially during the year 2004, the level of violence and destruction in Iraq has risen precipitately, both before and after the “handover” to a slightly more autonomous government. What was handed over to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi (a longtime associate of the CIA) seems to have been mostly the casualty rate (of Iraqis) and, frequently, Allawi’s forces still need to fall back on the American occupation troops so that Americans still die at an average rate of two a day.

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On other matters, the US is as much set in its foreign policy path by determined special groups as it ever was: The Cuban-Americans of Miami who have long wielded considerable clout in the Republican party would never consent to a more reasonable Cuba policy—even if Fidel Castro should die tomorrow. There is a China, or rather Taiwan, lobby that is similarly set in concrete, a rightwing (Likud) Israeli lobby that used to be closer to the Democrats, and from now on probably also an Eastern European lobby. The United States, it would appear, is far from having a united foreign policy. Latin Americans have little reason to trust it as one would a friend or friendly hegemon, President Bush’s early statements about his policy towards the countries south of the border notwithstanding. On the other hand, recent episodes such as the Franco-American intervention in Haiti are discouraging reminders of how a long tradition of gun-boat diplomacy can reinforce the worst expectations of what the US might do and why. While the administration from Bush to Powell claimed benign intentions for its abduction of Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Central Africa when he was threatened by a small but well-armed band of rebels, there have been plenty of critics in Congress (for example, Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters) and abroad, for instance Haiti’s Caribbean neighbors (Caricom) who said the opposite: As former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark pointed out, the Bush administration conspired to drive the democratically elected Aristide from office by cutting off humanitarian aid and ruining the weak economy of the poorest country of the hemisphere with a unilateral embargo. It armed, trained, and financially supported an opposition consisting of former (Duvalier/Baby Doc) military men, the paramilitary FRAPH, and criminal gangs to invade Haiti and overthrow its leader and his party. Aristide himself, from exile, has described his forceful abduction by US Marines who would not even tell him where they were taking him until a short time before landing in the Central African Republic. Critics have also suggested that the Bush administration may possibly pick as its next target the embattled president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, who was also democratically elected and has had to face American attempts to oust him earlier. After that, who knows what democratically elected Latin American leaders might be next? Is it any wonder if reasonably well-informed Middle Easterners view American calls for democracy in Iraq and elsewhere in the region with skepticism? Is it really possible that administration supporters in Washington are not aware of this hypocrisy? What would it take for the Bush administration to make a true about-face from the unilateral, imperial foreign policy course of 2002/2003? The first decisive step, it would appear, lies in a full understanding of the meaning of such words as multilateralism and unilateralism. There is strong evidence that the Bush foreign policy staff is rather unclear on the concepts, or is perhaps hiding behind the multitude of smaller issues of everyday foreign policy that cloud the basic direction of the Bush-Cheney-Powell course. In the midst of the American rush to war in Iraq, especially around February of 2003, hundreds of American city councils—ranging from small towns to mega-cities like Los Angeles and Boston—passed resolutions against going to war in Iraq without the express support of the international community. The rhetoric of the resolutions, of course, differed from place to place, but generally they named the UN Security Council as the agent of such support and carefully refrained from expressing any sympathy for the Iraqi dictator, or even for French President Chirac or then-Foreign Minister De Villepin.

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The debates in council and with an aroused public were often very emotional and evoked strong sentiments of American patriotism, for “supporting the soldiers” the Bush administration had needlessly put in harm’s way, and for “peaceful conflict resolution” whenever possible. One conservative councillor in one small town, a grizzled army veteran and Bush loyalist, coined a formula in the local debate that may well represent the sentiment in favor of going ahead with the invasion in many towns: “Look,” he said with a voice dripping contempt for the UN, we have been disappointed a number of times with what that organization will do for the US, disappointed also with some of our allies for the same reason. When we know who the enemy is and our commander calls, and the troops are ready to strike, why shouldn’t we go it alone? We know we have the overwhelming strength to knock out Iraq right now. Waiting for international approval is humiliating and probably counter-productive. It may never come, or tie us up in knots with whatever interests they are pursuing, different from what we want. The time is ripe for action. Let’s roll. Indeed, American military strength was overwhelming and the victory never in doubt. So why shouldn’t the US have “gone it alone” when it did? The counter-argument against unilateral action in Iraq rested on two words, or a concept that seemed to be unaccountably missing in the deliberations of the Pentagon, its neo-conservative Defense Policy Board, the White House, and its National Security Council: international legitimacy. While successful action abroad may be greatly enhanced by military muscle and aggressive conduct, a world leadership role befitting the American eagle cannot in the long run rely on military supremacy alone. Take, for example, the question of the oft-cited Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the hands of Saddam Hussein. There could be no doubt about the widespread and acute international concern, including that in Paris, Berlin, and Brussels about this menace. For the US, the same Dr Kay who in the winter of 2003/2004 would tell a Senate committee after six months of search by his Iraq Survey Group: “The reality on the ground didn’t match the prewar estimates,” was singing a very different tune in September, 2002: “Unless we take immediate steps, we will soon face a nuclear-armed Iraq.” In February, 2003, after the UN inspectors had been at work for several months and found very little besides the El Samoud missiles, Secretary Powell warned the UN Security Council about the large stockpiles of biological (anthrax, botulinum) and chemical (sarin gas, dioxin) weapons they had allegedly missed. A former general himself, Powell called for invading immediately before the threat to the world might explode. Our point here is not the tangled story of how and why these WMD were not found but rather, what would have happened if Dr Kay’s Iraq Survey Group or the AngloAmerican military had indeed found significant amounts of WMD after the invasion. The international reaction to such a post-invasion discovery by the super-confident, “arrogant” Americans was quite predictable: The American globocop would have been regarded with the same suspicion as any aggressive local police investigation by a sheriff who is known not to respect the established processes of law. Any find of WMD under the de facto control of the American military would have drawn hoots of doubt and

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derision around the world: “Guess who planted the incriminating evidence on the usual suspects,” the media of the world would have said. And who would have been more able to come up with the appropriate items of biological, chemical, and even nuclear weapons than the surviving superpower that, not too long ago, used to produce them itself? Even if at that point the American occupation had called in international observers to verify the incriminating find, it would not have been easy to convince anyone, inside or outside the US and Britain—least of all the Arab and Muslim nations—that this evidence had not been “planted” by the coalition. Legitimacy is very hard to restore once it has been willfully cast aside. The same fatal flaw also adhered to the frantic last-minute attempts by Bush and Powell, just before the invasion, to recruit further members of the Security Council to support a second UN resolution legitimizing the attack on Iraq. Even client states like Pakistan, Colombia, Mexico, and Chile took offense at the crude attempts to strongarm them and their UN representatives. Poor countries dependent on American foreign aid felt humiliated by the transparent squeeze play. Old allies like France and Germany felt insulted by the orchestrated jingoism, the campaigns of hatred, vilification, and boycott unleashed against them in the American media. They no longer recognized the spell of long-standing American leadership underneath the naked pursuit of selfish American interests. Military muscle alone, even “smart super-muscle,” could not make up for the distracted state of mind of the eagle. Bullying is not leadership. The delegitimizing leadership style of President Bush also had a devastating effect on the willingness of major allies to contribute peace-keeping troops and money to the American occupation of Iraq—even when the same allies did contribute both to the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and to Afghan reconstruction. Alliances require the legitimacy that grows from shared interests, for example common defense against a major threat, as during the Cold War. The case of Turkey is instructive: That country balked at letting US combat troops cross its territory at the beginning of the war but after the war showed some willingness to send a large contingent of peace-keeping troops.66 Another case is the defection of Spain after the electoral defeat of José Aznar’s Popular Alliance in 2004 after an apparent, massive AlQaeda bombing. The public perception in Spain of Aznar’s manipulation of the investigation for electoral gain boosted the chances of the Socialist (PSOE) opposition instead, because people felt misled, not led.67 Russia, too, has turned out to be less supportive, although it had never been as beholden in its foreign policy to the spirit of international law and collective security as France and Germany. In fact, Russia was savvy enough to exploit the tight spot in which Washington found itself to win some favorable concessions from France and Germany regarding the Russian treatment of Chechnya.68 By the same token, the neglect of international legitimacy has come home to roost upon the American plans to bring democracy to Iraq and the entire Middle East, the big switch of American policy from cultivating authoritarian regimes for the sake of the oil to democratization. The change was even criticized by long-established conservatives like Dmitri Simes, head of the Nixon Library: “The pursuit of [a] universal democratic utopia, as attractive as it may seem, is damaging vital U.S. interests.”69 Middle East scholar Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland has charted the development of Middle Eastern popular attitudes towards American democratization of the region, starting with Iraq: “The talk of democracy in Iraq has not captured the Arab public imagination…

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Most think the war heightened the instability of the region. Even allies mistrust the US’ intentions.” They are disappointed by what has happened in Iraq even if they first applauded the end of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship: “Few believed AlQaeda had any roots in Iraq before the war,” but now it has become a breeding ground for such terrorist organizations. They are dismayed that the Bush administration did not rest its stated good intentions on broad international participation and legitimacy, and in particular that it made no serious effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.70 Middle Eastern governments have tacitly supported the American invasion but have been deeply uneasy about the public’s anger and opposition to it, and clamped down on dissent in a most undemocratic fashion.

4 A CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION? It is very important to acknowledge that the great rift between America and Old Europe did not start with September 11, 2001 and the subsequent refusal of Germany and France to follow President Bush’s bugle call to invade Iraq. It began with a number of very controversial policy disagreements initiated by Washington, including the refusal to go along with the negotiations over the Kyoto Protocols on industrial emissions and global warming, the adoption of the treaty establishing an International Criminal Court, and the unilateral insistence on a free hand in pursuing world-wide, imperial American interests without being hampered by international obligations to the UN, to disarmament treaties like the Nuclear Test Ban or the ABM treaties, and to international law in general. Let us examine in this chapter how each of these major confrontations with the allies and the world was linked to domestic policies of the new administration that differed from earlier practices and attitudes in Washington. In view of the vast spectrum of policies, foreign and domestic, we have to be selective. But all three of these policy concerns are intimately related to what has often been called the conservative revolution in American politics. Let us begin with the profound differences of opinion on domestic environmental policies which made the American rejection of Kyoto so predictable. Early in 2000, warnings appeared in a number of American newspapers about dangerous levels of exposure to mercury linked with consumption of fish, especially for children and pregnant women. The latter were advised to avoid eating shark, swordfish, Atlantic (King) mackerel, and tilefish altogether, and to limit their consumption of fish somewhat lower in mercury, such as salmon, shrimp, and canned light tuna to no more than 12 ounces a week.1 Seafood is popular at the American table. Canned tuna, in particular, is an important part of everyday food in an estimated 90 percent of American households and plays a big role in millions of school children’s and working people’s lunches every weekday. One-third of the 2.3 billion or so cans of tuna sold annually, moreover, contains of Albacore (white tuna) which is significantly higher in mercury content than light canned tuna. A potential cause of neurological damage and major learning difficulties for small and school age children, mercury in fish is a galling health threat not only to the millions who are fond of seafood but also to those who value it for its high protein and low fat content. Even the supplementary capsules of fish oil—who could forget the spoonfuls of cod-liver oil, and now Omega-three—which have long served as dietary boons are now suspected of containing mercury. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has launched an educational campaign and several state governments require labels warning of the presence of the toxic metal wherever the seafood involved is sold.2 In the meantime, moreover, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that Atlantic salmon and trout raised in federal hatcheries in the Northeast, including those released into waterways—a favorite catch of anglers—also had dangerous levels of

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polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), probably picked up from their hatchery feed of fish oil and meal. The EPA issued special caution notices not to consume these attractive catches in excess of half a serving a month per adult.

Mercury in seafood Where does this worldwide pollution of the waters come from? About 40 percent of the mercury accumulating in animals and humans originated with the emissions of coal-fired, electricity-generating plants. Making electric power from coal is considered “cheap,” as compared to other processes, but this is true only if we ignore the possible life-time damage to children3 and other environmental damage caused by coal mining, such as by strip mining and the use of water in coal slurries that pollute and block streams. The general pollution from emissions of these plants into the air is also a major cause of global warming, the kind of impact roundly denied by the industry and by Bush administration spokespersons. While the effective control of the emissions of these power plants by itself would probably not be enough to end the health threat to humans and animals, it can serve as an indicator of many other major environmental problems that the administration in Washington is reluctant to address: The share of the resources of this planet used by most Americans—even the ecology-minded—far outstrips the US percentage of the world’s population and space. By our consumption habits alone, not to mention the disregard of some American corporations for environmental protections, we are wasting a far greater part of the resources of this common planet Earth than we are reasonably entitled to. In 2003, an ecological research group in Oakland, California, “Redefining Progress,” attempted to measure how much of an “ecological footprint” Americans leave on this Earth, as compared to other nations. This was accomplished with an Ecological Footprint Quiz which included the average size of dwelling, dining habits, car gas mileage, and energy use of a person. The comparison of average patterns yielded the conclusion that the average American takes up the equivalent of 24 productive acres, compared to the global average of 4.5 acres (each individual’s share of the planet). Canadians use 17, Italians 9, and Pakistanis only 2 such acres.4 It is difficult to exaggerate the vast sums of money in profits (or savings for mandated improvements) for the polluting industries and their banks and financial supporters. In 2003, dropping 50 prosecutions for environmental violations alone reportedly saved the electric power plant industry about ten billion dollars. Some of this money, a small cut really, finds its way into the coffers of cooperating, “friendly” politicians in Congress. The most tangible support of certain companies for elective politicians takes the form of massive campaign contributions and of lobbying those already in office. Office-holders in turn can help the companies involved avoid or significantly postpone the great expense of—literally—cleaning up their act. They can also cut the enforcement funds of regulatory agencies under their budget authority and shape the recruitment and confirmation process of key regulatory personnel, even judges, in order to curb any excessive regulatory zeal or, in typical Washington “revolving door fashion,” help former company officials to occupy important regulatory posts, or former regulators to be rewarded with lucrative corporate sinecures.

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To name an example, it caused only a ripple of surprise when the head of the EPA, former New Jersey Governor and liberal Republican, Christie Todd Whitman, was replaced with Utah Governor Michael Leavitt, and a Democratic Congressman, Henry Waxman, disclosed that Whitman’s EPA investigation of mercury in fish had been quietly and effectively shelved in 2003. The most likely alternative path of mercury air pollution policy thus moved to the White House and to the corporations involved, who “resolved the problem” by postponing action behind further studies and abandoning even the rather distant deadlines for controlling emissions. Or, another example: While the EPA was suing Southern Company for major violations at eight of its plants, its Washington lobby director John Pennerton was appointed EPA chief to monitor air pollution. Bush has declared war upon the original Clean Air Act while his Clear Skies Initiative practically ignores the problem of greenhouse emissions and leaves the power plants under a “cap-and-trade” system that trades off the worst offenders against the gains of the newer plants. The very name “clear skies initiative” denotes the opposite of the practical effects of giving the industry de facto carte blanche to pollute the air for the sake of vast savings in its bottom line. The initiative should really be called “leave no patch of clear skies behind,” just as Bush’s Healthy Forests Initiative deserves the label, with a nod to Berkeley linguist George Lakoff, “leave no tree behind,” to denote what it may really accomplish for the sake of the lumber industry.

The dirty Clean Air Act A look at the financial contributions of the top five contributors among the electric utilities to the 2000 and 2002 national election campaigns sheds a revealing light on what has been going on: The Dominion Resources Inc., Southern Company, Exelon Corporation, Texas Utilities, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association gave nearly $7 million to the campaigns of both Republican and Democratic parties. Three-quarters of it, or $5.1 million, went to the Republican National Committee, the rest to “helpful Democrats.”5 In turn, the electric utility industry was richly rewarded when the Bush administration and its Republican Congressional contingent changed the “new source review” of the original Clean Air Act of the 1970s which would have required all overhaul and modernization projects of the industry to undergo renewed inspection (regarding compliance) and licensing.6 Like the EPA itself, the act was a product of the spirit of public responsibility of the 1970s. In 1996, under Clinton, EPA chief Carol Browner predicted that, along with other existing and planned clean air improvements, it might reduce premature adult deaths by 40,000 and cut children’s serious respiratory problems by 250,000 cases a year once the stringent new standards for particulate pollution in the air and ground level ozone were realized. Healthcare and environmental groups generally supported the package while industry groups opposed it as too expensive for them. Among the expressions of opposition was a letter from Dick Cheney, then the CEO of giant Halliburton Co., the global oil services firm,7 to Vice President Al Gore, which also questioned the scientific justification of the proposed measures and alleged a lack of public debate and alternative proposals towards this goal. Gore was the author of Earth in the Balance and the environmental guru of the Clinton administration. Four years later, as

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accident would have it, Cheney had succeeded Gore as vice president and played a key role in assembling representatives of the oil and power industry on a top secret panel to design the nation’s energy policy.8 Attempts by the Congressional watchdog GAO, prominent journalists, and the conservative Judicial Watch group to obtain access to the list of participating groups, individuals, and firms and the records of the meeting have been unsuccessful to this day, although we know that the participation of environmental and labor groups was minimal indeed. Cheney’s defense was that the separation of powers between legislature and executive protected the jealously guarded meetings from public scrutiny. It was a dubious constitutional premise which had certainly failed to protect President Clinton from all kinds of intrusion into his relations with his own staff.9 Since the Bush administration is so close to the oil industry, with the president, vice president, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, and Secretaries Spencer Abraham, Don Evans, and Elaine Norton directly involved, looking for oil interests behind its Middle Eastern and Iraq policy was hardly farfetched. Domestically, Big Oil had always been a major political player that was not content just to supply the nation with oil and gas. There was also widespread suspicion that it had “something to do” with the steep increase in gas prices at the pump in 2004, even though Bush’s Saudi friends had promised to increase their production in order to stabilize the prices. In spite of protests and demands by Congressional Democrats, the president was unwilling to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to depress gasoline prices, arguing that this should be done only in a real emergency. Thus, oil company profits rose dramatically upon the impact of the impasses of supply and refining capacity. Gas prices and oil profits were nowhere higher than in California, the nation’s most populous state, which has been consistently inclined to vote against President Bush and his line of policies. When prices at the pump rose precipitously in 2004, in fact, Californians immediately suspected yet another example of predatory “gaming” of their gasoline and diesel oil markets by administration-friendly oil giants. The oil industry, after all, has the image of being not just an economic sector servicing the need for fuel, but a power-hungry monster that wants to dominate everything, including any rivals or threats to its monopoly power.10 In 2000 and the spring of 2001, as George W.Bush entered the White House, California was experiencing a major energy crisis, as electricity consumer prices suddenly went sky-high under conditions of uneven and incomplete market deregulation—natural gas prices too suddenly jumped 1,000 percent—which cost the state and its consumers billions in overcharges and renegotiated contacts before it settled down. Governor Gray Davis spoke of a loss of $12 billion, but the final refunds up to 2004 amounted to only $1 billion. At the time and since, however, plenty of evidence has been uncovered of a major scheme to “game” electricity markets throughout the Far West by companies such as Enron, Dynegy, El Paso, Duke, CMS, Williams, and other Texas-based power giants in order to rob “fat boy California,” or “Grandma Millie.”11 Only years later, after several high-level Enron executives—but not Bush’s personal friend and long-time financial angel, CEO Kenneth Lay (“Kenny Boy” to Bush)—had been indicted on major, unrelated fraud charges, did the full dimension of the conspiracy come to light: In one batch of documents obtained from the Department of Justice by a municipal agency in Snohomish County (Washington State), internal Enron discussions of market-gaming ploys in California were revealed in which energy traders talked of

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“stealing” or “arbitraging” the energy market of that state “to the tune of a million bucks or two a day.”12 The gyrations of wholesale prices and of the California power supply of 2000/2001 inevitably brought the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and its Bushappointed chair as well as the White House into the fray, as desperate Californians cried out for relief.13 Despite Congressional pressure—California has the largest delegation in the House of Representatives—and to their dismay, FERC at first refused to intervene and only belatedly was willing to institute “soft caps” on energy prices, even while the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began to investigate the allegations of “phoney trading” and “round-trip trades” intended to mislead investors in energy stocks. Bush shrugged off the scandal by pointing to vagaries of the market while Vice President Cheney blithely rejected any thought that energy conservation might solve this problem. As he put it later regarding the continual national energy deficit—his solution was to open the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (ANWAR) to oil exploration and drilling— conservation was perhaps “a sign of personal virtue,” but not a rational energy policy. Those who blame America’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil for the Gulf War of 1990/1991 and the Iraq invasion of 2003, on the other hand, point out that voluntary conservation and a raise in the fuel mileage (CAFÉ) levels of the automobile industry would ameliorate this dependence in a major way. Californians certainly learned to control their energy consumption in those crisis years.14 Under Bush, the EPA has also intervened against clean air regulation in agriculture and in metropolitan areas. An example of the former has been the dust-control limit in the fertile San Joaquin Valley of California which powerful agribusinesses got the EPA to waive. The noxious, thick brown haze over the valley now continues most of the year despite law suits by local agencies and environmental groups against federal air quality management boards. Despite the demonstrated risks to the respiratory health of 3.4 million residents there, the EPA exempted all on-field agricultural dust sources from the controls, “a sweetheart deal written behind closed doors by industry and the EPA,” as one of the suits by a coalition of physicians, environmentalists, and Latino leaders before the ninth federal Circuit Court of Appeal in San Francisco put it. The farm lobby considers dust abatement a costly burden on ranchers even though the dust causes cancer and asthma. EPA spokespersons protested “all these lawsuits” that waste time and tie up its resources, but the plaintiffs were able to point out that the federal air quality officials have missed every cleanup deadline since 1991 and that the deterioration of air quality has accelerated since 2001 when President Bush entered office, especially with the reform of the “new source review” of power plants. Another hair-raising EPA decision of 2001 came to light with a current suit by environmental groups in New York Federal District Court regarding safety measures to protect children from ingesting rat poison which is scattered in candy-like pellets in public housing projects, schools, and playgrounds. When Bush entered office, EPA aban doned the safety regulations after consulting with the poison manufacturers, with the result that, in 2003 alone, more than 50,000 children sickened, especially in poor and minority neighborhoods.15 A discussion of willful violations of environmental protections by the Bush administration is only the beginning of our story. It goes on to its opportunistic attitude towards the use of scientific methods in health and environmental research and to the complex problems of campaign finance. Health and environmental warnings can be

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undermined if their scientific basis is challenged or subjected to effective doubts by the companies and the experts and politicians they support, much as was done for decades by tobacco firms to deny the effects of smoking on human health. Most health warnings and assessments of environmental risk are based on extensive scientific investigations by recognized institutions of science and with the help of scientific method, as are the warnings about the effects of global warming in the Kyoto Protocols. That existing health and environmental protections at times get in the way of lucrative commercial endeavors and development schemes is inevitable and one can understand the frustrations of those who stood to benefit (or save vast sums by non-compliance) from carrying out their profitable plans. But to ignore the warnings and existing laws, or to characterize them as the romantic dreams of sentimentalists, “tree-huggers,” or, worse, “totalitarian bureaucrats,” trying to enforce “political correctness” against individual liberty is another matter. The most recent collision of science and the Bush administration occurred when the White House insisted on a veto on the appointment of distinguished American scientists to committees of the World Health Organization (WHO). We can imagine how the religious lobby, the pharmaceutical industry, or the health maintenance organizations (HMOs) influencing the Senate and the White House may have priorities that clash with those of respected scientists on certain issues. The American scientific community indeed has taken strong objection to the idea of such a veto, just as it has objected to the dismissal and appointments of administration-picked scientists on domestic advisory panels. There is also a lot of strong sentiment against environmentalists around, witness a statement by a Republican Congressman, Don Young, from Alaska, a state anxious to sell its vast resources to the highest bidder: “Environmentalists are a socialist group of individuals that are the tool of the Democrat party. I am proud to say that they are my enemy. They are not Americans, never have been Americans, never will be Americans.”16 But it is not the sentiments that are at issue. The Bush administration in countless cases has helped “friendly” corporations in a hurry to improve their bottom line by amending, overriding, or bending laws at any level. By one journalist’s count, it also had appointed over 100 industry representatives to important regulatory posts, overseeing their own industries. One of the most recent cases of federal intervention involved Houston-based El Paso Co., a giant and global energy firm that has been pursuing, among other targets, the exploration of natural gas in a remote part of a New Mexico national forest next door to America’s largest Boy Scout camp. After two years of strenuous objections by US Forest Service officials citing concern about water pollution, wildlife, and recreational uses, the administration finally forced officials to give in to El Paso’s plans to tap into some 40,000 acres of alpine meadows of the Carson National Forest in hopes of eventually drilling 500 wells on the east side of the forest. Over the protests of the state governor, Bill Richardson, who used to be President Clinton’s Energy Secretary, and many local environmental groups and state agencies in charge of oil and gas development—and as with similar plans of energy exploitation in other Western states, such as Montana, Utah, and Colorado—the Bush administration spared no effort to override all legal and environmental obstacles to accommodate its friends in the energy industry. In this case, the Valle Vidal was the target—named by Spanish explorers the “valley of life” because of its extraordinary profusion of wildlife; it reportedly harbors 200 species of birds and 60 kinds of mammals, including America’s largest elk herd—right next to the legendary

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Philmont Ranch where the Boy Scouts of America have hosted youth programs since 1938, involving some 25,000 young people every year. The White House Task Force on Energy Project Streamlining, seconded by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, saw “nothing inappropriate” in El Paso’s plans, which may transform the valley into an industrial landscape of roads, power lines, pipelines, wells, generators, compressors, and waste water ponds, and possibly cause Philmont to close down.17 El Paso, in the last five years, has contributed $2.3 million to Republican candidates, but has not yet made the final decision on Valle Vidal—the assault on this natural idyll is officially justified by American long-range energy needs. El Paso has the largest network of natural gas pipelines in the country and was accused of participation in the big energy shakedown of California in 2000/2001. Americans worship their magnificent national parks and wilderness areas and many were pleased when the outgoing Clinton administration significantly added to their acreage and put in place further protections of “roadless forests” from development. But it took the incoming Bush administration little time to reverse most of these gains for the sake of its developer friends and mining interests in the West. Some of the policy reversals have been as visible and frivolous as the waiving of Clinton’s ban on using snowmobiles in winter at Yellowstone Park where park rangers can now be observed having to wear face masks at the park entrances against the exhaust pollution of these vehicles. But the impact has been most severe in population centers where the new, industry-friendly EPA regulations aggravate already dangerously poor levels of healthful air for city-dwellers, especially children and the elderly.18 In 2003, for example, the Department of Justice launched a major assault against the authority of the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) of Greater Los Angeles to address the heavy smog conditions of its relatively windless location. In 2000 and 2001, AQMD had adopted new requirements for public and private operators of transport buses, school buses, sanitation vehicles, heavy-duty utilities trucks, shuttles, and taxis to buy clean-fuel models when they replace or add to fleets of more than 15 vehicles. The Western States Petroleum Association and the Engine Manufacturers Association sued in 2001, arguing that AQMD could not override the revised federal Clean Air Act to regulate motor vehicle emissions. The AQMD retorted that it was not requiring the car manufacturers to produce vehicles of lower emissions but only demanding that local authorities purchase less polluting equipment when replacing or adding to their fleets. AQMD won at the federal district and circuit court levels but lost before the US Supreme Court in 2004. That court, which has a vaunted tradition of upholding local and state authority against federal action—at least unless it is overruling Florida state courts on presidential election recounts—finally struck down the efforts of AQMD with the help of briefs from the US Solicitor General, Theodore Olsen, and the Department of Justice. To paraphrase disappointed Los Angelenos, “They want our city air to look more like the smog over Houston, Texas.”

A “balanced approach” Environmental groups critical of the Bush administration, and of Vice President Cheney’s energy policy panel of 2001, have chronicled an astonishing record of assaults on long-

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protected American natural resources, heretofore shielded by a broad consensus established back in the days of President Theodore Roosevelt and maintained faithfully by presidents of both parties, down to Clinton, who added mightily to national parklands and environmental protections.19 Bush, in the opinion of Sierra Club President Carl Pope, has deliberately rolled back a century of environmental progress by various means, including ignoring issues—as with Kyoto and global warming—or playing games with their scientific basis.20 “Science is supposed to shape policy,” writes Pope, “not the other way around. [But] the Bush White House regards scientific findings as [merely] the raw materials of spin, to be…manipulated or suppressed as suits the political needs of the moment,” or pleases the corporations that donate to Republican campaigns. And the reasons for this abysmal environmental record, again, lie mostly in the vast sums of money involved for the corporations that stand either to gain it or to save it by noncompliance. Less frequently, Bush policies on issues of health and the environment stem from ideological roots, as for example on public health appointments, where in one case he put on the FDA’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee a conservative religious activist, Dr W.David Hager, who was known not for scientific reputation, but mostly for his opposition to the abortion pill RU-486 and his advice that women suffering from premenstrual tension syndrome should pray and read the Bible. This was a fitting parallel to the “packing” of scientific panels concerned with chemical toxins and health hazards for children and cutting the research budget of the Department of the Interior’s National Water Quality Laboratory by 70 percent to stop its investigation of MTBE pollution of drinking water. Or to the intervention into the controversy about importing prescription drugs for the elderly from Canada where they cost about half of their US price. The very profitable US pharmaceutical industry was already aligned with the Republican party in the 2000/2002 election cycle when the top firms—PhRMA, Bristol-Myers Sqibb, Pfizer (which gave $5.6 million), and Eli Lilly—gave 87 percent of their campaign contributions to Republican candidates, obviously expecting lucrative concessions. It is anybody’s guess how generous they have been in the 2004 campaigns after Congress and the White House have protected their profits so strikingly in the ballyhooed senior drug prescription bill,21 which not only barred most imports but forbade the use of the bargaining power of the federal Medicare for negotiating better price levels. Maybe it is too much to expect the party in power occasionally not to rise to the defense of interests that support it, in spirit and financially. Some of this cozy government-business cooperation probably goes on in all democratic systems, even if it seems to border on corruption. What sets the Bush administration apart is the sheer volume and concentration of such deals which by now amount to a giant sale of public assets and advantages on an ever-larger scale to greedy corporations. Some may call it a kind of piracy with the help of government. Perhaps this boosterism goes a long way towards explaining why the current administration from the very beginning had no use for the international efforts to rein in industrial emissions to halt global warming and its catastrophic effects: It not only would have cost the corporate sponsors of the Republican party “too much,” but would have kept them from taking advantage of their extraordinary opportunity to steal the whole country in a few years. Was it different with the loss-profit equation behind the rejection of the chemical weapons, small arms trade, or the ABM treaties? Perhaps there lay, underneath the painful European-American rift, not so much

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philosophical disagreements about Mars and Venus, or the nature of the international order, but conflicts of short-term economic interest that deserve closer analysis. This is obviously a huge subject which this chapter cannot hope to exhaust. But we can at least peek under the cloak of what seems to be behind words like “conservatism” or “neoconservatism.” “Our approach is to maximize the quality of life for America,” said James L.Connaughton, chairman of Bush’s Council on Environmental Quality, “and that means balancing the environmental equation with the natural resource equation, the social equation and the economic equation.”22 But these claims of a “balance” have not been well received by the large community of well-established environmental groups and spokespersons who often protested that they could not see any kind of balance in these Bush policies towards the environment, or that it only seemed to involve the bottom line of cash—a venal exchange of campaign dollars for deregulation and savings for the companies involved. Spokespersons for the companies involved and their political representatives in turn pictured the environmentalists, scientists, or politicians, as “wild-eyed extremists,” romantics, “limp-wristed” esthetes, or “tree-huggers.” With the benefit of hindsight of four years of Bush environmental policies and a great deal of self-serving rhetoric to hide drastic reversals of long-established policies, we can conclude that this has been a major period of rethinking and undoing basic environmental guidelines, including many that had just been introduced by Bush’s predecessor, Clinton—for example the protection of “road-less forests” and wetlands from development. The most striking of these changes, the American rejection of mandatory, global controls on the emission of greenhouse gases, a major cause of climate change and global warming, may serve as the signal of the character and impact of the great reversal. America’s European and Asian allies understood the rejection of the still rather tentative Kyoto Protocols as the opening shot of a rather deliberative, unilateral break with the international environmental consensus, before the new American imperialism surfaced, and long before the “preventive strike” against Iraq. To be sure, much about Kyoto science and the international basis of this cooperation still remained to be determined, but there was no mistaking the American intent. The immediate reaction among other governments abroad was predictable. As in 1999, when the US Senate spitefully rejected the opportunity to debate and sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,23 the American action on Kyoto sent a signal: Key countries like Russia—which has meanwhile come around—immediately seized the opportunity not to sign the accord either, each for selfish reasons of their own. Since the international agreement depended on everyone’s good will and cooperation, it promptly fell apart, even though the Europeans later on still passed it among themselves. America’s unilateral refusal to lead the world on this important subject, like taking the ball and going home, broke up the ball game: The world’s biggest user of energy and worst polluter was not willing to cooperate and cared nothing about leaving bitter resentments among its allies. The great rift between Europe and America was in the offing in the spring of 2001. Knowing that the rejection of Kyoto was a natural outcome of a whole range of domestic environmental policies of the new administration in Washington did not soften the blow.

