Martin Henry AT ANY moment now bombs will begin raining down upon Iraq. "US ready to act alone, says Powell". "There comes a time when soft power or talking to evil will not work, where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works. We will not shrink from war if that is the only way to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction [which UN inspectors have so far being unable to find]. We continue to reserve our sovereign right to take military action against Iraq alone or in a coalition of the willing," says the Secretary of State.
And who may these "willing" be? A multi-national coalition and the United Nations backed the United States in 1991 in driving Iraq out of Kuwait. A dozen years later the alignments for an impending Second Gulf War are a spectacular commentary on the future of world history.
Charles Krauthammer, winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary and a US nationally syndicated columnist based at the Washington Post, speaking in defence of American unilateralism, says, "any discussion of it has to begin with a discussion of the structure of the international system. The reason that we talk about unilateralism today is that we live in a totally new world. We live in a unipolar world of a sort that has not existed in at least 1500 years."
In fact, Krauthammer quotes from an analyst, "nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power, nothing." He points out that even at the peak of its imperial power, Great Britain could be challenged by the next great powers. Britain had a smaller army than the land powers of Europe, and the next two largest navies combined equalled that of Britain. The United States military, on the other hand, today spends more than the next 20 countries combined. Beyond the military, US dominance extends to every other aspect of international life: economic, technological, cultural, and even linguistic.
There is the usual line-up against an American attack against Iraq. Fidel Castro, the arch enemy, warns that the US government faces widespread disapproval from the American public and risks harming the world economy if it launches a military attack on Iraq. "The vast majority of the world's public opinion opposes this already announced war," Castro says. China and Russia are opposed to war.
The Arab and Muslim world, while not supporting Iraq, is against military action. Even staunch ally Saudi Arabia is balking at the prospect. Malaysia's Islamic Prime Minister, Mahatir Mohamad, has been a strong supporter of the US war on terror in the aftermath of 9-11. But at the same World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where Colin Powell spoke, Mohamad, declared that "the United
States has gone overboard' and "war solves nothing".
Nelson Mandela, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who as South African President enjoyed excellent relationships with the United States, has called President Bush "arrogant and short-sighted." "One power with a president who has no foresight and cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust," he said.
In 1991, Western Europe through NATO lined up behind the United States. France and Germany as major European/NATO players have rejected war against Iraq at this time. In Germany, a recent poll indicated, 81 per cent of the population opposes war. The figure is 82 per cent in France and in Turkey, a strategic ally for attack bases, the number stands at 87 per cent. One senior German official says, "[Chancellor Gerhard] Schroder genuinely fears that this administration [Bush's] has gone mad". China has declared that its position is "extremely close to that of France.
UN Security Council members Russia, France, Syria, Germany and China along with Secretary-General Kofi Annan have said the weapons inspections in Iraq were working and should be given more time, particularly in light of the absence of any concrete evidence available to the UN that Iraq has rebuilt its arsenal, evidence which the US Government says it has but will not share with the world body. Three of the five veto-holding permanent members of the UN Security Council, China, France and Russia, are lined up against military action.
This leaves Britain as the only active ally of the United States. Newsweek (Jan 27) describes British Prime Minister Tony Blair as "Hope of the World". Blair "is the only man who might be able to slow or redirect the march on Iraq. The question is, will he?" the news magazine asked. Blair has just told the British Parliament (Wednesday, February 5, BBC) that it is perfectly clear that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and has ties to terrorist networks, and not acting will not only jeopardise world security but will harm the credibility of the United Nations.
Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has roughly dismissed France and Germany as the "old Europe". And Bush aides are describing Europe as "divided". This may well be the heart of the matter in the swirling realignments over Iraq!
Historically, Europe has been mostly divided bitterly and bloodily. The EU and NATO are really anomalies of European history. Up to the turn of the 20th century, Britain and France were mostly hostile rivals. In 1903, an Entente Cordiale was signed between the two countries. The entente was aimed at containing German expansionism and ending some 200 years of Anglo-French rivalry and hostility.
The British and the French then proceeded to fight in two world wars as allies against Germany. But only a few weeks ago 40 years of post-World War II Franco-German accord were commemorated and celebrated.
Many efforts have been made at European unification since the continent fragmented into warring bits with the dissolution of the Roman Empire. The present European Union and the NATO links with the United States and Canada across the Atlantic have been remarkably successful but their brevity in the span of history and their unusualness should not be forgotten.
There is deep interest in how a Second Gulf War will affect the world. There will certainly be large spill-over effects in unexpected ways and places. Such a war, it seems, is set to open old cleavages of history and create new alignments beyond combat in a new world order. The signs of the times are everywhere.
Martin Henry is a communications
specialist.
