You say Uni, I say

You say Uni, I say Multi - One of the most irritating facets of the current debate is the insistence by some on the left that acting unilaterally is totally incompatible with acting multilaterally with regard to Iraq.

Sullivan spells it out the way I'd like to.

The pursuit of national interest can (and should) lead to multilateral arrangements - NAFTA, GATT, NATO, the EU, etc - that benefit each party...These diplomatic contraptions, in other words, are means, not ends. Bush gets this, I think... But Bush adds a twist. It may be that some multilateral deals only really work when one of the critical parties to them threatens to abandon them and go it alone. Call it "unilateral multilateralism". Thatcher's relationship with the E.U., was rather like this. And Bush's continued insistence that the U.S. reserves the right in the last resort to deal with Iraq by itself has, I think, been the single most important factor in forcing the U.N. to act. His unilateralism made multilateralism possible. And it also gave direction to the multilateralism, reminding the U.N. that it should be concerned with tangible results not just debates and resolutions. I doubt the U.N. is up to the task, but it is one of the ironies of the present moment that without Bush's threat to walk, the U.N. wouldn't even recognize the task in front of it.

I need to print this on a 3x5 card before I go to work...

The Real Unilateralists - Germany's Helmut Schröder is ready to go it alone, says William Safire.

The reasons should be chilling to anyone who reads their history:

Bush was motivated to overthrow Saddam by his need to curry favor with what Scharping called "a powerful — perhaps overly powerful — Jewish lobby" in the coming U.S. elections. Jeb Bush needed their votes in Florida as George Pataki did in New York, and Congressional redistricting made Jewish votes central to control of Congress. Germany, the discredited minister said proudly to his discomfited audience, had rejected such pandering.

That bigoted political analysis is typical of the way Germany is undermining its Atlantic alliance. Today, Schröder — campaigning for re-election Sunday — seems eager to be more pro-Arab than the Arab League. Not even if the U.N.'s Kofi Annan himself grabbed a rifle and led the charge would his Germany send one soldier to depose Saddam.

...No matter who wins, the German-American relationship loses. Our response cannot be to mutter "how sharper than a serpent's tooth" and demand a refund of the Marshall Plan. It should be to reassess the need for our troop presence in Europe, which a half-century ago was "to keep Russia out, Germany down and America in." With Russia in and Germany up, should America get out?

Schröder's Social Democrats took some big hits in the provincial elections last summer, and the Christian Democrats (Germany's conservatives, more like moderate Democrats; think Norm Coleman in lederhosen) were looking up after a dismal decade.

This next election will be important for us as well as Germany.

Posted by Mitch at September 19, 2002 08:37 AM