Even the American cable news networks, awash in flag-waving exultation over the fall of Saddam Hussein's most prominent monument, could not avoid cutting not long after to scenes of rampant looting and pervasive anarchy on Baghdad's streets. Ironically, the most virulent criticism of US handling of the chaos in Baghdad has come not from those seeking to protect the city's residents from rampant violence, but from archaeologists concerned about the loss of precious Mesopotamian antiquities. The theft of invaluable artifacts has highlighted a situation in which American troops were entrenched around the Iraqi Oil Ministry but not even exhaustive pleas have gained protection for the museums, hospitals, or other vital organs of government. The "mess of freedom," which Donald Rumsfeld famously remarked upon when questioned about the looting, will have to be paid for.
Who will do the paying? The neoconservatives, with no reasoning other, seemingly, than "to the victor go the spoils," have declared that the UN will not be allowed to participate in the formulation of a new Iraqi government. This is congruent with the general neoconservative strategy of marginalising the UN, rendering it impotent politically and consigning it to the role of a humanitarian relief organisation. The neoconservatives would rather see one of two things- a long American occupation, or, using the model of Afghanistan, a rapid transition to an indigenous Iraqi government whose strings can be pulled from Washington (as, no doubt, there will be tremendous basing opportunities for the US military).
These two options, however, are paradoxical. The preferred option, handing over Iraq to an interim government rapidly, will likely be just as successful as it was in Afghanistan. That is to say, in Afghanistan, where the authority of President Hamid Karzai barely extends beyond Kabul, where warlords again rule much of the countryside, and where the power void is giving rise, once again, to the Taliban. Offencive operations in Afghanistan, though rarely covered anymore by the American media, have been resumed once again, as US forces fight guerilla battles with resurgent Taliban forces. The techniques which defeated both the British and Soviets in Afghanistan are emerging once again, but with the media focus shifted to Iraq and other affairs, the fact the tide of the war there has turned has completely escaped coverage.
Similarly, a quick transition to an indigenous government would be disastrous in Iraq. For one thing, the importation of Iraqi exiles to run the government would cause considerable consternation amongst a population agitated by their clear installation and manipulation by the Pentagon. Iraqis who have remained in the country and have government experience are almost entirely Ba'athist apparatchiks. Restocking the government with the agents of the Hussein dictatorship would hardly play well with the people either. The third option here is to formulate a government composed of relatively inexperienced Iraqis. They would have to contend with the Herculean task of reconstructing a country which has been devastated by a decade of economic sanctions and which has been leveled by US bombardments. Would Iraqi oil be able to be reinvested in the economy? It's unlikely the neoconservatives, with their ties to the oil industry and ostensible handouts to drooling US corporations of Iraqi reconstruction contracts, coupled with the laissez-faire Reaganomic ideology spewn forth by the White House, would be inclined to agree to the creation of a state oil industry, or at least one in which the majority of the shares are not controlled by US corporations. They will inevitably argue this is not plunder- that the experience of established corporations is necessary to "guide" the emergence of an Iraqi oil industry.
Not that releasing the oil funds directly to the Iraqi government would achieve much economically. Petro-states are notoriously incompatible with democracies, as the state awash in oil funds hardly needs to tax its citizenry, and without taxation, there is little demand for representation or political rights. This is how autocracies like Saudi Arabia are easily maintained. Norway, a petro-state with a full representative democracy, also managed to build a diversified economic base- oil discoveries were only the cream on the cake for the Scandanavian kingdom. In other petro-states, the pressure for economic reform is nil, as the state grows fat off the "black gold.: Economic diversification is essential for the development of a middle class, which in turn is necessary to build a stable democracy. Without a minimised wealth disparity, democracy cannot flourish. The revolutions which rocked Europe- the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Rebellions of 1830 and 1848- were all a direct consequence of the growth of the bourgeoisie and its demand for political rights. When Iraq was at its most stable and prosperous, during the early 1980s, it was because Ba'athist socialist policies had created a state in which an educated middle class flourished. This prosperity, unfortunately, was squandered by debts incurred during the Iran-Iraq War, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and the concurrent application of UN sanctions. A reconstituted Iraq will need more economic underpinnings than a petrochemical economy in order to flourish. In poor states awash in oil, in fact, civil strife has been fueled. Daphne Eviatar writes in the Boston Globe:
Compounding the problem, the slow growth and poverty associated with oil dependence also tends to fuel civil strife, Ross and others have found. This is most obvious in Africa, where the oil-producing states are among the poorest. In Nigeria, oil revenues are at the heart of ongoing civil unrest and widespread government corruption, despite the transition to civilian government in 1999. And in Angola, oil profits (along with the illicit diamond trade) fueled a 27-year civil war that only ended last year after the death of the insurgents' leader.
