Through UN Security Council Resolution 1500 of 14 August 2003, the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) was established for a year in the fi rst instance and renewed for a further year 12 months later. Following the bombings of the UN headquarters in Iraq in August and September 2003, UNAMI was withdrawn from Iraqi territory and now operated mainly from the neighbouring states of Jordan, Kuwait and Cyprus. The withdrawal of the UN and most foreign NGOs and INGOs refl ects the deteriorating situation within Iraq. Whilst sovereignty technically has been transferred to President Al-Yawer’s caretaker government since June 2004, its writ, like that of the Karzai Administration in Afghanistan, is heavily circumscribed. Despite the stated end of the occupation in June 2004, a US-led multinational military force remains engaged in peace-enforcement activities in the hope that national elections may be facilitated in January 2005. Since Bush’s speech that the war was over in May 2003 until mid- September 2004, there have been 1163 coalition deaths, of which 1028 have been Americans. Insurgent control, wholly or partially, of volatile areas of the country, hostage taking and beheadings bear testimony to the dubious prospects for inclusive elections. In late September US Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld seemed to recognize the diffi culties when he claimed that partial elections would be better than none at all. Nevertheless, President Al-Yawer, addressing the UN a few days later, called for greater international military and economic assistance and stressed that full elections would take place at the start of 2005.
The continuing casualties and instability in Iraq are undermining popular support for the war within the USA. As of mid-September 2004, 39 per cent of those polled believed that the USA had been wrong to use military force in Iraq – an increase from 22 per cent in March 2003. Additionally, 55 per cent of those polled believed that Bush possesses no clear plan for a successful disengagement from Iraq (Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press, 2004). The initial satisfaction at the seemingly quick ‘victory’
in Iraq has matured into a more ambiguous appraisal: ‘We know we’re killing a lot, capturing a lot, collecting arms. We just don’t know yet whether that’s the same as winning’ (Rumsfeld, 11 December 2003, quoted in Loeb, 2003). The continuing absence of reliable intelligence on the insurgency builds upon the intelligence defi cit that lay behind the case for war. In July 2004, the Select Committee of the US Senate produced its Report on the Intelligence Community’s Pre-War Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (Select Committee on Intelligence, 2004). A damning indictment of failures by US intelligence bodies, it held that internal ‘group think’ led to worst-case interpretations of Iraqi behaviour and a systematic exaggeration of evidence to justify war. The threat posed by Iraq to US national and international security was overblown and given greater urgency than it actually merited.
Assumptions were made that Saddam clearly was duplicitous and dangerous, and intelligence was tailored to fi t conclusions already made. The Report clearly gave the lie to Secretary of State Powell’s address to the UN Security Council on the case for war: ‘Every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are doing is giving you the facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence’ (Powell, 2003).
Rather, the Report concluded that the intelligence, especially that from the CIA, on Iraq’s reconstitution of its nuclear programme, its possession of chemical and biological weaponry and its delivery capacity for biological warfare ‘was overstated, misleading or incorrect’. The supposed link between al-Qaeda and Saddam was totally refuted, as Senator Jay Rockefeller of the Committee explained: ‘leading up to September 11, our government didn’t connect the dots. In Iraq, we are even more culpable because the dots themselves never existed’ (Borger, 2004). Although the Report ultimately found that there had been no political pressure for this manipulation of evidence, CIA Director George Tenet resigned albeit allegedly for ‘the well- being of my wonderful family – nothing more and nothing less’ (Tenet, 2004). In the face of this Report, many in Congress claimed that they doubted they would have voted for war if they had been aware of the true facts. The case for war was weakened still further by UN Secretary General Annan’s statement of its illegality: ‘I have indicated it is not in conformity with the UN Charter, from our point of view, and from the Charter point of view, it was illegal’ (Annan, 2004).
Annan has expressed his hope that ‘we do not see another Iraq-type operation for a long time – without UN approval and much broader support from the international community’ (ibid.). The costs of reconstruction, in terms of economics and human lives, in both Afghanistan and Iraq undoubtedly provide grounds for such hopes. Regime change in ‘rogue’
states continues to be an aim of the Bush Administration, but the willingness to effect it through military power has waned. A combination of ‘deterrence and reassurance’ is seen as more preferable when dealing, for example, with Iran and North Korea (Litwak, 2003/04, p. 19). The divisions over the war in Iraq undoubtedly hurt the transatlantic relationship, but it was not fatally wounded. Even at the height of the public rancour, cooperation continued on a host of security-related issues such as policing and judicial affairs.
