Coalition Of The Willing

The news in the Financial Times that Germany might join the reconstruction effort in Iraq if Kerry wins strikes me as awfully big. First of all, as Ezra Klein points out, it's not quite everyday that a foreign government would overtly create an incentive for American voters to choose one presidential candidate over the other. Secondly, it's an article of faith among many of the president's supporters that European antipathy to the Iraq war was foundationally premised on French obstructionism---and this news simply shatters that myth. Every country that opposed the war had its own reasons for doing so, which for the Germans was in large part a pacifism by default. (I think we can all agree that a pacifist Germany is not necessarily a bad thing.) The fact of the matter is that if France were the only country to oppose the Iraq war, then its opposition would be irrelevant; the international community can certainly overrule France's moral veto (if not its UN veto) and confer legitimacy upon the effort at democratic transformation in Iraq.

Here's how you know that the Bush administration was never serious about a genuine diplomatic campaign before the invasion of Iraq: an honest and competent pre-war diplomacy would have circumvented France entirely and appealed directly to Germany and other nations (but especially Germany) to support the war at least financially and politically if not militarily. Instead, the administration essentially ceded to France the role of spokesman for the bulk of the United Nations, knowing full well that the French had been bought off and were going to do everything in their power to obstruct any effort at regime change. Their calculation---the perfectly obvious Rovian calculus---is that the creation of a French bogeyman, completing a triad with Osama and Saddam [it functions like the trinity in the partisan Republican mind: one person numerically distinct in three parts--ed.], would be far more valuable for domestic political purposes than an internationally legitimized war. And indeed, the Republicans' cartoon of European opinion, reduced beyond recognition to an anti-American razzing from Jacques Chirac, served as the pivot point from which they bludgeoned the Democrats in 2002.

There's more than a kernel of truth to the conservative meme that France is not an ally of the United States and really hasn't been since the Revolutionary War. The biggest blunder in post-WWII foreign policy, it seems to me, was treating France as one of the Allied and victorious powers, when for 5/6 of the war, France was more complicit in furthering the Axis war effort and the Nazi final solution than Mussolini's Italy. France does, of course, have a history as a global power, but French power today resides primarily in France's cultural memory. It is indeed the consciousness of lost power and relevance that's behind France's bizarre brand of unilateralism. So the goal of any sensible American foreign policy vis-a-vis Europe would be to create a cleavage between France and Germany and pull the Germans into a tripartite alliance along with Britain, and in so doing get a purchase on the consolidation of the European Union. The alternative---the Bush doctrine, if you will---is to give a loud "fuck you" to all of Europe and pretend that hegemonic power can withstand near-total diplomatic isolation, until reality intervenes and at last proves otherwise.

What would it have taken to bring Germany into the pre-war coalition? The same thing that it will take to bring Germany into the post-war coalition: some combination of recognition of the ICC, willingness to negotiate over Kyoto, easing of trade restrictions with the European Union, a return to the framework of the ABM treaty, ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, international leadership on nuclear proliferation (which, pace Mr. Bush, is a lot more complicated than preventing terrorists from getting WMDs) etc. In other words, there are things that the Germans want from us, and things we want from them. Furthermore, I could make the case that what we want from the Germans is good for Germany, and what they want from us is good for the United States. So both countries have a compelling interest in bringing Germany into the fold on Iraqi reconstruction; and diplomatic grown-ups will be able to reach some mutually acceptable settlement.

Is it any wonder, now, why the president has taken so adamant a stand against joining the ICC in both presidential debates? American entry into the court might very well be the carrot that can enable us to internationalize the reconstruction and mend the diplomatic wounds of the past year. The subliminal (and, needless to say, xenophobic) message in Bush's non-sequiturs on the ICC was that the price of international cooperation is too high to pay. If you, dear reader, think that's true, then perhaps you should vote for Bush. But if you know that it's plainly false, then say whatever you want to about John Kerry's equivocations, he's an adult on foreign policy and there is something significant at stake in electing him.