''Where oil is the main source of wealth, you're inevitably going to have a polarized society,'' warns Michael Klare, director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College and author of ''Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict'' (2001). ''It could be along class lines, ethnic lines, or regional lines, but whoever controls the state usually also controls oil income, and it's inevitably corrupting.''
Ethnic tensions are already mounting in postwar Iraq, before the wrangling over control of oil profits has even begun. Factionism has beset Iraq since the Sykes-Picot agreement defined its arbitrary boundaries to include a stew of clashing ethnic groups. The only instrument holding together the tenuous state was the systematic repression of autocratic Ba'athist rule. In the north, the Kurds, who have agitated for a state since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, are demanding independence once again. In the past decade, Kurds have become used to the autonomy gained under the protection of the northern no-fly zone, and have established a rather flourishing, though unrecognised, state outside Baghdad's control- an independence they would rather not lose. Further complicating matters is the fact that Kurds are split into two equally powerful factions, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Both control rival peshmerga, or militia, groups. The only factor uniting these groups is the prospect of a Turkish invasion to strangle the nascent Kurdish state in its cradle, a real possibility given Turkey is concerned with its own territorial integrity, given its large Kurdish minority. Turksih troops are already poised in large numbers on the Iraqi frontier.
In the south, Shi'ite groups, among the most repressed by Saddam Hussein, are also demanding separation from the Iraqi state, and even unification with Iran. During the initial talks on Iraqi reconstruction, the largest and most powerful Shi'ite faction, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, refused to participate in any talks led by the American occupiers. This groups advocates spreading the Iranian Revolution to Iraq's Shi'ite regions, and installing an Ayatollah as the Shi'ite religio-political leader in Najaf. A genuine democracy in Iraq would probably not be in the interests of the United States, as it would inevitably continue support for Palestinian insurgency against Israel or even revert completely to Islamic rule. In Baghdad, where the only unity among ethnic Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ites has been the demand for an end to the US occupation, protesters hoisted signs reading "No to Bush, No to Saddam, Yes, Yes, to Islam."
Ergo, the United States would be advised not to follow the Afganistan model of "reconstruction on the cheap" in Iraq. So what of the other option, of a long-term occupation and the patronising education of Iraqis in self-government by a colonialist regime? This was the model followed by the British Empire for nearly two centuries, following Kipling's "white man's burden" to improve the lives of the ruled. The most successful model was always India- which portends ominously for the future of Iraq if administered by American proconsuls. What was the imperial Raj has split today into India and Pakistan- both locked in a bloody frontier dispute over Kashmir and both prepared to engage the other in nuclear warfare. India, cheered by the US State Department as "the world's largest democracy" is ruled by a parliamentary majority of Hindu fundamentalists who endorse policies of vigilante slaughter of Muslims, most notably in Gujurat province. Pakistan, meanwhile, is a smoking powder-keg of Islamist fervent kept in line only by the fragile dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf. When the British left India in 1948, it was painfully clear that even after two centuries of unity under the Raj, the only thing maintaining the territorial integrity of India was the brute force of the British military. The chaos that marked the earliest days of India and caused Gandhi's numerous hunger strikes was the most violent moment of the Empire's dissolution. All this in the model of enlightened rule envisioned by Kipling and the liberal imperialists, like Gladstone.
Members of the Iraqi National Congress and other opposition groups insist Iraq can be held together in a "federation." However, there is no indication Iraqi splinter groups desire to work together in any meaningful way, with the opportunity of ethnic nationalism at hand. Such mélanges of ethnicity are only possible if bonded by military force or if the ethnicities themselves elect to form a greater union. International cooperation is not established from the top down- it is entered into by ethnicities, religious groups, and nation-states. Iraq today is destined to be more like Yugoslavia than Switzerland, whose unity is founded upon a centuries-long process of agreements made by empowered, self-assured, prosperous cantons.
