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The San Diego Union-Tribune

Another casualty in the Iraq War

March 18, 2004

Whichever interpretation one chooses to explain the extraordinary defeat of the Spanish government this week, the results are bad news for America's leadership in the world.

For strategic reasons, Spain and several other European governments tied their destinies to the Bush administration's war in Iraq. They did so not because war was popular in their nations, but because their leaders believed it was important to stay aligned with America.

For reasons mainly internal to Europe, the leaders of Britain, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands and Denmark chose to assist Bush in war or occupation. With the exception of Britain, their choices were based less on views about Iraq's alleged possession of illegal weapons than on whether, strategically, it made more sense to align themselves with Germany and France or with America.

History has forced similar choices on these nations before, called on during the Cold War to follow either Atlantic (read, American) or European (read Franco-German) leadership. The post-World War II pattern in these nations on Western Europe's peripheries has been to support America as a guarantee against German or French hegemony in Europe.

Today, with a European constitution being written and with Germany and France at the center of the debate on how voting power will be redistributed in an enlarged European Union, Europe's peripheral nations are vitally interested in maintaining close strategic ties to America.

Britain has different reasons for resisting Franco-German leadership. Britain is a half-hearted "European" nation, willing to do the minimum necessary to remain in the club, but never enough to jeopardize the "special relationship" with America it has believed in since World War II.

Excepting Britain, whose prime minister, Tony Blair, desired war as much as Bush, the others preferred resolution short of war, which they knew would expose them to political risks. When the strategic imperative led them to join Bush, they believed the political risks would disappear when Bush's promises were met, including the discovery of Iraq's illegal weapons, the welcoming of invaders by Iraqis as liberators, and the destruction of the terrorist network Bush claimed linked Iraq to al-Qaeda.

With the defeat of the Spanish government Sunday, following by three days the attack against trains that killed more than 200, Spanish voters rejected the government's strategic choice to follow Bush.

In electing an anti-war Socialist prime minister, Spaniards blamed the defeated government both for the attack on the trains and its deceptions about who was behind the attack, Basque separatists or al-Qaeda-linked terrorists. Either way, their judgment was that the government of Prime Minister José Mara Aznar was wrong to join Bush and had to go.

To other European governments, it is important to know whether the attack itself or Aznar's deceptions was the main cause of his defeat. If it was the former, they too are vulnerable.

The British lost no time interpreting events. Sir John Stevens, chief of London police, said Tuesday an attack in Britain was "inevitable," and that despite huge security precautions, it was a only matter of time before "some sort of attack gets through."

A new poll showed two-thirds of Italians favored withdrawal of Italy's 3,000 troops in Iraq. A Pew poll showed people around the world believed Bush's war was eroding support for the fight against terrorism.

It is the judgment everywhere that Bush's war hasn't worked. In telling Congress recently that America was no safer than a year ago, CIA Director George Tenet used different language from that of Spanish Prime Minister-to-be José Luis Zapatero, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin and Italian EU leader Romano Prodi, but the message was the same.

Wednesday, Zapatero called the Bush war a "fiasco." Monday, de Villepin called the war "an error, I'd say even a blunder." Prodi blamed the Madrid bombings and other attacks on the Iraq War.

For more than a half century, the strength of the Atlantic Alliance has rested on the consensus behind America's leadership. Even when that leadership was challenged by France and West Germany under Charles de Gaulle and Willy Brandt, and during the Vietnam War, Europeans understood that American leadership was a sine qua non of Atlantic solidarity.

The defeat of Spain's ruling party following the train attacks is a renunciation of U.S. leadership under Bush.

The Aznar government's decision to join Bush in Iraq, similar to decisions by the leaders of Britain, Italy, Poland, Denmark and the Netherlands, was a consequence of a half century of responsible U.S. Atlantic leadership. Because the Iraq War lacked U.N. authority and was of dubious legality, Europe's leaders took risks in backing Bush, but gave him, as the de facto NATO leader, the benefit of the doubt.

The Spanish election creates a new strategic environment. The cover Europeans gave Bush for an essentially unilateral American war – a cover based on America's historical role as the alliance leader in security affairs – is being withdrawn. The evidence of America's strategic failure in Iraq has placed in jeopardy America's leadership of the Atlantic community.

Goldsborough can be reached via e-mail at

© Copyright 2004 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.