The United States will probably complete its war against Iraq with its military clout enhanced, its diplomatic clout reduced, and its place in the world less secure. Australia will share the last two outcomes, but will not have even the comfort of the first. Nor, probably, will it have the satisfaction of knowing that, in standing by its ally when all but Britain had fled, it will win any particular brownie points in a post-Iraq America.
The US could hardly have handled its diplomatic battles more carelessly, or more arrogantly. Its accession even to the idea that the United Nations had any role to play in disarming Iraq was slow and reluctant. The military build-up proceeded apace not because the US believed that weapons inspections would not work, but because they thought the inspections process a sham in any event. The message was that the US wanted war at any cost, and that any slowdown for diplomacy or concessions involved being conned by Saddam Hussein. Australia and Britain loyally tried to anticipate every American argument, and get on the record with them first. Tony Blair at least focused initially on the moral case—one that came to John Howard only late in the piece—and, with Australia, helped persuade the US that it should at least attempt to get a UN Security Council blessing.
That was a blessing that might have been obtained a year ago. But America’s arrogant carelessness has sapped not just the goodwill of most of the non-English speaking world and actively alienated public opinion in all parts of the world that count, but has actually created a new form of international anti-Americanism—one not so much hostile to its culture as believing that international American power needs checks and balances. The apostles of some counterweight, France and Germany, represent much more than an old Europe used to creating balances of power against the strong: they have the support of public opinion in most of the non-English speaking world, and substantial support even in Britain and Australia.
Increasingly, moreover, such nations will seem able to put the US in the moral wrong. The way in which the US has squandered any moral advantage it had after the events of September 11 is staggering—a result primarily of the ‘ourselves alone’ play on its domestic opinion, and its ‘with us or against us’ rhetoric in international forums. But the process of alienating other countries had