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A race to the bottom There followed a spiraling down of international environmental summits, a race to the bottom of the consensus of environmental protection: Stockholm, Nairobi, Rio de Janeiro, and Johannesburg—and then even the appetite for further international cooperation on the environment died down because US negotiators had indicated they would refuse to agree to spelling out any further clear goals or timetables for improving the environment regarding anything, water, forests, fisheries, or global warming. The rest of the world was skeptical of the American idea of solving environmental problems by “voluntary corporate action” or corporate-government partnerships. Secretary Powell was dispatched to Johannesburg to stand in for the president and received a round of boos for the American unwillingness to enter any more environmental agreements. Regarding emissions and global warming, in fact, the US is still in arrears to its own promises of 1992 to stabilize emissions at their 1999 levels. Needless to emphasize, the impact of the manifest American disdain for environmental protection—from Kyoto to Johannesburg—made a particularly negative impression on the German government and public opinion on the subject. Chirac’s conservative government has its own corporate polluters’ lobby, though years of leftwing governments and notable environmental battles have long imprinted a protective consensus on French public opinion and clamped limits of decent respect on predatory industries, as is true of most of Europe. The kind of corporate abuses of the environment we have described above would not be considered an admirable expression of “freedom” and would certainly not be tolerated there. In Germany, the land of the Greens party— represented in parliament and in many state and local assemblies since 1983— environmental consciousness is universally shared among the parties and, in fact, has brought about a “greening” of all the parties from right to left, including the otherwise business-friendly and conservative Christian Democrats. Unlike in America, laissez-faire attitudes towards the environment have never been viewed as the wave of the future there, but more likely as the rough-rider postures of the early industrial revolution. Even as a luxury enjoyed by a rich and spendthrift country which has, in contrast to Germany, seemingly unlimited resources and space to pollute they are unlikely to be respected. Hence the American rejection of Kyoto and other international environmental protections was considered an outrageous provocation and, by many German observers, perhaps the real underlying reason for Germany not to follow the bugle call for an invasion of Iraq. And the Germans are not alone in Europe in this sentiment:24 In a recent major report, European Environmental Agency scientists predicted that by the year 2050 three-quarters of the Alpine glaciers might disappear, there would be repetitions of the killer heatwaves of 2003—which killed thousands of the elderly and ruined harvests in some areas— and monster floods like those in 2002, and that rising sea levels would destroy coasts at an accelerated pace, all this as a result of the global warming that President Bush insists is unproven.25 Carl Pope has also pointed out the parallel between Bush’s international stance and his domestic conviction—obviously flawed—that clean air and clean water can never be achieved by legislation or litigation,26 a curious echo of the insistence of an earlier

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conservative generation that the racial divide could never be overcome by such means. The original and eminently successful Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, of course, demonstrated that environmental regulation “works”—that is unless governments cave in to greedy enterprises that would never cooperate voluntarily. The Bush administration, characteristically, reacted to its Johannesburg debacle (barely covered by the American media) by simply omitting the section on climate change from its annual EPA report on air pollution in America.27 Even where administration policies promised significant new departures, for example with stricter regulation of diesel engines used for big trucks and off-road vehicles, the new rules are not due to come into effect until the next decade. The Clear Skies plan, which promises to cut 70 percent of three major pollutants from power plant emissions—and to allow them to trade “pollution credits”—will be effective only in 2018, by which time the interests involved will probably have found new ways to dodge responsibility. In spite of its obvious skills in putting a good face on some of its more controversial environmental policies, the administration did not always succeed in doing so. One of its more egregious early actions involved a significant lowering of the standards set by its predecessor for allowing a percentage of arsenic in drinking water: It would probably have been a considerable saving for local governments but there was a public outcry and the Clinton administration standard was restored. There was also a major effort to redefine such terms as swamp, marshland, or other wetland areas, which opened vast wetland areas to commercial development, with predictable results also for the campaign coffers of the governing party: As the wetlands dried up—they are a major means for cleaning or filtering the water supply—campaign funds flowed all the more profusely. Similarly, the new wilderness area policies, including the so-called Healthy Forests Initiative,28 all too transparently permitted developers to start building, logging, mining, and drilling in vast public wilderness areas that Clinton had preserved from the hands of the developers. The new administration also lowered the barriers to increased oil and gas exploration on public lands, especially in Utah, Colorado, and in vast areas of Alaska. It also weakened the review process of the National Environmental Policy Act which further opened the flood gates to the exploitation of America’s vast natural resources by its most generous financial supporters. The chief reason cited over and over for this race for plunder at the expense of public health and the environment is to “unfetter” economic growth. Even the rejection of Kyoto allegedly was to maintain or restart American economic growth (and that of some other nations). There has been no evidence that this policy has helped lagging American economic growth. Besides, European economies are not only committed to farreaching environmental protections but have actually realized considerable growth in environmental businesses and jobs, a new branch of their economies. Bush and his energy policy team, understandably, were more concerned with lessening America’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil, although even their favorite remedy, exploring and drilling in Alaska, would yield more oil at best only a decade down the road. America still imports 60 percent of its oil and, for lack of better fuel economy standards, wastes much of it with its gas guzzler automobiles. The US automobile industry, another willing source of campaign funds for the highest bidder, is no more anxious to offer voluntary fuel savings than the electric power industry is to scrub its emissions.29

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The conservative revolution When did this new “conservative approach” begin that subordinates considerations of maintaining a healthy, sustainable environment to the profits of a few—and calls that “freedom”? Some of it obviously goes back to America’s colonial past and the first 100 years of the republic, when nature seemed bountiful, the land nearly empty—there was little respect for the rights of the native population—and the exploitation of its riches was limited only by the ingenuity of its would-be exploiters. In the last three decades of the nineteenth century, then, a long generation of commercial and industrial empire builders reached an apogee of resource development and exploitation, only to be met at long last with the first serious criticism and resistance by political progressives and economic reformers concerned about the social, economic, and public health consequences of unregulated industrial development. A wave of reforms in health—for example regarding the meat industry—the economy, and politics ensued, an important feature of the Progressive Era, and continued in part through the first half of the twentieth century, a period of Great Wars and the Great Depression. Even the natural environment for its own sake found outstanding champions such as Teddy Roosevelt and other founders and promoters of public park land and the natural wonders of the US, the national patrimony of all Americans. From this legacy, perhaps, came such ecological notions as that the beauty of nature is an exalted value that even rich Republicans would like to preserve and enjoy. However, under conditions of scarcity, they seemed to believe that such treasures ought to be mostly reserved for those who can afford to own and visit them—they need not be given away to the masses of their fellow-citizens. Instead of developing a “green conscience,” in other words, America’s ruling class came to view healthy nature only as “pretty,” and exploitable. It never came to understand, or did not want to understand, the wider implications of healthy eco-systems in terms of sustainability, or even of human public health, as long as the consequences of bad environmental stewardship were not brought home dramatically, for example with humans suffering visibly from unclean water, unhealthy air, or poor sanitation. The preoccupation with natural beauty also explains the political warning signals for the conservative Bush administration about neglect or disdain for America’s national parks, as dramatized in a wave of recent complaints about “privatization” of the park service and allowing mining on park lands. It also explains the paradox of allowing snowmobiles in Yellowstone Park—so the owners of such polluting craft can admire the park in the winter—and indifference towards the health hazards of the exhaust fumes to mask-wearing rangers, not to mention other humans, animals, and plants in a delicate environment. In the American media, of course, the trivializing of environmental concerns and environmentalists goes far beyond the concern with the beauties of nature to the obsessions of cranks, introverted dreamers, and, finally, environmental knights (or terrorists) who blackmail corporations and corporate tycoons to discourage them from their nefarious plans. By contrast, serious American environmental scientists, environmental authorities, and advocates at any level, and, of course, European environmentalists and green groups take a very different view of environmental health: First of all, they think in terms of larger, complex interacting systems of living processes, such as eco-systems. Second, and there are still many controversies to be resolved—to the delight of predatory interests who like

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scientific dissensus so they can carry on for a while, undisturbed by unanimous scientific judgments—scientific research and observation is often necessary to probe for the real causes of health or decay under the surface. Surface beauty is not the standard or measure of environmental health anyway, although scientists are always ready to admire the functional beauty of a system that “works.” Serious environmentalists also take it for granted that change is endemic to eco-systems and their interactions, and that some changes, even in the absence of human causation, may be ruinous to an eco-system or parts thereof. Hence the preoccupation with sustainability. Finally, in the context of a well-ordered Western nation-state, the private profit motives of a handful of entrepreneurs always have to take a backseat to the long-range needs of public health and environmental well-being. European concerns for environmental sustainability have a profoundly conservative take—in the Burkean sense—on contentious issues between industry and environmental protection. When Edmund Burke in 1790 defined the business of society and government as “a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are [yet] to be born,” he was expressing what today would be a green consciousness: The world around us does not belong to us for purposes of exploitation, but is a gift from our forebears to be treated with reverence and passed on to future generations. Sustainability, of course, is the opposite of “using up” environmental assets for the sake of the present generation, or even just the current elite.30 Although mining and the private exploitation of public lands without much government regulation date back much farther, the great contemporary political confrontations over environmental issues really began with the Reagan administration. President Reagan had campaigned for the presidency, among other things, on behalf of the “sage brush rebellion” of Western ranchers and mining interests on public land whose use of the public property on a grand scale and for little or no compensation was being challenged. At the same time, the president also gave legitimacy to the widespread hatred of governmental authority, taxation, and “bureaucracy” on every level, but especially of the federal government—a curious position for the head of that government to hold. Already while he was governor of California, he voiced many of the anti-government and antitax sentiments that became the icons of the conservative movement to come, such as that “government is not the answer [or solution] but the problem” and that “taxes should hurt.” He also coined phrases like “if you’ve seen one redwood [tree] you have seen them all.” His Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, and EPA chief Anne Burford were embroiled in many an environmental controversy. Strains of extreme rightwing thought31 merged with the hostility of small and medium businesses to legislation, taxation, and regulation of their economic pursuits. Deregulation and the down-sizing of the allegedly immoral welfare state—which was said to encourage and coddle Reagan’s mythical “welfare queens” (a codeword for black women on welfare) and other spongers on welfare payments—in favor of the good old-fashioned American virtues of individual self-sufficiency became the buzz words of the 1980s. Twenty years later, conservative rhetoric still focuses on the bugaboo of the trial lawyers, the last weapon of the lowly consumer or company employee against the predatory and irresponsible corporation. Indeed, the trend seems to be to restrict and abolish the right to sue in such a context. Among the American elites of the 1980s, slogans such as that “greed is good,” the profit motive, and business mergers on an ever greater scale became fashionable. After the

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1970s’ turn of American college youth, at least at the surface level, towards lives of selfchosen poverty—the hippie and drop-out counter-culture, but also of major altruistic pursuits such as racial equality and the war on poverty—the 1980s witnessed a turn back towards the pursuit of riches and lives of luxury and power. Reagan’s anti-government and anti-tax siren song (rather than his meager actual achievements in rolling back the federal bureaucracy) became the “conservative” marque of the decade, eagerly picked up and applauded by millions of followers, including his successor, George Herbert Walker Bush.

The military-industrial-congressional complex President Reagan faced enormous financial problems in the early years of his presidency: Decades of Cold War deficits, the cost of the Vietnam War, and economic stagnation had led up to the escalating crisis of the end of the 1970s, after two major oil shortages— caused deliberately by the formation of OPEC—had triggered hyper-inflation in the US. As he entered office in 1981, inflation was still at 12.4 percent and it was matched with economic stagnation—hence the word “stagflation”—and the annual deficit was projected to be $45 billion. In principle, cutting back government expenditures and raising revenues, however painful, would have made fiscal sense in response to this situation, and in a manner of speaking, Alan Greenspan (then the chair of a commission to reform the Social Security system and since then chair of the Federal Reserve) proposed exactly that with regard to the level of Social Security contributions paid by nearly all Americans towards their retirement and related needs, a major tax that falls heavily upon the lower income groups. He proposed raising it, and it was raised at the same time that the president, with great fanfare, proclaimed his great income tax cut: At the end of July, 1981, his first tax cut dropped the top tax bracket by 25 percent. Reagan’s signature tax cut was inspired by the dubious theory of economist Arthur Laffer that tax cuts, especially those on productive business enterprise and on the “most productive tax payers,” wealthy elites who might reinvest their tax cuts in productive enterprises, generate economic growth and thus, ultimately, more government revenue. But Reagan also raised government expenditures on defense by an extraordinary percentage, far outrunning the available income and, in effect laying the basis for the amazing American military superiority of today. In his eight years, he increased defense spending from about $130 billion to $290 billion in 1988, by a factor of nearly two and one-fourth—if we add about 30 percent for inflation, the Reagan defense budget at its highest was close to the level under the current administration—while the budget deficit tripled and the national debt grew from $900 billion to $2.6 trillion.32 He announced his intention to raise defense spending before Congress, along with lowering taxes and domestic spending, in February of 1981, and began with plans for building B-1 bombers, MX missiles, and eventually a national missile defense system (Star Wars). This was the birth of the basis of the neoconservative dreams of American empire and unilateral action, the second bone of contention between Europe and America. Like President Kennedy before him, one interpretation goes, he engaged in military Keynesianism, hoping to spur job creation and industrial production with deficit government defense spending. Of course, military Keynesianism is not nearly as capable of generating

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economic growth as is ordinary pump priming, deficit spending that recirculates the added capital. Reagan moreover stepped up his military expenditures at the same time that the country went through the severe economic downturn of 1981–1983. Another interpretation in the ever-ready armory of rightwing rationalizations has been that by greatly outspending the Soviet Union on defense, Reagan brought the chief antagonist of the West in the Cold War to its knees, though the Soviet empire was already well on its way towards unraveling and Moscow rarely reacts in any but the most truculent fashion to American bullying.33 In 1982, long-time Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died, followed in quick succession by Constantin Chernyenko and Yuri Andropov. Finally, there came Mikhail Gorbachev, who had new and revolutionary ideas on the subject of reform. Before Reagan, the US was far ahead of the military budgets of its allies, but not so clearly ahead of the Soviet Union which liked to mystify comparisons by hiding part of its military expenditures in other departments.34 On the ground in Europe, some of the allies, like West Germany, regarded the American-led ground forces of the West in the 1970s and 1980s as rather inferior to the Soviets—they feared being overrun by Soviet tank armies before the US might come to their defense—although the US maintained nuclear deterrent power. Still, this presumed weakness of the West led some of the defense experts of our European allies to suggest détente or rapprochement with Moscow, or a sense of “equidistance” between Moscow and Washington.35 A third interpretation was that the American “military-industrial-Congressional complex”, as President Eisenhower had called it, persuaded Reagan to address any postVietnam malaise with a huge military buildup that would, of course, benefit the Pentagon and the ever-hungry defense industry, not to mention Congressional and lobbying careers based on particular defense expenditures. Reagan raised defense expenditures every year, including the years after he had come to a significant understanding on disarmament with Gorbachev. Restoring America’s pride in its military might was, of course, an eminently conservative undertaking by any measure and it was also capable of rationalizing some rather un-conservative government spending. Many Americans were proud of the new military display and felt that, after the discouraging fiasco of Vietnam, it had indeed become “Morning [again] in America.” Future generations of taxpayers, however, that perennial object of conservative compassion, would have to pay for this recovery of American pride. The Reagan administration also featured a policy of high interest rates which effectively encouraged European and Japanese investors to purchase US bonds, with the result that they too propped up the giant US deficits, the military spending, and, ultimately, the imperial ambitions of recent administrations in Washington. But if one day these foreign investors should withdraw their stakes, the imperial bubble might burst, right along with the trade and budget deficit-based bubble of American prosperity. The first mega-mergers—such as the $25 billion acquisition of RJR Nabisco by Kohlberg, Kravits and Roberts late in 1988—hostile takeovers, savings-and-loan bubbles, and dream castles built of junk bonds were launched in the Reagan-Bush Sr era. In 1986, President Reagan had still pledged himself to a goal of balanced budgets under the Gramm-Rudman Deficit Reduction bill. By mid-1988 the crisis of thrift banks or savings and loan institutions was widespread: In Texas alone, they had run up a total of $152 billion.36 Right along with the abandon to the money chase, there was still an era of regret and guilt feelings about the conspicuous excess. President Bush the Elder started out by announcing a huge bailout plan for the thrift institutions and tried to tighten the reins, but

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he suffered a major backlash because he had very sensibly raised taxes in spite of having issued a pledge—“no new taxes: read my lips”—not to do so. The mantra of tax cuts and no tax increases was an ingenious one because conservative Republican politicians never felt the need to specify the subjects of such sanctified giveaways to favored special interests nor did they explain to the patient taxpayers (who rarely asked questions) what public services they were killing along with the tax, or what important needs they were not funding. Unlike the electorate of other Western democracies, American taxpayers are famously tolerant of giveaways to the wealthy elite, perhaps hoping that, some day, they may be among them. They are also amazingly willing to see benefits eliminated of which they are the chief beneficiaries. Finally, Republican politicians in office are very skilled at presenting de facto tax increases, such as fees for hitherto free services, as if they were not forms of taxation, too. To give an example, the deterioration of public schools and hospitals resulting from tax cuts—or from the defeat of school bonds under nonmajoritarian requirements, such as a two-thirds majority—are a form of taxing the wider public who cannot afford to send their children to a private school or go to a private physician. Regardless of his policies, Reagan remained immensely popular. As Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, later described his mixed reaction to meeting Reagan, who had barely escaped being impeached for the Iran-Contra affair, over lunch: “Reagan was something of a mystery to me, at once friendly and distant. I was never sure how much he knew about the human consequences of his harshest [domestic] policies, or whether he was using the hard-core right or was being used by them.”37

The push for all-out deregulation The big political push for all-out deregulation of business, the financial markets, and the abandonment of the customary controls on the auditing process and the Securities and Exchange Commission did not occur until 1995, after the “conservative revolution” of Newt Gingrich had swept a “new conservative” phalanx within the Republican party into the hitherto Democratically controlled House of Representatives: Gingrich had recruited several hundred mostly businessmen candidates of little political background beyond shallow Reaganite beliefs in God, greed, and country. They were pledged to his “Contract for America” on the steps of the Capitol and were fiercely loyal to him alone. The Contract consisted of a number of highly attractive planks to reorganize the House of Representatives and to dismantle the special prerogatives of the long-ruling Democratic chieftains and their majority in the House. Largely hidden behind the more sensible points was an iron determination to eliminate or cut back dozens of federal programs and, in particular, to demolish environmental protections and the power of regulatory agencies like OSHA to protect the work force from a deleterious environment on the job. The Gingrich juggernaut stormed in with the next elections, and made him the Speaker and absolute master of legislation. As one knowledgeable foreign journalist put it: “The mightiest man in America, next to [President] Clinton, immediately began to flex the muscles of his new political machine for a ‘revolution from the right,’ whipping in 14 hours through an amazing program of 15 votes to reorganize the House…and to hobble future ‘tax-and-spending’ initiatives with the requirement of a two-thirds vote.”38 Nearly the entire Contract agenda was passed within the first 100 days. The Senate, a majority of

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state governorships, and some state legislatures also went to the Republicans, though without endorsing the Contract or its revolutionary agenda. Subsequently, the conservative revolutionaries gutted the regulatory capability of the SEC and other regulatory agencies and tried to pass a tax cut of $264 billion, a huge sum in those days— and the cut was probably aimed at crippling the social and educational services of the federal government entirely: Among other targets, the Gingrichites had threatened to abolish the Department of Education altogether. Eventually, though, Newt Gingrich was dethroned by his own followers in Congress, reportedly because he became “wobbly” regarding the pursuit of the great tax cut or, more likely, because his impeachment drive against Clinton failed for lack of popular support. We do not wish to revisit the tawdry corporate scandals of 2000–2001 in any detail here, but it needs to be said where a consensus of knowledgeable observers, such as former SEC chief Arthur Levitt, placed the blame. The critics agreed on two major reasons why some of the largest business giants of America—Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco, together with whole banking, audit, and accounting systems—went bad. One was the obvious erosion or corruption of the business ethics of a generation of business executives who were evidently unable to withstand the temptation of fleecing their enormously wealthy companies’ investors, shareholders, and employees. In a climate of get-rich-quick companies, executive salaries and the appetite for more-moremore rose into the stratosphere. Noone has better described the giddy, quasi-inebriated business climate of the late 1990s than President Bush himself, a privileged beneficiary of some of the fast action of the day: The sky was the limit to vast gains and there was no thought of tomorrow.39 And what better way to rob a bank or a large business than from the inside, when you practically own it? The other reason was the systematic elimination of nearly all controls on corporate and executive misbehavior by legislative deregulation, emasculation of such controllers as the SEC, the corruption of banking, accounting, and auditing processes, and the suspension of most rules by the “conservative revolution” of anti-government forces in Congress. It may seem unfair to claim that the sweeping deregulation was intended to facilitate, but this was clearly its result. The conservative revolution also includes the toleration of massive tax evasion—again, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was demonized and its budget and enforcement personnel gutted—and of such corporate tricks as moving company headquarters and jobs offshore.40 Executive salaries, especially of the chief officers of giant companies, rose to astronomical distances from the remuneration of their average workforce. Even by 2004, as of this writing, most of these degenerations of the American business culture had not really been halted or reversed. And even without measuring the horrendous environmental and human costs, the resulting totals of lost government revenues and illegitimate corporate gains boggle the mind. It may not be immediately obvious what these anti-government and anti-tax attitudes have to do with conservatism in the late twentieth century and with the rich elites of America, but there is a nexus: In Washington D.C., a city blessed with the recent erection of major monuments and memorials to wars in which thousands of brave young Americans lost their lives for patriotic causes they believed in, one monument is still missing, a fitting memorial to American public gullibility and, without question, to the very heart of what Americans now call conservatism—without transparent rationalizations and sentimental trimmings. It could be the biggest of them all, taller than

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the Washington obelisk and encompassing more acreage than the Mall: a great bovine body clad in golden plastic tiles, with a large circling halo of eager lobbyists. Popularly known as the Great Federal Cash Cow (GFCC), its real name could be left to the industrious tailors of naked emperors.41 The GFCC, of course, is not a new phenomenon: Part of it was already identified and described by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address nearly half a century ago as the menace of the “military-industrialCongressional complex,” the iron triangle of defense industry lobbies, powerful Pentagon elites, and relevant Congressional figures and committees—the word “Congressional” has long been edited out by the industrious tailors of Congress which, of course, has to approve all defense expenditures. These iron triangles have long occupied and colonized large parts of the defense budget, and constitute the decisive core of how America determines its budget priorities—defense versus domestic needs—and how the vaunted American defense budget compares to those of other nations. This, and not the difference between Mars and Venus,42 may account for the dissensus on values such as the American pursuit of empire that underlies the European-American rift. Thanks to Reagan, as Democratic Senator Byrd pointed out in 2003, the American defense budget has grown to the equivalent of the defense outlay of the next 18 NATO powers plus Russia, China, and the six remaining rogue states (save Iraq). The neo-conservative interpretations of American military superiority simply drew their consequences from 20 years of budgetary developments in the US, although their conclusions are not all that compelling: If in a school or neighborhood situation, a particular person turns out to possess outstanding physical strength, this fact does not necessarily motivate him to become a bully of his peers nor would it be accepted as an excuse for aggressive behavior if he did.

The black hole of defense spending Needless to emphasize, the Reagan buildup of the 1980s continued under Bush the Elder and, in a more modest fashion, even under Clinton, who at first sought to cut the defense budget in order to provide a “peace dividend” for domestic needs,43 and to reduce the budget deficit over time. In 2003, Bush Jr obtained a Congressional defense authorization of over $400 billion—more than the Pentagon had asked for—not counting the considerable additional amounts for Iraq and Afghanistan ($87 billion) and for the new Department of Homeland Security ($31 billion). War expenses routinely are covered in separate budgets and important details are known only to privileged members of Congress, of the Pentagon, and to lobbyists for the particular suppliers. But there was another startling aspect to the defense buildup since the Reagan years which makes that budgetary process appear rather like a black hole swallowing a whole galaxy of meritorious domestic programs: Already in the 1970s, Pentagon bureaucrats became alarmed about spending abuses, notably bad purchase choices—such as the M-16 rifle which, since Vietnam, has had a dangerous habit of jamming upon being loaded in the midst of battle, and other weapons systems that failed crucial tests but were bought anyway—and such budgetary manipulations as underestimating the price (low-balling) and then demanding additional payments for the equipment supplied. At the time, the Pentagon established a watchdog office where in time the redoubtable Franklin C.

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(Chuck) Spinney, a former Air Force officer, investigated the cost and effectiveness of defense purchases and issued reports.44 In 1983, Spinney appeared on the cover of Time magazine as “the unlikely hero of the Pentagon reform movement” and Republican Senator Charles Grassley invited him to testify before the Senate, against considerable resistance. Spinney has painted a shocking picture of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement, “a moral sewer [of unaccountability] on the Potomac.” Every year, the inspector general of the Pentagon has had to waive the auditing requirements because “we cannot balance the books.” Since 1995, the Congressional oversight office (GAO) ranks the Department of Defense’s financial management the worst in the entire federal government, because it cannot “account for its spending of billions and billions of dollars while its financial books border on pure fiction.” In 2000, its inspector general could not account for over $1 trillion on its books—it seems like an awesome parallel to the accounting scandals of Arthur Andersen and other accountants and bank controllers in the horrific corporate scandals of 1999–2001. After 40 years of having the Cold War and Vietnam as an excuse, compulsive and slipshod defense spending has now adopted the war on terrorism to justify the purchase of high-tech super-weaponry and maintain the culture of the unrestrained money flow from the taxpayers’ pockets to the defense industry. But, says Spinney, “the weapons we are buying are not for the war on terrorism…not for threats we are facing [now]. Some of them may not work at all.” According to Spinney, the beginning of the war on terror gave “a big signal to the defense industry…[to] convert the war on terrorism into a big spendup in defense.” A typical example is national missile defense (NMD) research: a system of “immature technology and limited [mostly flawed] testing,” for which tens of billions have been set aside: Even if it could be made to work, it is of no use against terrorism. And the American military gets neither the best weapons—witness the M-16 that in many cases caused GIs to take Kalashnikov rifles (AK 47) and ammunition from dead enemies instead; the M-16 is still in use in Iraq and Afghanistan—nor weapons at the best prices. To quote Senator Byrd again: “Not more bang for the buck, just more bucks.” And, to top it all, Rumsfeld’s deputy Paul Wolfowitz recently pleaded with the Senate for “more flexible rules for the flow of money through the [Defense] Department” and for the “elimination of onerous regulations” such as the reporting requirements of Congress. He was obviously applying the deregulation mania of the conservative revolution—which is still generating corruption among American corporations—to defense spending, a vital element for his neo-conservative dreams of empire.45 To come back to the Great Federal Cash Cow, its image has broad implications beyond the defense sector. Non-Americans can hardly imagine finding in their daily newspapers advertisements such as a recent one in the Los Angeles Times which read: “Get Free Money From the U.S. Government! Homebuyers, Small Businesses and Real Estate Investors Get Down Payment Assistance, Lucrative Government Contracts & Low Interest Loans”.46 The full-page advert listed a number of beneficiaries, claimed that in 2003 a total of $384 billion in federal grants had been distributed, and quoted a former Congressman: “This is opportunity money!…The government grant, loan and subsidy system is probably one of the most efficient and effective ways to get money back to the average person who can use it for good purposes.” Regardless of its soundness, this advert appeals to a widespread inclination in the US to consider the GFCC as a plausible source of riches for individual citizens. And, indeed, most of the newer, private fortunes

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made in the US—with the exception of fortunes based on “old,” or inherited, money— have been derived from skillful use or exploitation of government programs. Fortunes have been made, for example, by helping the government computerize its operations, by supplying its defense needs, building transportation and communications systems, or responding to specially subsidized government priorities, with the subsidies of course always coming from the patient US taxpayer. Vast individual fortunes were also made from assets owned without a doubt by the American public: Rights of way for the railroads, to cite an old precedent, subsidies for large agricultural production, including special water rights, and major tax breaks for a wide array of services and privileges from public education to public libraries and local governments. Among the most egregious recent give-aways have been the airwaves and channels of radio and television to huge communications corporations supposedly supervised and regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), another federal regulatory commission firmly in the hands of the industry it is mandated to regulate.47 Under its present chair, Michael Powell, the FCC has been busy granting the media giants ever larger monopolistic shares of local and regional media markets for which most of them pay little or nothing to the public to whom the air waves belonged, not even in public services such as free airtime for election campaigns.48 And what did those successful entrepreneurs do after they had been clever enough to make their bundle from government initiatives, programs, benefits, and tax breaks since the 1970s, in short the GFCC? They began to pretend that they had gotten rich all by themselves—or as if they had discovered some secret family treasure that was completely independent of government and the rest of the population—and turned to bite the hand that fed them, the government and the common people who elected it and usually are their clientele. They became virulently anti-government and opposed to the taxes that were supposed to maintain the common enterprise, including the sources of their wealth. They spread their anti-government propaganda among the ignorant masses of the people who had little reason to hate the government they had elected to supply them with myriad public services from highways, bridges, police, and fire protection to public health and sanitation, public education, and defense: “Government is the problem, not the answer!”, said Ronald Reagan, who was never a businessman himself.

Saint Tax Cut enshrined The ungrateful new millionaires who had sponged off the government largesse and the beneficial order it created now rebelled against paying their fair share of the taxes needed to support the public services and hitherto paid by everyone. They thus rejected the cooperative idea underlying democratic government in America as elsewhere in democratic systems: “You work together and pay your share so we can all enjoy civilized living.” We are not talking about the occasional rightwing crank or neo-Nazi militia person who is an armed, organized tax resister;49 this was the birth of the new American conservatism of virulent anti-government sentiment and its debilitating tax cuts— crippling public services for everyone but the wealthy elites. At the popular level, perhaps there is an element of movie cowboy romance in Reaganism, however unhistorical and unrealistic, a dream of living in a Manichean, escapist world of soap

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opera, without the need for organized government. As the humorist Garrison Keillor put it succinctly in his new book, Homegrown Democrat:50 “The wave of anti-government rhetoric has taken its toll. People accept the idea of shrinking public services even though it goes against their own interest.” He could have added that usually someone gains vast windfalls from these selective tax cuts from whichever public services are cut or reduced, namely that same wealthy elite, once more sponging off government activities or policies. This is, of course, the reason why the critics of the great tax cuts of Reagan or Bush Jr emphasize the bias of such cuts towards the rich if it can be identified. Curiously, the conservative defense to such criticism is that this constitutes “advocacy of class warfare,” as if it was not the biased tax cut, or other preferential policies favoring the wealthy elites at the expense of everyone else, that was making war on the American middle class, the working classes, or the poor. With Reagan’s tax cuts, conservatives still debate whether the policy favored the rich—it did—and his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director David Stockman showed his guilty conscience when he spoke of a “Trojan horse” of introducing plutocracy to a still rather egalitarian society. The tax cut propaganda from Reagan to Bush Jr usually began with talk of “tax relief,” which sounds like alleviating an unjust burden. At the time of the 2004 Republican Convention, the younger Bush still referred to making his tax cut permanent as “tax relief.” Soon the rhetoric graduated to huge tax cuts designed to “keep Congress” from spending, or rather the Democrats in Congress from spending—for recent Republican majorities in Congress have been just as devoted to “pork barrel spending,” especially in the home districts of a Congress person, as were Democratic majorities of the past—for social programs, including very wellestablished programs like Social Security or Medicare. Keeping Congress from spending was the excuse for the huge $1.35 trillion cut of spring, 2001, at a point when estimates of never-ending future surpluses of over $5 trillion from the Clinton era promised to enable the federal government to solve many of its biggest problems, such as the threatening insolvency of Social Security and Medicare perhaps by 2030. By the time this tax cut of Bush Jr was passed (June 7, 2001), however, the Clinton bubble had already burst and soon, even before 9/11, Congress was back to ever-increasing deficits51 against a background of huge corporate failures—Enron, WorldCom—and scandals. The dramatic change in the economic situation never discouraged the president, who now claimed that he had designed his tax cuts to stimulate the economy—not to keep Congress from spending—and never stopped pressing for the cuts to be made permanent. Major parts of his huge cut involved only taxpayers with incomes in the top 1 percent bracket and, early in 2003, Bush announced his intention to “stimulate the economy” some more with another $726 billion, and no pretense of progressive or even-handed distribution. His critics pointed out that no administration in American history had ever granted a tax cut during a war but he did it anyway. His reelection campaign in 2004, again, hinted at “major tax reform,” which in Bush-speak can only mean more “tax relief” for the super-wealthy, possibly in the form of a flat tax the same tax rates for those of all incomes, regardless of their ability to avoid most of their tax burdens. One kind of desired tax cut has long been the abolition of inheritance taxes, dubbed the “death tax” by Republican wordsmiths, for legacies of millions of dollars—smaller legacies have long been tax-free—for example for businesses and land-holdings of vast proportions, not the Mom-and-Pop shops or little family farms of the tax cut propaganda.

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Others concerned drastic cuts in the upper tax rates or the repeal of the capital gains tax, neither of which offer middle-class taxpayers and investors more than a few hundred dollars in annual savings while their millionaire promoters would reap hundreds of thousands or millions. The contrast resembled that of the huge soil bank and agricultural water subsidies for the large agribusinesses of the past which were always justified by pointing to the few surviving family farmers whose benefits were miniscule. With both houses of Congress and the White House in Republican hands, there was no obstacle to enacting such tax cuts.52 The widespread anti-tax bias of the new conservatives also extended to tolerance towards massive tax cheating and tax avoidance by such means as relocating company headquarters off-shore, say in the Cayman Islands, and paying mere token taxes there. To make prosecution of tax frauds more difficult, furthermore, Congressional Republicans severely cut the enforcement budget of the IRS whose staff they have demonized as meddlesome, obnoxious bureaucrats. It was a striking parallel to the cutting of the SEC’s budget for controlling stock and accounting fraud by the likes of Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, WorldCom, and many other financial robber barons of the late 1990s. The facile conservative anti-government rhetoric also extended emphatically to “the bureaucrats” and their role, for example, in healthcare insurance where massive propaganda by drug firms and major private insurance companies succeeded in implanting a popular belief that the far more expensive private healthcare administration in HMOs must be infinitely superior to government-run programs such as one may find in Canada, Britain, and on the Continent. Anyone who has ever had to battle an American HMO knows different, of course: all bureaucracies are basically similar and without proper administrative training, discipline, and oversight, HMOs and similar private organizations are particularly prone to waste and incompetence, not to mention a noncaring attitude towards patients (and often doctors as well). Comparisons also have shown over and over that the average healthcare expenses of an American family are far above those of Canadians, Britons, Germans, or French. Private administration is more expensive for many reasons, including executive salaries—which in a wink went from figures 40 times as high as the salary of an average worker to compensation packages for big company CEOs 500 times as high—and lobbying expenses unlikely to occur in a civil service hierarchy. But who can talk the average American out of his mindless antigovernment prejudice, masquerading as conservatism? By now it should have become clear that this new American conservatism has very little in common with, say, British or continental conservatism. To be sure, there is also a strong religious camp in American conservatism, especially evangelical Christians, who also champion tax cuts and a bias against government—except when it tries to control bedroom behavior, an obsession with the religious right. In the new American conservatism, for example, there is no nostalgia for or deference to monarchy or aristocracy, or to the rights of an established church. If anything, evangelical religiosity is of a rebellious, anti-establishment sort, the “establishment” being the government, along with the courts and legislative edicts against Christian prayer and other displays in public schools and facilities. Unlike European Christianity, American evangelicals also seem eminently compatible with warlikeness, militarism, and disdain for the poor—the nonelect of Puritanism.53

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A city on the hill The moving phrase of the “city on a hill” was first coined by one of our New England divines in colonial times, in a deeply religious and long bygone, but also violently intolerant age.54 It may mean different things to different people today, in particular an image of positive national identity and of American uniqueness and goodness. To many Americans, including this writer, it evokes the messages of the Declaration of Independence, of constitutional government, and of democracy and individual freedom under law, as these concepts are popularly understood today. In earlier sections of this chapter, we have related such major issues between Europe and America as the Kyoto Protocols and neo-conservative American imperialism to relevant American domestic policies of the second Bush administration—such as its environmental policies and military Keynesianism. The shining city on the hill, to my mind, also conflicts with the rule of law at home and on the international level, as embodied in the American refusal to join our allies and half the world in support of an International Criminal Court. It does not diminish the validity of the ideals of the city on a hill for America and the wider world audience if they are found to have been violated or gravely under siege on a number of occasions, perhaps including today. Maybe we should think of the hill on which the city stands as very steep and the ascent slippery, requiring constant effort not to slide backwards rather than as a pinnacle which, once attained, will ever remain ours. There have indeed been times when America, for whatever reasons, lost its footing in the shining city and strayed far from its own ideals—usually under a perceived threat that seemed to require such departures. One of the more ominous such lapses occurred rather in the springtime of the republic with the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798, which not only facilitated the arrest and deportation of suspicious aliens but made it a “high misdemeanor” for citizens to enter into “unlawful combinations…opposing the execution of national laws,” to aid or attempt “any insurrection, riot, unlawful assembly,” or publish any “false, scandalous or malicious writing” that would bring into disrepute the US government, Congress, or the president. The purpose was clearly the suppression of dissent and opposition and it led to the prosecution of 25 and the conviction of 10 persons, mostly editors and printers beholden to the Jeffersonian opposition. Another notable slip occurred at the end of World War One and against the background of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and communist agitation in many Western nations. Beginning in the fall of 1919, the US Department of Justice under Attorney General A.Mitchell Palmer conducted nation-wide mass arrests of political and labor activists, deporting aliens—some 6,000 persons were seized and more than 500 deported, including many citizens and usually with the help of local vigilante squads and coerced confessions—and intimidating radicals and progressives. These Palmer Raids55 mostly aimed not at any discernible illegal actions or plots but at the “crime” of belonging to suspicious, extreme left organizations and sharing some of their beliefs. One of the largest mass arrests (January 2, 1920) netted 2,700 in 33 American cities, while most states initiated laws against labor unions and “criminal syndicalism.” It was not a proud moment for civil rights and law and order in the city on the hill. There were other lapses, especially involving race riots and labor disturbances during the Great Depression when sheriffs, local police forces, the National Guard, or even the US Army forcefully intervened to put down strikes and protests, often riding roughshod

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over the rights of due process guaranteed in the Constitution. World War Two and its aftermath, especially the end of the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union and its replacement with the Cold War, again stirred great fears and led to dubious persecutions, such as the wartime confinement of some 110,000 Japanese-Americans (including many US citizens) in camps and the anti-communist and McCarthyist witch-hunts of the 1940s and 1950s. There was a direct connection between those postwar days of anti-communist hysteria—through the career of Richard Nixon—to the secret wars of Ronald Reagan in Central America, as a result of which various groups opposing American foreign policy or sympathizing with the plight of, say, the Nicaraguan or Guatemalan populations came under intense scrutiny of the FBI.56 It is important, of course, to recognize the right of a duly elected government to defend its foreign and domestic policies even if they meet vocal opposition at home. Even democratic governments sometimes must defend themselves against extreme opposition, particularly in disruptive and violent form. The citizenry of a democratic polity, on the other hand, has a sacred right to oppose and protest, and this so-called First Amendment right of free expression must never be jeopardized except for the most pressing of causes, such as an emergency. On the one side, police, courts, and the FBI are playing justified roles, especially in stopping and punishing criminal conduct even when it is motivated by otherwise legitimate dissent. On the other side, dissenters should never be punished, repressed or even just discouraged for their dissent alone, their words and beliefs, or their associations (including membership in ethnic or religious communities).57 The lapses described above often involved such approaches as attributing guilt by association and persecution for unpopular beliefs or expressions of dissent. Given the great dissension of the Vietnam years, the FBI even engaged in a campaign of disrupting meetings of dissenters, illegal breakins, and “dirty tricks” against them (COINTELPRO). With the help of modern communications and data processing capabilities in this age of the war on terror—a hidden, potentially very destructive danger—the FBI has also tried to amass vast files on practically everything and everybody, in the dubious hope that some useful information may be filtered out of unimaginably large masses of data which, under present laws and future plans of surveillance, would include records of library use, consumer behavior, and some day perhaps bank records and medical records. There is, of course, a great deal of resistance to such quasi-totalitarian invasions of individual spheres of privacy for doubtful purposes. This is the background to the ongoing battles in recent years—driven by major terrorist crises and alerts and the evident eagerness of some officials to use such data to further corporate interests—it is cheaper than advertising a product—or spying on the opposition. In the mid-seventies, the hearings of the Frank Church Senate Committee exposed, and the Department of Justice repressed, some of the excesses of the FBI under President Nixon and FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover. There were a number of reform efforts but, unfortunately, the FBI ignored or forgot most of the lessons it had learned. Under Presidents Reagan, Bush Sr, and Clinton, the development towards a police state resumed while a series of terrorist attacks outside the US supplied an all-too-plausible pretext.

