TWO VISIONS, ONE CONFUSION:

Beyond the Sandstorm, Three Visions Compete (Timothy Garton Ash, Guardian, 3/20/2003)

Over the last few weeks, the geopolitical west of the cold war has collapsed before our eyes.... But we can already see three broad ideas competing for the succession to the cold war west. I'll call them the Rumsfeldian; the Chiraco-Putinesque; and the Blairite.

The Rumsfeldian idea - if idea is not too dignified a word - is that American might is right. It's right because it's American.... If some allies want to come along to help, that's fine. If they don't, then you find "work-arounds".... Meanwhile, you carry on offending all your potential allies with clumsy remarks.

The Rumsfeldian vision is half right and therefore all wrong....

The Chiraco-Putinesque idea - if idea is not too dignified a word - is that American might is, by definition, dangerous.... The diplomatic battle over the last few weeks, with the Franco-German-Russian (-Chinese) continental alliance pitted against the American-British-Spanish (-Australian) maritime one, made me think again of the war of super blocs in George Orwell's 1984. He called them Eurasia and Oceania.

The Chiraco-Putinesque vision is half right and therefore all wrong....

That leaves Blairism. Blair's idea is that we should re-create a larger version of the cold war, transatlantic west, in response to the new threats we face.... Yes, Europeans should worry about US unilateralism, but, he told the Commons, "the way to deal with it is not rivalry but partnership. Partners are not servants but neither are they rivals"....

Blair's idea is completely right.... Blair himself made two major mistakes over the last year. The first was not to do more last September to try to bring Europe to speak "with one voice".... The second was to forget that partnership also involves sometimes saying "no"....

I am totally convinced that the Blairite vision of a new postwar order of world politics is the best one available on the somewhat depressed market of world leadership.

Timothy Garton Ash is half right and therefore all wrong. What he fails to notice is that Blairism and Rumsfeldianism are the same. Both believe in cooperation; but both expect cooperation to arise out of negotiation, and to serve the needs of all cooperating parties. Sometimes, in negotiation, you say "no," and this was precisely what Rumsfeld did when he spoke of "work-arounds." Rumsfeld was treating Blair as a "partner," in Ash's definition, by saying no.

Ash also fails to recognize the tension in his insistence that Blair should be willing to "say no" to one partner but "speak with one voice" with other partners. According to Ash's own principles, if European nations aren't free to say "no" to one another, then they are not "partners." Thus a European partnership should not be expected to "speak with one voice."

The idea of a new transatlantic alliance to fight terrorism is attractive if it is a real alliance of committed nations. But it appears that such an alliance must exclude France, and will therefore divide the Europe that the Ash thinks should "speak with one voice." Blair has recognized this conflict. I wonder how long it will take the British intelligentsia to do so?

Posted by Paul Jaminet at March 20, 2003 9:10 PM