Dawn of a dark and threatening new era

America's president and his policies have become the focal point for the world's anxieties and frustrations in the dawn of a dark and threatening new era. Americans must not ignore the backlash and opposition that rise from an extended global presence as well as from President Bush's own errors or flaws. But we also must not wallow in these reactions, or allow them to dictate our actions abroad or at home.

New dangers as well as the Bush administration's policies now force other nations to choose. "With us or against us" did not hold up as a binding injunction, or even a workable test of moral clarity in fighting terrorism. Pakistan, Yemen and other countries proved they could be both at different times, or even simultaneously.

But the phrase does sum up the demand on others to help, hinder or get out of the way of an American leadership intent on restoring a sense of security to its citizens as the first order of everybody's business.

Highhanded? Indubitably. Unique in history? Hardly. Charles de Gaulle described his role as president of France as being the country's psychoanalyst. He forced other leaders and nations to bend to the restorative visions of grandeur he conjured up to heal France's deep wounds. Bush has had a similar role imposed upon him by 9/11. And he too pursues it with a disconcerting zeal.

Uncharacteristically, Defence Secretary Don Rumsfeld actually understated the direction and pace of change when he recently called attention to "old Europe," a shorthand dig at Germany and France for dissenting from U.S. leadership on Iraq and the Middle East. Their negativism stands in contrast to the readiness of recently liberated Central European nations now in Nato to support U.S. global strategy.

The line that separates nations today is not a geographical one that passes through Europe along the Old Continent's Cold War divisions. It is a strategic line that divides nations according to their visions of the leadership and actions needed to counter the spread of atomic, biological and chemical weapons and missile systems to irresponsible regimes and terrorist networks.

The flow of events just in this one week suggests how rapidly history is swinging on its hinges: Hans Blix's report to the UN Security Council and Bush's address to Congress both seemed to move war closer. Israelis went to the polls to re-elect a government that possesses no olive branches for Palestinians, and provokes total condemnation in Europe and total support from Bush. Leaden clouds of war and conflict blanket the global horizon.

"Old Rumsfeld told the truth," the Paris daily Le Monde editorialised this week. "At least a part of the truth. ... The problem is that the French and German conception of Europe is becoming a minority view inside the European Union" as it expands eastward. The new members "do not have the ambition to build a Europe that would have a single unified political identity" as do Paris and Berlin. Rumsfeld should have also admitted "America's inability to tolerate an independent ally in Europe," the newspaper added reproachfully.

Washington has long argued with Paris over what it means to be both independent and ally. But this is not just another round of old Cold War sparring that will be papered over in the name of unity. Bush has chosen deliberately polarising strategies in the war on terrorism and in confronting an Iraqi danger that others have been willing to let slide. His actions force realignments that are embryonic but real.

It is possible to imagine today that America's most important alliance in the future will not be built along Europe's historical and geographical fault lines, as Nato was and is, but along a confluence of democracy and vulnerability to religious-based terrorism and state-sponsored hostility. The United States, Israel, India and Russia fall on the same side of that line. They all pursue missile defence programmes that could eventually reinforce each other's security.

Russia's Vladimir Putin has chosen to let France take the heat in the UN debates about Iraq. He does not want to risk his friendship with Bush - or U.S. help on the Russian economy and tolerance of the brutal war in Chechnya. Pakistan's foreign minister came to Washington this week and complained of India's growing influence here.

These are straws in the wind at this point. But they blow in the same globe-changing direction. Bush's exercise of raw power abroad unleashes decades of pent-up frustrations and suspicions from status-quo nations. But he has established two big things: He will not stand still in a time of danger. And neither can anyone else.

© 2003, Washington Post Writers Group


Jim Hoagland, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is associate editor/senior foreign correspondent for The Washington Post. His column will appear bi-weekly.