The introduction of domestic, indigenous civil administration in places like Iraq cannot be achieved without the introduction of stable institutions of law and order, which in turn spawn a stable, diversified economic system. Fareed Zakaria writes in Newsweek:
"In framing a government," wrote James Madison in Federalist No. 51, "you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." Order, then liberty. In Iraq today, first establish a stable security environment and create the institutions of limited government, a constitution with a bill of rights, an independent judiciary, a sound central bank. Then and only then, move to full-fledged democracy.
Paddy Ashdown, the British politician who was appointed "czar" of Bosnia, admits that administrators there got the sequence wrong: "We thought that democracy was the highest priority, and we measured it by the number of elections we could organize. The result even years later is that the people of Bosnia have grown weary of voting. In addition, the focus on elections slowed our efforts to tackle organized crime and corruption, which have jeopardized quality of life and scared off foreign investment. "In hindsight," he wrote, "we should have put the establishment of the rule of law first, for everything else depends on it: a functioning economy, a free and fair political system, the development of civil society, public confidence in police and the courts."
In order to build a successful Iraqi society, American forces and the apparatus of a colonialist regime would have to remain long enough to provide for such systems of law and order as well as a flourishing economic system capable of producing an educated, entrepreneurial bourgeoisie. It is unlikely they will be able to do so, given the vehement opposition of Iraqis to the US military presence, even after mere days of occupation. Far more Iraqis filled the streets of Baghdad to protest the occupation than cheered the fall of Saddam's statue, and with Iraqis swearing to "drive out the Americans" just as "we did to the British with sticks, in 1920" must be disturbing for the incoming American administration headed by Jay Garner. Promises to rebuild Iraq along the lines of Germany and Japan after the Second World War are faulty- Iraq doesn't have the sense of national unity embodied by a homogenous population, nor the instruments of civil society, a uniform, highly educated workforce, or the apparatus of a democracy. Germany and Japan both limited experience with democratic institutions prior to the war, indeed, both Tojo and Hitler occupied elected positions. Furthermore, the reconstruction of Japan would have never been possible if not for the US agreement to leave the emperor in place. No such central authority exists in Iraq. Not to mention, the German and Japanese economies did not begin to flourish until around 1955, with the departure of US administration. And both required significant American expenditure. The aforementioned inherent problems with economically uniform petro-states demonstrate that Iraq's economy could not be sustained on oil profits alone.
Would the US be willing to endure tactics against its occupation similar to those employed by the Palestinians against the Israelis? Or the misfortune of strikes by terrorist groups motivated by the occupation against the United States itself? In the modern age, both are potent obstacles to a colonialist endeavour. Yet the United States would either have to subjugate such activities with force, and thus drag itself into an Israel-type situation, or appease Iraqis in such a way that the occupation is ended and an indigenous puppet government is established, saddled with the issues discussed above.
Is the postwar Iraq situation a certain snafu? Internationalists, including the US' most loyal follower, Britain, have called for roles for the United Nations ranging from a limited capacity as an adviser to reconstruction to full political administration. Yet questions must be answered about any UN role. Would Iraqis reject this, too, as colonial domination? The neoconservatives have dismissed the prospect of a UN-governed Iraq as the nation being "the ward of the international community." Iraqis may not look favourably on the UN, which has levied sanctions against them since 1991. Would a major UN role set the precedent for the international community's reluctant reconstruction of every nation-state the neoconservative cabal deems in need of a "regime change"?
Considering these questions, granting the UN, with its international legitimacy and experience in such reconstruction projects the primary role is preferential by far to a postwar administration dominated by the United States. After all, the reason the neoconservatives fear the UN role to such an extent is because it is likely to opt for the creation of a genuinely representative Iraq, in any direction its people so choose. For the neoconservatives, whose chief priorities are remaking the world in the image of the American Revolution and maintaining American power and hegemony, this is anathema, another constraint on their naturally powerful Empire to impose its will on the erstwhile too-autonomous Middle East.
Crowds of Baghdadis came out to meet us: Persians, Krabe, Jew, Armenians, Chaldeans and Christians of diverse sects and races. They lined the streets, balconies and roofs, hurrahing and clapping their hands. Groups of schoolchildren danced in front of us, shouting and cheering, and the women of the city turned out in their holiday dresses.
