The Price of Unilateralism

The Bush administration's decision to wage war against Iraq unilaterally under the cover of the so-called coalition of the willing, that is, without the explicit approval of the United Nations Security Council, has damaged, if not seriously crippled, the very institutions (the UN, and to a lesser extent, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) established to safeguard international security. In the aftermath of the war, the administration must reassess its developing posture of unilateralism not just to save these institutions from becoming completely irrelevant to international security but to safeguard U.S. national interests.

The recent events in Iraq may be only incidental to the global geopolitical realignment following the collapse of the former Soviet Union. The European community, led by France and Germany, no longer feels the need for the security blanket the United States once provided and that justified its predominance in European affairs during the fifty years of the Cold War. Although opposition to the rise of a single hegemon is not new to European political circles, it came into a sharper focus after the removal of the Soviet threat and America's subsequent emergence as the sole superpower. As early as 1990, Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris, suggested to close associates, including his foreign policy advisor Pierre Lellouch, that France should strive to have Europe be a counterweight in a multipolar world. He also noted that any community that has only one dominant power is always dangerous and provokes reactions. At the time, Chirac was not hesitant in indicating that France must take the lead in any such counterbalancing. Ten years later, Germany's foreign minister Joschka Fisher echoed these sentiments when he noted that Europe after 1945 was and still is at its core a rejection of the hegemonic ambitions of any one state. And as recently as February 2003, German chancellor Gerhard Schroder reiterated these sentiments by indicating that Germany did not feel obliged to other governments. Although playing to public sentiments against the war in Iraq as part of his reelection campaign, Schroder's position was also a byproduct of the profound and growing German consensus against U.S. unipolarity.

In the European community, France and Germany especially want to have their own unique voices while assuming a greater role in determining Europe's destiny. France under Chirac, in particular, continues to see Europe as a counterweight to U.S. economic and military power. The conflict over Iraq, among other things, has provided a platform for this vision. From the French and German perspectives, U.S. dominance threatens Europe's cohesiveness and possibly their own national interests. Raising the stakes higher for both nations is the expansion of the European Union to include ten Eastern European nations whose ties to the United States (because of its steadfast opposition to communism and their fears of France and Germany having a hidden agenda to dominate Europe) seem stronger than their ties to Western Europe. This situation explains Chirac's irate retort to those Eastern European countries seeking EU membership after voicing their support of the U.S. position on Iraq. As he famously scolded, their leaders missed a good opportunity to remain silent.

These concerns have coincided with the absence of any present threat to Europe's security and growing U.S. strategic and economic interests in the Middle East and Asia, which in turn are causing the United States to shift its focus away from Europe. The Bush administration, apparently oblivious to the domestic difficulties a possible invasion of Iraq presented to Chirac and Schroder, did not try to provide political cover for either as it did for Prime Minister Tony Blair of England. The peoples of all three countries were against the war. The French government, in particular, with a vocal minority of 5 million Muslims to contend with, was especially concerned about the fallout from a war. Still, Iraq was not the only crisis that has stained the old alliances. Other recent events, such as Western Europe's...