Indeed, the Iraq crisis may have been ‘possibly even salutary’ for the EU as it seeks to develop its security and defence presence. ESDP has become operational in Bosnia and Herzegovina through the EU Policy Mission (EUPM) there since January 2003 for a three-year period. In March 2003, Operations Concordia occurred with the EU sending a small military force to FYROM (the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia) to create a hospitable environment for the implementation of the 2001 agreement
between the Macedonian government and the Albanian insurgents. From June to September 2003, Operation Artemis was launched in the Democratic Republic of Congo to keep the peace between the government and rebels there (Menon, 2004). The EU and the USA appear to share a vision of the world order in terms of their commitment to the spread of democracy and the combating of transnational threats, such as WMD proliferation, human and drug traffi cking and international terrorism. Through the deployment of its ‘soft’ power with the ‘hard’ power of the USA, the EU can play a role in international security provision despite the immense difference in capability between it and the USA. It can bring a degree of legitimacy to state building that the USA acting alone cannot. In this way, there can be an accommodation of American power within the international system. It is, however, a fragile one and there are no guarantees as to its durability.
The EU appears to be learning, however painfully, the ramifi cations of American dominance while the USA is taking longer to learn the value of partnership over primacy.
CONCLUSIONS
This chapter has examined some of the key issues in contemporary transatlantic relations. It has been argued that while Europe and the USA share the same security agenda and have a signifi cant commonality of interests, there is also a propensity for division.
It is accepted that political conflict and crises within the Atlantic community are not new but it is asserted that they are more profound in their consequences in the post-Cold-War era. In the new security environment Europe and the USA have differed over perceptions of threat, and the means of response, not just in Iraq, but in the European theatre.
The complex and labyrinthine development of EU–NATO relations also represents a divergence among the Western powers which, at its heart, is about leadership. NATO embodies American leadership while the EU pursuit of a credible ESDP heralds alternative decision-making processes.
This was instigated in part by Washington’s chosen disengagement from crises affecting European security, in part from European recognition of the EU’s weakness to project its infl uence, and in part by the growth of European identity in the community of Western powers. The West is no longer simply a transatlantic construct.
The preservation of division as multipolarity versus unipolarity conveys some of the current problems in the Western Alliance. The Iraq war did emphasize differences in approach but the issue is really one of degree as Europeans can also act without UN blessing, as shown in Kosovo. The
trend of American policy from Clinton to Bush, though, does demonstrate a resistance to multilateral constraints (Pollack, 2003, p. 123). The European stress upon multilateralism is seen by some as a product of the EU’s own construction (Cooper, 2003, p. 168) and ‘Europe’s experience of successful multilateral governance has, in turn, produced an ambition to convert the world’ (Kagan, 2003, p. 60). Whether we see this as the product of
‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’ worlds (Cooper, 2003, pp. 21–54) or as between the realities of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power (Nye, 2002–2003), the implications are of division. For Kagan, ‘America did not change on September 11, it only became more itself ’ (Kagan, 2003, p. 85). The Bush Administration’s response to the terrorist attacks emphasized the gulf between European and American capabilities. Washington’s power was, and is, decisive in strategic intervention, leaving Europe with ‘secondary’ roles of reconstruction. The contrast, moreover, between Washington’s ability to act and division and impasse in Brussels was striking.
In Kagan’s analysis ‘the task, for both Europeans and Americans, is to readjust to the new reality of American hegemony’ (Kagan, 2003, p. 97).
For transatlanticists in ‘New and Old Europe’, acceptance of American leadership has been an implicit part of the Alliance bargain. For Europeans, the gulf in power projection with the USA is not necessarily the issue; rather it is the substance and manner of American leadership. The division is not
‘just because Europe is weak and the US strong, but because many people outside the United States simply do not trust America to use its enormous power wisely or well’ (Cox, 2003, p. 532).
The stage is set for ‘optimistic’ and ‘pessimistic’ analyses of the transatlantic relationship (Moravsik, 2003) in which there is potential for
‘divorce, partnership or drift’ (Daalder, 2001, p. 563). What is not in question is that the Cold War transatlantic balance of interests is over and a new bargain has yet to be realized. Europe is now less strategically important as the locus of threat moved from the continent, with dramatic interest after 9/11, and other regions demand Washington’s attention. Parallel to that process and, of equal signifi cance, is the construction of the European project. The challenge for Washington is to accept a Europe which seeks to be a credible actor on the world stage. The challenge for Europe is to realize its ambition and rely less on the USA for its security. The process of adjustment is under way but its conclusions are yet to be realized.