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A Global Journal Report --- Allies at Odds: Behind U.S. Rift With Europeans: Slights and Politics --- Schroeder and Chirac Discover How Popular Tweaking A Superpower Can Be --- Brushoff at a NATO Meeting
By Marc Champion in London, Charles Fleming in Paris, Ian Johnson in Berlin and Carla Anne Robbins in WashingtonWall Street Journal. (Eastern edition).New York, N.Y.: Mar 27, 2003.  pg. A.1
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Subjects:
Locations:Germany,  France,  Europe,  United States,  US,  Iraq
People:Schroder, Gerhard,  Chirac, Jacques
Author(s):By Marc Champion in London, Charles Fleming in Paris, Ian Johnson in Berlin and Carla Anne Robbins in Washington
Article types:News
Publication title:Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Mar 27, 2003.  pg. A.1
Source Type:Newspaper
ISSN/ISBN:00999660
ProQuest document ID:318585821
Text Word Count3360
Article URL:http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:pqd&rft_val_fmt=ori:fmt:kev:mtx:journal&genre=article&rft_id=xri:pqd:did=000000318585821&svc_dat=xri:pqil:fmt=text&req_dat=xri:pqil:pq_clntid=1564
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Abstract (Article Summary)

Today, with the war in Iraq well under way, that seems unlikely. But the U.S. rift with the French-German alliance has forced the [George W. Bush] administration and its one militarily significant ally, the United Kingdom, to carry out their invasion without U.N. approval, pitting Washington against a monumental alignment of world opinion. That isolation could make it more difficult for the U.S. to extricate itself from Iraq once the fighting is over as well. It also complicates efforts to convince other Arab countries that the U.S. is a liberator, not another in a long line of occupiers.

Looking back, other U.S. officials say they should have done more to involve NATO after Sept. 11. But they also say that with European military spending far behind U.S. outlays, the hard truth was that the European half of NATO had little to offer that the U.S. didn't already have. Referring to the often-fractious NATO military efforts in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Bush Pentagon officials at the time also didn't want to fight what some derisively referred to as "war by committee."

Britain was eager to get the U.S. to work through the U.N. but decided to try to influence the U.S. by joining it. This approach reflected Prime Minister Tony Blair's broader view that Europe generally should promote unity with Washington rather than try to counter it. Mr. Blair urged the U.S. to work through the U.N. and pledged military support whatever happened. On a Sept. 7 visit to the Camp David presidential retreat, Mr. Blair told Mr. Bush that the U.N. would add legitimacy to any military action.

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Copyright Dow Jones & Company Inc Mar 27, 2003


Corrections & Amplifications

GEORGE ROBERTSON, the secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, called Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sept. 12, 2001, to suggest that NATO invoke Article Five of its founding treaty in response to the terrorist attacks against the U.S. A page-one article last Thursday incorrectly said that the call took place on Sept. 11.

(WSJ April 3, 2003)

Early on Jan. 22, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder sat down for 20 minutes with Jacques Chirac in the French president's gilded office overlooking the gardens of the Elysee Palace.

As aides prepared for a glittering day of banquets and meetings to celebrate 40 years of Franco-German cooperation, the two leaders huddled after breakfast to discuss something more urgent: Iraq. For months, Mr. Schroeder had been a lone voice among European leaders saying that the U.S. had no cause to attack Saddam Hussein. His stand had helped him win a narrow victory in national elections four months earlier, but it also left him diplomatically isolated. Now, he was about to get some badly needed help.

Mr. Chirac confirmed what Mr. Schroeder had been hearing through his aides, according to people familiar with the meeting. The French, who for months had left open the option to join the U.S. in any military action, were going to join the Germans. Mr. Chirac said he was now convinced that France should make a stand against the U.S. by pushing to allow United Nations weapons inspectors more time to do their job. At the end of the meeting, Mr. Chirac said to Mr. Schroeder, "So, we're in agreement."

Those few words, repeated by the French leader at a press conference later that day, marked a historic turning point. Over the years, the U.S. has had periodic spats with its European allies. This, however, was a break of unprecedented proportions: two of Europe's most powerful countries publicly uniting to undermine Washington's top foreign priority, the overthrow of Iraq's dictator. By the end of that day, the West was headed for a diplomatic train wreck on a scale not seen since World War II, putting in question the alliances and institutions that have provided structure to the world since 1945.

Over the next six weeks, Messrs. Chirac and Schroeder worked the phones, visited foreign capitals and called in diplomatic chits. Their goal: nothing less than the reining in of what they saw as a rogue superpower. The German ambassador to the U.N. boasted in one confidential e-mail to colleagues at his foreign ministry that their strategy was to isolate the U.S. and make it "repentently come back to the [U.N. Security] Council," seeking compromise.

