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E-mailNew world disorder
As a longtime statesman, friend and admirer of the United States, he is worth listening to. Moreover, what he now says about America reflects what most of our VIP friends are expressing from ambassadorial dinners in Washington to conversations with ranking foreign policy officials in any number of foreign capitals.
Chris Patten, the former "foreign minister" of the European Union, last governor of British rule in Hong Kong and ex-Cabinet minister for overseas development, laments the loss of America's "weapon of mass attraction" -- the democratic ideals and entrepreneurial dynamism that other nations envy or aspire to.
In his memoirs, "Not Quite the Diplomat: Home Truths About World Affairs," Patten sadly sees the lack of U.S. global leadership leading to a new world disorder. Pre-emptive wars do not address the major problems of our era, from the challenge to the status quo by China and India, to failed and failing states, to terrorism, poverty and the environment.
Patten approves of America's 20th-century "undeclared" empire, which gave the post-World War II era global institutions, the "soft-power" that was the indispensable adjunct of "hard" power, the conjugation that defeated the Soviet empire. As he now sees the world, the United States has abandoned Wilsonianism to return to Teddy Roosevelt's gun-slinging, this time with precision-guided bombs and missiles.
Patten cannot see what Iraq has achieved except to reinforce a U.S. tendency to throw out the rulebook and act alone. What is widely perceived throughout the world as unprovoked American aggression has turned Iraq into the world's most effective terrorist training facility. By the same token, Iraq elevated Osama bin Laden from a fringe figure to a global leader opposed to U.S. hegemony in the Middle East.
U.S. unilateralism on the world stage, says Patten, feeds the dark side of globalization, or transnational terrorism. He believes restoring multilateralism in U.S. foreign policy is an imperative necessity and concedes Europe also is at fault for not doing its bit by providing sufficient support for U.N. reform, for peacekeeping and peacemaking roles.
By now, Patten argues, the European Union should have negotiated a common foreign and security policy that the United States could then treat as a genuine counterpart to its own multilateral efforts to bring a semblance of order to the world. He flays his own government for the worst possible service it could render the special relationship with the United States: supporting the unilateralist "Bush invasion" of Iraq.
This war of choice and not necessity has destabilized the Middle Eastern region. The al-Qaida network and its seldom mentioned support groups have been energized by the Iraqi insurgency. As have Muslim minorities in the barnacle-like slums of major European cities. Witness the daily footage of Muslim youths torching the Arab suburbs of Paris.
The Paris riots will further dampen what little enthusiasm there is for Turkey's membership in the EU. Patten's plea to his European colleagues to admit Turkey to the EU to help reconcile the growing number of Islamic communities within its borders is likely to fall on deaf ears.
Muslim youths opening fire on French security forces that are trying to end the chaos reinforces the conviction in the Bush administration that failure is not an option in Iraq.
The history of insurgencies since World War II shows they have a nasty habit of lasting seven or eight years. With President Bush's ratings on the conduct of the war slipping below 40 percent, it is hard to imagine U.S. forces remaining in Iraq that long. But a successful outcome does not necessarily depend on the presence of American troops.
Following the Dec. 15 national elections, a new Iraqi government, concluding it cannot hack it on its own, could turn to some of its Arab neighbors -- such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia -- and other friendly Arabs -- such as Egypt -- to request military peacekeeping forces. These could be supplied as peacekeepers under a new U.N. resolution. And they would remain until Iraqi forces are capable of holding the fort on their own.
Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt have voiced alarm over Iranian influence in Iraq. Some ranking officials from these three countries have complained in background briefings that the United States invaded Iraq "to turn it over to Iran." Iraq would give them a unique opportunity to put their troops where their mouth is.
The current conundrum is how to check the drift toward the emergence of three separate geographic and political entities -- Iraqi Kurdistan, Sunni Iraq and Shiite Iraq -- as they were more or less before Winston Churchill drew lines on a map after World War I.
Iraq requires imaginative geopolitical thinking; more of the same won't do.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of United Press International and of The Washington Times.