This is not, in fact, a description of events as American forces entered Baghdad recently. It appeared in the Manchester Guardian in 1917, as Britain had invaded the Ottoman province of Mesopotamia. The parallels to the present day are remarkable. The correspondant observed that "The people of the city have been robbed to supply the Turkish army for the last two years. The oppression was becoming unendurable, and during the last week it degenerated into brigandage" and that "As soon as the gendarmery left at two o'clock this morning, Kurds and others began looting. As we entered from the east this morning, they were rifling, and among the first citizens we met were merchants who had run out to crave our protection." Thus would British military presence in Iraq serve to allow a British mandate by the League of Nations, and hence one of Britain's most notoriously rocky colonial ventures.
Like the United States, the British Empire had eyed Iraq's strategic value. As the Ottoman Empire disintegrated, it was seen as yet another region in which Britain would compete with a protean Russia for Asian supremacy. From the turn of the 20th century, British designs included the seizure of Iraq to build a railway from Basra to Mosul to quickly move troops to the Russian frontier, and multifarious schemes to transplant Punjabi farmers to Basra province for the formation of an Indian colony. British control of India, however, did not materialise until the Ottoman alliance with Germany and Austro-Hungary in the First World War provided a casus belli for the invasion of Mesopotamia. Although at first elated by the removal of Turkish authority over Mesopotamia, the primarily Arab populace was soon discouraged by the continuing presence of British troops. A famous period photograph shows Rashid Street in Baghdad festooned with proliferous Union Jacks, the street mostly empty save for a pith-helmeted patrol. Unlike American troops today, British forces in 1917 immediately restored order to Baghdad's streets.
Most of the ostensible problems with imperialism, especially the well-dissembled and eloquently justified type, emerges in the long term. During the First World War, British policy in the Middle East, primarily executed by T.E. Lawrence, was to encourage Arab nationalism in order to fragment the Ottoman Empire and discourage Turkish policies of promoting a global jihad within Islam-oriented British possessions. Arab nationalism, in various manifestations, remains a potent force today. At its heart lies the reactionary impulse of resistance to foreign occupation and interlocution. Prophetically, Lord Hardinge, Viceroy of India, noted at the time that this policy would turn out to be "a Frankenstein's monster" for Britain, which was simultaneously carving the Arab world into arbitrarily-defined spheres with France. The Sykes-Picot agreement between the two victorious postwar powers partitioned the Arab world and laid the groundwork for the League mandates. The failure to produce a unified Arab state heightened suspicions among those who believed they had fought beside Britain for the cause of Arab nationalism, and the arrival of British and French troops for seemingly interminable missions and defined much in the same way as prewar incidents of "benevolent imperialism" set off a tinderbox of unrest in the Arab world. Appeals to American President Wilson to stick by his Fourteen Points and grant self-determination to the Arab states were met with the silence of Wilson's characteristic racism.
The creation of Iraq involved the fusion of multivariant ethnicities, all of whose nationalist senses had been stirred by British anti-Ottoman and American self-determinationist propaganda during the war. In fact, an Anglo-French pledge was made in the closing days of the war to uphold the Fourteen Points in the former Ottoman Empire. It was, apparently, taken too literally by Iraq's ethnic factions. Kurds began enthusiastically erecting the apparatus of a state in 1919, when Colonel Sir Arnold Wilson, the Iraqi civil administrator, dispatched Anglo-Indian troops to crush it. He deemed a unified Iraq a necessity and continued to cultivate fantasies of Indian colonisation. Kurdish guerillas proved difficult to dislodge, and in a stunning foreshadowing of Saddam Hussein's gassing of in the 1980s, poison gas was requested from the Secretary of War, Winston Churchill, who approved. Despite repeated calls for its use, the gas was not used, however, as strafing Kurdish peshmergas from biplanes proved effective enough.
Though such ingracious actions were masked by the seemingly innocent benevolence of the League mandates, stipulating the need for European philanthropy to accelerate the civic and economic development of the assigned states, Lawrence James writes in The Rise and Fall of the British Empire that "Arab nationalists put little faith in this brand of enlightened imperialism which reduced them to minors who could not survive without a substitute parent." By 1920 Iraq was in an open revolutionary state. Such brutal methods were used in the suppression of this insurgency that the War Ministry made a substantial coverup effort, aided by the distraction of events exploding in Ireland. However, James writes, "it was impossible to square threats of using poison gas against tribesmen with the essentially benevolent and humane ideals behind the mandate system." The British public eventually took notice- operations in Iraq were a waste of finances and lives.