Today, with the war in Iraq well under way, that seems unlikely. But the U.S. rift with the French-German alliance has forced the Bush administration and its one militarily significant ally, the United Kingdom, to carry out their invasion without U.N. approval, pitting Washington against a monumental alignment of world opinion. That isolation could make it more difficult for the U.S. to extricate itself from Iraq once the fighting is over as well. It also complicates efforts to convince other Arab countries that the U.S. is a liberator, not another in a long line of occupiers.

The damage could be lasting. At its heart, the clash is over how to address the world's problems: by the traditional, often-messy compromises favored by many in Europe, or by Washington's new preferred method in which the U.S. makes major decisions unilaterally and then tries to assemble coalitions after the fact.

The rift poses a difficult choice: Should countries go along with the U.S., hoping to shape its decisions? Or should they support Mr. Chirac's ambition for a united Europe to become a great counterweight to the U.S. -- a second superpower, with its own values and goals?

The diplomatic upheaval during the first few months of this year can be traced to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, an event that took away the common enemy that bound the West together for half a century. For much of the 1990s, the West enjoyed a strategic holiday, tending to domestic concerns after the uneasy Cold War years. Some tension surfaced after the Bush administration took office in 2001 and pulled out of the treaty forming an International Criminal Court, the Kyoto treaty on global warming and other agreements.

Still, the West united as never before just 18 months ago, when al Qaeda terrorists launched their attacks on New York and Washington. Yet it was at this moment, when the U.S. seemed at its most vulnerable, that Europeans realized how little they mattered. That was made clear through the one organization that, above all others, was supposed to bind North America with democratic Europe: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Late on the night of Sept. 11, 2001, George Robertson, NATO's plain-spoken secretary-general and a former British defense secretary, called U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell with an extraordinary plan. NATO, he said, could invoke its Article Five authority to come to the defense of the U.S. That provision says that an attack against one NATO nation is an attack against them all. It provided the binding glue of the alliance during the Cold War but had never been used. If ever there were a time to show trans-Atlantic solidarity, Lord Robertson recalls thinking, it was then.

"Go for it," Mr. Powell responded, according to his aides. The next day, the usually cautious officials at the alliance's squat headquarters near Brussels committed NATO's resources to fight terrorism world-wide. The mood in Brussels was euphoric, diplomats recall. NATO, which had appeared obsolete with the end of the Cold War, now seemed rejuvenated.

The ebullience faded a couple of weeks later, when U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz flew to Brussels to address NATO defense ministers. He thanked them for their gesture but otherwise ignored the offer to provide aid, according to official transcripts of the meeting and interviews with some of those present. He briefed the Europeans on Washington's independent plans for a "wide-ranging, long-term approach the U.S. is adopting to combat terrorism." There was no mention of a military role for NATO.

"He said very clearly that we don't need you," says a European official at NATO. Adds another, "He said thanks, but no thanks."

The issue of whether the West would attack terrorism under NATO's flag was largely symbolic. The U.S. in any case would have provided most of the manpower and money. But France, Germany and other European countries felt spurned and bewildered by Washington's refusal to take them up on their offer.

Mr. Wolfowitz says any officials who felt that way misread his position. At the time, he adds, the U.S. "didn't have any notion what kind of military forces we needed" for a possible war in Afghanistan, "nor any notion that NATO as an alliance was prepared to commit to something as ambitious as Afghanistan." Mr. Wolfowitz also says that last December, he presented to NATO a detailed proposal for how it could help with a possible war against Iraq. "But what we feared in September '01 is precisely what happened: The French blocked collective action."

Looking back, other U.S. officials say they should have done more to involve NATO after Sept. 11. But they also say that with European military spending far behind U.S. outlays, the hard truth was that the European half of NATO had little to offer that the U.S. didn't already have. Referring to the often-fractious NATO military efforts in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Bush Pentagon officials at the time also didn't want to fight what some derisively referred to as "war by committee."

Iraq entered the picture several months later, in January 2002, when President George W. Bush decried an "Axis of Evil" of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Many European leaders and citizens were shocked. Even though NATO had been shunted aside, most European countries had agreed on an individual basis to help the U.S. fight terrorism. Germany had sent thousands of troops to Afghanistan to help keep the peace. Now, it seemed as though Mr. Bush were shifting the target from Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda -- which most people recognized as a threat -- to Iraq. Mr. Hussein had flouted disarmament obligations for most of the 1990s, but few outside Washington saw him as an immediate danger to world security.

It soon emerged that there was a divide within the Bush administration over how to deal with Iraq. One faction, led by Secretary of State Powell, favored U.N. arms inspections, believing they still had a chance of defanging Mr. Hussein. Taking military action without broad international backing, Mr. Powell said, would risk alienating allies needed to continue the war on terrorism.

