Powell on Iraq

It's obviously the season for major speeches from the Bush administration. Last Thursday, Paul Wolfowitz gave a very hawkish address to the Council on Foreign Relations, and tomorrow George W Bush himself will give his State of the Union address, which Elisabeth Bumiller says is "the most historically important State of the Union speech that any [former White House speechwriter] can remember".

In between, yesterday, we had Colin Powell at Davos. Certainly, when it came to Iraq, it was hawkish, and that was what was picked up on by the headline writers. "Powell, in Europe, Nearly Dismisses UN's Iraq Report," says the New York Times, with sub-heads reading "Says US Can Fight Alone" and "He Sees It as Useless to Give More Time to Inspectors". The Wall Street Journal takes a similar stance: "Tough Message," it leads, followed with "At Davos, Powell Pushes Back Against Resistance Over Iraq", and "Secretary of State Says US Deserves Trust of World, But Nation 'Will Lead'". Then comes a full-colour list of "Powell's Punches," quotes from his speech:

"When we feel strongly about something, we will lead. We will act even if others are not prepared to join us."
"Multilateralism cannot become an excuse for inaction."
"We continue to reserve our sovereign right to take military action against Iraq alone or in a coalition of the willing."

This attitude makes sense, in the light of Powell's position. He has already been very publicly undermined by France, Germany and Russia, all of whom have indicated that they would veto any UN Security Council resolution authorising war on Iraq. At the same time, the White House and the Pentagon are making it crystal clear that they intend to go to war, with or without the support of the "Axis of Weasel".

Powell is generally seen these days as a beleaguered internationalist in the Bush administration, working alongside Tony Blair in a desperate attempt to bring the rest of the world in line with what Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush have already decided they are going to do. But he is also an old soldier, and the author of the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force. He knows that war is going to happen, it would seem, and he knows that if you're going to wage war, you can't do it half-heartedly. Hence the speech in Davos, the Iraq portions of which can basically be summed up as "You don't like what we're doing? Well, screw you, we're right, you're wrong, and we're going to do it anyway".

But what's this? The WSJ story is continued on page A6, where we see the headline "At Davos, Powell Tries to Mend Rift with Allies". And although you won't see a lot of evidence of that in the Journal's own story, you will see it in the speech itself. Most of the speech, it turns out, wasn't about Iraq at all. First of all he rattled off a list of places – Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, even the whole continents of Africa and Latin America – where, he said, "we seek nothing for ourselves other than to help bring about security for people that have already suffered too much". Indeed, America did the same thing for Europe in the aftermath of World War II, he said.

Then, after the Iraq passage, he moved on to North Korea, and said something it's hard to imagine coming out of the mouth of the president: "the United States has been the world's biggest donor of humanitarian assistance to North Korea and we will continue to contribute to their humanitarian requirements and needs".

He even tried to strike an optimistic note with regard to the Palestinian question, saying that "the creation of a democratic, viable Palestine is possible in 2005". (Although seeing as how he asked the impossible from both sides – a "new and different leadership" for the Palestinians, and economic aid for them from Israel – I'm not holding my breath.)

And he ended on an internationalist note which would have been boilerplate in the Clinton years but which is welcome coming from the Bush administration:

We understand full well that whatever we can do, whatever we can do as one nation, is nothing compared to what we all can do if we unite, if we become part of a great partnership of freedom-loving nations, nations that are committed not only to our own development, but nations that are committed to the hungriest, most desperate people anywhere in the world.

For sure, this kind of grandstanding is not going to change anyone's mind on Iraq, and indeed it's not going to convince anyone that the US is actually committed to strengthening any kind of international institutions. But it does go down well with the assorted internationalists at Davos, and does help create a feeling that although Europe and America might disagree strongly on Iraq, they're still ultimately allies, committed to the same ends if not the same means.

That's something which has been in doubt in recent months. As US imperialism and unilateralism has expanded, Europe has seen America – and America has seen itself – as a global hyperpower, a hegemon above international law, a country with a worldview at odds on many levels with that of Europe. Robert Kagan's Power and Weakness is just one of many essays which have been appearing of late, trying to examine a phenomenon which Timothy Garton Ash characterises in the latest New York Review of Books as America's "Anti-Europeanism".

Whatever else you might say about Powell's speech in Davos, it was internationalist in tone, and showed no hint of anti-Europeanism. It took issue with Europe's stance on Iraq, but more in the spirit of friendship than enmity. Here's the key passage:

Henry Kissinger, decades ago, wrote a book on the Atlantic alliance, and he called it "The Troubled Partnership". I am told that later Henry had second doubts about the title when he found that some bookstores were placing it on the shelf reserved for books about marriage counseling. But maybe the bookstore owners knew what they were doing, because problems with some of our friends across the Atlantic go back a long time, more than two centuries by my count. In fact, one or two of our friends we have been in marriage counseling with for over 225 years nonstop, and yet the marriage is intact, remains strong, will weather any differences that come along because of our mutual shared values.

In the same speech as some of his most hawkish statements to date, then, Colin Powell went out of his way to try to keep the marriage together. That's important, considering that from all their public statements, the likes of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz would be perfectly happy with a divorce. Let's see what Bush says about Europe tomorrow: this really could set the tone for transatlantic relations for the foreseeable future.

Posted by Felix at 16:03 EST