THE WAR AFTER WAR WITH IRAQ

  Artículo de TIMOTHY GARTON ASH en  “The New York Times” del 20.03.03

OXFORD, England

As the second Persian Gulf war begins, we peer into the sandstorm, straining to discern the outline of the new world beyond. Like most new worlds, this is actually a mix of old and new.

American officers at computer screens send "e-bombs" to fry Saddam Hussein's command equipment thousands of miles away; the intergalactic fight scenes in "Star Trek" look like 19th-century realism by comparison. But then I watch British foot soldiers in Kuwait preparing for hand-to-hand combat. A sergeant-major urges one young squaddie to bark elemental cries of hatred as he stabs and stabs again with his bayonet at a stuffed dummy of the enemy. This scene could be the eve of Agincourt in 1415: one man being psyched up to kill another by forcing sharp metal through his guts.

So also with the politics. There is something rather new: America feels so confident of its own military power and moral rightness that it will march into the most explosive region in the world with just one effective ally (two if you count Australia). And something very old: the United Nations diplomacy finally came down to a conflict between Europe's oldest adversaries, England and France. Again as at Agincourt in 1415.

Over the last few weeks, the geopolitical West of the cold war has collapsed before our eyes. No one can know what the shape of the new world will be. As Prime Minister Tony Blair said in his magnificent speech to the British Parliament on Tuesday, "History doesn't declare the future to us so plainly." But we can already see three broad ideas competing for the succession to the cold war West. I'll call them the Rumsfeldian, the Chiraco-Putinesque and the Blairite.

The Rumsfeldian idea — if idea is not too dignified a word — is that American might is right. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sees the United States as a City on a Hill. As the hyperpower of the free, it must strike back at international terrorism, the new international Communism. It may also end up spreading democracy to places like Iraq, and thus make the world a better place. If some allies want to come along to help, that's fine. If not, you work around them.

The Rumsfeldian vision is half right and therefore all wrong. It's probably true that the United States can now win most wars on its own. But it can't win the peace on its own. And victory in the war against terrorism is all about winning the peace in Iraq, in the wider Middle East, and beyond.

The Chiraco-Putinesque idea — if idea is not too dignified a word — is that American might is dangerous. President Jacques Chirac of France believes it is unhealthy for any single state to have so much power, but it's particularly dangerous if that state happens to be America (rather than, say, France). France's mission is to construct an alternative pole: Europe, which, in Gaullist geography, includes Russia. Seeing the Franco-German-Russian (and Chinese) continental alliance pitted against the American-British-Spanish (and Australian) maritime one in the recent diplomatic battle makes me think again of the war of super-blocs in George Orwell's "1984." He called them Eurasia and Oceania.

The Chiraco-Putinesque vision is half right and therefore all wrong. It's true that it is unhealthy for any single power, however democratic and benign, to be as preponderant as the United States is today. But for France to make common cause with Vladimir Putin and a semi-democratic Russia (the butcher of Chechnya), as well as a nondemocratic China, to bring temporary succor to Saddam Hussein is not the brightest way to move toward a multipolar world. Anyway, you won't unite Eurasia against the United States. Even in this crisis, half the governments of Europe put trans-Atlantic solidarity before their grave doubts about the wisdom of the Bush administration's approach to Iraq.

That leaves Blairism. Tony Blair's idea is that we should recreate a larger version of the cold war West, in response to the new threats we face. What he calls the "coming together" of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism should frighten us as much as the Red Army used to. The way to deal with American unilateralism is not rivalry but partnership. Partners are not servants. Last September, as the Bush administration began its push for action on Iraq, Europe should have said "with one voice" that it would help Washington confront terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, provided that it went down the United Nations route and restarted the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Europe and America should always work together through the international institutions of the post-1945 world.

Mr. Blair's idea is completely right. The trouble is the execution. He made two big mistakes over the last year. The first was not to do more last September to try to bring Europe to speak with one voice. Instead, he became almost a part of the internal administration argument in Washington, while neglecting Berlin and Paris as they swung together in an antiwar waltz.

The second error was to forget that partnership also involves sometimes saying no. One has the feeling that Mr. Blair is that kind of very decent Englishman who will always say no to drugs and never say no to Washington. If you have a stronger European voice, it's more credible that you might say no, and hence less likely that you'll have to.

If Mr. Blair had gotten the European side of his strategy right, there is just a chance that Saddam Hussein would have yielded to the united pressure of the West. I remain unconvinced that this particular war at this particular time is necessary or prudent. I now hope against hope that our victory will be swift and sure, and that the consequences in the Middle East will be positive.

I am totally convinced, however, that the Blairite vision of a new postwar order of world politics is the best one available on the somewhat depressed market of world leadership. It follows that it would have been a major setback, not just for Britain but for the world, to lose him over this war. The trouble is, of course, that to realize the Blairite vision you need Paris and Washington to sign up for it. With Jacques Chirac in one place and Donald Rumsfeld in the other, the chances don't look good. But does anyone have a better idea?

Timothy Garton Ash, director of the European Studies Center at St Antony's College, Oxford, is a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.