Others, led by Vice President Richard Cheney, thought that inspections and seeking U.N. consensus would pointlessly slow down the U.S. drive to depose Mr. Hussein. On Aug. 26, with many American policy-makers on vacation, Mr. Cheney made a startling speech, calling for "regime change" and deriding the U.N.'s process of using weapons inspectors to contain Iraq.

The response across Europe was electric. "Krieg" -- War -- announced Germany's mass-circulation Bild newspaper.

At the time, Mr. Schroeder was in a tight re-election fight. He had been mentioning in campaign stops that he opposed military action against Mr. Hussein, but the response had been lukewarm. Suddenly, after Mr. Cheney's speech, everyone in Germany was talking about a possible war. Mr. Schroeder's popularity soared, and he rode antiwar sentiment to a come-from-behind victory in September. Mr. Chirac and other leaders could observe the potential political payoff from opposing U.S. war plans.

Britain was eager to get the U.S. to work through the U.N. but decided to try to influence the U.S. by joining it. This approach reflected Prime Minister Tony Blair's broader view that Europe generally should promote unity with Washington rather than try to counter it. Mr. Blair urged the U.S. to work through the U.N. and pledged military support whatever happened. On a Sept. 7 visit to the Camp David presidential retreat, Mr. Blair told Mr. Bush that the U.N. would add legitimacy to any military action.

Less than a week later, a day after the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush seemed to settle the issue, siding with Mr. Powell. The president took his case to the U.N., saying in his speech that the U.S. was in favor of U.N. "resolutions" to deal with Iraq.

What followed was an effort to square the circle. Mr. Cheney essentially had announced that the U.S. wanted to topple Mr. Hussein. But Mr. Bush had said he wanted the U.N. involved. That meant accepting U.N. weapons inspectors as judges of whether Iraq was disarming. But if the Bush team had decided to invade, why involve the U.N? Many European officials say they suspected that it was just to give the veneer of international approval to a decision made in Washington.

The next day, the foreign ministers and U.N. ambassadors of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members -- China, France, Russia, the U.S. and U.K. -- met for lunch at U.N. headquarters in Manhattan. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin floated the idea of having two resolutions, according to people familiar with the lunch. The first would send weapons inspectors back into Iraq. If Saddam Hussein failed to comply -- he had disobeyed 16 previous resolutions over 12 years -- then a second measure would be required to trigger military action. Mr. Powell didn't shoot down the idea but warned France that if it voted for the first resolution, it had better be ready to vote for a second one.

From the start, there was deep mutual mistrust. "France was trying to get into a position where it could prevent the U.S. from taking military action, and we were trying to get into a position where they couldn't," says a British diplomat.

French officials confirm that Iraq became a test of a much broader question: What international rules should govern when countries -- including the U.S. -- may go to war? With Germany and much of world opinion weighing against U.S. plans to attack Iraq, the officials say, what better time to try standing up to Washington?

By early November, Messrs. de Villepin and Powell agreed that if Mr. Hussein failed to comply with the inspection process, the Security Council would convene to discuss what to do next. On Nov. 8, the council voted 15-0 to approve Resolution 1441. It threatened Iraq with "serious consequences" if it failed to "cooperate immediately, unconditionally and actively" with the inspectors.

The resolution seemed like a triumph of diplomacy, but in hindsight it was a flawed compromise. The U.S. and Britain saw in it a strong threat that Mr. Hussein had to comply or face military action. But France and Germany interpreted the same language as a fresh opportunity for the inspection process to avoid war.

Although a diplomatic showdown was taking shape as 2003 began, it didn't seem inevitable. Germany was still the only major country in the West categorically opposed to Washington's plans. Mr. Chirac seemed to be keeping his options open. In a New Year's address to the French military, he told troops to be prepared to deploy in new theaters, encouraging the belief in Washington and London that -- as in the last Gulf War -- the French would fall in at the end. The Americans were pleased when the French defense ministry sent a general to Washington to discuss possible contributions to the war plan.

But several developments coincided in January. Germany, which isn't a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, joined as one of the council's 10 rotating members. Suddenly, the antiwar perspective had new prominence. Simultaneously, the U.S. and Britain were continuing a months-long military buildup near Iraq, even though U.N. inspectors hadn't determined that Iraq had violated weapons rules.

That raised new questions in Mr. Chirac's mind about Washington's actual strategy -- a question finally answered when his chief diplomatic adviser, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, paid a quick visit to Washington to see White House officials in mid-January. When he returned to Paris, says a French government official, Mr. Gourdault-Montagne told Mr. Chirac of his strong impression that the U.S. would go to war, "no matter what."