T.E. Lawrence advocated limited self-government in order to balance British strategic necessity with nationalist impulses. In 1921, at the Cairo Conference, Britain brokered a deal with the Hashemite family, agitators of the 1920 revolution, granting them the thrones of Iraq and Jordan, to be "advised" by officers of the British mandate, making them, essentially, puppets. With oil strikes in the north throughout the 1920s, Britain held to Iraq ever more firmly. At considerable political cost to the Government, Iraq's Mosul province was defended from a Turkish incursion in 1922. Britain relinquished its mandate in 1930, but continued to pull Iraq's strings- an alliance was signed the same year and the RAF retained basing priveleges. This Anglo-Iraqi Treaty predictably fanned the flames of nationalism as much as the Sykes-Picot agreement. Edward Atiyah wrote of the British that "they say they are taking us into partnership, treating us as equals, but it is all words. At heart they remain rulers, fond of domination, resentful of our claims to equality in practise."
Anti-British sentiments in the Arab world significantly influenced events there during the Second World War. Enfeebled and condescended to under the mandate, and still living under the yoke of the British military, Arabs, especially Iraqis, looked to Hitler as a sort of antidote. Germany and Italy enjoyed propaganda coups in the Arab world, lambasting Britain for causing "atrocities." This coincided with the British attempt to suppress a rebellion in Palestine, with symbolic reverberations throughout the Middle East. As the war opened, Iraq was notably sympathising with the Axis. The British landed Indian troops as a precautionary move, within the terms of the Anglo--Iraqi Treaty, but this fomented a coup, and the new Iraqi leader appealed directly for Axis aid. Britain launched a full-scale invasion and entered Baghdad in May, 1941, launching anti-nationalist purges and reinstalling a puppet government. James writes that "each display of force left a deep sense of bitterness and frustration because it had amply demonstrated the victims' powerlessness. Britain was still the dominant power in the region and would go to any lengths to get its way there."
Of course, no select examples from history are guaranteed to accurately reflect current circumstances, but when taken in broad swathes of trends and dominant strains, history is a potent adviser. Anyone with a comprehension of the history of imperialism will comprehend with prescience the events which will manifest themselves in the coming weeks, months, and years in Iraq. The United States has little of the tact that Britain had as an imperial power, and the results for Britain were abysmal. In the contemporary environment, in which even perceived imperialism is a catalysing element to international terrorism, understanding the consequences of similar attempts in the past is even more important for Western interlocuters. The United States cannot afford the naïvité of exceptionalism- for when it looks its goals and intentions in the face, it should see those motivating the British Empire staring back. For a state founded on the principle of anti-imperialist agitation, it is a startling revelation indeed.
With the conquest of Iraq, the United States hopes to usher in the "reverse domino theory," the formula by which neoconservatives desire the sheer spectre of American power can help to reshape the Mideast without the political wrangling of warfare. Essentially, the military operation against Iraq demonstrates that the United States is prepared to go to any length, on the flimsiest of pretext, despite any opposition, to attain its policy goals. The neoconservative perspective on force in Iraq is that it was necessary to send such a message and that it was used because Saddam Hussein could not be otherwise deterred, the latter statement which was contradicted by over a decade of mostly successful containment. Still, Hussein would not accede to US policies, and his intransigence was met with arms.
In recent days the speculative commentariat has been filled with such rhetoric as "Syria is Next!" and "On to Damascus!", a fair reflection of the threats issued almost daily from the Pentagon and State Department to that country. The neoconservatives, the commentariat insisted, would attack Syria on the justification that it was harbouring fugitives of the deposed Iraqi government, supporting international terrorism, developing chemical weapons, aiding the defence of Iraq, and preparing to interfere in the reconstruction of Iraq by exploiting latent ethnic tensions, hence "Lebanonising" it. This would conform to the general neoconservative strategy of using American power to engage directly hostile adversaries- and to export, in a neo-Trotskyite fashion, the American Revolution, seeing "democracy" in the Mideast (although a genuine democracy in Iraq, or, for that matter, Syria would probably not be in the hawks' strategic interests, i.e., the simultaneous promotion of pro-American policy).
However, reports now indicate preparations for a military assault on Syria have been quashed at the highest levels of the Bush administration, and that the administration is more willing to confront Syria on political and economic strata. This does not necessarily depart from the general neoconservative strategy. The aforementioned reverse domino theory holds that democracy will flourish in the Mideast as its populaces seek to emulate the democratic model. Undermining the Assad regime in Syria helps to promote such goals in a subversionary fashion- a more Molotovian, rather than Trotskyite, approach, but revolutionary exportation nonetheless.
