RONBERG, Germany — The Bush administration now confronts spreading political guerrilla wars at home and abroad over its deep involvement in Iraq. Many of those who fought and lost the long contentious debate about going to war have shifted to small-scale, harrying actions aimed at crippling a presidential behemoth over time.
Shocked and awed these critics ain’t. American and British politicians have yet to register the gains in international opinion and cooperation — or at least acquiescence — that they expected would follow the swift destruction of Iraq’s dilapidated army by American and British troops.
The insurgency in Iraq has encouraged some of the war’s critics to believe they can outlast the Bush administration’s hard emphasis on military pre-emption, and perhaps the administration as well. President Bush should be under no illusion: As things stand now, he will not receive the benefit of the doubt that an incumbent president seeking re-election usually gets from foreign governments and publics, who are generally reluctant to see "the devil they know" turned out of power.
Talk to German, French and British officials and European think tank experts under London’s Chatham House rules — the speaker can’t be identified by name — and the sense you get is that many Europeans are waiting for the Americans to come back to their senses so that allied relations can get back to the intimacy of Cold War days.
"The main lesson to be learned from the Iraq War is to be learned in Washington: You have to plan and cooperate with others under established rules," says a German academic. His country’s strong and understandable Cold War fear of being left alone is alive and well.
But waiting for Cold War attitudes to return is more a futile wish than a strategy for improving trans-Atlantic relations, which are today outwardly polite but still full of unresolved conflict over Bush’s war on global terrorism.
In Europe, the blame for friction in U.S.-European relations and at the United Nations is focused narrowly on Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the administration’s doctrine of pre-emption. This gives foreign leaders and publics that take that view — those of France and Germany come to mind — every incentive to work to defeat Bush and to aid, indirectly at least, his Democratic rival in 2004.
To be effective, such political opposition from abroad will have to be subliminal and deniable. There will probably be no repeat of the prewar full frontal battles at the United Nations. Instead, there will be a subtle campaign of political attrition. This is of more than academic interest to Bush: Not since Jimmy Carter headed to defeat in 1980 has a president triggered such an intense backlash within countries that consider themselves important American allies.
The recent skirmishing around a new Security Council resolution on the occupation of Iraq contains elements of this emerging attrition strategy.
Quick passage of the draft resolution circulated last month by Secretary of State Colin Powell and the formation of a multinational division to be sent to Iraq under its terms might have enabled the Pentagon to avoid taking the politically painful step of calling up fresh U.S. reserve units this autumn. The resolution was also key to clearing the way for an increased U.N. role in the occupation.
But the resolution did not get traction. In late September the Pentagon had to go ahead with the call-up. The United States still wants a new resolution to attract reconstruction aid at the Oct. 23 donors conference in Madrid, but has dropped hopes that Europe will contribute more troops for Iraq.
The attrition goes on nonetheless: France and Russia have promised not to veto the resolution, but make it difficult for Powell to secure support for it. Germany is carefully unsupportive. And in a rare act of advocacy, Secretary-General Kofi Annan publicly criticized Powell’s effort rather than acknowledge that his traumatized staff is reluctant to work in Iraq, where the United Nations is distrusted and disliked for its own past involvement — not just because it is associated with the occupation.
The message from Annan’s demoralized staff to the Bush administration was decanted this way by an anonymous senior U.N. official who told The Financial Times: "We wish you well, we hope you succeed, but we want to maintain our own integrity in case you don’t." In other words, abandon ship.
This is a context to overcome: Re-establishing allied unity and international cooperation will help the United States succeed in Iraq sooner rather than later. Both the Bush administration, which has been overly dismissive of other nations, and its guerrilla critics need to remember Rule One of crisis behavior: When you are in a hole, stop digging.
Jim Hoagland can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or jimhoagland@washpost.com.
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