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Europe and the US are now adrift
(Martin Jacques, The Guardian, March 17, 2004)
Spain confirms the huge impact the Iraq war has had on our world . . . The US and Britain now find themselves that bit more isolated. Spain's exit from the ranks of supporters of the Iraq war may have been surprising, but hardly unexpected. Its government, in its support of the invasion, defied not simply half the population, as in the case of Britain, but the overwhelming majority. Clearly there was a price to pay, which has been paid by the Aznar government, though only following a horrific and tragic event. Inevitably, it poses the question as to whether other governments which have defied the will of the people in such a flagrant manner might pay a similar price. There was barely a democratic country in the world where, at the time of the invasion, the majority of the people supported it - barring the obvious exception of the US. . . . the issue is big enough, persistent enough, extraordinary enough, then one day the government may have to pick up the tab for its defiance. Iraq is just that kind of issue. It is one of those rare historical moments that change the world and leave nothing quite the same afterwards. . . . The prime minister is now desperately trying to concentrate the mind of the nation on domestic matters. Yet Iraq will not go away. It will continue to haunt him until he leaves office; and probably for the rest of his life. . . . The refusal of Britain - or half of us at least - to go along with the war remains one of the most extraordinary political phenomena of the past 30 years. It points to a profound change in attitudes - concerning Britain and its place in the world - that no one yet really understands. . . . Yet on Iraq the left has, bizarrely, found itself in the majority. Bizarre, because for the past half-century, the right has monopolised the ground of foreign policy and military prowess, intimately associated as it is with our imperial history. Who would have guessed that the left, vanquished on more or less everything else, would find itself in a majority on the biggest international issue for decades, with British troops committed and a Labour prime minister leading the charge? The fact that public opinion could have run so much against the historical grain suggests much deeper changes are afoot. It is no longer safe to assume that the public will support American foreign policy: nor that the involvement of British troops in a military adventure will command automatic backing. . . . There is another twist to the Spanish story. Without the bomb outrage, perhaps the right would have won the election. Overwhelming popular sentiment against the war coupled with the terrorist attacks proved to be a lethal combination for the government. Generally, terrorist attacks tend to strengthen the hand of the incumbent government, but not in this case. Indeed, rarely has a terrorist attack proved so effective in persuading public opinion to move in the perpetrators' desired direction. That is another extraordinary feature of this episode. If it had been during the cold war, the effect would have been the opposite. Now, though, we are in a completely different magnetic field: even though no one is quite sure what forces constitute the field. . . . According to a Sky News poll yesterday, 20% of those who voted Labour in 2001 said, in the event of a terror attack, they would switch from Labour - the majority to the Liberal Democrats. . . . European politics is going somewhere very different from what we have been familiar with for so long. Western European opinion is now adrift from, and inimical towards, the US. It rightly abhors Israeli behaviour and is therefore unsympathetic towards US policy on the Middle East . . . Europe has lost its old global moorings. Its newly discovered independence of mind is born not of self-confidence, nor an expansive sense of its own future, but a growing alienation from the US, combined with a heightened feeling of insecurity about the world we live in and what Europe's place might be in it.

posted by LoZo 10:01 AM