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From the Anti-Terrorist Act of 1996 to the Patriot Act A major step in the wrong direction occurred with the passage of the Anti-Terrorist Act of 1996 which was supposed to be a systematic response to the first attack on the World Trade Center (1993) and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995.58 Like its successor of 2001, the Patriot Act, the 1996 law focused surprisingly little on the suppression or avoidance of violent acts, as one might expect of anti-terrorist legislation. Instead, it rolled back some of the legal controls on FBI surveillance and placed a new emphasis on screening immigrants who could now be deported on secret evidence, never even having been allowed to confront it or their accusers. The place of the old, familiar formula of communist beliefs or association was now taken by a new, ill-defined phrase, “support for terrorism,” which was made to apply also to financial support for groups—say the Irish Republican Army—that at some time in the past and back in the old country may have engaged in violent or terroristic acts but were now engaged mainly in social assistance. Arab-American and Palestinian groups were particularly targeted which also brought the new restrictions to bear on immigrants and foreign visitors. A 1999 US Supreme Court decision deepened the impact by ruling that immigrants associated with such a “terrorist group” had no right to object to deportation for protest activities that, for citizens, would fall under the First Amendment of treasured liberties. Earlier federal court decisions had still accorded immigrants and aliens some equality regarding such constitutionally protected activities and a Secret Evidence Repeal bill almost killed the secret evidence feature in immigration (and some ordinary criminal) proceedings.59 But the impact of the September 11, 2001 attacks created a new situation. Within a strikingly short period of a few weeks, Congress was presented with the controversial Patriot Act, a work of 3,000 pages and sufficient complexity to make it quite impossible to read it in time, much less to debate it in the Senate or House. After a “debate” of only about 30 minutes, only one Senator (Feingold) and only a handful of House members voted against it. One of the funnier scenes of Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11 has him circling the Capitol building in a milk truck, reading passages of the Patriot Act aloud for the members of Congress who had not read it but voted for it. Attorney General John Ashcroft had presented it in a charade of hasty deliberation in order to take full advantage of the deep state of shock in which the nation and Congress still were. Almost immediately, some 12,000 “suspected terrorists” were detained under the act, especially Arab-Americans. Only one was actually charged in connection with 9/11 and perhaps a dozen were reported to be AlQaeda suspects. In other words, the vast bulk of the arrests were not for terrorism, but for visa and other immigration violations. Under the act, the Immigration and Naturalization Service can keep a foreign resident in custody as long as it likes—even after a court has ordered him or her released.60 Constitutional scholar David Cole and others have confirmed that most of this fearsome legislation and related administrative practices—throughout this long history of repressing alleged subversion and individual liberties—have been notably ineffective in what they were designed for: catching violent radicals and preventing them from doing damage to the national interest. At the same time, the power of the “keystone cops” of the

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growing federal police state has been encroaching upon the very sphere of liberty of those it was supposed to protect, the citizenry.61 Telltale dividing lines between the First Amendment rights of free expression, at least for citizens, and Ashcroft’s war on Muslims under the 1996 and 2001 anti-terrorism enactments have been drawn by prosecutions of Muslims in America, especially noncitizens, for association with suspect groups and travel to Afghanistan or Pakistan and, presumably, attendance at AlQaeda training camps there—but no evidence of participation in violent or terrorist activities. One test case in peaceful Boise, Idaho, involved a Saudi computer science doctoral student, Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, who was accused of designing websites that published lectures and edicts (fatwas) of radical clerics for the (so far unindicted) Michigan-based Islamic Assembly of North America. After months of FBI surveillance of his e-mail and telephone records, after a bank teller noticed large cash transfers in his account, he was accused of “using his specialized computer skills…to knowingly and intentionally support terrorist conspiracies” in Israel (Hamas) and Chechnya. There was no direct accusation of advocacy or incitement to violence but whether his computer skills constituted “material support” for terrorists, which could earn him up to 45 years in prison.62 The Patriot Act has drawn widespread objections from the public, including many Republicans of libertarian persuasion. Some 300 cities and counties with a total population of about 50 million people, as well as organizations like the League of Women Voters and the American Civil Liberties Union—which says that it accepts about four-fifths of it—have protested against it and a more severe version, Patriot II, that Ashcroft and Bush are already advertising. The critics argue that (1) the Patriot Act has done nothing to foil future terrorism and would have done nothing to prevent the attacks of 9/11; (2) the Special Registration Program for foreign visitors has not yielded a single terrorist; (3) the restrictions have had a chilling effect on bringing foreign students to the US and have reduced the numbers of Muslim refugees by 30 percent; (4) the FBI searches of library records have been going on for some time—on the Carnivore program—and the gag rule against disclosing current investigations to anyone makes no sense. Of the 50 American states, 48 have special protection plans for their libraries. The Patriot Act added still further to the already formidable investigative powers of the FBI, an extension of search and seizure rights of police without probable cause or even warning: Under its new “sneak-and-peek” procedures, the FBI can tap telephones and search premises in secret without having to give the accused any notice or explanation of why and whether they are being investigated. The new rules also authorize police access to the bank and library records of “suspected terrorists.” If these rules seem like an abomination to Americans proud of their Bill of Rights and practices of due process, some of the stories of the hundreds detained for immigration violations or as “material witnesses” sound almost like the proceedings at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq: Some prisoners were blindfolded, handcuffed, and sometimes physically mistreated. Relatives were often unable to learn if and where a person was being held. Being in custody involved no set term; in fact, the immigration service could hold a prisoner even after an immigration judge had ordered the person’s release. Some of the patterns indeed resembled the practices of endless and seemingly pointless military detention at Guantanamo, or in Afghanistan or Iraq where prisoners—without the most rudimentary rights of access to lawyers and courts and other icons of due process of the city on a

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hill—are “broken down for interrogation.” On the rare occasions when the outside world succeeded in breaking through the prison walls, for example when Tony Blair or John Howard insisted on British or Australian citizens held at Guantanamo being turned over to British or Australian courts for trial, the mountain of secrecy moved. There may even be additional releases of hundreds of prisoners as at Abu Ghraib or Bucca in Iraq or at Guantanamo. What better demonstration could there be that these torturous interrogations have little value but the sudden group releases of people who, in Bush-speak, were characterized as “illegal combatants” or “stateless aliens” without any human rights?

Fall-out from the prison scandals We have explained above (at the end of Chapter 2) how the American public and the Bush administration gravely underestimated the devastating impact of the prison torture scandals on the world. Even in Iraq, according to reliable accounts by American soldiers, it destroyed what little trust and admiration was left among Iraqis for American intentions in the Middle East. European allies, including of the so-called “coalition of the willing,” lost all desire to join American forces in this quagmire of discredit and insurgency. The story of the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the horrid jail, torture, and execution site that had been cited by the president as typical of the monstrous regime of Saddam Hussein, brought to light the fact that top lawyers at the Bush White House and the Pentagon had indeed discussed whether the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and 1955 were applicable to Taliban and AlQaeda captives from Afghanistan or alleged Iraqi insurgents. In January, 2002, Department of Justice lawyers John Yoo and Robert J.Delahunty argued in a memo that Afghanistan captives flown to Guantanamo had no standing in international or American law (under the Geneva Conventions regarding prisoners of war) because Afghanistan was a “failed state” and, besides, the military detention facility at Guantanamo was not part of the US territory. Thus, the wretched captives were completely at the mercy of the US Armed Forces and their commanderinchief, George W.Bush. The memo (published by Newsweek magazine) went on to claim that, nevertheless, the president could still put the prisoners on trial—for instance before military tribunals—for violating those same laws because his constitutional authority as commander-in-chief “to prosecute the war effectively” was absolute. Even American courts and Congress—in a system of ubiquitous checks and balances under a separation of powers—could not challenge his war-related actions.63 It should be obvious to anyone who has ever served in combat, of course, that such international treaties also protect American soldiers from abuse, should they ever fall into enemy hands, not to mention the possible need to try abusive enemy soldiers. It is very unwise to ignore the Golden Rule in such matters: Treat others as you would like to be treated some day— unless, of course, you are under the illusion that you will always win and be in total control. The two Justice lawyers, especially lead author Yoo, who is now a Berkeley law professor, also crafted several other memos that severely restricted the possible application of Habeas Corpus rights—i.e. the control of US courts over prisoners—and the international torture convention to Guantanamo. Despite strenuous objections of the State Department and against the better judgment of the Pentagon’s Judge Advocates General (JAGs), but with the support of White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzalez and

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Defense Department general counsel William J.Haynes, the Bush administration had evidently decided that these “quaint, out-of-date rules of international law” should not be permitted to interfere with the extraction of information from its imprisoned “terrorist suspects.” The revelations about the responsibility of President Bush and key legal personnel in his team belatedly drew attention away from the pictures of prison abuses in Abu Ghraib where Bush and the Pentagon brass were quick to deflect accountability downward, onto the lowliest military police and intelligence agents, the “rotten apples in the barrel.” Better yet, blame the snarling dog in the picture, the one that bit the naked, cowering prisoner: Bad dog! At this point, unfortunately, the so-called handover date for Iraq, June 30, drew nearer in the midst of explosions of violence all over the occupied country. And the rival conventions of the presidential campaign and the campaign itself began to draw the weak public scrutiny into their respective pales: The Republican camp followers were not interested in a negative focus on their candidate and the Democrats tried hard to “present a positive image” of their own campaign to the sleepy electorate through the amnesia of the summer. The White House lawyers finally released a collection of documents they thought would exonerate the president: Among other arguments they tried to quibble over the meaning of the word “torture,” as President Clinton in far less ominous circumstances had quibbled over the meaning of the word “is.” There were no fewer than eight in-house investigations under way by the Defense Department, none with representatives from outside the Pentagon. A military judge insisted that Abu Ghraib could not simply be razed, as Bush had suggested, because it was a crime scene under investigation. Higher-ups in the military should indeed be summoned to testify— although Secretary Rumsfeld was inexplicably spared dismissal by the president himself. The issues had already been broached long ago by foreign complaints and criticisms of detention at Guantanamo. Books had been written and reviewed. A letter to Congress “regarding recent human rights issues in Iraq” had been signed by over 500 American law professors who left no doubt what they thought of the specious legal reasoning in the Pentagon and White House.64 Notable advocates such as Scott Horton of the International League of Human Rights and chair of a New York Bar Association report on the rights of detainees and Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch weighed in with commentary. Major newspapers like the New York Times, Denver Post, and Washington Post compiled cases of scores of deaths resulting from mistreatment in Afghanistan and Iraq and tried to unscramble the confusion of channels of command at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere: Who did what, and how did military intelligence, military police, private security contractors, and local and regional military commanders fit into the shameful process of abuse?65 Did it really originate in the brute customs of Afghanistan’s civil wars and get imported, along with the torture specialists from Guantanamo, to Iraq? Since April, 2004, when the US Supreme Court had agreed to hear a suit brought by a Guantanamo prisoner, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, challenging his intended trial by military tribunal—his attorney, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, had to bring the suit under his own name—the gates of the secretive fortress of abusive military detention were about to open wide.66 Even the International Red Cross (ICRC) which had remonstrated unsuccessfully since summer, 2003 and was often turned away from the prison gates at Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo (in violation of the international laws of war) now began to reach the public’s ear; traditionally, it cannot

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turn to the public for support against uncooperative military authorities. Now it related that the military prison conditions were the worst the ICRC had seen since World War One.

An International Criminal Court It would have been surprising indeed if the new Bush administration, in the long months before 9/11 had agreed to sign the Rome Protocols for an International Criminal Court no matter how strongly the consensus among America’s allies (save Israel) favored it, nations that saw in it the next best hope for the rule of law in the international world. In an interview with Charlie Rose on PBS, Samantha Powers, an expert on the Rwandan genocide, explained just how President Bush had lost the support of the civilized world for going into Iraq without the UN. She cited in particular “the shameful American rejection of the International Criminal Court (ICC)” and the Hague Invasion Act with which Congress threatened a military invasion of the Netherlands—an active participant of the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq—if the international court in The Hague should dare to try any US officials for war crimes.67 We explained above how unlikely such a prosecution is—because of the safeguards in the ICC Treaty, not because Americans are incapable of war crimes or genocide—so that this bit of Congressional gunboat diplomacy really amounts only to gratuitous threats and insults from “rogue state America,” the imperial superpower. More sinister was the blackmail of scores of small, less developed nations, threatened with retaliation of cuts in aid, if they should ever bring or tolerate such war crimes charges against American military personnel, for example with “blue-helmet,” UN humanitarian or peace-keeping missions. The idea of an ICC to try individuals (rather than states, as the International Court of Justice does in The Hague) dates back mostly to the aftermath of World War One,68 when the Peace Treaty of Versailles included a clause for such a court to try German military violators of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. The attempt went by the boards along with Wilson’s visionary plans for the League. In 1926, the League (without the US) briefly revisited the concept but took no action. At the end of World War Two, the ideas of an ICC resurfaced in the trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo for war crimes and crimes against humanity—which resulted in the imprisonment and execution of dozens of wellknown war criminals and in the Genocide Convention of 1948. This convention proposed that domestic prosecutors and courts should have first crack at war crimes, unless these agencies fail to do their duty. The following year, the Geneva Protocols on War subsumed and revised all the earlier Geneva Conventions on the treatment of wounded and sick soldiers and sailors, of POWs, and of civilians in war. The era of the Cold War suppressed further prosecutions, but not the massive violations such as the murder of an estimated two million Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge. After the end of the Cold War, the UN picked up the project again and, in 1998, at a Rome Conference on the ICC, among 160 representatives of UN member states and 235 of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the Rome Statute for the ICC was finalized after contentious negotiations with the US and a handful of other states.69 By 2002, more than the required 60 nations had signed up—but not the US, whose cooperation is needed for optimal effect of the court—and on July 1 the ICC Statute became valid international law.

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To take action against persons accused of major human rights offenses requires the commitment of the country of residence to prosecute according to the letter of the treaty which also refers to other valid international law, for example the Geneva updates of 1977 and 1978 or the 1980 UN Conventions suppressing the use of weapons “deemed excessively injurious” to combatants and civilians.70 Failing such prosecution, an independent prosecutor in The Hague can initiate action. In the meantime, several ad hoc international criminal tribunals have begun to tackle some of the horrendous mass murders of recent years—in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, East Timor, and Sierra Leone. There is, however, still a widespread and deeply rooted climate of tolerance among nations towards massive slaughter, not to mention deliberate obstruction by the one remaining superpower of the Cold War, and so there is little hope that the scourge of war crimes and genocide can really be banished in the near future.71 Since the revelations about the prison scandals of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere, and the American rejection and sabotage of the ICC, we should not be surprised that “the US is no longer [considered] the country to go to regarding violations of human rights,” according to former General and NATO commander Wesley Clark. “If you take away justice from states,” wrote the orator Cicero in ancient Rome, “you have nothing but big bands of robbers (iustitia remota quod sunt regna sed magna latrocinia).” Without the beacon of justice, how can the city on a hill retain the respect and admiration of the world?

5 REVISITING PRESIDENT BUSH’S ELECTION Why revisit the presidential elections of 2000? There is a variety of reasons, beginning with the desire to know how much of the divisive policies that produced the great European-American rift were clearly part of the choice facing the voters in 2000. Was it the American electorate, in other words, that knowingly made this choice—as it appeared to do after the fact with Bush’s reelection in 2004—or was it only presidential candidate Bush and his team who wanted to veer in this direction after the elections? We have seen that some of the basic documents of Bush’s foreign policies, such as PNAC or Rebuilding America’s Defenses, had been publicized earlier, but they were hardly known to the wider voting public, given the anti-political slant of the media. We also showed that the big pre-9/11 confrontations, over the Kyoto Protocols, the new unilateral and imperialist stance of America, and the ICC were solidly embedded in broad policy directions, environmental, military-industrial (and budgetary), and international laworiented of the winning party of 2000. But were they discussed in any depth in this campaign?

Campaign issues of Bush and Gore To be sure, it is quite typical of elections in democratic countries for foreign policies to play a rather secondary, at least less visible, role in national elections than do domestic issues—short of the threat of war. Foreign policy experience is not necessarily an asset of presidential candidates in American politics. In the presidential reelection campaign of Bush Sr in 1992, the father of the current president had jeered that his dog, Millie, “knew more about foreign affairs than these two bozos,” meaning Clinton and Gore—both infinitely more knowledgeable in foreign policy than Bush Jr—but the bozos beat him handily in the end. In the last presidential debate of 2000, less than 10 percent of the questions of the audience for Gore and Bush Jr dealt with foreign policy. Nevertheless, the American public in its wisdom thought Bush and Gore equally competent in foreign policy, according to the polls—and this after Bush’s initial ignorance and Gore’s 20 years of hands-on experience had long become a matter of public knowledge. When asked which candidate might be “better for military preparedness,” 62 percent singled out the Texas National Guard Airman Bush over Vietnam veteran Gore (with 33 percent), and a narrow majority also gave Bush the edge regarding American policy in the Middle East.1 In a Newsweek poll at about the time of the USS Cole terrorist bombing, however, 49 percent of the respondents preferred Gore regarding foreign policy (versus 40 percent for Bush), and 50 percent (versus 38 percent) named Bush as their preference on national

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defense. 51 percent (versus 42 percent) credited Gore as a “strong and decisive leader,” according to a Time/CNN poll, and 52 percent (vs. 42 percent) as a likely “international leader.”2 The AlQaeda attack on the USS Cole was widely considered a test of sorts of their capacity as leaders, but since they both expressed outrage and vowed retaliation if the guilty were found, this was hardly a true test. In the presidential elections of 2000, even the domestic policy issues remained rather vague in many cases and were distorted by the accidental stresses of the debate between the chief contenders: Faced with a Democratic contender of solid credentials on social policies, for example, George W. Bush could not just emphasize his conservatism and conservative values, but had to stress his “compassionate conservatism,” a variation on his father’s theme of “a kinder, gentler society” of eight years earlier. It left open the question who were to be the beneficiaries of this compassion—“the millionaires,” some detractors insisted, relating compassion to the great tax cut of $1.3 trillion promised for taxpayers “across the board.” Many interpreted his compassion to be aimed at the unborn children for whose benefit the newly inaugurated president indeed took prompt action by rescinding Clinton’s actions on the subject. Others related compassion to Bush’s great education initiative, promptly enacted over considerable resistance as the No Child Left Behind Act, but then neglected shamefully in funding. A politician who loves children, unborn or in school, creates a very positive image, especially in a country where many minority children nearly always get “left behind,” and also in a party which, under Newt Gingrich’s ultras, was trying to abolish the entire federal Department of Education only a few years earlier. Many also considered compassionate conservatism as of one piece with Bush’s new emphasis on bringing America’s churches, a traditional source of compassion, into providing various social services from which they had hitherto been banned under the separation of church and state. To be sure, politicians often hide details of domestic policy behind broad symbolic appeals, such as the popular American obsession with outlawing the burning or defacing of the flag—in a country where the flag often is part of commercial advertisements of just about any merchandise or is worn as part of clothing, including sports clothing. In this case, Republican politicians in 2000 often liked to orate about “bringing honor and integrity back to the White House,” a reference to the Lewinsky scandal of 1998 and the charge that President Clinton had somehow dishonored the Lincoln bedroom of the White House by rewarding political friends and contributors with overnight stays in that room. Democrats for their part may have thought that in those drunken debauches of young George W.Bush there surely must have been some women and drugs present, too, but they were too squeamish to investigate or to bring up this possibility.3 These were not really issues of domestic policy though they seem to have preoccupied many a traditional voter. Looking farther afield on the domestic side, there were, of course, the environmental issues highlighted by Gore’s well-known record and writings (Earth in the Balance), which may have forced Bush’s position far from its Reaganite precedents. Gore strongly endorsed the emission caps of the Kyoto Protocols, having participated in their preparation. Bush was willing only to go so far as to hope for voluntary action on the part of corporations and leave the rest to the states.4 The ample finance sources of the Bush campaign, as we have seen, included heavy support from precisely the industries we discussed in the preceding chapter, but these facts were not widely known and rarely covered by the media.5 Bush never seems to have shown his

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negative opinion about global warming. But on September 24, 2000, he actually promised to make the electric power plants abide by the emission limits in the Clean Air Act. Upon election, of course, it did not take him long to “flip-flop” on this issue. His contribution to the nation’s energy policy was to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR), even though the effects of such a huge new venture were not expected to pay off for the nation—only for the oil companies involved—for at least 10– 12 years. Both candidates were in favor of drilling elsewhere.6 The biggest fight of the 2000 election was over the issue of what to do with the enormous budget surplus, perhaps as much as $5 trillion expected—if with doubts and trepidation—during the next 10 years. According to public opinion polls, as many as 66 percent preferred to use it to pay off the national debt and, from the savings in interest on the debt, help to fund the coming gap (with the aging of America) in Social Security and Medicare. If there was to be a big tax cut, 55 percent wanted to see it used to help middle and lower income families pay for college for their children and for their own needs of long-term nursing care. The big tax cut advocated by Bush, $1.3 trillion over 10 years, was meant to cut back the role of government, he said, and to drop 6 million low income taxpayers off the tax rolls.7 Gore—who wanted to support a tax cut of only $500 billion—called it a “windfall for the rich.” Senator John McCain dubbed it “fiscally irresponsible” and a threat to the future of Social Security and Medicare.8 Candidate Bush notably flubbed his supporting arguments on the campaign trail; at one time he even confused trillions and billions, as he defended himself against the withering attacks from the Gore camp.9 When he was challenged, he did supply details—such as his plans for personal Social Security savings accounts, school vouchers, and partial financing for senior prescription drugs—but he also encountered a good deal of suspicion towards these schemes. Still, he made a respectable showing in the polls on these issues: Respondents preferred Gore’s solutions on “saving Social Security” by only 47 percent to 39 percent, and on education—Bush’s compassionate-conservative, flagship issue—Gore was ahead only 44 percent to 42 percent, even though he promised to put far more money into it.10 Both sides, in any case, succeeded in attaching telling pejorative labels to each other: Bush was “for the rich and powerful,” and Gore was “for Big Government.”11 In foreign policy, as will be recalled from Chapter 3, candidate Bush had a notably weak start and, after some coaching by Condi Rice, still was very much the object of criticism and condescension on the part of his opponent Gore. Bush’s emphasis on American humility in the world and promise of a “distinctly American internationalism” gave no clue to what was to come after the election though, with the benefit of hindsight, we can guess that he might have meant his pseudo-Wilsonian (neo-conservative) urge to force democracy upon all the world. He certainly never communicated his consuming hatred for Saddam Hussein to the electorate—at least not to the extent that one could have guessed he would start a war against Iraq. But there were some signs, at least with the benefit of hindsight, that he, his speech-writers, or stand-ins like Dick Cheney or Jesse Helms had little patience with Gore’s emphasis on transatlantic ties and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which a Republican-dominated Senate had not even wanted to discuss in 1999.12 He strongly advocated increasing the defense budget which his predecessor Clinton had neglected but—he gave few details—seemed more inclined towards better pay and training for the military than to see it “overdeployed” abroad. Once in office, of course, military pay (also veterans’ pay and services), training

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and equipment, and overdeployment (particularly of reserves and National Guard) in Iraq and Afghanistan became continual objects of criticism. Most of the actual military budget increase, it seems, went to defense contractors and to profiteering companies like Halliburton and Bechtel in Iraq. Towards the UN, Bush took a Helmsian stance of disrespect—he said he would never put American troops under UN command—and expressed a desire to cut US financial obligations to the world organization. He never mentioned international law, war crimes trials, or the Geneva Conventions. There were other aspects of that 2000 election that seem very relevant to the themes of this book. One of them is the question, raised, for example, (but not only) by third party candidate Ralph Nader—Nader, the traitor, as many Democrats came to call him because his egocentric candidacy helped Bush into the White House—whether there was really a significant difference between Bush and Gore who both appeared to be toadies of big American corporations.13 Bush’s first term certainly answered this query. Another aspect is the question whatever happened to the Republican ultras who, under Newt Gingrich in 1998/1999, had been hell-bent on overthrowing President Clinton with no regard for the Constitution.14 A dominant group in the party and instrumental in the deregulation and tax cut mania behind the biggest corporate scandals, the ultras were persuaded to lie low during the presidential campaign and kept off the program of the presidential convention, perhaps because they were seen as too aggressive by the wider public. After 9/11, however, some of them, including Gingrich himself, have come back to wield considerable influence in the Republican party in Congress and in business and finance. None of the issues before the voters gave much of an inkling of what was to come if they elected Bush rather than Gore. But the biggest reason for revisiting the presidential elections of 2000, by any measure, was the great political upheaval, both in the US and abroad, over the Florida election which clinched—or did it?—the election of George W.Bush as the forty-third president of the US, leader of the free world. Was he really legitimately elected or was the election “stolen?” His opponent Gore actually won the popular vote throughout the US, but not in Florida if the final, certified totals there are correct. The Constitution specifies that the winner have a majority of votes in the Electoral College for which a win in Florida, again, was crucial. The electors are equal in number with—but never identical to—the number of Senators and Representatives from each state which gives the small states, and the Republicans, an edge over the more populous states. Foreign observers have long found the Electoral College quaint and its role hard to reconcile with principles of democracy. The question of whether the Florida election was stolen also involved a major and very suspicious purge of the voter rolls before the elections, contentious recounts, and court battles all the way up to the US Supreme Court which, by low procedural tricks, as some say, usurped the power to award the presidency de facto to George Bush. The huge uproar around the world, the recurrent references to the “accidental president George Bush” (The Economist), and the reverberations to this day of possible electoral fraud behind the most powerful elective office in the world make revisiting that election necessary.

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A dull campaign The presidential election campaign of 2000 had been long and rather uneventful. It was boring because both sides were trying so hard not to appear combative for fear of alarming the voters who had so emphatically expressed their displeasure of partisan hardball, especially at the excesses of hostility of the impeachment drive against President Clinton in 1998/ 1999. “But this was a contest,” according to Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian, “billed as a snoozathlon between two dull second-raters.”15 Vice President Gore’s campaign drew mixed reactions even from his Democratic sympathizers. The presidential debates in which he was expected to shine were mere “duelling litanies” and he appeared “defensive and muzzled to the point that he seemed to be sitting in a crouch.” He also had to endure a degree of media bias not unlike that directed earlier at Clinton.16 According to some analysts like CNN’s Jeff Greenfield, Gore was hurt by association with Clinton’s scandals, while some criticized him for not sticking closer to the spectacular campaigner Clinton and to the fabulous economic success of the Clinton-Gore years when the stock market rose above 10,000 and perennial budget deficits turned into surpluses. Gore’s in-between stand between the Clinton-Gore record and wanting to be his own man resulted in the paradoxical message, in the words of the London Economist: “We are prosperous as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.”17 The Economist in fact endorsed Bush and so did the National Review. In the Republican primaries, candidate Bush had $67 million in his campaign hoard from the very beginning and the money soon grew by another 50 percent. Obviously expertly advised, he first outmaneuvered his rightwing rivals by going to the right, then wore out the charismatic Senator John McCain in bible-belt South Carolina, and finally went into a comfortable, two-digit lead over Gore after the Republican convention. Gore had disposed handily of his Democratic primary rival, the soft-spoken, professorial exSenator Bill Bradley. He caught up with Bush only after the Democratic convention where he firmly established his much-applauded independence as a candidate from President Clinton, and showed his credentials as a family man (unlike Clinton) with his famous public kiss and embrace of his wife, Tipper. Gore’s celebrated choice of Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut as his running mate—the first Jew who might become president—was also perceived by many as a slap to Clinton, whom Lieberman had publicly berated in the midst of the Lewinsky scandal of 1998. Foreign correspondents in the US were puzzled by Gore about whom Sylvie Kauffmann wrote in Le Monde: Clinton’s successor will inherit “a formidable economic balance sheet,” and yet the vice president was keeping the president at a distance.18 The gargantuan surplus expected, with estimates running up to over $5 trillion, also did not escape the attention of predatory interests and of the Republican tax cut faction in Congress as soon as the victory of George W.Bush seemed assured. While the voters had been rather lukewarm about the great tax cut, the tax cutters immediately agitated for a cut of at least $1.6 trillion in income taxes over 10 years—most of it for the wealthy— and the abolition of the marriage penalty and the estate tax (the latter also applying only to rather large inheritances). They were in a hurry because signs of a serious recession

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began to rise on the horizon, and they wanted to bring in the harvest, in which they had invested so much. The election proved a great disappointment to Vice President Gore, whose ultimate failure to win the Electoral College cost him the final prize, by the narrowest of margins. Gore did not even carry his own state, Tennessee, or Clinton’s state, Arkansas. Nevertheless he obtained a national popular plurality, 540,000 votes ahead of George W.Bush—some observers believe that the last-minute revelations about the unadmitted drunk charge of Bush may have cost him at least this many votes. Gore came within a hair of winning the Electoral College vote which finally hinged on winning the 25 electoral votes of Florida: the vote was so close that it was not clear for 36 days after the election who had won. When the media suggested in the last weeks of the campaign that there might be a split decision, with Bush winning the popular vote and Gore only the Electoral College, some Republican hotheads immediately swore they would never accept a verdict based only on Gore winning the anachronistic Electoral College. As Le Monde correspondent Patrice de Beer reported on the eve of the elections, Republican exCongressman Bill Frenzel had called it “an anachronism, a denial of a democratic electoral system.”19 When the split turned out the other way, however, Gore responded that he had no intention to challenge what the Constitution prescribed. He did challenge the murky Florida election count until the US Supreme Court, in a five-to-four partisan decision, tipped the scales in favor of Bush. Ralph Nader, the Green party candidate, received enough votes nation-wide and in key states including Florida to deny Gore the victory. George W. thus won the Electoral College by the minimum required, for a total of 271 votes. The competition for Congress had a similarly close result: The Senate for the first time since 1880 ended up dead even between Democrats and Republicans, and the Republican House majority was reduced to a mere nine seats. The news media both in the US and abroad made valiant efforts to understand the unfolding drama of the presidential elections in Florida: To start with, they first claimed Florida for Gore because estimates of the Voter News Service, following earlier and exit polls, had found about 15,000 more Gore than Bush voters. This first erroneous guess was then reversed by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel, or rather by a first cousin of Mr Bush (John Ellis) who worked for Fox. The rest of the media then adopted the new, pro-Bush estimate. After a while, the media switched to a diagnosis that “it was too close to call.” The to-and-fro to follow conjured up familiar images in many minds: “The old South with its corrupt political machinery, favoritism, racism, intimidation, rowdy crowds and payoffs,” as one reader’s letter put it in the Los Angeles Times.20 Others familiar with Latin American versions of democracy pointed to the familial ties of George W. with ex-president Bush, his father, and the fact that his brother, Jeb, was governor of Florida at the time of the alleged election irregularities. The foreign press had a field day with this. Some media voices both in the US and abroad, on the other hand, tried to put forth the best angle on an embarrassing situation by pointing out that the uncertainty of the outcome really underlined the ultimate fairness of decentralized democracy in America, and this was a fine lesson in the intricacies of democratic procedure. This was also the line adopted by “the ever-school-marmish Gore” (Jonathan Freedland). But it was not much of an excuse for such reported discrepancies as completed ballots strewn across

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tables and on the floors of counting rooms, “chads” (the punchouts of punchcard ballots) of every description all over, dimpled, pregnant, or two-cornered, or the stories told by some: A locked ballot box was said to have been found in a hotel room a few days after the elections, but it turned out to contain not ballots but only pencils and scratch paper. In another case, a ballot box was said to have been seen in a bus or taxi. Two men allegedly stole a Palm Beach voting machine complete with butterfly ballots, and tried to sell it on the Internet. The worst were the complaints of African-American voters about chicanery and intimidation. As Peter Preston, the Washington correspondent of The Guardian put it: “When the wagons of democracy are so rickety, it’s no surprise if wheels fall off.”21

The chad fight of Palm Beach To almost everyone’s surprise, the closeness of the contest, really a statistical tie, turned the seeming indifference and boredom of the parties and the electorate overnight into the most passionate clashes of opinion. “Sooner or later,” to quote Greenfield again, “a presidential election with a hundred and one million voters would come down to a single state, [with]…a statewide difference of 0.005 percent of the [statewide] total.”22 First of all, the closeness of the contest, a few hundred votes out of six million in Florida, triggered an automatic machine recount under relevant state law. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the highest election authority in the state and co-chair of the Bush campaign, had announced that Bush had won by 1,784 votes, but an Associated Press survey calling every county but Seminole revised this down to about a margin of 229. This first recount in any event did not satisfy the Gore camp even though their candidate had already conceded to Bush by telephone and then took back his concession as premature, having been told meanwhile of the many irregularities and possible election fraud. Newspapers also reported that some counties did the automatic recount in a rather slipshod fashion, merely checking if their original machine figures were correctly reported. There were literally thousands of complaints from individual voters and the Democrats employed nearly 50 volunteers to collect them for possible later use in lawsuits. In West Palm Beach the first protesters’ lawsuits were filed by voters complaining that their socalled “butterfly ballots” were misleading and illegal in that they did not conform to the formula of Florida law which requires that the bubble to be marked always be to the right of the name of the candidate. These bubbles, moreover, had to be punched through, which often produced invalid votes when the punching mechanism either was not aligned properly, failed to punch out a “chad,” or left more or less ambiguous marks on it. More than 29,000 ballots in Palm Beach County (about 4 percent) were thrown out because they either included votes for more than one presidential candidate (over-votes) or had no votes punched (under-votes). The “sunshine test” of the three-member election canvassing committee of Palm Beach County at first simply declared all seemingly Democratic ballots valid if they could see the light through the punch hole. Later they would look to see if three corners of the chad had been dislodged, and in Broward County, the election committee also accepted so-called “dimpled” or “pregnant” (concave) chads as evidence of the “voter’s intent” prescribed by the law.23

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There are large concentrations of elderly voters in Palm Beach, mostly retirees from New York and other colder climes, many of them liberal Jews who had been refugees and survivors from Hitler’s Europe. Many now protested that the confusing ballot had made them vote inadvertently for the national populist Reform party candidate Pat Buchanan instead of Gore. In an interview on NBC, Buchanan himself admitted that it was unlikely that he had received an extra 3,000 votes in this area. Some voters demanded that the election be held again, two weeks hence, which was a constitutional impossibility. When the manual examination of 4,600 Palm Beach ballots resulted in finding 19 more votes for Gore, election officials ordered a recount of 460,000 in this heavily Democratic county because a proportional Gore share of all ballots would have exceeded Bush’s advantage so far. Palm Beach’s and some other counties’ butterfly ballots were also flawed by the sheer number of presidential candidates, ten, who could not be placed easily on one page of the ballot. Instead they were spread over two pages and arranged so as to face each other, rather than in one vertical row. Many new Democratic voters, especially in the Jacksonville area, had been told by their own election workers to “mark every page” which led some to over-vote, that is vote for more than one presidential candidate, thereby invalidating their ballots. In Palm Beach, many voters complained, moreover, that precinct workers had turned away their questions and refused to help those who discovered that they had spoiled their ballots. As complaints from all parts of the state flooded in, the language between the two camps became shrill and shriller. Street protests and demonstrations erupted in Palm Beach, as Republicans ridiculed the “stupidity” of voters who were confused by the ballots while Democrats railed at the local election supervisor, Theresa LaPore (a Democrat), who had designed the butterfly ballot. The first moment of truth seemed to come with a Democratic challenge to the authority of Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, in the Leon County Circuit Court. The hearings before Judge Terry Lewis produced two almost prophetic quotes for the future. A Gore lawyer, Dexter Douglas, said: The issue is does Florida stand up for an honest vote, [one] that people in other countries can look to and say that the US has honest elections, or are there elections where some bureaucrat writes a letter and says, you lose, your vote doesn’t count. And the judge asked a Bush lawyer: “How could you possibly do a manual recount…without enough time? It seems kind of futile to give someone an option for a manual recount, but no opportunity to do it.”24 It was at this point, barely a week after the balloting, that the Florida post-election developments crossed a line between the predictable partisan squabbles and election snafus and an obvious attempt to hi-jack the people’s decision. It consisted in Harris’ announcement (November 15) that she would reject all requests from various counties (especially Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach) to update their election tallies in the light of hand recounts conducted there. To quote the New York Times’ Richard Berke, it was “a clear tactical move to freeze the election results in Bush’s favor.”25 Judge Lewis had advised “discretion” in whether to accept later returns (other than the absentee ballots due November 17) but she simply chose to preempt all recounts.

