NEW NEW WORLD ORDER:

Blair must find the courage to turn his back on the EU (David Frum, 24/03/2003, Daily Telegraph)

It's tough to see through the dust clouds that swirl about the allied tank columns on the road to Baghdad - but tougher still to see our way out of old habits of mind. The critics of the war against Saddam have been right about one thing: this war will overthrow and transform the status quo in the Middle East.

But there is another status quo that is also being overthrown and transformed - the status quo of the transatlantic relationship between America and Europe. And no country on Earth will have to make bigger and more difficult choices in the aftermath of this transformation than Britain. [...]

[T]he existing structures of multilateralism now stand condemned in American eyes. Jacques Chirac's opposition to American policy went beyond dissent, which Americans will always accept, to outright sabotage - pressuring former French colonies, for example, to follow France's orders against America.

After this stunt, it would be a careless American president indeed who ever took an important security decision to any body in which the government of France wielded a veto.

If Britain tries to revive such multilateral bodies, it will fail. And even if it somehow succeeded, what would Britain gain? When did it become a British interest to seek to increase French political influence?

Instead, Britain should work to develop and renovate institutions that offer the Anglo-American alliance multilateral legitimation - without a veto for governments that fundamentally oppose that alliance's purposes and values.

What would such institutions look like? They might look like Nato: a council of like-minded allies to face common security threats across the globe.

As the Iraq war demonstrates, this council already exists: it includes America and Britain, Australia and Japan, and other countries as well who recognised the threat from Iraq and were prepared to take action - and who also already recognise the even greater threats taking shape in east Asia.

The council lacks a name and a building and a chairman, but it exists and takes decisions. And Britain matters much, much more inside this council than it ever has or could at the UN or even within the EU.

"Like-minded" is the key element here. You can't leave American national interests subject to the veto power of countries that are opposed to human freedom, like China and France. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 24, 2003 9:08 AM