THE HOLLOW ALLIANCE

 Artículo de WILLIAM SAFIRE en “The New York Times” del 28/06/2004

Por su interés y relevancia, he seleccionado el artículo que sigue para incluirlo en este sitio web. (L. B.-B.)

LONDON — At this week's NATO summit conference in Istanbul, it will be in the political interest of America's European adversaries — France's Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schröder — to appear to cooperate with the coalition helping Iraq complete its liberation.

At the same time, it is in the political interest of George W. Bush and Britain's Tony Blair to appear to be delighted with whatever safe and cheap aid that the Chirac-Schröder bloc allows NATO to offer instead of supplying alliance troops.

In this way, the French and German leaders can tell their nations that no diplomatic cost was attached to their opposition to removing Saddam Hussein. And Bush and Blair can face elections this year and next, able to make two claims: that the prewar split in the Western alliance has happily healed, and that the war was justified by the belated blessing of the leaders who fled from the fight.

Behind this facade, however, exists a hollowed-out alliance. Its previous common purpose — to block the westward march of Soviet imperialism — has not been replaced by a new purpose: to defeat imperial terrorism. Unless the democracies of France and Germany elect leaders capable of grasping that current challenge, NATO will continue to atrophy, supplanted by ad hoc coalitions of the willing to meet emergencies.

Such a withering of the West's grand alliance is not inevitable. Although savants in the U.S. seem certain that Bush and Blair will be punished by voters for their sin of strangling the worst regime in the cradle of terror, the view I get from London is different.

Britain's Labor Party is unlikely to thrust aside its eloquent leader and proven vote-getter. Blair has recently flummoxed internal dissenters as well as opposing Tories by proposing referendums not just on giving up economic sovereignty to Continental bankers but also on turning over political sovereignty to the bureaucrats of Brussels in the proposed European constitution. Like a strong majority of Euroskeptical Britons, Blair is now lukewarm on both issues, which snatches the clothes of the Tories.

Bush should accede to his stalwart ally's request for the release of four British subjects now held in Guantánamo, underscoring the special relationship. And as the interim government in Baghdad puts a nationalistic Iraqi face on its internal battle, Bush and Blair will be bolstered politically by (a) the reality of a shift in the war's fortunes as well as (b) the papering-over of the cracks in the wall of NATO solidarity.

Presume that Bush wins re-election this year and Blair the next. Further presume (and I know all this is hard to do) that necessary belt-tightening in France and Germany, at a time when unemployment is stuck near double digits, takes its toll at the polls.

Germany's Schröder is a political zombie, with a Thatcheresque successor in the wings. The sclerotic government of Chirac is desperately trying to block the rise of the charismatic finance minister, Nicolas Sarkozy. This savvy dynamo of Hungarian descent, 49, is tough on immigration, France's sleeper issue. Though he would surely irritate London and Washington in the grand French tradition, Sarkozy would probably not align himself with a German politician to treat the rest of Europe, as does Chirac, as children not well brought up.

Dare to think the unthinkable: What would the Western alliance look like if Bush and Blair receive fresh mandates, and Chirac and Schröder give way to leaders who see the modern collective defense in sponsorship of freedom outside their area? What if NATO is given new life by the urgent need to confront the new threat of terror networks?

Then we would see the emergence of NATO II, no longer North Atlantic but tied by need for citizen safety. It would not compete with the United Nations as a universal forum for debate and funneler of humanitarian aid, but be led by democracies willing to make proportionate sacrifices to provide for the common defense.

Of course, today's hollowed-out NATO could continue down the path of pretended mutuality that we will see in Turkey this week. And the voters of its member nations may follow Spain in choosing leaders averse to the cost of collective security. But as the old NATO showed, nations find safety in numbers.