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Harris’ highhanded coup was likely to trigger an avalanche of lawsuits. A further moment of truth came when the vice president, in a dramatic address on national television, proposed to drop all further legal challenges if the Texas governor agreed to a full statewide manual recount which, very likely, would have produced additional Bush votes too in heavily Republican rural counties. Bush, who had kept out of sight on his ranch, rejected this option out of hand on national television. Harris turned down the recount results in two counties, claiming that her “unambiguous” filing dead-lines left her no choice but to make an issue of a recount being even a few minutes late.

Competing charges of election theft At this time, the absentee ballots had not even been counted as yet, but the stakes were very high. Both sides had brought in platoons of attorneys headed, respectively, by two former US secretaries of state, James A. Baker III for Bush and Warren Christopher for Gore. There were easily 30 to 50 lawyers present whenever the matter moved into a court room. There were loud accusations on both sides alleging major conspiracies to “steal the elections.” Republicans, in particular, insisted that there was a major Democratic theft attempt afoot which they believed they saw in the Democratic efforts to recount the vote manually. As compared to the somewhat halfhearted Democrats, the Republicans were determined to win this contest, if necessary by “going nuclear.” The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post spoke of Gore’s recount strategy as a “coup détat.” Conservative columnist George Will spoke of Gore’s “serial mendacity” and his “corrupting hunger for power.” Michael Kelly (National Journal) referred to the “hacks and thugs” in the Gore campaign and Tom DeLay, the Majority Whip in the House, solemnly proclaimed: “What we are witnessing is the theft of an election.”26 For his part, Warren Christopher announced reassuringly: “I don’t…think we’re on the edge of a constitutional crisis. And we don’t intend to provoke a constitutional crisis.” One favorite argument of pundits and media people was also that the American people were becoming restless and upset over the growing delays. As Gerald Lubenow wrote, however, “while the media bloviated about constitutional crises and an illegitimate presidency, the people…seemed willing to accept the fact that things could be a bit messy and still produce an acceptable outcome.”27 There were further protests and lawsuits, especially from African-Americans alleging a denial of their right to vote by such means as illegal early closing of polling stations, roadblocks, and inaccuracies in the voting lists, for example deletion of names for alleged criminal convictions. Many potential Gore voters discovered at the polling station that their names had been removed from the voter rolls for alleged felony convictions. Baker arrived three days after the elections with what appears, with the benefit of hindsight, to have been a full-fledged battle plan for snatching victory from possible electoral defeat. It is small consolation that at least half of his tactical steps turned out to be unnecessary to achieve his goal, and that, months later, the media recounts of under-votes and over-votes in any case confirmed the hopeless irresolvability of the Florida tie. What was Baker’s strategy? When he arrived in Florida, Bush’s advantage of 1,784 votes had already been trimmed by the automatic recount to less than one-fifth of that amount and the Gore campaign was requesting manual recounts in populous, and heavily

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Democratic, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, Broward, and Volusia Counties. If possession is half the law, as lawyers like to say, having a Republican lead, however small and shrinking, was crucial. And so the first step was obviously for Baker to claim that Bush had already won, that the decision fell on the very first count, and that George W. should immediately begin arrangements for his transition to the presidency and pick his cabinet. Baker’s initiative happily coincided with the partisan and social sense of entitlement of the Republican business and professional clientele in the suburbs of the nation: “Of course we have won. Who are these Democratic protesters? Where did they come from? Why can’t these Democratic voters read their ballot instructions?” As early as November 9, in “what had the ring of a truncated…acceptance speech,” Bush even promised “to unite the nation [and] bring people together after one of the most exciting elections in our nation’s history”. Baker sanctimoniously invoked “constitutional government,” “the rule of law,” and even “our standing in the world” as relevant to his victory claims.28 However, the transition office in Washington would not cooperate and hand its keys over to Bush’s transition team. But Baker’s strategy had made its point of declaring victory and moving on despite the obvious resistance to his interpretation of the facts. Baker’s second step was to attack manual recounts as a legitimate election corrective. Of course, manual recounts have been employed at all levels (save for president) in Florida and in most other states. They are the preferred method for resolving electoral disputes throughout the country and in other democracies too. Texas Governor George W.Bush himself had just signed a Texas statute that provided for manual recounts whenever needed in his state, and there had been earlier Republican plans to request hand recounts of the close presidential tallies in Oregon, Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Mexico. Florida law also allows for manual recounts as long as they are requested within 72 hours of the elections. It was rather outrageous therefore of the Baker propaganda machine to suddenly make manual recounts appear illegitimate. Republican liberals like Governors Whitman, Pataki, and Racicot were marshalled to pour scorn on the very idea of a recount. It was even more absurd for Baker to claim: “the more often ballots are recounted, especially by hand, the more likely it is that human errors, like lost ballots and other risks, will be introduced. This frustrates the very reason why we have moved from hand counting to machine counting.”29 Even the manufacturer of the controversial punchcard machines promptly disagreed with this statement. Baker’s third step was to stop or delay those menacing recounts by any means, foul or fair. In fact, after accusing the Gore campaign right upon his arrival of “unduly prolong[ing] the country’s national elections” and “unending legal wrangling,” it was actually the Bush campaign that first filed suit (November 11) in US District Court for Southern Florida to block the manual recounts. Submitted on behalf of Bush and Cheney and seven Floridians, the suit claimed that the recount might injure their voting rights under the First Amendment and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It requested a temporary restraining order to prevent irreparable harm to the presidential transition(!). A large part of the blocking of recounts was to be done by Katherine Harris who took advantage of conflicting statutory deadlines and the possibility that recount results could be ignored if they failed to meet the stringent deadlines. She also temporarily stopped recounts by challenging their legality, or held back their start, as in Palm Beach, by endless delays, false starts, and Republican court challenges. In Miami-Dade, another Democratic-leaning county, never-ending delays and

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finally the Republican “mini-riot” of Capitol Hill staffers, called from Washington and invading the premises of the canvassing board, persuaded the board to halt its recount. The game of manipulating deadlines—really a fourth step of the Baker strategy—and running out the clock by stopping and delaying the recounts was brought to its decisive climax by none other than the conservative majority of the US Supreme Court which stopped all recounts (December 9), allegedly until it could hear the contending parties and make a decision itself. It finally did so at 10 p.m. on the day of the prescribed deadline, December 12, ruling that a more ambitious kind of recount under identical counting standards thoughout the entire state could indeed take place, but that regrettably there was not enough time left for this now. December 12 was supposed to be the end of the “safe haven” period during which the electoral slates from each state were safe from constitutional challenge by Congress. Republican strategy in any case had provided a double line of defense, with the Republican state legislature preparing its own slate of presidential electors in case the Florida Supreme Court’s recounts created new facts on the ground, namely a Gore majority. The Republican House majority then would have rejected a Gore slate in favor of a slate put forth by the Florida legislature. This would have been step five had it been needed.30 Republican campaign officials claimed they were very concerned that once lawyers got involved and courts were making crucial decisions, that judges at various levels might get in the way of their strategy. They need not have worried, for most Florida judges, even if they were Democrats or had been appointed by Democratic administrations, ruled in their favor anyway. Even the Florida Supreme Court, all Democratic judges, was fairly divided in its decisions in this election. When it finally overruled Judge Saunder Sauls and permitted manual recounts to go on, however, step six of the Baker strategy evidently called for a withering blast at the authority of all judges, “unelected by the people.” Baker proclaimed that he “would never accept” this court verdict of the Florida high court. House Republican Whip Tom DeLay orated that the court had “distorted the judicial process into nothing more than a mechanism for providing Al Gore with a victory he was unable to win on November seventh…This judicial aggression must not stand.” The archconservative Weekly Standard of Washington called it “an act of judicial usurpation.” Baker also refused to promise that the Bush camp would abide by a possible US Supreme Court decision if it went against their cause. And finally, step seven of the Baker strategy, there was the slogan of “the Democrats stealing the election” at the precise moment that the Republicans were well on their way to success in doing just that. A grand headline, “Thou Shalt not Steal,” graced the cover of the National Review (December 4) without further elaboration and the same slogan was passionately adopted by the Weekly Standard of the same week. Thus the Baker strategy appeared as one designed to bring off such a major heist under the cover of making it seem like a merely defensive maneuver against those thieving Democrats. None of this, of course, is conclusive evidence that the Republican campaign actually stole the 2000 presidential election, only that they carefully and perhaps unnecessarily plotted to do so. The real clues lay elsewhere. Curiously, it was the Republican journals that reminded the public of the precedent of the conservative revolutionaries gunning for President Clinton: “Yes, it’s beginning to feel just like [Clinton’s] impeachment,” wrote Pomuru in a piece called “Here we go again: Impeachment redux” in the National Review,31 although he was of course accusing

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the Democrats of ignoring the law and the Constitution, without giving details, both in 1998 and 2000. There was continuity in the media spell of the vast rightwing conspiracy which tried to falsify due process and constitutional law in pursuit of its extraordinary hatred of Clinton in 1993–2000, even though the media were no longer united now in singing its tune. There was continuity also in that the struggle was for the interpretation of the elections, not the hard numbers of votes cast, or the intent of each voter, just as there had been a furious struggle for maintaining the impeachers’ spin of events, not the facts themselves or the adverse public opinion polls. The more the conspirators complained about the “spin machine” of the Clinton White House of 1998/1999, the more they were really pushing their own interpretation. Furthermore, the main purpose of the impeachment campaign, after all, had been the attempt to win the equivalent of an electoral victory against the twice-elected president—to throw him out of office— “without counting the votes” of the mandate he had won in 1996. It was this effort to bypass the result of a legitimate democratic election that made the bogus impeachment of 1998 a coup attempt in the eyes of many Americans and the European press.32

The battle in the courts The Gore officials had requested manual recounts in four heavily Democratic counties, Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia. The last two started right away. A federal judge, Don Middlebrook, ordered the Palm Beach commission, in particular, not to certify a final recount there for the time being. Bush’s unofficial lead at this point stood at 327 votes and Bush officials rushed to seek court injunctions to block further recounts altogether. The highest Florida election official, Harris, now announced that she would certify the vote totals by her statutory deadline, one week after the actual election. Leon County Judge Terry Lewis confirmed her authority to make this decision but added that, if she used her discretion, she could also choose what recount totals to reject or accept. Harris thereupon demanded explanations from three of the counties that had started recounts and declared the next day that, except for the absentee ballots from overseas, she would not accept any more recount figures. Regarding her deadline and its requested waiver, she reportedly sent out a tongue-in-cheek e-mail message to her staff which began: “The New York Mets announced today they are going to get an additional inning added to Game 5 at the end of the World Series.”33 But by this time, the Florida Supreme Court had also gotten into the act, first overruling Harris’ decision to halt all recounts and then allowing Palm Beach to proceed with the hand recount. The court consisted of seven judges, all but one appointed by Jeb Bush’s Democratic predecessor, Lawton Chiles. Both camps now filed papers in federal court, the Republicans to end all recounts, the Democrats to continue them. In spite of their stated aversion to having the courts decide the elections, both parties had resorted to judicial means to resolve them. Ten days after the presidential elections, contrary writs and court decisions were flying back and forth while the recounting went on in Palm Beach and Broward Counties. After long squabbles and delays, Palm Beach County had taken up its recount on November 17, with over 100 volunteers and in the face of a snarling Harris, who threatened not to recognize what promised to be a result in favor of Gore. In one of the funnier moments, Republicans were accusing Democrats of concealing, even eating the chads, that might

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have been produced by repeated handling of the ballots which, according to Baker, might also cause their deterioration. There were hundreds of Republican demonstrators in the streets and furious debates over dimpled and three-cornered chads were going on;34 in Broward County, John Miller, a county circuit judge had sanctioned their validity. The share of invalidated “over-votes” was even higher in Duval County (Jacksonville), where a mighty get-out-the-vote effort had brought out thousands of additional Democratic voters, especially in heavily African-American precincts, who were confused by the ballot design and by the instructions of their campaign volunteers. An estimated 15–30 percent of these new voters “messed up” their ballots which otherwise could have added thousands to Gore’s tally and helped him win the elections. There was no challenge and no recount in this heavily Republican county. In the meantime, Miami-Dade County officials had also been encouraged to join Broward and Palm Beach in a full manual recount but were slow to get under way. Dimpled chads or not, the Gore campaign had not made great gains in catching up with Bush’s lead when a major intervention, the miniriot, caused the canvassing board of Miami-Dade, the largest Democratic concentration in the state, to cease operations. Republican telephone banks had urged Miami Republicans to descend upon the Stephen P.Clark Government Center downtown while the exile-Cuban radio station Radio Mambi called upon Republican Cuban-Americans—Miami Cuban-Americans voted for Bush 4:1—to “storm downtown.” Republican congressional staff aides were brought in force from Washington, reportedly trampling and kicking people and pounding on the walls. In a vain attempt to exclude the rough demonstrators from its deliberations, the canvassing board had first retreated to an upstairs room and then shut down its operations in the face of the unruly crowds in front of the Center and inside which, without a doubt, was the intent of the rioters.35 To add to the tense situation, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Dick Cheney, a victim of three earlier heart attacks and a quadruple bypass operation, suffered a “mild heart attack,” although he was back on his feet in a few days. In the meantime (November 18), the overseas ballots had also come in and been counted, raising Bush’s official lead back up to 930 votes. A state circuit judge confirmed Harris’ discretion to refuse recount totals but the state supreme court barred her from certifying anything until it could rule on the admissibility of the recounts. The court also expressed skepticism about the reliability of the election machines and about the argument that hand recounts could be employed only in cases of machine failures. It also ruled unanimously in favor of recounts in three of the counties and set a new deadline, November 26, for counties to report the new results. After the hearing before the Florida Supreme Court, demonstrators for both sides engaged in shouting matches outside the building. “No more counts,” howled the Bush partisans and “Every vote counts” shouted the Gore supporters. Nearly six out of ten Americans in national public opinion polls wanted the recounts to continue. Many saw the Republican gambit to stall or stop the recounts as a tactic to “run out the clock” against the eventual deadlines when the electoral votes had to be turned in. When Broward County reported the final result of its recount of 588,000 ballots (November 24), it had once again halved Bush’s edge to 464 votes, but the Texas governor was still ahead. On November 19, newspapers also reported that the Republican-dominated Florida legislature had discovered—on the advice of the Republican congressional leadership— an old, obscure, never-used provision of the U.S. Code (Title 3, section 2) that would

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give it the opportunity to take matters into its own hands if, by December 12, the election had not produced a slate of electors. It was one more line of defense, “an ace in the hole for Republicans,” as the New York Times36 put it, in case the Florida election failed to produce a Republican slate. As Jeff Greenfield points out it would have been easy, if the recounts had given Gore the lead, for the Republican lawyers by hook or crook to delay the decision long enough so that a Democratic slate could not have been ready before the “safe haven” deadline of December 12 ran out.37 The Bush lawyers now appealed to the US Supreme Court to end all Florida recounts. Secretary Harris solemnly certified the election results (November 26), discounting some but not all recount totals, and declared George W.Bush the winner by 537 votes in Florida and, consequently in the Electoral College of the nation. With this official act, the race was run. The frustrated Gore now only had the option of the loser challenging the outcome, a far more difficult legal undertaking than the earlier skirmishes. The day after Bush was formally certified, Gore’s lawyers brought suit before the state supreme court to have the certification overturned and the recounts reinstated. The unanimous decision of the high court that the recount results must be included if they came in no later than November 27 was accompanied by an emphatic statement: “To allow the secretary [Harris] to summarily disenfranchise innocent electors [by setting an earlier deadline] in an effort to punish dilatory board members, as she proposed in the present case, misses the constitutional mark.” But the court had little to say about the precise standards by which the ballots were to be judged, except for mentioning the intent of the voter, as did Florida legislation: “Voters should not be disfranchised where their intent may be ascertained with reasonable certainty, simply because the chad they punched did not dislodge from the ballot,” the court ruled. “Such a failure may be attributable to the fault of the election authorities, for failing to provide properly perforated paper, or it may be the result of a voter’s disability or inadvertence. Whatever the reason, where the intention of the voter can be fairly and satisfactorily ascertained, that intention should be given effect.”38 Not everyone was prepared to accept this formula. In a harsh response, Bush attorney Baker said: “Two weeks after the elections, that court has changed the rules and has invented a new system for counting the election results…So one should not now be surprised if the Florida legislature seeks to affirm the original rules.” He was not specific as to what horrendous miscarriage of justice he might be referring to nor what exactly the Bush campaign or the legislature might do about it. A number of Republican legal actions immediately took aim at various aspects of the recounts. The Republicans in the legislature also took up the complaints and voiced their desire to convoke a special session to deal with this alleged reinterpretation of Florida electoral law. Conservative journals fulminated against the Florida high court. There were also some liberal critics of the court’s decision such as Jeffrey Rosen of the New Republic who approved only of the part allowing manual recounts to proceed. He thought that “the court vastly overplayed its hand” in the rest of the ruling, particularly by hinting that dimpled chads should be counted as evidence of the voters’ intent. New issues also came to the fore with disclosures that in Seminole and Martin Counties, Republican partisans had been permitted access to the absentee ballot applications and “corrected” formal errors on thousands of them before they were mailed to registered Republicans. Democratic voters received no such courtesy corrections if

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needed, nor were Democratic activists notified and given similar access. It had the makings of a major scandal which, the Democrats hoped, might lead to the discarding of tens of thousands of absentee ballots since it was impossible to identify the actual voters involved. Invalidating all the ballots involved might have cost Bush as many as 7,000 votes and the elections.39 The Gore campaign preferred to remain aloof from these voters’ lawsuits, evidently worried that it might be accused of inconsistency, of not always insisting that every vote be counted. The Republican lawyers argued that such partisan assistance was only a “technicality” and were eventually upheld by Florida courts.

The final showdown In the last days of November, the vice president crafted a three-pronged strategy to challenge the state-certified outcome of the elections: He would address the nation on prime time television, asserting that all he wanted was a “full and accurate count” in Florida. To this end, the recount figures from Palm Beach and Miami-Bade had to be restored and the blocking of recounts by court orders lifted in plenty of time for the final deadline of December 12. He also needed to rally his support among Democratic leaders in Washington as the public opinion polls were slowly beginning to turn against him. The public had been very patient and supportive up until this point. The final showdown unfolded within less than ten days before the supreme courts of Florida and the nation had ruled on the disputed election. First, Leon County Circuit Judge N.Sanders Sauls, who was known to have a long-standing grudge against the Florida Supreme Court, wasted another precious week in transparent fashion: He took up the case of the stalled ballot recounts and, in a show widely compared to the sensational slowmotion, televised chase of murder suspect O.J.Simpson’s white Ford Bronco on the San Diego freeway in 1994, had thousands of disputed ballots—eventually all 1.16 million ballots of the three most populous counties—trucked up to Tallahassee on the pretense of making them available for closer scrutiny. Finally, on December 2, he was ready for the actual trial hearings. Two days later, he had rejected every single argument of Gore’s lawyers for taking up the recounts again—without ever looking at the 14,000 ballots or any others on the Ryder rental truck—and ruled that he could find no evidence of illegality, fraud, improper influence, or coercion in the balloting, nor was there any likelihood that further recounts would alter the certified figure. Gore’s attorneys immediately filed an appeal to the state supreme court. The next day, other state judges also turned down the independent challenges from Seminole and Martin counties. In the meantime, a grudge fight had also developed between the Florida and US supreme courts. When the latter first took up the case, on December 1, it did so with evident reluctance to wade into the partisan fray of elections and, after a decade of championing states’ rights, to overrule state authorities. It merely listened to the Bush lawyers’ claim that the Florida supreme court had usurped the authority of the state legislature in extending the original deadline. Eventually it sent the case back to Florida with the request that the state supreme court elaborate on its reasons for this decision. A federal appeals court in Atlanta, meanwhile, had rejected the Bush lawyers’ argument that manual recounts in selected counties were somehow unconstitutional. Manual recounts by themselves are quite legal in many states, including Texas, it affirmed. The

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Florida legislature, too, stated its intention to field its own slate of Republican electors in case Bush’s slate became bogged down in court battles. While the Democrats in the legislature resisted furiously, Florida Senate President John McKay even insisted that this action was “of a non-partisan nature.” There was heated debate over just what power state legislatures have over the selection of their presidential electors. The Constitution only grants them the determination of the “manner” in which “each state shall appoint” them (Art. II, section 1). In the early days of the republic, the state legislatures indeed chose their presidential electors (as they did their US senators), but the growth of democracy and the rise of political parties put an end to this practice. After 1832, only South Carolina still followed this procedure and soon their election by the people also introduced the winner-take-all rule in all but two states. It seems implausible to revive the selection of presidential electors by state legislatures now. On Friday, December 8, Florida’s supreme court overruled Judge Sauls by a four to three majority and ordered a state-wide recount of about 42,000 “under-votes” (that had not been counted by the voting machines). It also reinstated the earlier recount additions refused by Secretary Harris, reducing Bush’s edge to an ominously low 154 votes. The newly authorized recounts were taken up promptly. But now Bush’s attorneys made an emergency appeal to the US Supreme Court which, with the familiar five to four majority of Republican conservative hardliners—William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Anthony Kennedy—immediately stopped the recounting again the next morning, until it might have an opportunity to hear both sides. By this time the first returns from the aborted recount had already further reduced Bush’s lead by 56 votes to under 100 and the recount was well on its way to proving that, perhaps, Gore had indeed been elected. If there was any doubt about the partisanship of the high court, it was dispelled by its most conservative member, Antonin Scalia, who declared for himself that George W.Bush had “a substantial probability of success” and “the counting of votes that are of questionable legality in my view threatens irreparable harm to the petitioner [Bush] and to the country by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election.”40 Scalia did not speculate on what cloud of illegitimacy might be cast upon the presidency by the partisan intervention of the high court. This was the final, decisive action to put Bush into the White House, stopping the recounts against the swiftly approaching deadline of December 12—though actually over a dozen states did not turn in their electoral votes by that day. It was followed by 90 minutes of familiar legal arguments on both sides and judicial probing on December 11, until Chief Justice Rehnquist proclaimed: “The case is submitted.” This time there was no hesitation to wade into matters of state jurisdiction or of favoring states’ rights over federal prerogatives, a policy that had marked many recent decisions under Rehnquist. The court deliberated behind closed doors and finally delivered its opinion at 10 p.m. on December 12 to the media, 65 pages of no fewer than six overlapping opinions and a confused hodge-podge of arcane legalisms. In their helpless floundering about to make any sense of it, the journalists presented the only comic relief in this hour of judicial failure. In essence, the judges had ruled with a 7:2 majority that there were problems of equal treatment with a complete recount of all “undervotes” (only), more specifically violations of the equal protection of the laws, a principle that the Rehnquist court had routinely ignored in many cases of recent decades. Of course, any electoral recount

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involves questions of equal treatment of those who believe they were not properly counted. To refuse to remedy such electoral problems at all only perpetuates the inequalities the court had belabored. By a partisan vote of five to four, the court then declared that it could see no way of remedying the situation before the (dubious) deadline of December 12. There were eloquent dissents from the Supreme Court majority, not counting those (Thomas, Scalia) that really meant to support the opinion of the Chief Justice. Justice Stephen G.Breyer, a Clinton-appointee, declared solemnly: “What it does today, the court should have left undone. I would repair the damage done as best we now can, by permitting the Florida recount to continue under uniform standards. I respectfully dissent.” Justice David H.Souter, who had been appointed by President Bush Sr, put his dissent in these words: “To recount these [ballots] manually would be a tall order, but before this Court stayed the effort to do that, the courts of Florida were ready to do their best to get that job done. There is no justification for denying the state the opportunity to try to count all disputed ballots now.” Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, appointed by President Clinton, was so disgusted by the majority opinon of the court that she replaced the customary formula, “I respectfully dissent,” and merely wrote “I dissent” at the end of her opinion which was adopted in part also by Judges Souter, Breyer, and Stevens. She wrote, “instead of respecting the state high court’s province to say what the state’s Election Code means, the chief justice [Rehnquist] maintains that Florida’s Supreme Court has veered so far from the ordinary practice of judicial review that what it did cannot be considered judging… There is no cause here to believe that the members of Florida’s high court have done less than ‘their mortal best to discharge their oath of office’.” But none of the dissenters was more withering in his widely quoted comments than Nixon-appointed John Paul Stevens, the oldest (80) of the judges. Stevens concluded: “Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”41 The Supreme Court decision was received with great skepticism by constitutional experts, much of the American media, foreign correspondents, and by the public at large. Vice President Gore, in his concession speech, made clear that he emphatically disagreed with it even though he accepted its verdict. The Bush campaign naturally exulted over it, but limited its comments to generalities and expressions of relief that the contest was finally over and done with, and that they could now get on with the transition to taking office. Public opinion polls soon bore out Judge Stevens’ judgment: The court had dropped notably in public esteem even though the majority of the people was also glad it was over. Congressman Robert Wexler (D-Florida) said: “I am heartbroken. The court let America down.” Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, in his book Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000, called it “the single most corrupt decision in Supreme Court history.” Former Charles Manson prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, in a book The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President, suggested there was ample ground to impeach Chief Justice Rehnquist and the rest of his conservative majority on the court, but that this was unlikely to happen, given the majorities in House and Senate. The Reverend Jesse Jackson, on behalf of many minority voters, declared: “Many people feel [the election was] stolen. They feel robbed. They feel disenfranchised.” The

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Miami Herald, followed by a number of other newspapers, obtained a court order in hopes of taking a closer look at 9,000 disputed ballots from Miami-Dade County.

Barking up the wrong tree The public and media reactions to the election debacle in Florida had been vehement and yet there was an understandable tendency to cast blame for this unseemly spectacle and, in so doing, to bark up the wrong tree. On that fateful Tuesday in November—as soon as the dust and smoke of the electoral campaign 2000 for the presidency cleared and it became clear how very close the electoral race really was—the American public responded with shock and confusion. This had not happened very often in human memory. Who could remember the Kennedy-Nixon contest of 1960 when the race was even closer?42 Now an army of reporters descended upon the state of Florida to reinforce those already on duty there, all bent upon covering the ensuing battle over the electoral votes of the largest state that still seemed undecided. There was an overwhelming desire to blame someone for this “mess,” though exchanging the winter of New England or the Dakotas for the warm vacation climate down in Florida also seemed a welcome change. A Newsweek magazine cover had the word “Chaos” on its cover and spoke of an impending constitutional crisis, a curious choice of phrase though hardly unique to this weekly: “I have a deep and abiding concern,” the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, Charles Wells said (after his court had voted to restart the recounting of the votes in Florida), “that the prolonging of the judicial process in this counting contest propels this country and this state into an unprecedented and unnecessary constitutional crisis. I have to conclude that there is a real and present likelihood that this constitutional crisis will do substantial damage to our country, our state, and to this court as an institution.” The London Economist had a different take on the role of the courts earlier in the elections: “So far this is not a constitutional crisis: nobody has yet refused to accept a court ruling.”43 But James Baker III, the chief spokesperson for candidate Bush, did in fact rail against an earlier Florida Supreme Court ruling, called it “unjust and unacceptable,” and darkly hinted at “a constitutional crisis.” Perhaps the quick resort to this phrase reflected the uneasy memory of the constitutional crisis of 1998/1999 when the Republican ultras tried to oust a duly elected president with their highhanded impeachment maneuver. Leading papers like the New York Times and Washington Post now gave chapter and verse of the electoral mess in Florida. The closeness of the national popular vote, with Gore leading by a solid half million votes, brought the irregularities of the process in Florida into sharp focus and to the painful attention of everyone. Whoever won Florida now, would win the Electoral College vote and hence the White House. If there had been an appreciable distance between the two frontrunners, Gore and Bush, perhaps no one would have taken much notice of the odd and various ways that Florida collected and counted the votes, nor would they have looked for the electoral flaws of other states with a close vote in 2000. But the country and the state had split right down the middle, statistically speaking, and the national vote for the Senate and the House had been similarly close.44 All of a sudden, every burp from a Florida swamp, every bit of partisan

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invective, and even the makeup habits of Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State and chief election officer, seemed to matter immensely. America is a very old constitutional democracy and, like many distinguished oldsters, may show a tendency to become careless at times—even to forget to observe some of the things, such as the rule of law, that made it famous. Its memory lapses, selective or chronic, may become chronically amnesiac—as in the United States of Amnesia— regarding past failures and breakdowns of a major sort. If the criticism from the outside becomes too strident, the oldster may simply turn off his hearing aid. But when it comes to the criteria of democracy in America, the tenor of criticism abroad has become crucial: The chorus of critical voices about the lapses of democracy in 2000 in Florida may actually have done lasting damage to the American democratic image, on which American world leadership depends. This is the reason why it is very important for Americans to listen to these criticisms even when they seem disagreeable, insulting, or unintelligent. Platoons of foreign correspondents, especially from democratic nations, also began to concentrate on the Florida story in Miami, New York, and Washington. They were truly astonished, and often shocked, by what they saw in Florida; they had never expected this in the leading democracy of the West and made no bones about their reactions. One of the great newspapaers of the world, the French daily Le Monde, had still oracled the day before the elections “that Americans now question their ‘model of democracy’, and…despite their newly found wealth, complain about the stress in their lives and about [new] social inequalities, especially the position of minorities.” Five days later, Le Monde had its big first-page headline, “America in Crisis,” and spoke of “irregularities, recounts, and ancient electoral machinery.” In the same issue, Olivier Duhamel voiced “legitimate doubts about the accuracy of the [early] election results.” He also expressed his perplexity at the Electoral College hitch that provided that “winners may be losers” and added: “We must highlight the profound degradation of [American] democracy demonstrated with these elections…[Why?] Because this involves the superpower [our leader]. Because it shows up the evils we are concerned about.”45 The first obstacle facing Europeans in understanding the American way of electing a president is the Electoral College, an institution not found in this form in any other Western democracy. The few federal countries among them are mostly parliamentary regimes in which there is no directly elected president. Before the American elections of 2000, Europeans were largely unaware of the Electoral College, as were so many Americans. To European minds it seems a profoundly undemocratic institution that undercuts the popular vote, the source of democratic legitimacy. Historical examples of the electoral vote prevailing over the popular vote (1824, 1856, 1860, 1876–1892) are not seen as all that reassuring today: “The Electoral College may be an anachronism— developed by the country’s elitist leaders to protect states’ rights,” wrote Nancy Gibbs in the Financial Times of London, “but it is still the law and an honoured tradition.” The Guardian’s Washington correspondent reflected wistfully: “The anxious frothing about the difference between the popular vote and the electoral college is more than mere debating. America has started at last to think about the quality and relevance of its democracy.”46 The democratic legitimacy of the newly elected President George W.Bush, indeed, was the underlying issue. As Freedland posed the question: “Bush would have a legal

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mandate to be president—but would he have a moral one? Can a democracy really allow the winner to have fewer votes than the loser?” Le Monde was not very impressed by the argument of federalism or states’ rights today either: “The electoral college no longer serves federalism or local interests,” observed Denis Lacorne, a political scientist, under the heading “The anachronisms of American democracy”: “It is a distraction.” A few days earlier, an editorial in the same newspaper had declared categorically about the question of the legitimacy of a president elected only by the Electoral College: “It may be federalism but it is archaic.” The Financial Times prophesied somberly: “This president’s opponents will never forget that the people voted for someone else.”47

