The mood today? Nope, it’s actually a description of January 1991, the eve of the gulf war. It’s a time that senior Bush officials well remember, since they conducted that war. And it had a happy ending. In France, for example, once the war was underway, the poll numbers flipped and two thirds of the public supported the military action. The lesson: forge ahead, and if you are successful, your allies will come around.
But while victory in a second gulf war will make many doubters change their minds, the political climate today is fundamentally different from 1991. For one thing, the numbers are truly staggering. In Germany, 81 percent oppose a war; in France, 82 percent. Last week in Turkey, the antiwar numbers reached 87 percent. The Bush administration has made much of the support of Vaclav Havel. But almost two thirds of the Czech people oppose participating in a war. Even in Poland, probably the most pro-American country in the world (along with Israel), support for the war is low. Only 6 percent of Poles support a war regardless of what happens with the inspections. Even if the inspectors “prove that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction,” that number rises to just 24 percent. On the other hand, 34 percent of Poles oppose a war regardless of the circumstances.
“This is a very different atmosphere from 1991,” says Josef Joffe, editor of the German weekly Die Zeit. In 1991, the allies still believed that they needed America to protect them. The cold war may have been ending but the framework of international politics hadn’t really shifted. Joffe explains: “While there was an anti-American left, there was always a pro-American center-right that dominated Europe’s politics. Now we have a bipartisan suspicion of the United States.”
Today America’s allies worry about a new threat–America. Of course they don’t think that the United States wants to conquer them, but they worry about living in an American-dominated world in which their national destinies are shaped by Washington.
American power has brought peace and liberty to countless places around the globe–especially to Western Europe. American power helped created a more civilized world in the Balkans. Despite Washington’s tentative approach toward nation-building, the war in Afghanistan has vastly improved the lives of the Afghan people. And a war in Iraq–if followed by truly ambitious postwar reconstruction–could transform Iraq and prod reform in the Middle East. And yet it is easy to understand that for most countries, even if all this is true, it only heightens their sense of powerlessness in this new world.
“It’s not that we don’t like you,” says Simon Atkinson, a British pollster. Meaning Americans. “We don’t like him.” Meaning George W. Bush. The Bush administration has done much to alienate the world, in actions but also in its tone. “When you just see the way these guys talk, their mannerisms, their body language, it’s like they’re in tryouts for a Marlboro Man commercial,” says Rami Khouri, a syndicated columnist in Jordan.
But in fact this is not a problem produced by George W. Bush. It is one produced by American power. The French foreign minister coined the term “hyperpower,” after all, to describe Bill Clinton’s America. But if Bush has not created this problem, he can easily help alleviate it.
It is not simply a matter of trying to be popular. Rising anti-Americanism makes it more and more difficult for politicians to back American actions, even when they agree with them. This is why the Turkish government has had to scale back its support. Now Washington may have to go to war without a major attack from the north. It is becoming politically suicidal for any foreign leader to be forthrightly pro-American. In such circumstances it will be difficult for the United States to further its broadest goals–or even achieve its narrow security.
American power becomes far more acceptable to others if it is wrapped in the blanket of the international community. That means Washington must try hard to get a second United Nations resolution authorizing military action. As with the first, a real effort might well succeed. It also means it should make the case for war not just to the American public but to the world. It must send the signal that it cares what the rest of the world thinks. George Bush has to convincingly explain to the world, “It’s not that we don’t like you. It’s that we don’t like him.” Meaning Saddam Hussein.