A few days later, the French became more firmly convinced of this view and more determined to block the Americans. On Jan. 19, Messrs. de Villepin and Powell met at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York on the eve of a U.N. Security Council meeting on terrorism. The French minister referred to an interview Mr. Chirac had given to the French newspaper Le Figaro, in which he laid out his position that weapons inspections, not force, were the right way to deal with Iraq, according to a U.S. official.

Mr. Powell, according to people at the meeting, responded by saying "don't underestimate the resolve of the U.S. to settle this, without dragging it out."

Mr. de Villepin returned to his suite at the UN Plaza Hotel that evening convinced that Mr. Powell had joined the Bush administration hawks and was bent on war, French officials say.

The next day, Mr. de Villepin stepped out of the Security Council meeting on terrorism to tell a press conference that France believed that war with Iraq would increase, not reduce, terrorism. "Today, nothing justifies considering military action" against Iraq, he said. Asked if France would use its veto, he said, "Believe me, that in a matter of principles, we will go all the way to the end."

U.S. officials say Mr. Powell reacted angrily to the de Villepin press conference. For the secretary of state, this was a critical moment, the officials add. Within the administration, he had fiercely advocated diplomacy, inspections and the pressure of a steady U.S. military buildup, the officials say. If it didn't work, he had argued, the Security Council would back military action.

But the de Villepin statement indicated that France intended to block any such action, some American officials say. Facing continued opposition from administration hawks, Mr. Powell began to lose hope about working through the U.N., the American officials say. Two days later, Messrs. Chirac and Schroeder sat down for their morning meeting in Paris, sealing their alliance.

Washington reacted swiftly. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed France and Germany as part of an "old Europe," that was rapidly being sidelined by a "new Europe" that would back U.S. policy on Iraq.

In all, 18 European leaders signed letters of support for the U.S., angered by the attempt by France and Germany to speak for them. But all of them, including Washington's two main European allies, Mr. Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, faced huge opposition to war at home. To counter this, Messrs. Blair and Aznar worked hard to persuade President Bush to support a second resolution, which would hold Mr. Hussein in breach of the earlier resolution -- and thus be a justification for war.

Mr. Blair figured he could get the second resolution approved based on the work of Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector. They met privately at Chequers, the prime minister's official residence in the English countryside, on Jan. 17 -- the day news broke that inspectors had found 12 empty chemical-weapons warheads south of Baghdad. After the hour-long meeting, Mr. Blair's aides became more confident that Mr. Blix would issue a stern accounting.

Mr. Blix's first report on Jan. 27 was tough, prompting Mr. Blair to draft a second resolution. But the prime minister had miscalculated. The next report from Mr. Blix, on Feb. 14, was much more positive, saying that Iraq had shown signs of cooperation. The veteran Swedish diplomat also dismissed some of the intelligence evidence Mr. Powell had presented to the U.N. a week earlier as proof that the Iraqis were hiding illegal weapons.

Televised deliberations of the Security Council showed tensions heightening. During the ambassadors' private lunches upstairs, tempers sometimes exploded, officials say.

France and Germany pressed a more aggressive world-wide lobbying campaign than the U.S., whose top officials rarely strayed abroad. The biggest prize was Russia, also a permanent Security Council member. In February, Russia's foreign minister began to echo France in threatening to veto a second resolution. But Washington was still hoping that it could win over President Vladimir Putin, who valued his relationship with Mr. Bush.

Mr. Schroeder traveled to Moscow on Feb. 28 to lobby Mr. Putin personally. "We only stayed a few hours, but we wanted to show that we'd make a long trip for just a few hours," says a German diplomat involved in the effort. "We knew the Americans weren't doing much work like this, and we thought we'd make sure the Russians stayed in our corner."

The coup de grace came on March 10, when Mr. Chirac said in an interview that he would veto a second resolution "in all circumstances." U.S. and British attempts to assemble a Security Council majority collapsed. All that remained was to announce the death of diplomacy.

On Sunday, March 16, the U.S., British, Spanish and Portuguese leaders met at a NATO air base in the Azores. It was a symbolic setting in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The tiny volcanic islands for centuries had acted as a key staging post for sailing ships on their way between the old and the new worlds of Europe and the Americas. Now, curious villagers lined up on the stone walls of their small farms to watch the U.S. leader and his handful of European allies arrive for a 90-minute meeting that would trigger war halfway around the globe.

When the expected ultimatum was announced at a press conference in front of the traveling media, it was delivered not to Iraq, but to France. Mr. Chirac had 24 hours to drop his veto threat, or the allies would abandon the U.N. As the four leaders climbed back onto their aircraft to head home, there were no more illusions. War was inevitable.

---

Philip Shishkin in Brussels and Carlta Vitzthum in Madrid contributed to this article.


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