Second thoughts about America If the split vote of Electoral College and popular vote had shaken European expectations about democratic legitimacy in America, the first encounter with Florida electoral methods dealt them an even bigger body blow. The Italian daily, La Repubblica, a favorite of Italian political junkies, carried 12 pages of coverage—probably more than most American newspapers—reporting on page 1 the stalemate of “Bush and Gore head to head” and “At a Dead Heat.” In the same issue, Ezio Mauro wrote that “the incredible impasse of American democracy stupefies the world and is a spectacle in itself… The archaic electoral machinery of the US has revealed all the fragility and contradictions [of democracy].” Veteran Repubblica correspondent Vittorio Zucconi then added his reflections under the title “A Day in the Banana Republic”: “If [major] irregularities are discovered, Bush could be sworn in come January 20 and be deposed a little later.” A few days later, the Italian paper spoke of “these two halfpint leaders (piccoli, piccoli) who make America tremble.”48 Another Italian daily, Il Sole: 24 Ore also reported the electoral deadlock and the first Republican efforts to go to court against the continuation of the recounts. A political scientist, Piero Ignazi, commented on “The Rude Awakening from the Myths of America”: “The sacrosanct character of American institutions collides in public opinion with the more pedestrian, dirty ways of partisan conflict… For a country that has always idolized its Constitution and its inspiring principles, this denouement must be traumatic.” A few days later, Mario Platero wrote in the same daily: “The world speaks of an institutional and constitutional crisis, of economic risks, judicial interference, incompetence, and the abdication of democracy in favor of judges and lawyers…but there have not been any aggressive demonstrations or dangerous [violent] methods in the streets in order to exercise pressure on magistrates and politicians, as might happen in more fragile and less consolidated democracies.”49 As the recount totals were seesawing up and down and the parties battled each other in the courts, some conservative European newspapers even began to apologize and to defend US democracy against its critics. The Sunday Telegraph (London) apologized that “the election…produced in this country [Britain] some in part shameful manifestations of arrogance… schoolmasterly contempt exhibited by British TV reporters [in Florida].” “The press of the Old Continent is without pity regarding American electoral methods,” declared Le Figaro in Paris and quoted the London Times: “A parody of democracy…the gravest political crisis since Watergate,” and the Daily Mirror of London: “The results have been turned in, and then retracted in a manner worthy of what

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one would expect of a banana republic.” Le Figaro also quoted the conservative German Die Welt: “A debacle, what a macabre spectacle, “and the Berliner Zeitung: “Such electoral chaos! One could be amused if this was only the election of the mayor of Chicago and not of the most powerful man on earth.”50 We shall return below to the expectations, sometimes rather unrealistic, that other democratic nations place on the US, but there were also the unmistakable European recollections of the all-too-public American political dogfight—with the salacious Starr Report on the world-wide internet—of 1998. The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel opined more critically that “The echo [to the elections] from abroad mirrors for Americans their contemptuous attitudes towards democracy. Multiethnic Florida, in particular, is being viewed as a Third World country.” The magazine also cited the jocular manner in which Russian President Putin and, of all people, Fidel Castro, had offered to help with the Florida count. Der Spiegel cited the Washington Post headline, “A landslide victory for confusion,” and the line “citizens find a political stalemate that threatens to precipitate a constitutional crisis”—there was that phrase again. The German weekly also called Florida “an electoral chaos of irregularities and errors, of possible fraud and unresolved legal questions.” It also reported a worldwide drop in the stock markets and gave a list of pertinent antecedent Florida scandals, including the overturned Miami mayoral elections of 1998 and, only a decade ago, “false or incomplete lists of voters.”51 By this time the first complaints about alleged fraud had begun to come in, disappearing ballot boxes, and more. There were complaints about precincts that counted more Democratic votes than there were voters, and tin ballot boxes that were brought in to the counting station not by policemen but by Republican activists. Some observers cheekily pointed to their own countries as electoral models from which the US could learn a thing or two: “Americans could learn a few things [about elections] from Britain,” wrote Freedland in the Guardian Weekly and suggested that, at least, American voting could be standardized across the nation. In Zaire, that model of democracy, Reference Plus of Kinshasa asked: “If this can occur in the US, what can we expect of poor Africa?”52 Some thoughtful comments also pointed to the connection between the Florida embarrassment and American stature and influence in the world. The Economist sagely remarked: “The outside world has on the whole merely smirked at America’s election farce… But if the world’s guarantor of democracy fails to deal with the clanking from its electoral machine, those knowing smiles will disappear.”53 The Corriere della Sera of Milan marveled: “The respect and reputation of the US are suddenly in jeopardy…[Along with the electoral system], the authority of America in the world is at risk.” We might add that it will be questioned in particular when America, under Bush, tries to convince the world of his neo-conservative plans to bring American democracy to the entire Middle East. The leftish Libération of Paris underlined sarcastically: “So far nothing indicates that…this will amount to yet another inspiring lesson in democracy.” Even the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote: “The world awaits the next American president, with resentment, astonishment, or maybe only with tense expectation…there is an irritating contrast between the political and technological power of America as a whole and the antiquated state of its institutions and processes.”54 The Hungarian daily, Nepszabad of Budapest showed more impatience when it editorialized: “It would be a sign of the vitality of the American model of

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democracy if they would at least make the effort to reform the electoral mechanism.” In the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit, Michael Schwelien, the son of a well-known German America correspondent, also pointed to “the Florida tradition of electoral fraud”—he mentioned the precedent of the 1998 Miami mayoral elections—and hinted: “Governor Jeb Bush, George W.’s brother, certainly knows his way around Florida interests.”55 The Florida election mess conjured up images of Third World nations in the minds of many foreign and some non-Floridian American observers. As Patrick St. Paul put it in Le Figaro: “It is a pity that our African colleagues haven’t got the airfare to Florida. They would feel right at home and could surely give us some pointers.” 56 He added with Gallic sarcasm: “In the realm of ‘high tech,’ from the country convinced of being in the forefront of civilization and democracy, certain images come back in singular fashion to the less developed countries.”

Taking sides The frustrations of near-stalemate and glaring irregularities not only raised the political temperatures between the two camps to a fever pitch, but encouraged observers to take sides. While the post-election discourse became even coarser than the electoral debates had ever been, Freedland wrote in the Guardian: “There are teams of lawyers crawling all over the state…partisan rancour between Republicans and Democrats is so deep that the prospect of a [polite] ‘no, after you,’ from Bush to Gore is [simply] not plausible.” It is surprising that Freedland seems to have thought such a step on the part of George W. appropriate at this point, either because of Gore’s nation-wide popular majority—and the archaic Electoral College—or perhaps because of Bush’s oft-repeated stress on his “moral leadership” if elected. The Guardian’s editorial of that day also asked: “Should not Mr. Bush do the decent thing and cede the election to Mr. Gore?” But then it also admitted that “this would be a very bad precedent”—Republicans could claim that the primacy of the Electoral College vote was the rule—and that Gore would probably not concede an Electoral College win on his part, had the situation been reversed. So, perhaps, “Gore should accept defeat and campaign for electoral reform” for the next round.57 The partisan rhetoric soon escalated beyond slogans and marching orders: Karen Hughes, Governor Bush’s adjutant, for example, claimed that the vice president had advocated ignoring the law in order to overturn the election results, and that Palm Beach officials were “inventing votes,” not just counting them. The Wall Street Journal called Gore’s legal efforts to overrule Katherine Harris’ premature certification of the results a “coup.” Michael Ledeen, a Republican strategist and terrorism expert, called them a “counter-revolution,” an interesting choice of words inviting the question what the “revolution” might be. The Democrats, for their part, did not hesitate to call Harris “a Soviet Commissar,” “Cruella de Vil,” and a “crook.” Le Monde also mentioned the Republican mob action in the Miami county court house and that the Republican militants, deprived of the White House for eight years, were now accusing Gore of “electoral theft,” and a “coup attempt,” and demonizing him just as they had demonized Clinton for eight years. “Underneath the facade of good will to respect the outcome of the

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balloting, each side engages in a judicial guerrilla warfare that resembles the tactic of scorched earth,” wrote Patrice de Beer.58 The Republicans rather got the worst in European comments on American elections and democracy: “George W.Bush and his party have caricatured Gore as a man surrounded by frauds and incapable of governing. Even a moderate like Bob Dole…threatened to boycott Gore’s possible inauguration.’ In an editorial, “US and Democracy,” Le Monde wrote: “The attempts of George W.Bush by every means to stop the recount operation which should have gone on by itself, are shocking.”59 Needless to emphasize, none of this was flattering to American democracy and, in view of European perceptions of the impeachment charade of 1998, least of all to the Republicans. Der Spiegel interpreted Republican motives as a “mixture of disappointment with what was supposed to have been a landslide with an abyss of [personal] contempt for the vice president. One partisan was quoted: “If Gore steals this election it will be World War Three in Congress.” Der Spiegel was unimpressed by Tom DeLay’s reported claim that “the Democrats were conducting a war against fair and free elections” and commented sadly on “how the [solemn] will of the voters disappeared behind the legal tricks…[of] hundreds of partisan lawyers.” Stefan Simon in the same journal reported the growing bitterness among the party activists and that as many as one third of them on either side absolutely refused to recognize a possible victory of the other side. This, in his view, reflected poorly on American democracy and, worse, on the immediate future: “It is almost a guarantee that, even after inauguration day, the US will be a paralyzed, deeply divided nation.”60 Another Guardian correspondent, Martin Kettle, expressed his astonishment that, at this indeterminate stage, Bush was acting as if the race was over and it was already time to build up his administration. In response to the thousands of voter complaints and NAACP claims of discrimination, the Guardian also felt: “Mr. Bush is not ‘acting presidential’: A real unifying leader would support the Florida investigations [into the racial complaints].”61 Three days later, the Guardian editorialized with alarm about the Republican manipulations” and insisted that George W. rein in his lawyers in Florida: “Fight the Florida fix. Its latest manifestation is Bush buddy James Baker’s outrageous bid to persuade Miami’s federal court to block a full manual recount in Palm Beach County…and elsewhere…This is a blatant attempt to thwart an accurate return in a state election awash with irregularities.”62 The London Observer wrote the same day: “Gore now must fight on until he has exhausted all reasonable means…he must resist the pressure to accept Bush’s victory in the name of national unity, good government, or the constitution.” The Economist had actually endorsed Bush, in a manner of speaking. Yet at this point it also felt compelled to voice misgivings: “The main priority is simply to get it right—to count and recount…it is the right thing to do [even if it takes time].” And, in the following issue: “Bush…was dispatching his lawyers as rapidly as Mr. Gore and hypocritically objecting to the very sort of manual recounts that as governor he signed into law in Texas.” The next issue even bore a title picture of the Statue of Liberty sinking into swamp waters, with five alligators with menacing eyes approaching, over the caption “In the mire.” Inside there was an adaptation of the contest to the fable of the tortoise and the hare, ending with the sentence: “and both sides have hired the best alligators.”63

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The mini-riot naturally drew journalistic attention, since the recounts in Miami-Dade County seemed to inch ever closer to wiping out Bush’s slender lead. A well-planned operation brought Republican volunteers from all over the country, especially Washington, to Miami. They were summoned there by House Whip Tom DeLay with the help of a telephone bank, or “boiler room”operation. Some observers claimed to have perceived his name written all over the Republican anti-recount strategy: “Delay, delay, delay.” On November 22, these “storm-troopers in coat-and-tie”—French journalists called them “the bourgeois Republican Guard,”—invaded the recount operation of the Miami-Dade canvassing board. As a result the board suspended its recount “amid scenes of intimidation in the county government building…they…called into question the [old] notion that, whereas other countries may burn tires in the street, America at least conducts its electoral process according to the rules of law.” The German weekly Die Zeit described this “spontaneous Bush demonstration” as “much more violent than merely shouting and waving signs. The demonstrators went into the counting rooms, drummed on the glass doors, threatened members of the election board, and used their fists and feet…” DeLay was reportedly paying their air fares and hotel rooms out of party coffers. The local press spoke of a “rent-a-mob.” An exile-Cuban radio station had called for “storming downtown Miami.”64 The Guardian was relentless in taking sides: “People will always wonder what strings Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush, pulled to deliver [the state] for his brother. The conspiracy theories are already circulating,” including some speculations about Bush Sr, the old CIA spymaster. In an editorial of November 28, under the title “Gore is right to fight: in the US a constitutional crisis looms,” the daily wrote that the “Republican fix in Florida” needed to be fought, especially “Katherine Harris’s manipulations… Mr. Gore is right to fight on because, simply put, he almost certainly won Florida on November 7 and a fair and accurate return would confirm that view.” The paper added: “After eight years [out of power], the GOP wants the White House too badly to let go.”65 Finally, after the US Supreme Court handed down its verdict, another Guardian editorial bore the heading: “The fix is in, Al Gore is out and it is a bad day for American democracy.” This time the editorial spelled out the elements of this alleged “fix”: First of all it charged Jeb Bush with prepoll manipulation of the electoral rolls, presumably removing or discarding thousands of names of likely Democratic voters. Second, there was intimidation and deliberate exclusion of minority voters on election day. Third, there was sheer incompetence and possible fraud afterwards. Finally, the Bush lawyers had used every trick and ruse in the law books to waste time and block accurate tallies. “Florida was a setup from start to finish and in that disgraceful charade, the US Supreme Court has foolishly yet definitely connived.”66 The Guardian was not alone in taking sides with the Gore camp. The Austrian daily Standard greeted Bush’s final triumph with the words “Hail to the Thief,” and the Mindener Tagblatt (of Minden, Germany) wrote acidly: “Bush won his victory without a popular majority and in a not quite kosher (nicht ganz sauber) manner. For his crucial, very narrow Florida victory—which gave him the edge in the Electoral College—was accomplished in a fashion that the US, ever the schoolmaster in matters of democracy, would not have accepted from any Third World country. After this debacle, the US has suffered deep scratches on its scutcheon as a democratically leading power, resting on a constitution that can firmly brave all storms.” Andrea Böhm of Die Zeit, under the

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heading “Little dirty tricks” concluded: “Al Gore was right. It would have been only fair to recount all the votes in Florida.” Another journalist wrote in the same issue: “Under normal circumstances, Gore would have won Florida and hence the presidency.” In a more philosophical vein, the conservative Münchner Merkur criticized: “Many Central Europeans are struck by the frivolous, even contemptuous treatment of the [solemn] will of the voters which the last remaining superpower has demonstrated to the astonished world, day after day. Recounts are an obvious and simple choice whenever such irregularities occur… Now a man has sued his way into the White House who cannot prove with certainty his legitimation by the voters.”67 That some European opinion leaders became so involved as to take sides in the Florida battles also tells us something about how they saw their own political world and—by implication and of obvious relevance to the subject of this book—why many Europeans became incensed at the international politics of President Bush once he was in office: They perceived the unrestrained “will to power” of the aggressive, overbearing Republicans as akin to the two-fisted fascism of another age, beating down the democratic opposition in their own respective country with no holds barred, and no respect for the rules of the democratic game or the constitution. In international affairs, then, the same unapologetic will to power was equated with the power politics of a Mussolini, Hitler, or the Japanese military dictators, unilaterally pursuing empire and resources with military threats and preemptive action. If Bush’s Republicans fought their way into the White House with “fascist ruthlessness,” they may not only have given the free world an illegitimate leader but, once in power—with the most puissant economy and military in the world in their hands—they would very likely have a similar approach to international law and cooperation. They would unilaterally pursue empire and other people’s resources with no respect for treaties, international organizations like the UN, the Geneva Conventions, or the idea of an International Criminal Court. Hence the foreign policies of the new Bush administration both before 9/11 and after it (towards Iraq) were readily recognized and identified with their Florida antecedents, regardless of the clouds of propaganda of the “war on terrorism” and its alleged necessities. As the Florida battle brought out the latent anti-fascism in some Europeans, especially but not only left of center, the international power politics of the Bush administration provoked instant anti-imperialist opposition among them. It was a most ironic development, considering that Bush and many of his neo-conservative advisers seemed in the thrall of believing themselves under a monstrous, looming threat (from international terrorism) quite similar to the fascist “axis of steel”—Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and imperial Japan—threatening the free world in 1939. The Republican campaign also had a few sympathizers in the European press. On December 1, for example, Leo Wieland editorialized in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: “By now the Operation Recount has already lasted longer than Desert Storm, the invasions of Grenada, Panama or Haiti, the Cuban crisis [of 1962], and the Olympic Games, not to mention the [biblical] creation of the world.” He had already written two weeks earlier, under the title “Solid American democracy”: “The nasty suggestions that the superpower, especially in Florida, is also a kind of banana republic are foolish and inappropriate.” The Murdoch-owned Sunday Telegraph of London, referring to Gore’s premature concession and retraction on the night of November 7, said: “What are we to think of a possible Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces who first surrenders to the

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enemy, then changes his mind?” The similarly Murdoch-owned Sunday Times of London had indicated its preference for Bush all along by the way it described major turning points, illustrated with quotations of Tom DeLay regarding the Florida high court’s ruling that recounts should proceed: “This judicial aggression will not stand!” Now veteran conservative journalist Andrew Sullivan addressed the Florida court decision under the title “The mounting of a legal insurrection”: “The [ruling]…was one of the most remarkable examples of judicial tyranny in recent years…a completely arbitrary, retroactive and political rewrite of the settled laws of a free society. A state’s laws are as solid as the whims of the judges who pervert and undermine them.”68 And he was not speaking of the US Supreme Court.

Something rotten in the USA The reaction to the US Supreme Court decision among some foreign correspondents in Washington and their media back home was nothing less than that of Hamlet discovering how his father died: “Democracy was poisoned to put George W.Bush in the White House. So were most of the institutions this election touched: the presidency, federal courts, state courts, state officialdom, election vigilators, the very mechanism of balloting itself,” wrote Hugo Young in the Guardian.69 Young blamed the court for taking the case in the first place, and the Bush campaign for bringing it. A sharptongued Guardian editorial had earlier applauded Gore’s determination to fight “the Florida fix,” as long as “the Bushmen remain intent on drawing in the nation’s highest judicial authority…to buttress their bogus anti-democratic tactics.” It warned of “a constitutional crisis.”70 The Guardian’s assault had more venom in a feature entitled “Following in Daddy’s Footsteps” and calling George W. a “monarchic president: Republicans spent eight years trying to prove that President Clinton had blood on his hands…” Now George II was bent on “restoring his father’s court in Washington.” It also quoted Justice Scalia’s phrase that “the counting of votes…of questionable legality does…threaten irreparable harm [to Bush’s chances],” and this under a headline “Foolish and unwise: the supreme court makes an ass of itself.” Halting the recounts was “wrong in law, wrong in respect of the constitution, and wrong in terms of plain common sense.”71 Two days later, the Guardian also detailed the charges of conflict of interest on the court: Justice Thomas’ wife wanting to work for the Bush campaign and Scalia’s son being a law partner of Ted Olson, the chief counsel of the Bush campaign. If only these two would recuse themselves from voting on Bush vs. Gore, the majority would be reversed. The next day, Kettle wrote that, at its core, it was a “question of impartiality,” a “velvet legal coup” by the justices, the “willing tool of the Bush campaign.”72 Freedland added that “some Americans are already arguing that the US can no longer travel the world, telling smaller, weaker nations to embrace democracy when their own leader has been installed in a courtroom fix.” The Guardian editorial for that day, under the title “In, but illegitimate,” said: “[the court ruling] leaves in its wake shockingly unfamiliar but very real doubts about the fundamental fairness and honesty of American democracy.”73 The business-oriented, conservative Financial Times was no kinder. In a column, “Bush’s Poisoned Presidency,” Philip Steinberg wrote: “American politics will long bear the rancour of this presidential contest… Bush can never claim to have won…the

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judgment penned this week by… Rehnquist took one’s breath away with the sheer transparency of its partisanship.” An earlier comment in the paper had already said that “the legal, political and moral struggles over the US election result could yet make the impeachment of Clinton seem a parable of virtue.”74 On the continent, perceptions of the court decision were no more favorable. Le Monde spoke of “an institutional crisis” and “the most explosive case since Watergate.” The activism of the court drew particular opprobrium and so did basing this “nearly fatal coup” against the vice president on a matter of calendar, on running out of time. The conservative Le Figaro in advance criticized the readiness of the court to intervene, the danger of a divided court, and the curious statement of Justice Scalia giving Bush ahead of time the “greater likelihood” to succeed in this race. Many “landmines” would await the new president after it. In 1998, Le Figaro had been very critical of the bogus impeachment of Clinton, but was rather matter-of-fact about the Florida dispute, except for the media circus in Tallahassee, at the state supreme court. After the decision, the paper hailed it “Finally Bush!”75 El Mundo of Madrid commented bluntly: “The US Supreme Court is evidently partisan and blind…not an encouraging finding for the state of [American] democracy.” The centrist La Repubblica of Milan received the court ruling with skepticism about America’s “president [which America] did not elect…hand-delivered by the judges,” and the “internal balance of the most important democracy of the world, today [a system] fearfully out of balance among the legislative, judicial, lobbying and financial powers.” In a general feature, “The Nightmare is Over,” La Repubblica distinguished between “the legality of Bush’s win in Florida by a few hundred votes and that he really won by one vote in the Supreme Court.” The next day, the daily quoted two American newspapers with approval: “The trust of Americans in law and institutions will never again be the same” (New York Times), and, from USA Today, “if one had thought of restoring credibility and dignity to the presidential election, it was a complete failure.”76 Other Italian newspapers were no less somber: Il Sole 24 Ore of Milan bemoaned the split into two of American politics and now also of the courts—lurching towards “an unprecedented institutional and constitutional conflict”—and added: “In the West, the US has always represented an ideal example of democracy.” The Murdoch-owned Sunday Times of London also headlined its account “US fears constitutional crisis in election fiasco,” but then continued with the entire Bush line, including that “Bush supporters…would not recognize a Gore victory,” even if he won a majority,77 hardly a compliment for American democracy. In Germany, the Hamburg newsweekly Der Spiegel had amused its readers all along with features such as “Scenes from Absurdistan,” where it reported one Broward County sheriff’s raid in Fort Lauderdale, “which seized 160 manual recount votes and 78 new chads, putting them in bags marked criminal evidence,” as Republican documentation of Democratic mischief. It also described organized “Tours to the Last Recounts in Palm Beach,” six a day, and—after a reference to Clinton’s impeachment in 1998—quoted him: “The whole world will ridicule America if the disputed ballots are not counted.” Finally, the weekly wrote that when Bush would take his oath of office in January, “he will be taking it from the man he owed it to, Rehnquist.” Der Spiegel also spoke of a “damaged judiciary” which at all levels had abandoned its independence to “open partisanship.” The intellectual Die Zeit, in its Florida election coverage, described the US as “the biggest Banana republic.”78

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The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung covered everything in depth, if with a Republican slant. It expressed agreement with the Guardian’s remark that Americans should “wake up and understand that their country has been thrown into a deep constitutional crisis.” Editor Leo Wieland repeatedly referred to the Clinton impeachment, a sign that educated Europeans remember that charade a lot better than do Americans. There was also mention of Justice Scalia, and that candidate Bush had expressed his desire to “nominate more Scalias and [Clarence] Thomases to the US Supreme Court.” But the editor was troubled by the conflicts of interest and the reversal of the traditional relationship between court and president; usually the latter picks the former. He was also worried that the verdict might not be accepted by many Americans.79 Even the provincial German press commented sharply on the court’s ruling, for example: “If you thought the electoral chaos in the US could not be topped you may have another thought coming…unworthy of a democracy…a new electoral law is needed to avoid similar embarrassments of the strongest power in the world.” Or another: “In a nutshell, the Supreme Court decision said: Every citizen has the right to vote…but not to have that vote counted. Residents of former communist East Germany will readily recognize that principle.”80 What does all this amount to if not a gigantic loss of faith of America as a world leader of democracy? Does it really surprise anyone that American plans to make the Middle East safe for democracy met with a great deal of European skepticism? Even in non-democratic China, reporter Xia Xiaoyang was apparently scratching his head, writing in the governmentcontrolled Wen Hui Bao81 of Shanghai about the mysteries of the wayward Supreme Court ruling: “The US Supreme Court is the real loser…its ruling handed the White House to Bush, yet it did not directly judge that Bush won the election. It…blocked any possibility for Gore to take the White House yet it did not state that Gore lost the suit due to his defeat in Florida either. Its very involvement in the election case led the US Supreme Court to its dishonor.”

Black disfranchisement in Florida So far we have looked at many of the flaws of the 2000 presidential elections, that vexing monument of how not to go about electing the most powerful leader of the free world: We have briefly reviewed the dramatic happenings of the election and its aftermath, down to the scandalous Supreme Court decision. It was a scene of partisan contention of which the excesses clearly went back to the “conservative revolution” we described earlier, in Chapter 3. Partisan invective and hyperbole aside, there were indeed glimpses of intentional wrong-doing here and there, none more consequential than the “judicial coup” by which the conservative Supreme Court majority stopped all recounts and handed the presidency to Bush.82 Well-meaning observers have identified several paths to address the most obvious problems: One remedy was simply the dramatic expression of the shock of both American and European opinion leaders—normally the first step to basic reform—at democratic dysfunction in Florida and partisan judicial distortion in Washington. This, of course, also served to highlight a major source of negative European attitudes underlying the European-American rift of the present, even if it shed more heat than light on the causes and possible remedies. Another path involved serious

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efforts to correct the obvious shortcomings of the electoral mechanism exposed by the media coverage of the elections in Florida and elsewhere in the US, a very important subject but not in this context.83 Suffice it to say that former President Carter, whose Atlanta Center frequently monitors elections in other countries, would flatly reject the likes of the election laws and standards prevailing in Florida in 2000—especially the absence of a non-partisan election supervisory authority and the arbitrary role of local officials—for his routine monitoring projects.84 His center would not accept an aspiring democracy with such poor conditions for democracy. A third approach to the Florida debacle was adopted by a consortium of large newspapers which undertook actual ballot recounts in a number of Florida counties in order to shed more light on questions left dangling by the court squabbles. Looking at over-votes and under-votes and confusing ballot instructions, they concluded that the results, depending on which court prevailed, federal or state supreme court, still left the two contenders at a statistical deadlock.85 They did not consider the impact of political interventions such as the Republican mini-riot in Miami or the partisan “handling” of ballots in Seminole and Martin counties. The whole enterprise of recounting was condemned by Republicans like Mark Foley (R-Florida) who called it “a waste of time [that] undermines the legitimacy of the presidency…Mr. Gore has conceded, and that should have been the end of that.”86 None of these approaches really addressed the possibility that the voter rolls may have been tampered with in favor of the Republicans in advance of the balloting so that neither electoral reform nor recounts would have been any help. Let us now turn to the evidence of such a partisan purge of the voter rolls. Easily the most damaging complaints about the Florida elections were those alleging discrimination against minority voters of whom Florida has many. Like the need for electoral reform—particularly new voting machines—this is not an exclusive Florida problem. Recently, a county official in Michigan alarmed African-American voters with his loose talk about “the need to suppress the Detroit vote,” in other words the huge black vote of Detroit. Black Americans bitterly remember the 100 years of disfranchisement, especially the Southern skullduggery of literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, judicial and police corruption, and Ku Klux Klan violence, and critically perceive any new complaints from anywhere.87 The first such complaints came in almost immediately from Broward and Miami-Dade counties where scores of African-American and HaitianAmerican voters had been turned away at the polling stations—some for lack of valid identification (or for failing to supply multiple identifications, for which white voters were not asked). Some felt intimidated by unhelpful poll workers. Some found that their precincts had been changed or unexplained roadblocks had appeared on their way to the polls. The NAACP reported that black voters were systematically kept from voting in several parts of the state: At Daytona Beach’s Bethune-Cookman College, many students were turned away in spite of valid voter registrations and identifications.88 Some Dade County polls closed inexplicably early or black voters in line were turned away. In some parts, voters registered under Clinton’s Motor Voter Act (instant eregistration) were not listed or names were missing because of alleged felony convictions. Overworked poll workers were unable to help. Haitian-American voters found Creole interpreters lacking at their polling stations. To aggravate matters, record numbers of black Floridians had gone to the polls this time—a reported increase of 60 percent over the 1996 turnout, and in some Broward

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County precincts as many as 85 percent of registered voters tried to vote—the result of a special registration drive. They were overwhelmingly inclined to vote for Gore but the state authorities (Jeb Bush and K.Harris) had made no effort to accommodate the increased numbers in heavily African-American areas, contrary to their preparation for increases in the absentee vote which is overwhelmingly Republican.89 Nearly one-third of the 26,000 ballots thrown out for “over-voting” in Duval County (Jacksonville) came from overwhelmingly black precincts. The thousands of newly recruited voters evidently had trouble with the two-page presidential ballot and, for lack of clear instructions, invalidated their ballots by punching a second hole—they had been told to perforate every page. David Bositis of the Washington Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies had found such surges of the black vote also in Missouri, shifting the weight towards the Democrats under whose Clinton administration African-Americans had done very well indeed. Candidate Bush had gone out of his way to defend the Confederate flag flying over the capitol of South Carolina and to make a special campaign appearance at Bob Jones University.90 African-Americans also recalled the anti-affirmative action campaign of Governor Jeb Bush with his controversial One Florida program that reallocated student recruitment for the state universities and changed the bidding practices for state projects. Right after the elections, black legislators viewed Jeb Bush’s call for a blue-ribbon commission to review election procedures with distrust and, in their Florida Conference for Black State Legislators, resolved to bring the matter before the Department of Justice. However, with Clinton’s term coming to an end and his Attorney General, Janet Reno, planning to challenge Bush for the governorship, not much was expected to transpire.91 So, on December 11 and 12, 2000, the NAACP organized a series of protest rallies, “Count Every Vote,” in some 45 large cities across the country to point out “wide-spread denial of voting rights to minorities on election day.” Standing outside the Miami-Dade election office where the Republican mini-riot had led to the abandonment of the recount, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume proclaimed: “We are standing before the building where they chose not to count the vote to say: ‘We will not be counted out.’” The rallies were to kick off a voter registration and education drive. A series of lawsuits were filed against various Florida counties, charging violations of the Voting Rights Act. The NAACP had compiled a 296-page report on all the allegations of election fraud and intimidation.92 There were hints in the air of the beginning of another civil rights movement. In early January, the Congressional Black Caucus staged a protest on the floor of a joint session in the House of Representatives to challenge the slate of Republican presidential electors when they came in, at the last formal step before the inauguration of the new president of the US. The caucus needed the support of just one Senator—there were no African-Americans in the Senate—but none of the Democratic Senators was willing to endorse the protest in writing, none of the great liberals in the upper house. It fell to the presiding Vice President, Gore—of all people—to rule their protest out of order.93 It was a bitter disappointment for the caucus and hardly a recommendation for the Democrats. As one reader’s letter to the Los Angeles Times put it: “But will AfricanAmericans…feel like voting in large numbers for any [Democrats]…next time out?”94 Feelings were worse, no doubt, for the new president who had received only 9 percent of the black vote nation-wide and less than half of that percentage in his own state, Texas—

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where his share of the black vote in the 1998 gubernatorial elections had still exceeded 20 percent. At the last NAACP convention (July, 2000), Bush had told the delegates that his and Abraham Lincoln’s party “has not always carried the mantle of Lincoln,” the great emancipator, but after that conciliatory moment, and gestures, and several prominent appointments—Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Rod Paige—the Bush campaign followed its “Southern strategy” and acquired a different image in the eyes of African-Americans. The closeness of the vote in Florida, in any case, suggests that if the black vote there had been counted fairly and not “suppressed,” Vice President Gore would have won the White House. The controversial photo finish in Florida amid charges of black disfranchisement at the hands of Harris and Governor Jeb Bush rubbed salt into the old wounds. To quote Bositis once more: “There’s a great deal of anger and a great deal of hostility toward Bush among African-Americans.” A poll of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center ascertained that 90 percent of blacks thought the election results were unfair—as compared to 60 percent of white respondents—and 77 percent believed Bush to be unworthy of the presidency, as compared to “only” 37 percent of the whole electorate, which is in itself a poor manifestation of the spirit of democracy. There were further unflattering comparisons between the US Supreme Court decision in Bush vs. Gore and its historical, racist rulings of Dred Scott—upholding the Fugitive Slave Act in 1857— and Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), establishing the principle of “separate but equal” which subsequently legitimized official segregation.95

The felon purge A particular bone of contention in Florida was a sweeping purge of the voter rolls “to curb voter fraud” made by Database Technologies Inc. (DBT), which apparently mislabeled thousands of voters as felons and removed their names from the voting lists. The purge was ordered in 1998 by the predecessor of Secretary of State Harris, following the controversial Miami mayoral election. Unlike most other states, Florida bars people convicted of felonies from voting for the rest of their lives unless they apply for and are granted clemency by a state board and the government in office, that is the governor and three cabinet members.96 The practice, which the state shares with 13 other, mostly Southern, states, dates from an 1868 post-Reconstruction law intended to restrict black suffrage. Obtaining clemency requires the filling out of a 16-page form and all kinds of documents as well as incredible disclosures of matters of personal privacy, such as information about debts to the state, about group memberships, and information about mates and illegitimate children—in other words, an onerous procedure similar to the old literacy tests of the Jim Crow era. State officials in Tallahassee made matters worse by long ignoring the clear warnings about their neglected files and mounting mistakes in matching names. Now they further loosened the criteria by which the names of voters are matched with those of felons and dead people, putting the voting rights of even more innocents into jeopardy: An 80 percent match—for example similar names or matching birth dates or social security numbers—was declared sufficient to disfranchise a person. DBT cross-checked the 8.6 million registered voters against law enforcement and other

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records and pin-pointed about 100,000 names for removal from the voting rolls. Company officials later criticized the Secretary of State’s office for casting the net too wide in defiance of logic and common sense.97 Some county election officials found the numerous errors so intolerable that they ignored the lists of alleged felons. Some tried to correct them but many others simply used them even though they knew them to be flawed. Many of the alleged felons were never notified of the disqualification and, arriving at the polling station, could not find any person to respond to their predicament. Some felons had migrated from other states where their background was not a disqualification.98 Others who were notified reacted with outrage at being expected to prove their innocence by sending their fingerprints to the state Department of Law Enforcement for verification. It was not the only example of official arrogance adding insult to injury. It seems difficult to estimate how many eligible voters were stymied by this procedure in 2000. Nicholas Thompson has a figure of 8,000 lost Gore votes as a result of the purge. Joe Lantigua of the Nation thinks that about 20,000 who had wanted to vote were disfranchised and the vast majority of the alleged felons were black and would very likely have voted for Gore: Of the Miami-Dade County list, for example, 66 percent were African-American and in Hillsborough County (Tampa) 54 percent were. At a 9:1 ratio for Gore, the partisan impact is obvious. And we are clearly dealing with figures that dwarf the few hundred by which Bush won Florida.99 Bositis, again, called the felon purge program in Florida “a patently obvious technique to discriminate against black voters.” As soon as the election was over, interestingly, the Republican-led Florida legislature repealed the statute authorizing DBT purges and voted to create a new statewide voter registration database. DBT was taken over with all its files by Choice Point Inc. of Atlanta. It is easy to read a Republican, anti-black conspiracy into this strange purge.100 In total, Florida has kept over half a million real ex-felons from voting, most of them black and poor, a harsh and undemocratic rule considering that a felony conviction can be acquired with relatively minor drug offenses—such as possession of one-fifth of an ounce of crack, the drug of choice in the ghetto. About 17 percent of Floridian black males of voting age are felons and the state leads the nation in the number of juveniles charged with felonies—so they never get to vote at all. Although about a million former felons in America share the same disqualification, most American states and all other industrialized countries let felons vote once they have served their time.101 The US Civil Rights Commission conducted hearings in January and February, 2001 to determine why so many Floridians were denied their right to vote. As the Commission had pointed out earlier, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 “aimed at subtle as well as obvious state regulations and practices” that might have the effect of discriminating against certain voters. It found evidence of “prohibited discrimination” in the election process of the state. In connection with the felon purge, moreover, the NAACP and other groups had brought suit against Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris who already stood accused of arbitrariness in handling the deadlines and certification of the recounts. Governor Jeb Bush appeared before the Commission and, predictably, passed the buck to his secretary of state and the counties because “my duties [only] are to certify the election” and to exercise “a moral authority to see that the laws—state and federal laws—are upheld.” When asked, he rather improbably denied having had any preelection conversations with

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Mrs Harris, who co-chaired the Bush campaign for Florida with him. A month later he also denied that he had been in frequent contact with his brother’s campaign staff during the 36 days of post-election wrangling.102 In a press interview before the hearings, Jeb expressed his firm belief that “there was [no] concerted effort to take away people’s right to vote.”103 Harris in turn testified that she had delegated her authority over election day complaints and the felon purge to the director of the state’s division of elections, Clay Roberts, and his staff. The Commission chair, Mary Frances Berry, viewed Harris’s testimony as “laughable.” Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth, a Democrat, then related that his office had received 2,600 complaints from disgruntled voters, most of them about the controversial butterfly ballots of Palm Beach, but also some about registered voters being turned away because of an alleged felon record. There is, of course, no accounting for the many who gave up or were afraid to make a public complaint in a corrupted electoral system.104 As Mrs Berry noted, the Commission can only hold hearings, report on election irregularities, and recommend changes: “We can’t make them do anything, but we can embarrass them and make them tell the public what they are doing.” Jeb Bush responded that there was no evidence of “intentional discrimination,” admitting by implication that some discrimination had taken place. The chair retorted that even “unintentional discrimination” was illegal under a 1982 amendment of the Voting Rights Act if it resulted in disproportionate numbers being excluded from the polls. The Commission report went to the Congress and the White House for possible action.105 In the meantime, the US Supreme Court had ruled that citizens have no legal right to challenge actions or laws of their state, unless they can demonstrate that the alleged discrimination is deliberate and not just circumstantial. This was another decision of the Rehnquist court to reduce federal civil rights protections against state actions. A confidential draft report of some 200 pages, “Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Elections,” spelt out that the disfranchisement “fell most heavily on the shoulders of African-Americans.” The election was characterized by “injustice, ineptitude, and inefficiency,” and the Commission urged the US Justice Department and the state attorney general to investigate relevant state or federal conduct: “Despite the closeness of the election, it was wide-spread voter disenfranchisement, not the deadheat contest, that was the extraordinary feature in the Florida election…the disenfranchisement was not [just] isolated or episodic… State officials failed to fulfill their duties in a manner that would prevent this disenfranchisement.” African-American voters were nearly 10 times as likely to have their ballots rejected as others. Eighty-three of the 100 Florida precincts with the largest percentage of discarded ballots have a black majority. Fifty-four percent of the disqualified ballots were by black voters, the draft report revealed. The panel was reluctant to cast the blame—“no conclusive evidence”— on particular state officials conspiring to disfranchise African-American voters or any other groups. But it criticized Jeb Bush, Harris, and other state officials for neglecting known weaknesses in the electoral processes of Florida and failing to provide for the increased black turnout. The felon list had “at least a 14.1 percent error rate” and “resulted in denying countless African-Americans the right to vote.” DBT/Choice Point officials testified under oath that they knew there were plenty of mistakes in their lists but that they were

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not acted upon by Florida officials. The Commission announced its intention to return to Florida in a year to check on the state of reforms: At this point, however, the state legislature had already passed a series of bills (May, 2001), approved the use of provisional ballots for voters challenged at the polls, and funded additional poll worker training.106 The evidence, according to the Commission report, clearly showed that Florida’s policies and practices violated US law by unfairly discriminating against black voters. The Justice Department was already investigating 12 Florida voter complaints. Having accused Jeb Bush and Harris of gross negligence, the Commission initiated a preliminary enquiry into possibly similar discriminatory actions in 33 other states. The Commission report received the endorsement of six (four Democrats and two independents) of its eight members while the other two vehemently denounced its methods, findings, and recommendations.107 There was more than a whiff of the “smoking gun” of electoral fraud in the air, a very serious offense under Florida law. An editorial in the Nation jeered in retrospect at the concern of “the Bush Five” on the US Supreme Court about possible unequal treatment suffered by the voters: “The election itself was a state-wide orgy of unequal treatment.” The weekly found its earlier discoveries about the felon purge confirmed: As the Commission report put it, “The purge system disproportionately impacted African-American voters who were placed on purge lists more often and more likely to be there erroneously.”108 Was the 2000 Florida election stolen or is George W.Bush the legitimate president? Republican Congressman Mark Foley was right when he said that Gore’s concession— very likely with the advice of timid Congressional Democratic leaders—made Bush president. But Gore would easily have won the election, had it not been stolen by the Florida Republicans and the US Supreme Court.