Furthermore, a more gradual escalation of tensions with Syria would achieve for the neoconservatives the sort of claims twelve years of containment policy had provided in Iraq- that such methods "do not work" and that military action was of necessity rather than choice. Not to mention, any US military assault on Syria would most likely originate in Iraq (as one launched from Israel carries inordinate political risks), and there are constraints militarily on such an operation which require time to address. First and foremost, the desert heat is not conducive to an offencive operation, and with great care the world witnessed the US building up its forces in Kuwait during the UN inspection process and suddenly displaying impatience with the inspections in order to order an invasion before the realities of Mideast weather debilitated its forces. Also, while virtual anarchy reigns in Iraq, the US desperately needs to deploy more forces to retain order. Policing Iraq while maintaining rearguard actions in Afghanistan and engaging elsewhere in the "war on terrorism" has seriously overburdened US forces. The neoconservatives may wait until it has transferred power to a puppet regime in Baghdad in order to engage a large array of forces against Syria, which has a vastly more powerful defence apparatus than Iraq prior to the inception of the concluding conflict.
Though the neoconservatives publicly espouse the reverse domino theory, there is sufficient evidence that they themselves don't believe it a likely scenario- hence the arrogant rhetoric stinging Syria while American troops still engage some Iraqi forces. That the higher, civilian levels of the administration are opposed to a conflict with Syria is evidence this move may be motivated by domestic politics. It would be more advantageous for Bush to put in place at least the appearance of a government in Iraq before engaging in any more episodes of adventurism, and, furthermore, most propitious for him if the conflict is initiated closer to the election date of November 2004.
While engaging in the US offencive on al-Qaeda, Syria simultaneously supports Hezbollah and Hamas, a potent casus belli for Bush hawks. Yet Syria has been of demonstrable help to the US in its "terror war"- Syria has provided crucial intelligence aiding the US effort against al-Qaeda. That Syria's terrorism links threaten, almost exclusively, Israel, will make the Bush administration's task manipulating 11 September fears difficult among educated Americans. Of course, most Americans remain in gross ignorance of the fact that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had little to no involvement with terrorism, especially of the Islamic fundamentalist type- over 40% believe he was personally involved in 11 September! Still, the complex nature of Syrian terrorism sponsorship renders the Bush policy toward Syria far more ambivalent- it is difficult to paint in bichromal, "with us or against us" terms.
Of the many painful lessons to be drawn from this crisis, the most important one for Europe will be to acknowledge the limits of its power as long as nation states, especially its largest ones, remain reluctant to pool any more of their sovereignty. It can manage matters ranging from ferrets to the euro, but if it wants to get a handle on war, peace and nation-building in trouble spots beyond its own Balkan backyard, it's really going to have to think bigger and work harder - and maybe then it can come to terms with an unassailably powerful America.
This is indeed an on-the-mark summary. The petty quibbling between states has made the idea of a unified Europe not only appear ineffectual and ineffective to the extra-European world throughout this Iraq affair, but has led to general remorse among even the staunchest Europhiles. While superficially prospering- Hungary voted with an 87% majority for EU succession in 2004- the Union is fraught with the type of deep divisions not seen since the period of the Reagan-Thatcher axis. Cynical commentators have even gone so far as to describe the divide between the maritime (Britain, Spain, Portugal) alliance (i.e., Oceania) and the troika of France, Germany and Russia (Eurasia), recalling the superstates into which the world was polarised in Orwell's 1984.
Though the Union will probably move closer again in the near future- its growth and progress have always come in a pattern of fits and starts- the reemerging Union is likely to be more slanted toward American policy. Split leftist oppositions impair the overthrow of Aznar in Spain or Berlusconi in Italy, and the inability of Gerhard Schroeder to pass his economic reforms through a Bundesrat filled with rebellious SPD and hostile opposition CDU members will probably result in a Christian Democratic sweep in the next German elections, whether or not the CDU articulates a foreign policy palatable to German pacifism. France is already beginning to become concilatory toward Washington in its hopes to resecure French economic interests in the region, while Putin in Russia will either see fit to amend his realpolitik strategies to appeasement of the new American puppet government in Iraq or be shunned by the emerging, conservative Europe altogether. After all, the incoming members- Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary- all zealously joined NATO upon receiving the invitation, and assorted military scares involving a Russian merger with Belarus or the stationing of nuclear submarines at Kaliningrad have accentuated Russophobic viewpoints in Eastern and Central Europe. The incoming members, hoping all to achieve the type of startegic partnership Britain enjoys with the US, all kowtow heavily to American interests. Of course, relatively ineffectual allies to the US like Portugal and Denmark seem to benefit little more for their zealotry than France or Germany, and even Britain is being frozen out entirely from spoils, imput, or even suggestion on Iraqi reconstruction.
