Déjà Vu All Over Again

Recently I attended the Brussels forum, a new Davos-like event organized by the German Marshall Fund. The idea was to bring Europeans and Americans back together after all the insults traded over Iraq. It was just the sort of event that helped keep the West unified during the tough years of the cold war--a place where politicians and pundits could meet in a swank

setting to drink French wine, speak non-native English and spend German money.

Everyone was on their best behavior. EU foreign-policy czar Javier Solana, with NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer sitting cozily beside him, proclaimed that current U.S. relations were "perfect." Sen. John McCain, testing his presidential wings, said they'd "never been better." Diplomat Daniel Fried, in charge of Eurasian affairs for Condoleezza Rice's State Department, dismissed splits over Iraq. "So 2003," he scoffed. It was almost enough to make me believe in the good old days of the transatlantic alliance--until people began to speak their minds. When they did, Americans and Europeans found themselves further apart than ever.

The issue was Iran. McCain sounded the alarm. Iranian nuclear weapons are "the greatest single threat outside of the war on terror," he said, comparing "failed" European negotiations to the Paris peace talks on Vietnam, "bogged down over the size of the table." "There is only one thing worse than military action," he thundered, "and that is a nuclear-armed Iran." Lest you think this a purely Republican point of view, he was seconded in full by Richard Holbrooke, something of a Democratic shadow secretary of State, who declared that Iran would be "the test case" for transatlantic dialogue.

Europeans were stunned. Could it possibly be that the next American president would be even more adventurous in the Middle East than George W. Bush? The parallels to Iraq seemed obvious. Once again, Europeans fear they are the caboose on a runaway train to war.

Like three years ago, rumors of a U.S. military strike are rife. Clifford Kupchan, a former State Department official and Iran expert at the Eurasia Group, puts the odds of an attack on Iran at more than 50 percent. John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was widely reported to have told British parliamentarians that a U.S. military strike could halt or hold back Iran's nuclear program--something he now denies having said. Just as before the Iraq war, Washington recently requested--and was refused--rights to use air bases in Turkey, a likely launching pad for any strike.