NOTES INTRODUCTION 1 L’Express International, April 10, 2003. 2 The German poll appeared in Der Spiegel, February 17, 2003, p. 23. The review of Todd is in “Le Défi du declin?”, Le Débat, no. 123, January-February 2003, pp. 62–65. 3 Der Spiegel, January 6, 2003. Beck is well known from his writings on the “risk society.” His most recent book is Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitalter: Neue weltpolitische Okonomie, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2003. 4 The Economist, May 17, 2003. Quoted in Der Spiegel, February 17, 2003. Schröder’s policy was endorsed at the time by 69 percent of German adults, and only 9 percent thought that German foreign policy ought to be governed by a concern for maintaining a good rapport with the US. Nevertheless, 87 percent felt that “the US will be an important ally in the future of Germany.” 5 See also the summary of the post mortem report on the 2002 elections, Bundestagswahl: Eine Analyse der Wahl vom 22.9.2002, Berichte der Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, Mannheim, no. 108, and the Christian Democratic assessment by Stephan Eisel, “Ein Wahlergebnis und sieben Fragen,” Die politische Meinung, no. 396, November, 2002, pp. 5–11.

1 WHO LOST AMERICA? WHO LOST OLD EUROPE? 1 See Politbarometer, December, 2002 and January and February, 2003. After February, 2003, it was 32 percent good and 65 percent bad. By mid-October (2002), also, that is after the German election which Schröder won, the 50 percent opting not to participate in an American invasion of Iraq had shrunk to 43 percent, possibly reflecting the German media coverage of Bush’s return to the UN—Resolution 1441 had not yet passed. 2 Ibid., October, 2002. 3 Politbarometer, February, 2003. Only 7 percent among Schröder’s SPD, and 18 percent among the opposition CDU/CSU wanted to send troops, and 30 percent “matériel and money.” 4 See Friedrich Mielke, “Die deutsch-amerikanische Krise,” Die politische Meinung, no. 399, February, 2003, pp. 17–22. 5 Christian Hacke, “Beziehungen in schwerster Krise,” Die politische Meinung, no. 399, February, 2003, pp. 23–27. Robert Kagan’s essay was first printed in Policy Review, June/July 2002. 6 Lothar Rühl, “Der Fall Irak,” Die politische Meinung, no. 399, February, 2003, pp. 45–48. Rühl also claimed that the Schröder government and other European critics were inclined to overlook the unreliability of weapons inspections. 7 The use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops in the Iraq-Iran war and against the Kurds while the US was supporting Saddam is an example. Some European comments also linked the mass murder of Shiites after the Gulf War to American encouragement for their uprising against the brutal dictator.

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8 “Das verflixte Irakjahr,” by Kristin Vorpahl, Die politische Meinung, no. 405, August, 2003, pp. 55–56. 9 There is by now a growing literature on the phenomenon of American rightwing talk radio in the style of Rush Limbaugh and others, and also on the concentration of media ownership and its doubtful impact on American democracy. See for example Ben H.Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000. 10 For German reactions to the trials, see the public opinion polls in the American Zone of Occupation reported by Richard and Anna Merritt, Public Opinion in Occupied Germany: The OMGUS Surveys 1945–1949, Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970, pp. 33–35. 11 For the German reception of Western concepts of democracy and acceptance of responsibility for wars of aggression, see the public opinion polls reported by Richard and Anna Merritt, Democracy Imposed: US Occupation Policy and the German Public, 1945– 1949, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995, esp. pp. 140–173, 242–243, and 337–339. 12 See also the contributions to Angelika Volle and Werner Weidenfeld, eds., Der Balkan zwischen Krise und Stabilitat, Bielefeld: Bertelsmann, 2002, especially the part on Kosovo. 13 On German unification, see my German Unification in the European Context, University Park: Penn State Press, 1993, pp. 315–318. President George H.W.Bush’s policies in Europe, like those of Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman before him, stressed multilateralism, international order, and national self-determination, and he was careful to avoid provoking counterproductive reactions. 14 See Markus Spillmann, editor of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, “Der Westen und Kosovo. Ein leidvoller Erfahrungsprozess,” in Volle and Weidenfeld, pp. 15–22 and Wolfgang Ischinger, “Keine Sommerpause der deutschen Aussenpolitik. Zwischenbilanz nach dem Kosovokrieg,” ibid., pp. 23–26. 15 August Pradetto, “Zurück zu den Interessen. Das Strategische Konzept der Nato und die Lehren des Krieges,” Blätter für deutche und internationale Politik, no. 7:805–815. On the Stability Pact, see Bodo Hombach, “Zukunftsstrategie Stabilitätspakt,” Volle and Weidenfeld, pp. 51–56. 16 August Pradetto, “Funktionen militärischer Konfliktregelung durch die Nato,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 24, 2002, pp. 12–21. Also Michael Rühle, “Wandel und Erweiterung. Der Prager Nato-Gipfel und die transatlantischen Beziehungen,” Die politische Meinung, no. 399, February, 2003, pp. 49–53, and Karl-Heinz Kamp, “Deutschland und die neue Nato,” ibid., pp. 11–16. 17 See also my A Coup Attempt in Washington? A European Mirror on the 1998/1999 Constitutional Crisis, New York: Palgrave, 2001, and the European media and literature cited there. 18 The typical media version of Clinton’s impeachment today and since 1999—if it is mentioned at all—has claimed that he was impeached for his affair with Monica Lewinsky (hardly a “high crime and misdemeanor” in the sense of the US constitution). The actual charges however were perjury and obstruction of justice and both were defeated in the Senate. The “sexing up” of the charges of course has permitted their propagandistic use with puritan readers and voters. Ibid., pp. 137–150. 19 The California recall was legal in that it followed the letter of the 1909 law, but it overruled a popular gubernatorial election of fall, 2002. The collection of recall signatures began almost immediately after that election—hardly in the spirit of a democratic recall—and was bankrolled by Republican Congressman Darrell Issa who hoped to become the next governor. Instead, movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger won and with a larger majority than the man he replaced, Democratic Governor Gray Davis. 20 Will Hutton, A Declaration of Interdependence: Why America Should Join the World, New York and London: W.W.Norton, 2003, pp. 4–5.

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21 See also Alton Frye, ed., Toward an International Criminal Court? Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2000. 22 See the appropriate chapters on Italy, Northern Ireland, and Spain in Martha Crenshaw, ed., Terrorism in Context, University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1995, chs. 4, 8, and 10. 23 See my essay “West German Leftwing Terrorism,” ibid., pp. 160–210. 24 See especially Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000, pp. 4– 15 and chs. 9 and 11. 25 The “peace bonus” was a major topic in Europe and America at the time the Cold War came to an unlamented end, at the beginning of the 1990s. The assumption that the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the fall of communism would allow the Nato states to slash their defense budgets in favor of long-neglected social needs was taken very seriously in Western Europe. In the US, however, determined efforts of the “military-industrial-Congressional complex” fought the cuts and produced the extraordinary American military super-power instead. 26 In his book Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions (2003) and in an interview with Charlie Rose on PBS, Clyde Prestowitz explained the cause of the European-American estrangement with the open contempt shown by American neoconservatives and the Pentagon to our eager allies after 9/11. Also Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, New York: Basic Books, pp. 104–105. 27 In some cases, American authorities demanded that suspects in an ally’s custody be turned over to them, or not be released even if an ally’s court proceedings freed them. 28 Earlier requests for military involvement in Yugoslavia had raised fears that, with the troubled legacy of Nazi occupation during World War Two, German soldiers would be targeted for assassination. Later, with Kosovo, German participation was justified with Germany’s moral-historical duty to resist “ethnic cleansing” and genocidal atrocities. 29 Martin Wagener, “Deutschland und die Irakfrage,” Die politische Meinung, no. 396, November, 2002, pp. 41–44. The author is also critical of the feckless lack of a clear position in his own party. 30 Politbarometer, May, 2002. 31 See Politbarometer for May through September. In August, particularly, the floods rated second place among the important themes with 38 percent, while “war and terror” sank to a mere 3–4 percent. 32 An early September poll (September 2–5) measured even 43 percent of Christian Democrats as saying “under no circumstances,” which may reflect their reaction to the Cheney speech. Politbarometer Flash, September, 2002. After a mid-September poll (September 16–17) when “war and terror” had still come second in importance at 16 percent, it faded because Schröder’s statements had resolved the issue of German participation. 33 The polls against participation held steady while the support for the Schröder government shrank to half the support it had received prior to the election. Early in 2003, the government parties also lost a string of state elections. 34 See Heribert Prantl in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 23, 2002. In a vignette on the subject of Washington protests about comparisons of Bush with Hitler by prominent SPD politicians, one CDU state chairman, Christoph Stölzl in Berlin, likened the SchröderFischer triumph to the 1933 takeover by the Nazis. It was a telling reminder that the Schröder camp had no monopoly on such glib comparisons with Hitler’s schemes of another generation. Stölzl was sharply reprimanded both by the SPD and by leaders in his own party. 35 Politbarometer, December, 2002. 36 One German press report also credited Canada’s Foreign Minister Bill Graham with the statement—in September, 2002—that the invasion was planned for the end of Ramadan, in February of 2003. Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 24, 2002.

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37 In September, 2002, the continental press also commented on the long-awaited dossiers on Iraq’s WMD that the Blair government had presented, though the press comments were made with noticeable overtones of skepticism. 38 “To Hell with Sympathy: The goodwill America earned on 9/11 was illusory. Get over it,” Time, November 17, 2003. Krauthammer also points out that, after its September 12 headline “We are all Americans,” Le Monde published a small book, All Americans? The World after 9/11 in which the old anti-American prejudices were aired again. 39 New York Times, December 9, 2003. 40 L’Express International, April 24, 2003. 41 Time, November 17, 2003. 42 “L’antiaméricanisme: Un mal franç ais,” L’Express International, April 10, 2003. 43 See also Vaisse in Le Monde, March 27, 2003. 44 Le Figaro, January 31, 2003. In the hour of victory, the British polls did pick up in favor of the war to a level of 63 percent, approaching the sustained support level in the US, but soon they dropped again below a majority. 45 L’Express International, April 10, 2003. 46 Ibid., p. 51. 47 Of those who were opposed to the war, 52 percent “did not at all approve” of US military action, 33 percent “rather not,” and only 12 percent approved by degrees. Ibid. 48 Ibid., The polls varied considerably on what percentage actually said they wanted to see the dictator win. Le Monde claimed as much as one-third at the height of the war and also reported one-third as “in solidarity” with Great Britain and the US. Anger and passing emotions obviously played major roles. 49 These perspectives on religious and political leadership and crusades are paralleled in other European countries, for example in Germany. Der Spiegel, February 17, 2003. 50 “La guerre de Villepin,” L’Express International, May 8 and April 17, 2003. Also Le Figaro July 13, 2003. 51 Le Figaro, July 10, 2003. This parallels the German criticism that Washington was trying to divide Europeans and wreck the EU. 52 Ibid., p. 2. 53 Le débat, no. 123, January/February, 2003. Védrine was foreign minister under premier Lionel Jospin (Parti Socialiste), 1997–2002, while Chirac was already president. 54 “Que faire avec 1’hyper-puissance,” an interview with Hubert Védrine, Le débat, no. 125, May-August, 2003, pp. 4–16. See also Georges Le Guelte, “Le monde de George W.Bush et l’Europe,” ibid., pp. 17–27, which also discusses neoconservative doctrines. 55 Védrine also speaks of a European tradition of underestimating the intelligence of American presidents, except John F.Kennedy and Bill Clinton, and blames it on a kind of knee-jerk anti-Americanism among intellectuals who often come from a Marxist tradition and really don’t understand America. See also the editorial, “Le piège de l’anti-américanisme,” ibid., pp. 190–192, which attributes it to a new cultural anti-Americanism that is based on a sense of powerlessness and a diffuse, consensual prejudice. 56 See also Gréau, Le capitalisme malade de sa finance, Paris: Gallimard, 1998. 57 “Les contradictions de l’empire,” Le débat, January-February, 2003, pp. 31–47. 58 Ibid., pp. 55–61. Todd replies in some detail, ibid., pp. 66–69. 59 Europeans are well aware of what Americans have said about Bush. Many European leaders and, of course, seven of the Democratic candidates opposing Bush in 2004—not to mention Al Gore in 2000—are all book authors. 60 A popular literature about the real and imagined adventures of immigrants and travelers made up for establishment disapproval. There were also the substantial numbers of Hessians who, after fighting the War of Independence on the British side, decided to stay in America which they obviously preferred to going home.

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61 The constitutional draft of the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848/49 had a federal system and separation of powers like the American model, but retaining monarchy at the federal and state levels, and the failure to adopt a strong independent judiciary and bill of rights made it a very different system. It failed when the old powers, especially the king of Prussia and the Habsburg emperor, had troops disperse the parliament and arrest deputies. 62 See also Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany: The Education of a Nation, New York: Harper & Row, 1960, p. 295n. 63 See, for example, Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels’ diatribe Der Sumpf (the swamp) against Berlin social and cultural life, or survey a considerable part of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda. 64 This old argument resurfaced after World War Two as a polemic against American occupation policies unfriendly to the trade unions.

2 ALEA IACTA: HOW DID THE RIFT HAPPEN? 1 Financial Times, May 21, 2003. The memorial issue of The Economist was that of September 7, 2003 and the editorial on p. 7. 2 Le débat, May-August, 2003, p. 9. 3 It may have seemed an unserious or unofficial initiative, but Perle claimed later to have sent it on to the office of the Secretary of Defense where its trace disappeared. 4 “The Divided West, part 1,” Financial Times, May 27, 2003, p. 8. 5 Ibid. 6 Interestingly, the motives behind the original Friendship Treaty 40 years ago also had distinctive anti-Anglo-American tinges: De Gaulle had earlier blocked British admission to the Common Market, the predecessor of the EU. Adenauer, feeling his influence in Washington slip, wanted to give the Federal Republic alternative support with De Gaulle’s France. 7 European objections tended to focus on the geographic and historical inanities to make Britain and Italy appear “newer” than France and Germany. See, for example, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 24, 2003, and Le Figaro, January 31, 2003. 8 Neither Britain nor Spain were members of the Common Market in 1963. Britain joined only in 1973 and Spain in 1986. The original members were France, Germany, Italy, and the three Benelux countries. 9 After the war ended and after very large credits and loans were extended to Turkey, the Turkish parliament agreed to send up to 10,000 troops, but the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (especially its Kurdish members) in effect vetoed any such force from what was Iraq’s old imperial master. 10 Spain’s Aznar apparently bore a grudge against Chirac’s “arrogant reaction” to the recent Moroccan occupation of the tiny Spanish rock island of Perejil. Since he was about to step down from the prime ministership he may also not have hesitated to be the “skunk at the Old European picnic.” 11 “Poison: Letters,” Financial Times, May 28, 2003. We may never learn the exact flow chart of the collusion of agents of the breakup. 12 Quoted in “Blair’s Mission Impossible,” Financial Times, May 30, 2003, p. 11. 13 As it happens, Cinco de Mayo, the day celebrating the independence of Mexico from Emperor Maximilian, is rarely honored in Mexico itself, but is dear to Mexican-Americans in the US, many of whom can vote and have been courted by the president and other Republican politicians.

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14 Europeans have long been critical of the American game of hardball with threats and “incentives” for the poorer countries. In the wrangling over Resolution 1441, for example, they were shocked when the US threatened to cut its military aid to Colombian drug enforcement. 15 There were large anti-war demonstrations reported also in large cities of Asia and the Middle East, not to mention the Commonwealth countries allied to the American plans, such as Australia. 16 Financial Times, May 29, 2003. 17 President Vicente Fox reportedly telephoned Chirac, hoping for a French veto that would spare Mexico from abstention or voting no in the teeth of an angry G.W.Bush. 18 Financial Times, May 26, 2003. 19 Ibid., May 27, 2003. 20 Ibid., May 26, 2003. 21 Los Angeles Times, December 19, 2003, and Financial Times, May 30, 2003. 22 Financial Times, May 30, 2003. 23 Ibid. 24 Haig Simonian in Berlin, Financial Times, May 21, 2003. 25 Janes is at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies in Washington, D.C. 26 See, for instance, the remarks of former Defense Minister Paul Quiles on French defense modernization and a more autonomous European defense organization, in Le Figaro, July 14, 2003. 27 “The long march towards the new army,” ibid, and Philippe Migault, ibid., pp. 4–5. 28 “Assuming the defense burden,” ibid. Not everyone would describe the Cold War defense contributions of West Germany and, later, of Germany in such glowing terms. 29 Financial Times, May 23, 2003. 30 Among the reasons given by Washington hardliners why inspections would not work were Saddam’s wiliness and past evasions, the infinite hiding places and sheer size of Iraq, and the fears of likely informants that they would incur Saddam’s revenge as long as he remained in power. 31 Before Sharon marched onto the Temple Mount and went on to become prime minister, the Europeans had helped to conclude the Oslo Agreements and invested in the Palestinian Authority that was to be established under the agreements. 32 As came to light recently, President Nixon in 1973 had even prepared to seize the oilfields of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Abu Dhabi by military force to secure the Western oil supplies at the height of the oil crisis. 33 Politbarometer, January, 2003. 34 Der Spiegel, January 23, 2003. 35 See ibid., January 6 and 13, 2003, Le Monde, January 20, 2003, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 24, 2003. 36 As Der Spiegel pointed out, it was, of course, Nazi Germany that had started the shift from bombing military and industrial targets to terror-bombing the civilian population in Guernica (1937), Warsaw (1939), Rotterdam (1940), and with the blitz on Britain (1940), long before the RAF under “Bomber Harris” and the US Air Force took to “saturation” or “carpet bombing” to break the morale of German civilians—and Allied governments and media of course lied about the targets and goals of these campaigns. Der Spiegel, January 6 and 27, 2003. 37 Due to the majority-and-run-off system, Jospin missed the run-off when French leftwing voters indulged themselves by voting for a gaggle of other leftist groups. Jospin thereupon took personal offense and retired from politics altogether. In the subsequent parliamentary elections, moreover, Chirac’s party gained a majority. 38 The opposition PS is not very strong in the National Assembly but big enough to matter. 39 Der Spiegel, January 6 and February 3, 2003.

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40 Ibid. 41 Politbarometer, February I and II. 42 Politbarometer II (February 17–20). 43 The American and British intelligence agencies at this point still had not supplied the UN inspectors with the critical information they claimed to have about WMD, while attacking them for their failure to find these chimeric weapons. 44 Der Spiegel, February 10, 2003. 45 The Boykin story seems to have been unknown to the European media before the war. 46 These polls were reproduced in Der Spiegel, February 17, 2003, without indication of source. 47 One website of French businesses in the US for people to boycott was www.boycottfrenchproducts.org. Another one included German products. The international ownership of some firms must have been confusing to customers. See especially John Peterson and Mark Pollack, eds., Europe, America, Bush: Transatlantic Relations in the Twenty-first Century, London and New York: Routledge, 2003, p. 12n. 48 Chirac reportedly telephoned all 45 African heads of state, not just those of Francophone Africa, and swore them to oppose the war in Iraq, and instead to support its peaceful disarmament. 49 Der Spiegel expressed the belief that the foremost war-monger in Washington was Rumsfeld. February 24, 2003. 50 Ibid., March 3, 10, and 17. 51 In January, 1991, when the bombs were falling, 63 percent of Germans admitted fear. There is no way to tell how many, especially men, might be embarrassed to show fear as many men might in Britain and the US. 52 Der Spiegel, April 14, 2003, pp. 17 and 19. By this time the percentages supporting the sending of German troops or of money and matériel had dropped slightly while those who wanted to send nothing had increased from 59 percent to 62 percent in mid-March. Politbarometer, March I and II. 53 Ibid., March II. The polls were conducted between March 24 and 27, in the middle of the surging hostilities. The beginning of the war also improved the popularity of Fischer and Schröder and lessened that of CDU/CSU leaders Edmund Stoiber and Angela Merkel. 54 In response to a question about Schröder’s social security reforms, 24 percent of his partisans said that they “went too far,” 33 percent that they “did not go far enough,” and only 33 percent that they were “about right.” The general population responded as follows: 25 percent “too far,” 35 percent “not far enough,” and 21 percent “about right.” 55 Politbarometer, April, 2003. The war soon dropped to a mere 3 percent of mentions in May and then disappeared from the list of the “most important themes.” The low assessment of German-American relations remained unchanged. Ibid., May and June, 2003. 56 34 percent objected to the German presence in Afghanistan and, among those who thought it “right,” only half wanted to see it extended beyond Kabul to the Afghan provinces. Ibid., August, 2003. 57 See my A Coup Attempt in Washington: A European Mirror on the 1998/1999 Constitutional Crisis, New York: Palgrave, 2001, pp. 170, 345. 58 The war had hardly damaged the oil installations and at first the occupiers did not seem to realize the desolate state of the oil industry that had been neglected for a decade and was unable to supply Iraq, much less to sate the expectations of big war profiteers. 59 US media comment and the Bush administration generally implied in their statements that partaking of the loot must be the chief motive of the European allies and that denying it to them would be a spectacular punishment. In reality, however, French and German businesses eager to bid played a negligible role in public opinion as compared to the mass reaction to the revelation of the “real motives” of what was supposed to be a noble cause. 60 Der Spiegel, April 14, 2003.

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61 The concern of European business circles about the price of transatlantic dissension was also reflected in an appeal for multilateralism in foreign policy which the European trade negotiators Chris Patten and Pascal Lamy published in the International Herald Tribune. 62 See also Der Spiegel, April 21, 2003. 63 Ibid., May 5, 2003. 64 Der Spiegel cited an NFO Infratest poll according to which two-thirds favored humanitarian aid; 3 percent offered German troops, 6 percent money, and 22 percent no support at all. July 14, 2003. 65 Stefan Aust and Cordt Schnibben, eds., Irak: Geschichte eines modernen Krieges, Stuttgart: Spiegel/DVA, 2003. 66 British and American reporters after the war made several efforts at estimating the numbers of civilian casualties from uncertain Iraqi hospital and funeral records. They arrived at figures of between 7,000 and 10,000 innocent “collateral damage.” In the meantime, estimates have risen to as high as 100,000, even though the Pentagon had always insisted that, despite its immensely destructive weaponry, civilian casualties would be “very low.” No one knows the number of Iraqi military casualties. See also Der Spiegel, August 11, 2003. 67 On the counter-arguments against following the American call to arms, see, for example, T.Bastian, 55 Gründe mil den USA nicht solidarisch zu sein—und schon gar nicht bedingungslos (55 reasons not to show solidarity with the US—least of all to follow its lead unconditionally), Zürich: Pendo, 2002. Regarding both Kosovo and Afghanistan, some Germans became very concerned about the innocent civilians killed by the bombings. 68 As it happened this particular general was unacceptable to the Kurdish representatives because of his activities under Saddam and had to be replaced. In the meantime, US Marines were deeply offended that the US command had not simply sent them in to storm Falloujah with fire and sword (or helicopters and bombs). 69 There have been some pathetic efforts by the Bush administration in the face of the elections of 2004 to dispute belatedly some of the negative findings such as these. 70 Scuttlebutt also tells of cases where local Afghhan chiefs or nasty neighbors, for example, sold to the US military persons they disliked as AlQaeda or Taliban suspects either for material gain or to ingratiate themselves with the US forces. 71 I became aware of these totalitarian police theories many years ago through Hannah Arendt, who particularly drew my attention to one Theodor Maunz, a German constitutional law professor who taught at the University of Munich while I was there as a student. The theories of the state of emergency were derived from Carl Schmitt’s work. 72 In the Pentagon, the anguished protests of the Judge Advocates General (JAGs) testify to the resistance to ignoring the Geneva Conventions as “outdated,” when in fact the well-being of American soldiers in captivity may well depend on them. 73 Associated Press, July 27, 2004. 74 FDCH E-Media, Inc., July 26, 2004. 75 Quoted by Philip Gourevitch in The New Yorker, July 26, 2004. 76 For months, media voices and Republican strategists had tried in vain to get the challenger to commit himself to a stance similar to that of President Nixon’s challenger in 1972 on the Vietnam war, George McGovern. Naderites and leftwing Democrats also made efforts in the same direction, but Kerry, who had even voted for the 2002 Congressional authorization for military action—back when everyone still believed in the WMD in Iraq—stuck to his cautious course, arguing that a sudden withdrawal from Iraq now would only aggravate the effects of the administration’s Iraq policies. 77 The book by Anonymous is Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, New York: Brassey’s, 2004, and he advocates massive lethal strikes at the enemy, “a popular, world-wide… Islamic insurgency.” The invasion of Iraq, to him, was an avaricious enterprise of the Bush administration and “a Christmas present for Osama Bin Laden,”

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whose recruitment for AlQaeda was vastly enhanced thereby. See now also Paul L.Williams, Osama’s Revenge: The Next 9/11, New York: Prometheus, 2004, William Pfaff, Fear, Anger and Failure: A Chronicle of the Bush Administration’s War Against Terror from the Attacks of 9/11 to Defeat in Baghdad, New York: Algora, 2004, and Craig R.Eisendrath and Melvin A.Goodman, Bush League Diplomacy, New York: Prometheus, 2004. Pfaff is the wellknown Paris-based columnist who has long given a skeptical, “realist,” appraisal of Bush diplomacy from a kind of Euro-American point of view. 78 See Kevin Phillips, The Bush Dynasty and Unger. As Michael Moore has pointed out again, Saudi, and also Bin Laden family money has been instrumental at crucial points in financing Bush’s career. There are also the business ties of the multinational Carlyle group of arms dealers whose board includes Saudi and Bush family members and long-time Republican power-brokers like James Baker, the elder Bush’s Secretary of State. 79 Since President Clinton had been the target of an intense witch hunt by conservative Republicans—the witches being a series of accusations over the years, ranging from the Whitewater real estate boondoggle to various allegations of sexual misconduct—and of unsuccessful impeachment in 1998/1999, he was unlikely to have done more than to order bombing raids in retaliation for the embassy bombings in East Africa. Even these brought forth a torrent of charges that he was “wagging the dog” to distract the public from his personal problems. See my A Coup Attempt in Washington? 80 Most of the information on the plot was obtained from Pakistani Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the Hamburg conspirator, Ramzi Binalshibh, both in American custody. It was an admittedly limited base for analyzing such a complex network and its relationships among the principals. The plot, of which many details are still unknown, began in 1999 and may originally have included 10 attack sites in the US, including some on the West Coast. Bin Laden himself reportedly scaled it down to the four targets of 9/11. 81 The White House preferred not to give the director budgetary and hiring-andfiring authority over the subordinated intelligence organizations whose heads immediately raised objections to the plans before a Senate committee. Nor would Bush welcome the director as a member of his cabinet, only as an advisor to the president, much as the CIA director used to give him daily briefings. 82 The bombing of the railroads in Madrid, of course, became a much-quoted precedent for possible similar attacks to influence elections. 83 There had also been an earlier, ominous announcement that, in case of a terrorist attack just before the elections, the balloting might have to be postponed. See also the New York Times and Washington Post of August 3, 2004.

3 THE DISTRACTED EAGLE 1 Both the League and, perhaps more sincerely, the UN were meant to take on a major trusteeship responsibility for decolonization and the advancement of excolonies to selfgovernment. 2 Christopher Kitchens, among others, has tried to explain away the difference between multilateralism and unilateralism. 3 Spanish rule in the Philippines was defeated with the help of a strong nationalist movement of rebellion under Emilio Aguinaldo, but the victors were not inclined to give the rebels the expected gift of self-government. 4 This did not keep Wilson from intervening unilaterally in several countries of the Western Hemisphere, nor from non-neutral trade policies that favored US exports to Britain and its allies while reducing trade with the Central Powers.

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5 This was the time of successive submarine crises, 1915–1917, as Germany pursued unrestricted submarine warfare and, among others, sank the British-registered Lusitania with 128 Americans aboard. 6 As former Secretary of State, Henry A.Kissinger, pointed out, for example, a collective security organization that permits the aggressor to participate in the deliberations about its conduct, as the League and the permanent Security Council members do, allows the aggressor country to divert or stop action against it. Does America Need a Foreign Policy? New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001, pp. 43–44. 7 Philosophers Francisco Suàrez, Hugo Grotius, and Samuel Pufendorf come to mind. 8 The Hague Tribunal consisted of 15 (originally 11) judges and always included an American. The US has long and actively promoted arbitration and, on occasion, submitted to it, for instance in the so-called Pig War threatening over the Canadian-American border in the San Juan Islands (WA) in 1872. 9 See also the website www.un.org/law/icc/index.html. Also Howard Ball, War Crimes and Justice, Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio Press, 2002, pp. 48–58. 10 Among the legal loopholes written into the treaty was the definition of the “elements of crimes” subject to the court which cover only “widespread and systematic atrocities” and have to be investigated first by national authorities. Only if a major crime is not prosecuted there or in case of a sham trial does the ICC have jurisdiction. Finally, ICC prosecutors and judges can be removed by the signatory governments, mostly US allies. 11 A Trusteeship Council was established under the aegis of the UN to guide the progress of further colonies towards independence and democracy, hopefully with more success and sincerity than its predecessor. Within a generation, indeed, a large number of ex-colonies under UN auspices became sovereign members of the UN. 12 See Maria La Ganga, Los Angeles Times, May 28, 2000. 13 A case in point was the unfortunate conflict with China over Taiwan when the president seemed unable to calibrate his official rhetoric in an appropriately nuanced way rather than to threaten China with massive retaliation. 14 Los Angeles Times, March 27, 2001. 15 There was also pointed criticism from Madeleine Albright, ex-Secretary of State under Clinton, of the failure of Bush to take charge of the situation in Kosovo and Macedonia, and regarding North Korea. 16 See, for example, Los Angeles Times, April 30, 2000. 17 Ibid., May 1,2000. 18 Ibid., May 8 and 24, 2000. 19 See ibid., May 17 and August 26, 2000. 20 See Robin Wright, ibid., September 13, 2000. 21 This gracious custom is to give a new president a period relatively undisturbed by partisan criticism, but it was not observed by Republican ultras during President Clinton’s first 100 days when he was attacked and even threatened with impeachment—long before anyone had ever heard of Monica Lewinsky. 22 The Economist, September 6, 2003. 23 Paul O’Neill had already wanted to make the first big tax cut contingent on continued good news about the large budget surplus expected in coming years which turned into an ever larger deficit, however. When he and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan objected to the second giant tax cut, half a year later, because they considered it hazardous to the economic recovery of the country, O’Neill was fired. See Paul O’Neill with Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. 24 Richard A.Clarke, the anti-terrorism adviser of Presidents Clinton and Bush, places Iraq at the head of Bush’s agenda in early 2001. Bob Woodward, in his Plan of Attack, does so right after 9/11.