However, there are emerging optimistic signs for European federalists. Throughout the Iraq war, opinion in Europe was solidly against American actions, registering 97% even in Poland (according to Newsweek). The only real fluke was Britain, where the perennially dissent-stifling cry of "support the boys" brought opposition down to about 50%. European public opinion remained in solidarity while governments bickered over their roles in Europe and what was in their own "national interest". With accession polls indicating humongously positive reception to inclusion in the Union in such relatively affluent havens as Malta and Slovenia (wealthier than Portugal), one must only conclude that enthusiasm for European unity is not just a measure of economic distress, but an indication of sweeping pan-Continentalist sentiment.
With such majorities opposed to US foreign policy and in support of EU membership in Eastern and Central Europe, one observes that the popular sentiment is that their nations' policies should be coordinated with others in a setting in which they have representation (Brussels) rather than being dictated to from a distant foreign capital (Washington). Despite all the ad-hoc analysis of the "New Europe" emanating from the Pentagon, Eastern Europeans do not see the United States as a "liberator". Rather, having been vassal states of the Soviet Union for half a century, they can sing the praises of slow progress- as early as 1953, the secret police was banned in Poland and the country was headed on a path toward Solidarity representative democracy. To those observing the fall of Saddam Hussein's statues in Baghdad and comparing it with the fall of the Berlin Wall, one must ask, how much blood was spilled in 1989?
Britain, more than any other EU member, has damaged the fragile nature of the Union. And yet policies for further integration with Europe are constantly promulgated from Downing Street- Euro referenda, Common Foreign and Security Policy proposals, European Defence Initiative proposals, Gordon Brown's theories on a devolutionised Europe and the implementation of the Golden Rule to free member states of the stringent, draconian budgetary controls of the Stability Pact. The hypocrisy is enervating to anyone who remembers Tony Blair insisting he alone would have implemented Bush policy had it not been White House strategy- by which he can only mean unilateralist aggression...or to anyone who remembers the Prime Minister or his cohort going before parliament to- incredulously -place the blame for the war on France's intent to veto Un resolutions authorising force.
With such doublespeak from Downing Street, it is no wonder the triple entente of France, Germany, and Russia are drawn ever closer, meeting at St. Petersburg to announce Blair's policy- UN administration of postwar Iraq -without the unwelcome element of Blair's evident hypocrisy...or that France, Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg are meeting to plot the future of an integrated European peacekeeping force, inviting all those willing to participate, while British troops engage in unprovoked combat hostilities in Iraq. Blair may have once been the prime minister needed to sell Europe to a reluctant Britain, but, with his zeal on Iraq, Jacques Chirac appears to have overtaken that role now, while Britain appears less ready to join Europe than the period during which De Gaulle blocked its entrance into the Common Market. Even when articulating policies for Europe- devolution, especially- Britain appears isolated.
While the conservative movements in Italy and Spain are showing momentum and Germany's staged for a comeback, it's worth remembering that even the conservative government of Italy is having extreme difficulties constraining popular opinion, even with nearly full control of the Italian television media. Popular sentiment in Croatia caused the government to demand an apology from the US for including it without consultation on the list of members of its "coalition," while in Poland the government has lashed out at the US for including members of its token forces there in propaganda photographs. The Czech Prime Minister called the "imposition of democracy by force" an idea "alien to this century."
Though the emerging reunified Continent isn't the utopic, Social Democratic, vehemently anti-hyperpuissance counter-polar superpower those such as Hubert Védrine, former French foreign minister, would like it to be, it still poses potent challenges to American unilateralism, and while the limits of European power are in evidence while attempting to fuse the sentiments of its feuding member states, the limits of American power will far more surely be demonstrated in its attempts to outmaneouvre its emerging rivals- China, and an increasingly unified Europe.
