The Arrogant Empire

Some make the argument that Europeans are now pacifists, living in a "postmodern paradise," shielded from threats and unable to imagine the need for military action. But then how to explain the sentiment in Turkey, a country that sits on the Iraqi border? A longtime ally, Turkey has fought with America in conflicts as distant as the Korean War, and supported every American military action since then. But opposition to the war now runs more than 90 percent there. Despite Washington's offers of billions of dollars in new assistance, the government cannot get parliamentary support to allow American troops to move into Iraq from Turkish bases. Or consider Australia, another crucial ally, and another country where a majority now opposes American policy. Or Ireland. Or India. In fact, while the United States has the backing of a dozen or so governments, it has the support of a majority of the people in only one country in the world, Israel. If that is not isolation, then the word has no meaning.

It is also too easy to dismiss the current crisis as one more in a series of transatlantic family squabbles that stretch back over the decades. Some in Washington have pointed out that whenever the United States has taken strong military action--for example, the deployment of Pershing nuclear missiles in Europe in the early 1980s--there was popular opposition in Europe. True, but this time it's different. The street demonstrations and public protests of the early 1980s made for good television images. But the reality was that in most polls, 30 to 40 percent of Europeans supported American policies. In Germany, where pacifist feelings ran sky high, 53 percent of Germans supported the Pershing deployments, according to a 1981 poll in Der Spiegel. In France, a majority supported American policy through much of Ronald Reagan's two terms, even prefer-ring him to the Democratic candidate, Walter Mondale, in 1984.

Josef Joffe, one of Germany's leading commentators, observes that during the cold war anti-Americanism was a left-wing phenomenon. "In contrast to it, there was always a center-right that was anti-communist and thus pro-American," he explains. "The numbers waxed and waned, but you always had a solid base of support for the United States." The cold war kept Europe pro-American. For example, 1968 was a time of mass protests against American policies in Vietnam, but it was also the year of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Europeans (and Asians) could oppose America, but their views were balanced by wariness of the Soviet threat and communist behavior. Again, the polls bear this out. European opposition even to the Vietnam War never approached the level of the current opposition to Iraq. This was true outside Europe as well. In Australia, for example, a majority of the public supported that country's participation in the Vietnam War through 1971, when it withdrew its forces.

But today no such common threat exists, and support for America is far more fluid. Center-right parties might still support Washington, but many do so almost out of inertia and without much popular support for their stand. During the recent German election, Gerhard Schroder campaigned openly against America's Iraq policy. Less noted was that his conservative opponent, Edmund Stoiber, did so as well, at one point (briefly) outflanking Schroder by saying he would not even allow American bases in Germany to participate in the war.

In one respect, I believe that the Bush administration is right: this war will look better when it is over. The military campaign will --probably be less difficult than many of Washington's opponents think. Most important, it will reveal the nature of Saddam's barbarous regime. Prisoners and political dissidents will tell stories of atrocities. Horrific documents will come to light. Weapons of mass destruction will be found. If done right, years from now people will remember above all that America helped rid Iraq of a totalitarian dictator.

But the administration is wrong if it believes that a successful war will make the world snap out of a deep and widening mistrust and resentment of American foreign policy. A war with Iraq, even if successful, might solve the Iraq problem. It doesn't solve the America problem. What worries people around the world above all else is living in a world shaped and dominated by one country--the United States. And they have come to be deeply suspicious and fearful of us.