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25 Knowledgeable scholars doubted that such public performances—“a little hot air” for domestic consumption—could bring down the Soviet colossus, nor did they “buy” the assumption that outspending Soviet defense expenditures would automatically persuade Soviet leaders to throw in the towel. Instead, they pointed to Soviet internal processes of conflict and disintegration, especially in the south. The Berlin Wall fell because of the internal situation in East Germany. 26 New York Times, January 6, 2004. 27 See The Nation, February 23, 2004, pp. 23–32. In an interesting sidelight on the question if Bush “sexed-up” the intelligence information on WMD, or if he was fed intelligence by a special Pentagon source over the heads of the CIA, Michael Lind also explains the neoconservative hostility to and desire to politicize the career intelligence organizations, the military, and the diplomatic service bureaucracy so that they will better serve their grandiose plans for preemptive wars and empire. 28 In his excellent review and survey, Lind not only traced neo-conservatism back to its leftist antecedents of the 1960s and earlier, but emphasized its curious affinity to British attitudes towards the rising menace of Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s. Evoking the ghost of “appeasement” of 1938 and denouncing the supposed “appeasers” of today vis-à-vis Osama Bin Laden/Hitler or Saddam/Hitler, they saw George W.Bush as their Churchill, rallying to the defense of an empire that Britain lost half a century ago. Except, of course, that now they would really prefer a new imperial crusade to bring democracy by force of arms to the whole world. 29 See Condoleeza Rice, Foreign Affairs, 2003. 30 Zbigniew Brzezinski also refers to this in his The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, New York: Basic Books, 2004, pp. 35–37. 31 Chalabi was sentenced in absentia to 22 years in prison by a Jordanian court on 31 charges of bank fraud involving his defunct Petra bank. 32 Nicholas Lemann, “The Next World Order,” New Yorker, April 1, 2002, pp. 42–48. Also Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003, pp. 12, 15, and 17. 33 This NRA interpretation has never been backed by the US Supreme Court, one of whose judges, the late Harry Blackmun, is on record as saying the opposite. The NRA boasted, upon the election of Bush Jr, that it would now be able to move into the White House. In September, 2004, President Bush’s feckless action in letting the assault weapons ban expire, in spite of the furious attacks of his challenger and the disapproval of two-thirds of the public, demonstrated how beholden he is to the NRA. 34 William Rivers Pitt, “Blood Money,” Truthout/Perspective, February 27, 2003. 35 Rebuilding America’s Defenses, pp. iv-v, 5–13. 36 Ibid., pp. 50–52. See also Brzezinski, The Choice, pp. 20–21. 37 See the 9/11 report. 38 See John W.Dean, Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, New York: Little Brown, 2004, pp. 93–107 and the references given there. 39 Brzezinski lays out the full scenario while distinguishing between a policy aimed at American leadership—transforming supremacy with careful and consensual steps into a selfsustaining system of international organization—and a unilateral policy towards global domination by mostly military force. Brzezinski, The Choice, pp. 18–19. 40 Republican Senator Rudman and Democratic Senator Hart’s commission reported January 31, 2001. Among their recommendations was a Homeland Security Department, an idea later claimed by Bush who at the time preferred to commission Vice President Cheney to coordinate plans to respond to possible terrorist attacks instead. See also Dean, on the curious evasions of the subject by the Bush administration, Dean, Worse than Watergate, pp. 107–124.

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41 See Joe Klein in Time, March 22, 2004 where agency squabbles and unused opportunities to follow up the recommendations of Clarke and Sandy Berger are discussed. See also New York Times, July 23, 2004. 42 Ibid., July 12 and 14, 2004. 43 Actually, Afghanistan was never conquered by the US forces, but only bombed, with considerable civilian casualties. Much of the money was used to buy the allegiance of greedy regional war lords of the Northern Alliance. As a consequence, years later, most of the country beyond Kabul was not under Western control. 44 As discussed at the time (August, 2002) in the Washington Post and New York Times, there was the strategic assumption, no doubt harbored also by Cheney, that seizing Iraq and its oil resources would have a tremendous impact on the rest of the Middle East. The legacies of uncontrolled Soviet nuclear accidents can be matched with the American difficulties of safely burying nuclear wastes in places like Yucca Mountain, Nevada, where the local population does not welcome such Greek gifts. 45 I do not mean to imply that empires may not eventually die of economic impoverishment. The high costs of empire, for example of Britain in India, were borne for a long time by someone other than the imperial elites, usually by their middle and lower classes and, of course, by the colonials. 46 The doctrine of “just war” specifies concrete tests far from whether a war leader imagines himself commissioned by god himself; for example, whether all nonviolent means to resolve a conflict have been exhausted, whether the means are proportionate to the goal, and whether the outcome is better for all participants than the original situation. President Bush’s war on Iraq cannot meet any of these tests. 47 See the wide-ranging feature, “Weapons of Mass Destruction” in National Geographic, November, 2002, pp. 2–35. The defunct Soviet bioweapons program, American government laboratories, and a few other places (Iran, Libya, Israel) are still the most likely sources of the materials and know-how of chemical and biological WMD. The defoliant Agent Orange, which was used not only on the vegetation but also on people in Vietnam, poisoned both American soldiers and Viet civilians with its highly toxic dioxin, which caused deaths, lifelong misery, stillbirths, and birth deformations among the latter for decades to come. More recently, some US Gulf War victims have shown terrible reactions to vaccinations against the effects of possible WMD. 48 “World Order and Mr. Bush,” New York Review of Books, October 9, 2003, p. 8. 49 At the time, Senator Kerry was also hedging his bets by voting for the [Senator Joe] Biden amendment in the Senate which required Bush to come to that house before launching actual military action. The amendment, however, did not pass, and neither did a second Biden amendment qualifying Kerry’s initial support for $87 billion for the war effort in Afghhanistan and Iraq—whereupon Kerry voted against the $87 billion. During the reelection campaign, Bush liked to cite this as an example of his opponent’s “flip-flopping “on issues, without ever mentioning his own “flip-flops,” for instance from going for UN inspections to pushing them aside. 50 Urquhart, “World Order and Mr. Bush.” See also Rashid Khalidi, Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East, Boston: Beacon Press, 2004, for a view from the other side. 51 Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, a title rather fishing for the attention of serious policy-makers and their public. 52 The Sorrows of Empire was published by Metropolitan Books (New York) in 2002 and Johnson wrote columns and an article in the Nation (October 15, 2001) about it. 53 Published by Thundermouth Press/Nation Books, 2003. 54 See also the insightful review of Khalidi’s book by Warren Cohen in Los Angeles Times, September 5, 2004. Further, Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003, pp. 121–143.

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55 Author of a series of three volumes on social theory on the evolution of the modern state and social classes since 1760, Mann is currently teaching at UCLA. 56 Tilly is particularly well-known for his symposium on the growth and development of European nation-states since 1500, which ran the gamut from basic state-building to the development of courts, The Formation of European NationStates, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975, where the gradual acceptance of taxation, public services, and the rule of law towards the modern territorial state is traced. 57 Kaldor’s latest book is Global Civil Society—an American Answer to War, forthcoming. 58 Cosmopolitanism, to Kaldor, means respect and persuasion for peace, universal human rights, and deference to multicultural differences. Except for self-defense and “safe havens,” force is to be used only in an international framework. 59 To Kaldor, the American hi-tech “spectacle wars” in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq were designed largely to give the government legitimacy at home and abroad—and to distract the American public from cutbacks in social services. There are also “new wars,” asymmetric assaults such as the Russian war on Chechnya or that of Israel upon the Palestinians in their territories. 60 On the culture of peace, see UNESCO News, September 20, 1997, the Culture of Peace Newsletter, from October, 1996, and David Adams, “A New Vision of Peace for the 21st Century,” Waging Peace Worldwide, spring, 1999, pp. 4–5. Also the UNESCO Director General’s Report on Educational Activities, “Towards a Culture of Peace,” pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 50/173 of December 22, 1995. 61 Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, New York: Knopf, 2003, the book length version of an earlier article in Policy Review. 62 See Stephen Holmes, “Why We Need Europe,” review of Of Paradise and Power. 63 “They Burned the History of This Country,” Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2003. 64 We can imagine what Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, or Nixon might have done when faced with such dysfunctional dissension in their cabinets: Knock heads together. 65 Wanting to be seen as friendly by the Iraqis, the UN had pointedly declined the protection of the occupation, with disastrous results. One of the casualties was UN Undersecretary De Mello. 66 The Turkish situation was complicated first by the rise to power of a party with fundamentalist Islamic leanings, then by the fact that the Iraqi Governing Council immediately protested against getting peace-keeping troops from the former colonial masters, Ottoman Turkey. 67 Aznar was dramatically accused by the Socialists of pretending that the Madrid attack had been the work of ETA, the Basque separatists—which might have benefited his Popular party—rather than of AlQaeda or Islamic fundamentalists, which reminded the Spanish public that it had been strongly opposed to being drawn into the war. Hundreds of nocturnal Spanish demonstrators gathered outside the party headquarters, banging pots and pans together and calling Aznar a liar. Ten thousand followed in protests all over Spain. 68 In Russia, interestingly enough, President Putin was reelected in a landslide the same weekend that Aznar stumbled and fell, but this probably less because he was against the Iraq war than because he represented a strong arm in a country still under the shadow of its fall from power, unity, and relative prosperity. 69 “Iraq: One year Later,” Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2004. 70 Ibid., Opinion, March 14, 2004.

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4 A CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION? 1 See for example Los Angeles Times, February 16, 2004 and March 20, 2004. Also the EPA and FDA Mercury Policy Project, National Resource Defense Council, 2004, and www.seaturtles.org/gotmercury.htm. 2 Like all such warning labels, they were not exactly popular with the industry and supermarket chains. Displaying canned tuna warnings, in particular, required government supervision and, at times, intervention. 3 The percentage of American children at risk has been revised upward in recent studies from under 10 percent to 15 percent, that is about 600,000 under present conditions. Of American women, 8 percent have more mercury in their bloodstream than the EPA considers healthy. See also Paul Krugman, “The Mercury Scandal,” New York Times, April 6, 2004. 4 Kim Todd, “Are You Big Foot?”, Sierra, January/February, 2003. 5 This was far more lop-sided than in 1994, when the Democrats still controlled both the presidency and Congress, the obvious target of lobbying by interested groups. At that time, the incumbent Democrats received 3.3 million and the Republicans 2.7 million. 6 See also Los Angeles Times, March 19, 2004, and May 14, 2004. The original Clean Air Act had a big loophole in that it allowed the “grandfathering in” of old electricity plants and refineries that now pass off their modernization as “maintenance and repairs.” Allowing them to do this is worth billions to the firms involved. See also Paul Krugman’s op-ed piece, “Every Breath You Take,” New York Times, November 26, 2002. The EPA technical staff were cut out of the process of reformulation. Also ibid., Sunday Magazine, April 4, and ibid., April 7. 7 See also Dan Briody, The Halliburton Agenda, New York: Wiley, 2003. 8 See Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Interest, The Buying of the President 2004: Who’s Really Bankrolling Bush and his Presidential Challengers—and What They Expect in Turn, New York: Perennial (HarperCollins), 2004, pp. 221–222. 9 During the impeachment campaign against President Clinton, federal courts refused to exempt his lawyers, advisers, and even his security guards from having to answer questions about his sexual involvement with a White House intern—which was certainly no criminal matter, nor did it involve public policy as in Cheney’s case. 10 The American oil industry has a long record dating back to the Rockefellers’ Standard Oil Company’s monopolistic manipulations. 11 Los Angeles Times, May 28 and June 28, 2001. 12 Ibid., May 11 and 18, 2004. California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer is still investigating the involvement of Enron. He has also instigated inquiries into possible “gaming” of gasoline and diesel fuel pricing since a major refinery in Bakersfield revealed suspicious plans to shut down operations in a tight market. 13 Ibid., June 25, 2001, and May 22, 2002. There also occurred some heat-waves that made demand in the Southwest jump temporarily by as much as 4 percent, compared to earlier years, and resulted in so-called “brownouts.” 14 “Energy wholesalers are in cahoots with the [federal] administration,” wrote Robert Scheer. Ibid., May 29 and 30, and June 3, 2001. 15 The dust abatement was aimed at unpaved roads, vacant lots, construction sites, building materials, and tilled fields. Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2003. Other suits attacked oil industry smog and pollution in the valley. 16 Representative Don Young (R-Alaska), Alaska Public Radio, August 19, 1996.

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17 “White House Intercedes for Gas Project in National Forest,” Los Angeles Times, August 9, 2004. 18 See, for example, Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2003. 19 See also John G.Mitchell, “Our Great Estate,” Sierra, March/April 2004, on the opening of 10 percent of the area designated as federal lands by earlier administrations to logging, mining, and oil exploration by Bush. 20 See Carl Pope and Paul Rober, Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Also their article in Sierra, May/June 2004, pp. 40–43. 21 The point then was to bar the import of prescription drugs from Canada where they often cost as little as half their price in the US. See Lewis, Buying of the President, pp. 103–105 and 434–436. 22 Los Angeles Times, August 19, 2004. 23 This was really a comedy on a very serious subject, arranged by Senators Jesse Helms and Trent Lott, the Republican Senate majority leader, as an act of “vengeance” on President Clinton because he had beaten the impeachment rap and not resigned. The result was the unraveling of the international consensus on nuclear disarmament. See Merkl, A Coup Attempt in Washington: A European Mirror on the 1998/1999 Constitutional Crisis, New York: Palgrave, 2001, pp. 170–171. 24 For a quick overview of the rise of a dozen green parties all over Europe, see Ferdinand Müller-Rommel, ed., New Politics in Western Europe: The Rise and Success of Green Parties and Alternative Lists, Boulder, Col.: Westview, 1989. 25 Los Angeles Times, August 19, 2004. 26 See his editorial in Sierra, January/February, 2003, p. 6. 27 It still accounts for the hole in the ozone layer, although that appears to be gradually closing as a result of international cooperation on reducing air pollution. See EPA bulletin, “14 Years after the Montreal Protocol: Latest Findings on National Air Quality.” 28 The Healthy Forest bill was originally intended to remove only underbrush and excessive growth to minimize fires and make them more accessible for the fire fighters, but its critics believe it allows for cutting too many valuable trees and diminishes wildlife habitat. 29 There was a recent request for a modest CAFÉ standard increase for cars and light trucks, 1.5 more miles to the gallon which would fall short of even a “band aid” approach. 30 On the character of green party movements throughout Europe, see also Thomas Poguntke, “The New Politics Dimension in European Green Parties,” in Müller-Rommel, New Politics, pp. 175–194. Also E.Gene Frankland and Donald Schoonmaker, Between Power and Protest: The Green Party of Germany, Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1992, esp. chapters 2 and 9. 31 In Europe, the extreme rightwing traditions tend to be statist and authoritarian, as with Italian fascists, German Nazis, and similar movements all across the continent, even if some contemporary neo-fascist and far right populist movements (for example the German Republicans), under the influence of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, embraced neoliberal economic policies for a while. In America, by contrast, an instinctual aversion to all government per se is typical of the far right. 32 Peter B.Levy, Encyclopedia of the Reagan-Bush Years, Westport, Conn.; Greenwood Press, 1996, p. 423. 33 The reasons for the disintegration of the Soviet colossus appear to be less economic than political. Beginning in the 1980s, after the last reform efforts of an aging party leadership, ethnic conflict in the south and west reawakened nationalist ambitions, for example, in Georgia, Armenia, and Moldova. Decades of lessening of dictatorial control and ideological self-confidence weakened the central response to the challenge. There was also the disaster of Afghanistan, which turned into the Soviet Union’s Vietnam. The final chapters were characterized by Gorbachev’s glasnost (transparency) and perestroika (restructuring, liberal

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reforms) which eased the transition to the final dissolution of the Soviet Union into the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). See, for example, Gordon B.Smith, Soviet Politics: Struggling with Change, New York: St Martin’s Press, 2nd edn, 1992, pp. 136–146, 279, 296–299. 34 A good example of the difficult comparisons involved is Frederic L.Pryor, Public Expenditures in Communist and Capitalist Nations, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1968. 35 Charles De Gaulle had already raised the question in the late 1960s of whether the US would really risk New York for Berlin, when the chips were down. On the views of the 1980s, see the contributions to Wolfram Hanrieder, ed., Arms Control, the FRG, and the Future of EastWest Relations, Boulder, Col: Westview, 1987. 36 Levy, pp. 397ff. ibid., timeline for July 7, 1988. 37 Bill Clinton, My Life, New York: A.Knopf, 2004, p. 345. 38 Joseph Joffe in Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 11, 1995. 39 See Paul Krugman, The Great Unravelling: Losing Our Way in the 21st Century, New York: W.W.Norton, 2003, p. 26, and, on tax evasion, pp. 181–182. 40 See Donald L.Bartlett and James B.Steele, America: What Went Wrong?, Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1992, a book in which the Pulitzer prize-winning journalists of the Philadelphia Inquirer describe the breath-taking speed with which America in the 1980s was moving to a two-class society. 41 Calling GFCC the “golden calf” would not be appropriate: It would make this terrible system sound small and endearing. 42 Los Angeles Times, August 25, 2004. 43 Congressional Quarterly. The Presidency A-Z, 3rd edn, Washington D.C.: CQ Press, 2003, p. 133. 44 Franklin C.Spinney’s report on the 1970s which got the attention of the Senate and Time magazine was called Defense Facts of Life. 45 Interview with Spinney upon his impending retirement by Bill Moyers on NOW, PBS, December 5, 2003. 46 Los Angeles Times, August 25, 2004. 47 A wave of negative reaction from the public and Congress compelled the FCC to rescind its giveaway to the largest media corporations. 48 In spite of the rollback, the FCC under Michael Powell’s chairmanship still raised the percentage of local media control by the highest bidder from 33 percent to 39 percent. 49 On far right tax resisters and militias, see also Heidi Beirich’s report in Intelligence Report, spring, 2004, no. 113. (This is the journal of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which regularly reports development on the American far right.) 50 Keillor is a very popular radio comedian whose road shows philosophically and gently poke fun at life in Lake Woebegone, a peaceful, rural, and mostly fictitious community in Minnesota or South Dakota. 51 See Krugman, The Great Unravelling, pp. 186–188, on the return to annual deficits under the cover of 9/11 hiding the huge tax cuts. 52 Ibid., pp. 177–179, on agricultural subsidies. 53 There have been scores of features on the religious right, or the evangelicals in the Republican party, all over popular and news magazines, especially during the campaign year 2004. 54 While many of the early colonists were brought to the American colonies by their desire for freedom from religious oppression, they themselves often oppressed and persecuted other religious groups such as Catholics, Jews, and “heathen” Indian religions. 55 The immediate trigger of the raids was a bomb exploding at Palmer’s Washington residence. The broader context of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the fears generated by neverending political turmoil in Europe made the popular hysteria about labor agitators like the “Wobblies” (International Workers of the World—IWW) more plausible.

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56 See also David Cole and James X.Dempsey, Terrorism and the Constitution, New York: New Press and First Amendment Foundation, 2002, pp. 65–67. 57 Ibid., pp. 2–3 and pp. 65–67. The authors called the 1996 Act “one of the worst assaults on the Constitution in decades,” a high compliment in comparison to such crises as Watergate and Iran-Contra. 58 On the whole, however, little action resulted from the 1996 Act, at least none of any help against real terrorist activities. 59 On the secret evidence provision, see Cole and Dempsey, Terrorism and the Constitution, pp. 108, 125, 128. 60 This can be accomplished by the simple device of filing an appeal and insisting on custody until the appeal is exhausted. The full extent of this problem of racial profiling and mistreatment of foreign Muslim visitors to our shores can be gauged from a review of an earlier book by Cole, Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism, also New Press, by Anthony Lewis in The New York Review of Books, October 23, 2003, pp. 16–19. 61 Ibid., pp. 172–175. 62 Los Angeles Times, May 23, 2004. 63 Web exclusive, Newsweek National News, May 22, 2004, by Michael Isikoff, “Double Standards?”, including the [post-Cold memo of the Office of Legal Counsel, a supportive memo by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez, the habeas corpus memo, a critical State Department memo, and opinions of Scott Horton and Kenneth Roth. 64 www.iraaq-letter.com. The operation recalls the summoning of a dozen or so of the best minds in American constitutional law in 1998 by Congress, upon Democratic insistence, to determine whether President Clinton’s transgressions really amounted to “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the standard demanded by the Constitution for his impeachment. Without exception, every one of these renowned scholars, both male and female, said no, whereupon the conservative Republicans in charge simply ignored their judgement. See Merkl, A Coup Attempt in Washington?, pp. 101–105, 156. 65 See Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, May 22, 2004, whose judgment indicted military intelligence in particular and who named three dozen inmate deaths, many from the abuse they received. 66 See Neil A.Lewis, ibid., April 8, 2004. 67 Interview with Charlie Rose on PBS, January 21, 2004. 68 The ICC Treaty was substantially modified to accommodate American concerns, though Washington rejected it anyway. 69 For a prehistory of ICC, see Howard Ball, War Crimes and Justice: A Reference Handbook, Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio Press, pp. 48–49. 70 Among the ad hoc international war crimes trials was that of Serb and Croat leaders, including Slobodan Milosevic. The latter faced, interestingly, 66 charges of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, violations of the laws and customs of war, crimes against humanity, and genocide arising from the Yugoslav civil wars, attempts at “ethnic cleansing,” and imperialistic drive at a Greater Serbia of the decade. The Bush administration must have been embarrassed at the American part in leveling the charges, for it let it be known that it wanted to end such international criminal courts as soon as this trial would end—in the meantime, several others have begun. 71 Ball, War Crimes and Justice, pp. 49–58.

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5 REVISITING PRESIDENT BUSH’S ELECTION 1 Time, October 30, 2000. 2 Der Spiegel, October 23, 2000 and Time, September 18, 2000. 3 Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, pricked the balloon of hypocrisy when he promised substantial rewards to women who could tell compromising stories about the Republican pursuers of President Clinton: Among those unmasked were the next House Speaker and the chair of the Judiciary Committee in charge of the impeachment proceedings. The new book by Kitty Kelley is The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, New York: Doubleday, 2004. 4 Newsweek, October 16, 2000. 5 Charles Lewis, The Buying of the President 2004, New York: Center for Public Integrity, 2004, pp. 88–105. 6 See Paul Krugman, The Great Unravelling: Losing Our Way in the New Century, New York, London: W.W.Norton, 2003, pp. 149–151, 184–185. See also David B.Magleby, Financing the 2000 Election, Washington D.C.: Brookings, 2001, especially the essay by Diana Dwyre and Robin Kolodny on the parties’ use of soft money. 7 Ibid., pp. 18–19, 169, 225. See also Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman, Electing the President 2000: The Insiders’ View, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. 8 It should be mentioned that the so-called Social Security Fund itself is not funded but has long been used to “cover” part of the general budget deficits. 9 Time, September 11, 2000 and Newsweek, September 4, 2000. 10 Even the approximate size of the surplus was really not known so that Newsweek, October 9, 2000, for example, spoke of “the surplus fantasy.” See also Time, October 9 and 23, 2000. 11 In the polls, 48 percent (versus 43 percent) expressed the belief that the Bush tax cut would benefit a mere 1 percent of taxpayers, while 56 percent (versus 36 percent) thought that Gore’s budget proposal would increase the size of government substantially. 12 Jeff Greenfield, “Oh, Waiter! One Order of Crow!”, New York: Putnam, 2001, pp. XVXVI. 13 See also Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003, pp. 43, 115–121 and passim. 14 When the Republican ultras in the House of Representatives tried to impeach Clinton for allegedly having been guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the ancient constitutional formula for impeachment, they were compelled by the opposition to invite testimony from the best-known constitutional law professors of the nation. But when all these fine scholars testified that it made no sense to relate the phrase to these constitutional proceedings, the ultras simply ignored them and impeached the president anyway. 15 Guardian, November 9, 2000. 16 US News and World Report, October 23, 2000. See also Jake Tapper, Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency, Boston: Little, Brown, 2000, and Joe Conason, Big Lies: The Rightwing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003, pp. 43–44, about the intense media bias against Gore as compared to the treatment of Bush Jr, ibid., pp. 43–51. 17 Economist, November 4, 2000. Also Richard Johnston, Michael Hagen, and K.H.Jamieson, The 2000 Presidential Election and the Foundation of Party Politics, Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Also Larry J. Sabato, ed., Overtime! The Election 2000 Thriller, New York: Longman, 2001. 18 Le Monde, November 8, 2000.

Notes

186

19 Ibid., November 7, 2000. 20 Los Angeles Times, December 3, 2000. Also the Washington Post contributors to Ellen Nakashima, ed., Deadlock: the Inside Story of America’s Closest Election, Washington D.C.: Washington Post, 2001, and the New York Times collection 36 Days: The Complete Chronicle of the 2000 Presidential Election Crisis, New York: New York Times, 2001. 21 Guardian, November 11, 2000. 22 Greenfield, “Oh, Waiter!”, p. 32. See also Jay Nordlinger, “The GOP’s Burden,” in National Review, August 28, 2000. 23 For a picture of a butterfly ballot, see 36 Days: The Complete Chronicle of the 2000 Presidential Election Crisis, New York: Times Books and Henry Holt, 2001, p. 11. 24 New York Times, November 14, 2000. 25 Ibid., November 16, 2000. 26 All quoted in Greenfield, “Oh, Waiter!”, p. 227. 27 Gerald Lubenow in Public Affairs Report 41, no. 5 (winter, 2000), p. 6. 28 New York Times, November 9 and 10, 2000. 29 Ibid., November 11, 2000. 30 Los Angeles Times, November 18, 2000, and Time, November 27, 2000. 31 National Review, December 4, 2000. 32 Merkl, A Coup Attempt, pp. 310–315. 33 Los Angeles Times, December 17, 2000. 34 New York Times, November 17 and 19, 2000. 35 Ibid., November 24, 2000. 36 Ibid., November 19, 2000. See also Jeffrey Toobin, Too Close to Call: The 36 Day Battle to Decide the Florida Election, New York: Random House, 2002. 37 Greenfield, “Oh, Waiter!”, p. 263. 38 Ibid., pp. 259–261 and 272–276. See also the opinions in E.J.Dionne Jr and William Kristol, eds., Bush v.Gore: The Court Cases and the Commentary, Washington D.C.: Brookings, 2001, esp. pp. 193–252. 39 New York Times, November 22, 2000. Toobin believes that the Democratic failure to challenge the large number of military absentee ballots doomed the count for them. 40 Los Angeles Times, December 12, 2000. Justice Scalia also ran afoul of judicial canons of probity when, in spring, 2004, he followed an invitation of Vice President Cheney to go duck hunting as Cheney’s guest. Scalia refused to recuse himself from participation in discussions of Cheney’s case before the court (and Rehnquist refused to compel him) regarding the files of the energy policy panel of 2001. 41 Jack N.Rakove, The Unfinished Election of 2000: Leading Scholars Review America’s Controversial Election, New York: Basic Books, 2001, pp. 29, 35, 70–72. 42 Republicans and the Republican-controlled media preferred that, in 1960, Richard Nixon nobly walked away from his narrow (and controversial) defeat. He did not, but launched a series of unsuccessful legal challenges. Gore, in 2000, accepted his defeat from the hands of the US Supreme Court. 43 Newsweek, December 12, 2000. 44 Economist, November 18, 2000. 45 Le Monde, November 6 and 11, 2000. 46 Financial Times, December 19,2000, and Guardian, November 9 and December 1, 2000. As Toobin wrote, all that the Supreme Court achieved was to taint the legitimacy of President Bush. 47 Financial Times, November 9, 2000, Le Monde, November 11 and 15, and Financial Times, December 15, 2000. Senator Hillary Clinton made a motion to abolish the Electoral College and La Repubblica, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Swedish Dagens Nyheter praised the idea. 48 La Repubblica, November 8, 9, and 12, 2000.

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49 Il Sole 24 Ore, November 12 and 19, 2000. 50 Quoted, respectively, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 21, 2000, and Le Figaro, November 10, 2000. 51 Der Spiegel, November 13, 2000. 52 Quoted in Guardian Weekly, November 16, 2000. 53 Economist, November 18, 2000. 54 Quoted in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 22 and December 12,2000. 55 Nepszabad and Die Zeit, both on November 16, 2000. 56 Le Figaro, December 11, 2000. 57 Guardian, November 9, 2000. 58 Economist, November 18 and Le Monde, November 28 and December 11, 2000. 59 Le Monde, December 12, 2000. 60 Der Spiegel, November 13, 20, and 27, 2000. 61 Guardian, November 10, 2000. 62 Ibid., November 13, 2000. 63 Economist, November 11, 18, and 25, 2000 64 Ibid., November 25, 2000 and Die Zeit, December 7, 2000. 65 Guardian, November 15 and 28, 2000. 66 Ibid., December 14, 2000. 67 Quoted by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 12 and 15 and Die Zeit, December 7, 2000. 68 Quoted by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 15, 2000. Also Sunday Times, December 10, 2000. 69 Guardian Weekly, December 21 and 27, 2000. 70 Guardian, November 28 and December 5 and 8, 2000. 71 Ibid., December 11, 2000. 72 Ibid., December 13, 2000. 73 Ibid., December 14, 2000. 74 Financial Times, December 11 and 15, 2000. 75 Le Monde, December 11 and 15, and Le Figaro, December 5 and 14, 2000. The latter had shown far more juristic acumen about the impeachment question than about the Florida decision, which it simply accepted. 76 El Mundo, December 14, 2000 and La Repubblica, December 5, 6, 9–15, 2000. 77 Il Sole 24 Ore, December 17, 2000. The Corriere della Sera wrote: “Bush was crowned by the US Supreme Court” and quoted the famous statement by Justice Stevens. December 14,2000. The Italian press sometimes tended to lionize Justice Scalia as “one of our boys.” 78 Der Spiegel, November 20 and 27 and December 4 and 18, 2000. Also Die Zeit, December 7 and 14, 2000. 79 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 23 and 29 and December 1, 2, and 13–15, 2000. 80 Respectively, the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, December 11, Darmstädter Echo, December 15, and Straubinger Tageblatt, December 14, 2000. The last wrote: “The picture the US presented to the outside world these five weeks was unattractive and disquieting.” 81 December 13, 2000. There is no equivalent to the Western predominance of law and lawyers in China; they are just being reintroduced. 82 The presence of third party candidates like Nader, the Electoral College, or the cravenness of the Democratic leaders are not causes of the failure of the electoral process in the same sense. 83 The electoral reforms since 2000 concentrated on providing better machines, for example replacing the ancient punch-card machines with touch-screens. The new equipment, however, has raised new doubts: It is vulnerable to “hacking,” occasionally makes huge errors and, most important, leaves no paper trail for recounts. In the state of California, for instance, use of the new machines has been suspended.

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84 Lehrer Newshour, January 19, 2001: Interview with Jimmy Carter. 85 The consortium of newspapers included the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Miami Herald. Also Associated Press and the conservative Judicial Watch. Their final count, ironically, showed that a recount in the whole state (as the US Supreme Court had suggested but made impossible) would have produced a Gore victory, whereas the partial recounts demanded by Gore would result in a Bush win. 86 Quoted by the Los Angeles Times, December 20, 2000. 87 During the presidential election campaign of 2004, a number of new warnings against Republican election fraud have been aired, including talk of a new purge of the voter rolls and stories of uniformed and armed Florida state troopers coming to the homes of elderly black voters and intimidating them. 88 New York Times, November 10, 2000. 89 Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2001. 90 New York Times, November 14, and Los Angeles Times, November 29, 2000. 91 Los Angeles Times, December 7, 2000. 92 Ibid., December 12, 2000. 93 Gore remained the presiding officer of the Senate until the inauguration of the next vice president, Dick Cheney. Ibid., January 6, 2001. 94 House Democrats did launch a task force in February, 2001, to look into irregularities in the Florida elections. It was chaired by a prominent African-American, Maxine Waters, of Los Angeles. Los Angeles Times, January 9, 2001. 95 Ibid., January 12, 2001. 96 As in many other states, the black prison population of Florida grossly over-represents the percentage of African-Americans in the state which is only 15 percent. Of inmates, 54 percent are black. 97 As one reader wrote in the Los Angeles Times, May 25, 2001: “It doesn’t defy logic if the purpose is to steal an election.” 98 The number of felons from other states was estimated by Jeff Manza of Northwestern University at 50–100,000. The Nation, February 5, 2001, p. 20. 99 Joe Lantigua, “How the GOP gamed the system in Florida,” ibid., April 30, 2001. This is probably the most thorough of the accounts of election irregularities. 100 Nicholas Thompson, “Locking up the vote: Disenfranchisement of former prisoners was the real crime in Florida,” Washington Monthly, May, 2001, pp. 17–21. 101 Quoted by Gregory Palast, “Florida’s Disappeared Voters: Disfranchised by the GOP,” The Nation, February 5, 2001, p. 20. In Alabama, too large a number of black males have been disfranchised because of a felony record. Rakove, p. 87. 102 Media reports documented Jeb Bush’s many telephone calls and pointed out that Harris’ aides had erased computer work done during the recounts. Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2001. 103 Ibid., January 12,2001. 104 Ibid., January 13, 2001. 105 Ibid., March 10,2001. 106 Ibid., June 5, 2001. 107 The Republican member Abigail Thernstrom said: “I am obviously not convinced there is a violation of the Voting Rights Act.” She and an independent member, Russell G.Redenbaugh, later issued a joint statement blasting the report for “the shoddy quality of the work, its stolen election message, and its picture of black citizens as helpless victims of the American political process.” Ibid., June 9, 2001. 108 The Nation, June 25, 2001. See also the interview with the Commission chair, Berry, in Crisis, July/August, 2001, p. 9.

INDEX Abortion 160 Abraham, Spencer 126 Abrams, Elliott 94 Abu Ghraib 65; Bush and 74, 155; international impact of 155; investigations of 156; John Howard and 154; media and 156; military police at 74; Tony Blair and 154 Adelphia, 142, 148 Adenauer, Konrad 13, 42 Afghanistan 8, 9, 17, 24–6, 154 s.a. Enduring Freedom; Europeans against 26; fund transfer to Iraq 102; US and 17–8 Africa 3 African-American disfranchisement: elsewhere in US 193; in Florida 192–3; and increased turnout 193–4, 198; past electoral discrimination 193; purge of voter rolls 193 air quality management 128–1 Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (ANWAR): oil drilling in 128, 161 Albright, Madeleine 21 On 15 Al-Hussayen, Sami Omar 153 Alien and Sedition Laws (1789) 150 Allawi, Iyad 72, 118 al-Qaeda 10, 18, 22–3, 62, 73; al-Qaeda cells in Europe 23–7; al-Qaeda in Indonesia 27; new attack plans 79 Al-Sistani, Grand Ayatolla Ali 19, 110 American concern with own casualties 107 American democratic image 181–8, 192; damage from Florida controversy 180–3, 186–7; damage from Starr Report 183; damage from Supreme Court intervention 189–2; polarized electorate and 185–6

Index Andropov, Yuri 140 Anglo-American ‘realist’ foreign policy 70, s.a. US foreign policy Andersen, Arthur 141–5 Angola 19, 22, 46 Annan, Kofi 110 anti-Americanism: definition of 30; of European intellectuals 204n55; Greek 30–1; Middle Eastern 11 Anti-terrorist Act (1996) 152; and attack on WTC (1993) 152; and Oklahoma City (1995) 152 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) 153 appeasement: towards al-Qaeda 73; towards Iraq 2, 6 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) 90–1; Bush on 91; European leaders on 90 anti-imperialists, American 81–2 Arab attitudes toward US: admiration for personal freedom 107; bias in favor of Israel 107; hatred for hypocrisy 107; invasion/occupation of Iraq 107 Ashcroft, John 152–3; bias against Arab-Americans 107, 152–3; and Patriot Act 99 Atlantic Charter 86 Australians: at Guantanamo 75, 154 ‘axis of evil’ 24–6, 40, 63 Aznar, José 32, 44–5, 73, 121; protests against 213n67, 214n67 Bacevich, Andrew 106 Baker, James III 111, 168–70, 175, 186; attack on judges 171, 180; election strategy of 169–72; and Iraqi foreign debt 67 Baghdad embassy (US) 72 Balkans (Yugoslavia) 8, 14–16; France and 16; Germany and 15–16; UN and 16 Barak, Ehud 37 Bechtel corporation 51, 65, 162 Beck, Ulrich 2 Belgium 5, 21

190

Index

191

Berliner Zeitung 183 Berlin Wall: Reagan’s speech at 93 Berlusconi, Silvio 32, 45 Berry, Mary Frances 197–8 Bertram, Christoph 49 Blair, Tony 10, 15, 32–4, 41, 45–7, 56, 65; belief in the UN 70 Blix, Hans 41, 46–7, 54, 57, 116–17 Bolton, John 93; on small arms trade 96 Bradley, Bill 164 Brahimi, Lakdar 72, 118 Bremer, L.Paul 20, 110; dissolution of Iraqi army 115 Breyer, Stephen G. 178 Brezhnev, Leonid 14, 140 Briand, Aristide 86 Brzezinski, Zbigniew 23–4, 94; on coalition of the willing 94 Brooks, David; on neo-conservatives 93–4 Browner, Carol 126 Bryan, William Jennings 81 Bugliosi, Vincent; impeach Rehnquist majority 179 Bulgaria 44, 46 Bush administration; and friendly corporations 129–0; and oil industry 126; and tax cuts 147–8; and Western mining interests 130 Bush, George W.; alcoholism 61; bias against Clinton policies 89, 91; and DNI 101; campaign funds of 66; campaign environmental issues 161; compared to Bush Sr 111; defense budget of 143–4; delegitimizing leadership style 121; in European perception 2, 7–8, 14, 20–4, 34, 41, 48–2, 56–7; foreign policy campaign speech (1999) 89; imperial assertiveness of 14, 31, 33; imperial-economic bubble 140–1; initial ignorance of foreign policy 88; initial humility in foreign relations 89; on the insurgency 114; invasion of Iraq 6, 9, 34, 64; ‘mission accomplished’ 71, 105; neo-conservative bellicosity 89; penchant for secrecy 100–1;

Index

192

resistance to 9/11 investigations 100–1; responsibility for casualties/deaths 117–18 and war against terror 23–4, 34, 57–8, 64; as ‘war president’ 101; on the UN 91 Bush campaign issues (2000): anti-Big Government 162; Bob Jones University 194; Clean Air Act 161; Clinton policies 164; Confederate flag 194; defense increases 162; international law and order 162; Medicare 161; plans for budget surplus 161; school vouchers 162; senior prescription drugs 162; Social Security 161–2; tax cut 164; on war crimes 162 Bush, George Herbert Walker (Sr) 14–15, 20, 139; Ambassador to UN 88; assassination attempt 49, 51; Gulf War 111; Saudi family connections 100–1 Bush, Jeb 76, 94, 173, 183, 187, 194; and affirmative action 194; and Florida election 195–8 Bush vs. Gore 163–5, 171; irregularities in 190; opinions of 178; public opinion polls on 178 business executive salaries 143, 149 business deregulation: auditing, accounting 141, 143; communications 146; environment/health 142; financial markets 141–3; small business 141–3; tax evasion 143, 148; work place protection 142 business mergers 141 Burke, Edmund 137 butterfly ballots 166–7; punch-out 167 Butterworth, Bob 197 Byrd, Robert 197 California energy crisis 127–8 Cameroon 46 campaign funds: from electric utilities 126;

Index

193

from power plants 125 Canada 67 Carter, Jimmy: electoral monitoring 192 Castro, Fidel: offers help with Florida controversy 183 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 99–1 Chalabi, Ahmed 72, 95, 115 Chechnya 18, 43, 122, 153 Cheney, Dick 162; and Halliburton 65; and invasion of Iraq 44, 92–3, 100; and PNAC 14; anti-terrorist campaign 100; bellicosity of 89; Defense Policy Guidance 100; on energy conservation 128; heart attack of 174; on oil and power 126; panel on energy policy 126, 131; on tax cuts 92; rejection of UN inspections 41; saber-rattling speech (2002) 7, 27–9, 41, 63–4; and WMD 117 Chemical Weapons Treaty 104 Chiang-Kai-Shek 5 Chiles, Lawton 173 Chile 46 China 80; Communist rule in 5; Bush on 89–90; and invasion of Iraq 1, 9, 43, 46, 64; lobby for 118; nuclear arms of 98; opposition to Iraq war 103; and Taiwan 2, 47 Chirac, Jacques 6–7, 28, 34, 41–9, 56–9, 119; attitude towards the US 48; military modernization 50; vision of international order 48–9, 70 Chomsky, Naom: on preemptive action 95 Christian Democrats (German, CDU/CSU) 7–9, 26–8, 49. 56, 60; opinions of voters of 27–8 Christopher, Warren 168–9 church-based social services 160 Church, Frank 151–2 churches (US) against Iraq war 103 Churchill, Winston 35, 86 Cicero 158 civil rights of dissent 150 Clark, Ramsey 119

Index

194

Clark, Wesley 158 Clarke, Richard 77 Clean Air Act: ‘new source review’ of 126–8 Clear Skies Initiative: cap-and-trade of emissions 125 Clinton, Bill 15, 37, 70, 78, 90; anti-terrorist policy of 100; and Balkans 17, 32; budget surplus of 65, 147–8; on Bush 91–2; controls on rat poison 128; disarmament agreements of 6, 21, 98; European perceptions of 19; expansion of national parkland 130–1; ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ 219n14; impeachment of 9–10, 19, 62, 95, 142, 163, 172, 180, 201n18, 209n79, 214n9, 215n23; media bias against 163; NATO reforms and 16; reaction to embassy bombings 41, 62; on Reagan’s domestic policies 141; US hegemony under 63; wetlands protection 130, 135 coalition of the willing 18, 32, 43, 65, 154; and Abu Ghraib 154; antiwar sentiment in 33; letters of 44, 48–9, 55, 64; reaction to Madrid bombings 73; targeted by insurgents 73 Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA): financial scandals of 66 Cole, David 153 Cold War 81, 145; legacy of weapons 103; witch hunts of 151 Colombia 121 Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) 96 Committee for the Present Danger 97 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty 90, 162 Connaughton, James L.: on environmental policy 132–3 conservatism (US) 141; anti-government bias 141–7, 160; and American democracy 147; bias towards the rich 141–3, 147, 160; and ‘city on the hill’ 149; ‘compassionate’ 20, 160–2; cutbacks in health/education 144; religious conservatives 149; elimination of welfare 141; tax cuts/no new taxes 141, 147, 149; on war 149

Index Conservative party (British) 46 conservative revolution (1994) 19 Coolidge, Calvin 85–6 cost of Iraq war 65 Council on Environmental Quality 132 Council on Foreign Relations 77 Cuba 30; Cuban-Americans 173; US lobby for 118 ‘culture of peace’ 109 Czech republic: and invasion of Iraq 44–5 Däubler-Gmelin, Herta 7–8 Daily Mirror 183 Daily Telegraph 182–3 ‘Dark Winter’, simulation 104 Davis, Gray 127 Dean, John: on Cheney 100 death penalty 20 DeGaulle, Charles 11, 35, 42, 54 Delahunty, Robert 155 DeLay, Tom 169–74, 185, 1989; and mini-riot 170–4, 186–7 democracy (US): image abroad of 19–20; Middle Eastern perception of 20 Democratic National Convention 2004 76–7 Democratic party (US) 10, 76–7, 147; and inauguration 195; electoral invective of 185; Washington leaders of 176 democratizing Iraq 51, 59, 66 democratizing the Middle East 51, 60, 66 Denmark: and invasion of Iraq 43; reaction to Madrid bombing 74 deregulation of business; and corporate scandals 138, 141–3 Dershowitz, Alan 179 Der Spiegel 53, 57–9, 68–9, 183, 185, 191 De Tocqueville, Alexis 31 Die Welt 183 Die Zeit 184–7, 191 Director of National Intelligence (DNI) 101 disfranchisement of felons (Florida): covering up 196; effect on 2000 elections 195–7 Dole, Robert 185 Dred Scott decision (1857) 195

195

Index Duhamel, Georges 31 Duke corporation 127 Dynegy corporation 127 ‘Ecological Footprint’ 124–5; US share of 125 The Economist 40, 163–4, 180, 183 Egypt 51 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 140 Ekeus, Rolf 56, 116 El Baradei, Mohammed 41, 56, 103, 116–17 Electoral College 163–5, 177, 220n47; and federalism 181–2; popular vote and 181–2; small state bias 163 El Mundo (Madrid) 190 El Paso corporation 127–30; campaign contributions 130 emergency powers 64, 67; to justify torture 75 Enduring Freedom 18, 24–6; Old European participation in 64, s.a. Afghanistan, 9/11 ENRON corporation 127, 142–3, 148 environmental damage: from coal mining 124; global warming 124; profit (or savings) from 125 environmentalism 20–1; bias against 129, 133 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 124–8; and climate change 135 environmental regulations: curbing of 125 environmental science: ecological sustainability 137–8; European attitudes towards 137; scientific methods in 129–31, 137 Eurocentrism 3 Eurocorps 50 European Environmental Agency (EEA); environmental protection 134; on global warming 134, 135 European Union (EU): admission to 45; and Balkans 16–7; Constitution of 42, 55; defense policies of 16, 55; expansion of 11–12, 67; farm policies of 42; fears of split in 45, 55;

196

Index

197

founding fathers of 43; presidium of 44 European peace order 17 Evans, Don 126 extreme right ideology: and US conservatism 138–41, 147 Falloujah 72 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 153–4 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 146 Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) 127–8 Feingold, Russell 152 Feith, Douglas 93 felon purge: in Florida elections 76, 195–9 Financial Times 40–8, 181–3, 190; on international order 49–50 First Amendment Rights 152–3 Fischer, Joschka 7, 9, 12, 15, 45–7, 55–6; and Balkans 16–7; belief in UN of 70; and Greens party 27; reconciliation mission 68–9 Florida elections (2000): absentee ballots 175; felon purge 195–9; fraud charges 168–72, 185; overseas ballots 172, 174; over-votes 173; recount consortium 192–3; recounts 166–78, 185–6; under-votes 177–8, 193; voters’ intent 175 Florida electoral history: recent scandals 183 Florida: judges 171, 175–6; legislature 171–7, 196–8; Supreme Court 171–80 Foley, Mark 193, 199 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 124 Ford, Jerry 92 Foreign Affairs 91 foreign policy issues: in public opinion polls 11, 159–60; saliency in elections 159–60 France: anti-Americanism in 10, 31; attitude toward Britain 10, 34–5; attitude toward Middle-East 7; and Balkans 16–7;

Index and colonial empire 6, 9, 11, 31; on EU defense policy 16; exclusion from reconstruction 66; and invasion of Iraq 42, 46; participation in war on terror 29, 35; past US ally 80–1; public opinion polls in 2, 33–4; relations with Germany 53–5, 68; relations with the US 4, 10, 35–6, 47 Franco-German Friendship Treaty 42–3, 54, 204n6 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: on Clinton impeachment 191 Freedland, Jonathan 163–5, 181–3 French citizens at Guantanamo 75 Friedman, Thomas 47 fuel mileage (CAFE) standards 128, 136; and Republican campaign funds 136 Future of Iraq project 115 Garner, Jay 115 General Accounting Office (GAO) 126, 145 Geneva Conventions 13, 65, 104; on military detention 155; on torture 75–6; on war 157 genocide 13 Genocide Convention (1948) 157 Gerecht, Reuel Marc 95; regime change in Iran and Syria 95 Germany: anti-Americanism in 8, 38–9; anti-colonialism of students in 14; anti-imperialism in 13; and Balkans 17–18, 26, 52; fear of Americanization 38–9; foreign policy continuity of 70; ‘greening’ of all German parties 134; and invasion of Iraq 6–7, 27–9, 42, 46, 52, 56–8; memories of WWII 58–60; Nazi 83; participation in war on terror 49, 52, 62; polls on post-war Iraq 61–2; public opinion polls in 2–7, 52–6; relations with EU 49–50; relations with France 6–7, 56; relations to the US 4–10, 15, 21, 28, 47, 56–8; WWII air-raids 53 Ghali, Boutros Boutros 53 Gingrich, Newt 67, 142, 160–3; conservative revolution 142; Contract for America 142;

198

Index social and educational cutbacks 142; tax cuts 142 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader 178 global civil society 108 Globocop role 91, 97, 121 Gonzalez, Alberto 155 Gorbachev, Mikhail 93, 140 Gore, Al 76–7; and Big Government 162; budget surplus 161; on Bush 89–90; cheated out of victory 187, 192–5; and Clinton record 164; demonization of 185; disagreement with Bush v. Gore 179; environmental issues 126, 161; media bias against 163; popular vote 180; strategy of 176 Gourdault-Montagne, Maurice 42 Grassley, Charles 144–5 Gramm-Rudman Deficit Reduction 141 Great Britain 80–1; anti-war sentiment in 32; citizens of at Guantanamo 75; empire of 212n51; imperialism of 31, 106; and invasion of Iraq 43, 46, 49 Gréau, Jean-Luc 37 Greenfield, Jeff 164–6, 174 Greenspan, Alan 139; and Social Security reform 139; and tax cuts 147–8 Greens party 7, 15, 61, 109; ‘greening’ of all German parties 134 Guantanamo 65, 75, 154–6 The Guardian 163, 166, 181–90; on Bush v.Gore 189–90 Guinea 46 Gulf War (1991) 8–9, 14, 87–8; US veterans claims 67 Hacke, Christian 8–9 Hague Conventions: on war 113 Hager, David 131–2 Halliburton corporation 51, 64–6, 162 Hamdan, Salim Ahmed 156 Hamilton, Lee 78, 101 ‘hand-over’ to Iraquis 72, 110, 116–18, 155–6 Hapsburg Empire 81

199

Index Harding, Warren G. 84 Harris, Katherine 76, 166–75, 180, 185, 194–8 Hassner, Pierre 31–2 Haynes, William J. 155 health research: exclusion of scientists 129; scientific methods in 129 Healthy Forests Initiative 125 hegemony (US) 1, 8, 16, 36, 49–50, 62–5 Helms, Jesse 90, 162 Hitler, Adolf 2, 7, 12 Hobsbawm, Eric 68 Holbrooke, Richard 16 Hoover, J.Edgar 152 Horton, Scott 156 Hughes, Karen 184 Human Rights Watch 156 Humphrey, Hubert 94 Hungary: and invasion of Iraq 44 Hussein, Saddam 79; atrocities of 9–10, 51, 74, 88; capture of 117; inmate release 112–14; and Gulf War 14, 53; link to 911 1,6, 10, 27, 30, 40–2, 50–1, 105, 122; perception of in France 34; resistance to UN 41, 45, 47; sons of 107; ultimatum to 47; WMD deception 117–118; and WMD 26, 29–30, 46, 63, 88 Hyde, Henry 62 Ignatieff, Michael 106 Ignazi, Piero 182 Il, Kim Jong 89 Il Sole 24 Ore 182 imperialism: cost of empire 107 imperial plans (US): for the Middle East 26; in the world 39 India; Bush on 90; population of 67 Indonesia 24 Inhofe, James 74 intelligence organizations (US): in Pentagon budget 101 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 153–154;

200

Index

201

cutbacks of 143, 148; demonization of 143 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 56 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) 156–7 International Court of Justice (ICJ) 85, 157 International Criminal Court (ICC): in force from 157; international law and order 157–9; loopholes for US 210n10; rejection by US 21–2, 85, 123, 150, 158; Rome Treaty of 85, 157 international criminal courts 15, 21, 31, 69–70; for recent mass murders 158, 218n international environmental cooperation 133; end of 133; international environmental summits 134 international law and order 2–6, 9, 15, 21, 31, 49, 69–70, 123, 150; definition of international law 84; and POWs 155; of war 61 s.a. Nuremberg Tribunal, Geneva Conventions International League of Human Rights 156 international legitimacy 88, 105, 120 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 49, 79 Iran 25–6; US and 67; and WMD 40, 63, 111 Iran-Contra conspiracy 141; Walsh Report on 92–3 Iraq: al-Qaeda in 72; anti-colonial rebellion in 71; civilian casualties 108, 207n66; democracy in 71; ethnic conflicts in 71; exit strategy sought 110; Clinton and ILA 95; insurgency 62, 71, 105, 111, 114–15; invasion of 40–1, 43, 123; Iraq National Congress 95; Iraq reconstruction contracts 66; link to 9/11 72, 74; looters 112–13; oil revenues of 66; organized crime in 113–14; post-war chaos in 67, 71–3, 108, 110, 114; regime change in 1–2, 26, 40, 63–5, 95–6, 122; security forces of 71; UN role in reconstruction 105; weakened state of 7, 71; weapons depots in 115; WMD in 47, 56–7, 63, 72, 74, 120

Index Iraq Liberation Act (ILA) 95 Iraq war, justifications: for Halliburton 102; ‘moral leadership’ 103; for oil 102; US bases in region 102; WMD 103–5 Irish Republican Army (IRA) 152 Israel 26, 30, 37, 104, 153; threat from Iraq 37; Likud party policies 118 Israeli-Palestinian conflict 9, 122 Italy 80–1; Fascist 83; and invasion of Iraq 43–4 Jackson, Henry (Scoop) 94 Jackson, Jesse: theft of 2000 election 179 Janes, Jackson 49 Japan: militaristic 83; relations with the US 20 Jefferson, Thomas 80, 109 Johnson, Chalmers: militarism 106; US bases 106 Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies 194 Jordan 43; and invasion of Iraq 43 Jospin, Lionel 54 Jung, Kim Dae 89 ‘just war’ doctrine 103, 212n Kagan, Robert 8, 109, 200n5; and European multilateralism 109; pseudo-Wilsonianism 109; and unilateral power politics 109 Kaldor, Mary 108–9 Kay, David 29, 57, 117; postwar inspections by 117, 120 Kean, Thomas H. 78, 101 Keillor, Garrison 147 Kellogg, Frank B. 86 Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) 86 Kelly, Michael 169 Kennedy, Anthony 177 Kennedy, John F. 20, 76–8 Kennedy-Nixon contest (1960) 179 Kennedy, Teddy 76 Kerry, John:

202

Index

203

$87 billion ‘flip-flop’ 212n49; on 9/11 commission 101; and WMD 105 Khadafi, Muammar 111 Khalidi, Rashid 107 Khalilzad, Zalmay 94 Kissinger, Henry 68, 92 Kohl, Helmut 7, 14–16, 70 Korean War 5 Krauthammer, Charles 30–2 Kristol, William 93 Kurdish militia 110 Kuwait 8, 14, 49, 87–8, 104; and invasion of Iraq 43 Kyoto Protocols on global warming 6, 20, 31, 89, 92, 123, 132–3, 159, 161; European approval of 133; German reaction to rejection of 134–5; rejection by US, Russia 133–4; and US economic growth 136 Lacorne, Denis 181–2 Lafayette, Marquis de 4 Laffer, Arthur 139 Lakoff, George 125 Lambrosini, Charles 50 Lang, Jack 54 La Repubblica 182, 190 Latin America: Rice on 90; and invasion of Iraq 91 Lay, Kenneth: and Bush 127 League of Nations 57, 80–4, 109, 157; Covenant of 83–4 League of Women Voters 153 Leavitt, Michael 125 Ledeen, Michael 185 Le Figaro 32, 35, 50, 182–4, 190; on Clinton impeachment 190 legitimacy of Bush election 163 Le Monde 165, 185; on Bush v.Gore 190; on Florida mess 181, 185; on 9/11 1; on 2002 German election 28 LePen, Jean-Marie 54 Levitte, Jean-Davide 47 Libby, Lewis 94 Liberation 184 Libyan nuclear development 111 Lieberman, Joseph 164

Index

204

Lifton, Robert J. 106 Limbaugh, Rush 74, 201n9 Lodge, Henry Cabot 83–4 Los Angeles Times 145, 195 Maastricht Treaty 24–5 Mann, Michael 107 Marshall Plan 12 Mbeki, Thabo 46 McCain, John 161, 164 McKinley, William 84 Medicare 147–8 mercury in seafood 123; from power plant emissions 124 messianism in foreign policy; of Bush 91 Mexico 46, 90–1, 121 Mfume, Kweisi 194 Miami Herald 179 Middle East: Christian crusades in 43; democratization of 119, 122 military-industrial-Congressional complex 159, 202n25; defense budgets and 139; definition of 140, 143–4; John F.Kennedy and 139; Reagan and 139–40 military prison deaths: in Afghanistan 74; at Guantanamo 74; human rights of prisoners 75; in Iraq 74 Miller, Gene 75 Milosevic, Slobodan 16 Mitterrand, François 7 Monroe Doctrine 83 Moore, Michael 77, 152 Motor Voter Act 193 multilateralism 2, 35; and collective security 81; and environmental collaboration 81, 133; in European integration 105; global acceptance of 82; and international courts 81, 85; of Old Europe 69–70, 109; in US foreign policy 80–1, 119; Woodrow Wilson and 8, 109 Münchner Merkur 187 Muqtada, al-Sadr 72, 110, 116 Musharraf, Pervez 21, 88

Index

205

NAACP 194, 197; Bush and 195; ‘Count Every Vote’ 194 Nader, Ralph: on Bush and Gore 162; popular vote in 2000 165 Najaf 72 National Environmental Policy Act: and campaign funds 135 National Intelligence Director (DNI) 78 National Missile Defense (NMD) 21, 89, 97 National Review 164, 171–2 National Rifle Association (NRA) 77, 211n33; and 2nd Amendment 96 national self-determination 82–3 National Water Quality Laboratory; and drinking water 132 Negroponte, John 85 neo-conservatives (US) 4–6, 11, 31–7, 41–4, 59, 62–4, 81, 107, 202n26, 211n27; Bush advisers among 92–3, 104, 109, 118; Bush and 87, 89; and defense spending 144; and democracy in Middle East 51, 68, 82; Pentagon Defense Policy Board 92; popular mandate of 159, 162; Rupert Murdoch and 93 Nepszabad 184 Netherlands 21, 157 New Europe 43 New Republic 175 Newsweek 155, 180 New York Post 169 New York Stock Exchange 79 New York Times 29, 93, 106, 174, 180 Niger yellowcake 69, 103 9/11 attack 56, 76–8, 95, 105, 209; Bush on report of 78–9; and Islamic fundamentalism 106; link with Iraq 101–4; messianic US reaction to 50, 106, 123; as Pearl Harbor 98–101; Western reactions to 43 Nixon, Richard M. 20, 92, 151–2; 1960 elections 220n; and repression of dissent 151–2; No Child Left Behind 160, 162 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 13–18, 45, 48, 66; and Balkans 17; expansion of 17–18, 44; and invasion of Iraq 43–4, 49; reform of 16–18 North Korea 25, 58, 89;

Index

206

missile threat from 97, 111; and WMD 40, 58, 63, 89, 102 Norton, Elaine 126 Nunn, Sam 104 Nuremberg International War Crimes Tribunal 13, 157 Nye, Joseph 62, 65 Observer (London) 186 O’Connor, Sandra Day 177 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) 147 oil 49, 51, 53 oil industry (US): and Iraq policy 127 ‘Old Europe’ 3, 10–11, 20, 40, 43–4, 54–5, 62, 111 Olsen, Theodore 131, 189–90 O’Neill, Paul 77, 92, 210n23; on Bush cabinet sessions 92 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 15–17, 70 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) 23, 51; energy crises of 1970s 139 Orwell, George 71 Oslo Agreements 37 over-votes in Florida 193 pacifism, German 6–8, 12–18; German churches behind 102 Paige, Rod 195 Palmer, A.Mitchell 150 Pakistan 2, 46, 79, 121; and Taliban 24, 26; US and 24 Parti Socialiste (PS) 54–5 Patriot Act (2001) 77–8; Bush and 153; criticism of 152, 154; and 9/11 152–3; secret evidence under 152 Pax Americana 94 peace bonus, after Cold War 25, 202n25 peace demonstrations 46–7, 59–60, 64, 68, 74 Pearl Harbor 86 Pentagon: Judge Advocates General (JAGs) 155 Perejil Island 205n10 Perle, Richard 37, 41, 44, 93 Pershing, John 4 Permanent Court of Arbitration 84 Permanent Court of International Justice (World Court) 84–5 pharmaceutical lobbies 129; campaign funds of 132 Pinochet, Augusto 21

Index

207

Platero, Mario 182 Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) 195 Poland: and invasion of Iraq 44–5; reaction to Madrid bombing 74 Pope, Carl: on Bush’s voluntarism 135; on environmental rollback 131, 133 Pope John Paul II: opposition to Iraq war 102–3 Portugal: and invasion of Iraq 44 Powell, Colin 29, 32, 42, 54–7, 195; belief in the UN 70; and invasion of Iraq 44; at Johannesburg summit 134; at Security Council 46–7, 69; and WMD 117, 120 Powell, Michael 146 Powers, Samantha 157 preemptive action 95, 105–6 preemptive war 2, 34–5, 60; and unilateralism 105 prescription drugs for seniors: importation of 132 post-2000 election reforms 221n83 presidential election 2000 10, 19, 28, 97, 156; expenses 164; irregularities in 162; media on 165–6; popular vote 163–5 presidential election 2004 221n87 privatization of National Parks 137; polls on 162 progressivism 81, 109, 136 Project for a New American Century (PNAC) 64, 94–5, 159; foundation of 94–5; and US empire 105 Putin, Vladimir 43, 58, 98; German 2003 polls on 56, 66; invasion of Iraq 45; re-election concerns of 43; relations to US of 48; and St Petersburg summit 67; and US 2000 election 183 Quayle, Dan 94 Rabin, Yitzak 37 Raffarin, Jean-Pierre 7 Rangel, Charles 119

Index

208

Raynaud, Philippe 37–8 Reagan, Ronald 18, 26, 37, 70, 85, 89; anti-communism of 92; benefit cutbacks 141; Central American diplomacy 92; civil rights 151; and corporate interests 92; defense budgets 139–40; environmental issues of 138, 161; fiscal policies of 139; Iran-Contra conspiracy 92; military build-up of 98; model for Bush administration 92; on Soviet Union 92; tax cuts 139 Reaganite ideology: anti-bureaucratic, anti-government 138; anti-federal government bias 138, 146–7; anti-tax attitude 138, 147; icons of 1980s conservatism 138–9, 146 Rebuilding America’s Defenses 96–8, 159 Rehnquist, William 177–8 religious lobbies: and public health appointments 129–32 Reno, Janet: voter discrimination 194 Republicans, conservative (US) 5, 9–10, 19–20, 169–76, 183–5; Clinton impeachment 189–91; compared to inter-war Fascists 188; and international law and order 188; mini-riot in Miami-Dade 170–4, 185–7; unilateral foreign policy 188; Védrine on 36–7 Rice, Condoleezza 8, 42, 56, 66, 195; on ABM Treaty 90; coaching Bush 162; on Latin-America 90; and post-communist anarchy 112; Soviet expertise 88; on US national interest 90 Richardson, Bill 130; roadless forests 130–3 Ridge, Tom 79 Roger, Philippe 31 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 35, 84; and Wilsonian multilateralism 86–7 Roosevelt, Theodore 81, 84; environmental protection 131, 136 Rosen, Jeffrey 175 Roth, Kenneth 156 Rudman-Hart Commission 100 Ruehl, Lothar 9

Index Rumsfeld, Donald 37, 49, 61; and Abu Ghraib 74–5, 156; fights with Powell 114–15; Helmut Schmidt on 55; and neo-conservatives 93; on ‘OldEurope’ 32, 43, 54–5; and PNAC 94; ‘Rummy Rambo’ 54; ‘sexing up’ intelligence 69 Russia 74–5; and Balkans 17; Bush on 89–90; and Chechnya 24; imperialism of 31; and invasion of Iraq 1, 9, 42–3, 46, 102; Iraqui debts to 43, 49; and Islamic fundamentalism 43; on looting 113; on NATO expansion 18; and 2002 German elections 28 Saudi Arabia 9, 51, 106; Bush and Saudi families 77–8 Sauls, N.Saunders 176–7 savings and loan frauds 141 Scalia, Antonin 177–8, 189–90 Schmidt, Helmut 7, 14, 55 Schröder-Fischer government (Red-Green) 25–6; coalition agreement of 15; electoral lag of 27; and Enduring Freedom 18, 26, 53; and environmental concerns 20–1; and European peace order 70; and Kosovo 16; and multilateralism 21, 70; recklessness of 26; reconciliation with Washington 49, 67; trade unions and 61; in 2002 election 28, 63, 70; and UN 70 Schröder, Gerhard: anti-Americanism of 28; and Chirac 55; on L’Europe puissance 11; on German relations to US 4; German polls on 56, 61; on Iraq foreign debt 67; ‘no’ on Iraq war 28, 41, 49, 53, 63; post-election slump 55; at St. Petersburg summit 67 Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) 128;

209

Index scuttling of controls of 142–3, 148 Sharon, Ariel 26, 51 Shiite militias 110; rebellion against the US 116 Shinseki, Eric 112 ‘Shock and Awe’ 102; and 1939 blitzkrieg on Poland 109–10 Simes, Dimitri 122 Social Democrats (German, SPD) 7–8, 15, 61; and pacifism 13; and voters’ attitudes 27–8 Social Security 147–8 Solana, Xavier 44–5 Souter, David H. 178 South Korea 89 ‘Southern strategy’ of Bush 195 Soviet Union; in Cold War 87; as ‘evil empire’ 26; fall of 210n25, 216n33; and Gorbachev 93; NATO and 18; threat of SS-20s 14; Todd on 37 Spain: and invasion of Iraq 43–4, 46, 80; al-Qaeda attack on 73 Spinney, Franklin C. 144–5; and NMD 145 Stalin, Josef 82 Starr, Kenneth 62 Starr Report 183 Stevens, John Paul 178–9 Stockman, David 147 Stoiber, Edmund 7, 27–8 Strategic-Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT) 98 Straw, Jack 42, 45, 47 Struck, Peter 61 Sullivan, Andrew: on Florida Supreme Court 189 Sunni resistance 51, 116 Syria 41; US designs re. 67 Taft, William Howard 81 talk radio (in US) 10 tax cuts: Bush’s of 2001, 2003 147–8, 160, 164; conservative mantra of 141; cutting back government 161; ‘for the rich’ 218n11;

210

Index

211

public services and 141; Reagan’s of 1981 139, 147 Telhami, Shibley 122 The American Prospect 109 The Economist 91 The Nation 199 The New Yorker 95 The Times of London 183, 189–91 Thomas, Clarence 177 Tilly, Charles 108–9 Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal 157 Todd, Immanuel 2, 36–7, 59, 68 torture 74–76; Bush and 75; Cheney and 76; international treaty on 76; Rumsfeld and 75; US image abroad and 75–6 Trianon, Treaty of 83 Turkey 12, 24; and invasion of Iraq 43–4, 53–5; Ottoman 81 Tyco corporation 142, 148 ultra-conservatives in the year 2000 163 Unilateralism US 1–2, 32, 35–7, 43, 48, 59, 63–76; Bush and 94, 159; and the environment 133; and international law 81; and preemptive war 105; and self-defense 80; in US foreign policy 80,91, 119 UN Charter 9, 21, 61; character of 23, 82, 86; Declaration of Human Rights 85; developing nations 87; European attitudes to 25; Germany and 15; and international cooperation 21; institutions of 82, 87; 9/11 and 1, 8, 17–18, 22; US attitudes toward 6, 22–3, 82, 87 UN Security Council 111; Bush’s return to 41, 62; Bush Sr and 87; collective security 21, 35; French veto on 11, 35; inspections of weapons depots 115; invasion of Iraq and 1, 9–10; Resolution 1441 1, 7–9, 18, 29, 41–53, 63, 88, 96; second resolution of 40, 45–7, 55, 59, 121

Index Urquhart, Brian 105 US Civil Rights Commission 197–9; hearings on voter discrimination 197–8; report on Florida 198–9 US defense spending: accountability of 144–5; defense budget 94–8, 144; and war on terror 145 US concern with own casualties 107 US Department of Justice 151–3, 194, 198 US environmental history 136 US foreign policy: anti-French backlash 2, 33, 46; attitude toward ICC 157; attitude toward UN 8–9, 22–3, 82, 87, 120; attitudes toward Germany 62; hegemony 5, 9, 65, 99; imperialism of 81, 94, 97, 101–5; isolationism of 81, 86, 91; US-Soviet military balance 140 US Forest Service: and Valle Vidal 130 US in Iraq: cheering American liberators 112, 114; combat casualties in 51, 71; cultural looting 113; exit strategy from 118; future presence in 71; intelligence failures in 99; military prison scandals 158; post-war casualties 114–16; volunteer efforts in 113, 116 US News and World Report 74, 106 US Nuclear Posture Review 98 US Strategic Petroleum Reserve 127 US Supreme Court 174, 176–7; conflict of interest on 189–90; partisanship on 190, 199; support for states rights 131, 176–8; and 2000 Florida elections 131, 177, 187, 190 Védrine, Hubert 36 Versailles, Treaty of 83, 157 Vietnam 144–5; trap of 107; US in 7, 14, 65 Villepin, Dominique de 35, 42–9, 54, 96, 119 Voting Rights Act 194, 197–8 Wall Street Journal 44, 58, 169, 185 war crimes, German 13

212

Index

213

war, justification of 60–1, 66–9; ‘privatization’ of 108 Washington, George 4, 80 Washington Monthly 76 Washington Post 180, 183 Waters, Maxine 119 Watt, James 138 Waxman, Henry 125, 171–2 Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) 2, 25, 29, 40–1, 44–7; Bush and Blair on 104; kinds of 104; 9/11 link to 116; none found 47–57, 68, 116; threat of 49–50, 104, 117; 2003 consensus on 103, 117; US intelligence on 57, 116–17 Weber, Vin 94 welfare state 9,11 Wells, Charles 180 Weizsäcker, Richard von 69 Wen Hui Bao 192 Wexler, Robert 179 White, Tom 112 Whitman, Christine Todd 125 Wieczoreck-Zeul, Heidemarie 68 Will, George 169 Williams corporation 127 Willkie, Wendell 86 Wilson, Woodrow 8, 81–7; and Fourteen Points 83; and international law 8; morality in foreign policy 82–3; multilateralism of 82–4; national self-determination 82–3 Wolfowitz, Paul 34, 37, 145; on defense spending 145; and Iraq invasion 42–4, 55, 69, 95, 102; and WMD 103 Woodward, Robert 77 World Bank 48, 79 WorldCom Corporation 142, 148 World Health Organization (WHO) 129 world leadership 120–1, 160 World Trade Center (New York) 40 World War One (WWI) 157 World War Two (WWII) 157 Wright, Robin 91 Yellowstone Park: snowmobiles at 130, 137 Yoo, John:

Index memo on military detention 155 Young, Hugo: on Bush dynasty 189 Zakaria, Fareed 91 Zapatero, José Luis Rodriguez 73; and ‘culture of peace’ 73–4 Zucconi, Vittorio 182

214