He has written several groundbreaking bestsellers on themes ranging from the new economy and globalisation to nationhood and the dark side of political correctness. In 1978 he predicted a world of global communication through networked computers and was the author of France’s first strategy for facing up to the digital revolution. His best known titles include ‘The New Middle Ages’, ‘www.capitalisme.fr’ and ‘A selfish history of Economics’.

As well as writing, Alain Minc has been an advisor to various French governments. He formerly served as an Inspecteur de Finances and also runs an influential consultancy firm, AM Conseil. He is the chairman of Le Monde’s supervisory board and director of a number of leading companies, from brands such as Gucci to firms such as the automotive giant Valéo and the construction group Vinci.

What follows is a transcript of his most recent lecture delivered to a packed house at The Institut Français, London. The event was chaired by Peter Mandelson and attended by some of the UK’s leading foreign policy experts including Sir Michael Butler, Phillip Stephens, Roger Liddle and Mark Leonard

The Foreign Policy Centre would like to thank Accenture for supporting the lecture and The Institut Français for hosting the event.

Transcript

For a French man to talk about transatlantic relations under the present circumstances would be like a murderer to develop a theory of crime. You may, obviously, be suspicious: is he savagely Chiracian? Or Villepinesque? Or is he by any chance one of the last remaining French Atlanticists? I hope I will escape this quite limited category. To be frank, and to put my cards on the table, I was against the war and against the veto, which may be compatible. My deep feeling is that transatlantic relations are at a crossroads for much more essential reasons than Iraq. In fact the Iraq affair is more a symptom of the transatlantic rift than a key cause, and I think there are six questions that deserve an answer:

– First, are our two worlds, the old one and the new one, becoming more and more alien from each other?

– Second, do we Europeans think that we are facing a new American Empire?

– Third, is our common space no longer strategic but economic?

– Fourth, in this context, what are the potential scenarios?

– Fifth, what about the British?

– Sixth, what about all Europeans, you and us?

So are our two worlds the old one and the new one becoming more and more alien from each other? I think that no one can ignore the new ethical melting pot that has emerged in the US. More than 50% of Phds in the US are going to Asians. There are more and more Asians in the academic world and the research centres. To give you an example, in the main Motorola lab 99% of the employees are Indians. The Hispanic phenomenon is also transforming the US. The US is becoming a kind of synthesis and whilst yesterday it was a western country, today it is a world country.

What will the US look like in some years from now? The Indians will be as powerful as presently the Jews, the Chinese as influential as presently the WASPs, the Hispanics as politically important as the Irish Catholics. Do you think it will be the same United States? Will the melting pot work like it works today? I will quote you some remarks from Harold Macmillan’s diaries from September 27th 1952:

We are threatened by the Americans with a mixture of patronising pity and contempt. They treat us worse than they do any other country in Europe. They undermine our political influence all over the world. They really are a strange people. Perhaps the mistake we made is to continue to regard them as an Anglo-Saxon people. That blood is very much watered down. Now they are a Latin-Slav mixture with a fair amount of German and Irish. They are impatient, mercurial and panicky

Tomorrow’s America will be an Asiatic, Hispanic mixture with a black flavour. Will it be the same? What will be their values? I think that we will continue to share the market and democracy because these values are less and less Western and more and more global. But apart from that, will we have the same vision of God? Of the place of religion within our society? Of human rights? Abortion, death penalty, of habeas corpus, freedom and balance of power? Europe will be the freezer of old Western values and the US the laboratory of the new world wide values. And in a world where public opinion is the key we must understand how deep these differences may be. We are the freezer of the old values which we may enjoy, but they are clearly creating new values.

So behind the transatlantic relations there will remain our common customs of our common histories, but our common values which have rarely clashed, will become under strain because the new American ethnicity will change America as much as it has changed the new immigrants. This transformation will also have implications for our increasingly differing roles in the world. As a world country the US will have worldwide concerns. China is in the long run its main competitor, the industrial world’s factory and the first creditor of the US will be its first priority. And it will not be so easy for the US. The Chinese will not be as kind to them as the Japanese. China has not lost a war, China does not need any nuclear umbrella, China can use its financial power to influence the US. Next will be India, which is presently becoming the services factory of the world. I have asked myself why China is becoming an industrial factory and India a services factory and I have found that the only answer is “English”, because you can’t become a service factory without knowledge of English. You can become an industrial factory without knowing any foreign language. The British have helped India become the world’s service factory. The third concern for the US will be Russia which is less and less a nuclear power and more and more an oil power.

Vis à vis the terrorist threat; there is a transatlantic relationship and all countries, not only the wealthy ones, are involved. Egypt and Turkey are more threatened than Spain, France or Britain. So even from that perspective the US’s solidarity is global and transatlantic.

We must keep in mind that in the US there is no such thing as an immigration threat. Immigration is their life and is their chance. In Europe there is strong concern about immigration even though we need more and more immigration. The Americans will look to us as we presently look to Switzerland. So it is clear that the old Europe means the old and the new one, to use Mr Rumsfeld’s concepts is to a certain extent an oxymoron.

Immigration will be our first concern which will be more and more difficult for Italy, Spain and Portugal which were emigration countries and now have to become immigration countries. Demography will be a key concern because of the pressures on pension systems. We also have concerns about the precision of our own borders. We don’t know where our eastern border is and where our southern border is and we will become obsessed with incidents and difficulties on these borders. We don’t see ourselves as a world power. The most important determinant of the transatlantic relationship is common enemies. The godfather of Europe is not Jean Manet but Joseph Stalin because we built Europe over the threat of the Soviet Union. Terrorism is a common scapegoat. But it is not enough to sustain a long term axis. I think that in the long run the United States is becoming another world.

Following on from that, do we Europeans think we are facing a New American Empire? You know obviously Robert Kagan’s theory about Venus and Mars which from a certain point of view Kagan is right: the US is Mars and we are Venus. But his theory is partly wrong because although we are Venus, they are not Mars. They are not Mars because this would dramatically overestimate American power and its ability to be a worldwide policeman. Is the present US posture an accident that will vanish with a new administration, or is it the expression of the new US, a country which considers that it has to rule the world? Is the Bush Administration, even though it was badly elected, the expression of a new political spectrum which will dominate the US in the same way that Roosevelt was the expression of an old political spectrum? I think that in the long term the US will be internationalist and unilateralist and this will not be contradictory.

This America with its new ethnicity, the new melting pot with new values does not fit the Wilsonian approach. If you are a world country the world is supposed to be your province. Although that is the vision, the US doesn’t have the means to manage such a policy. Its ambitions are contradictory with its financial means. A ruling empire can not rely on creditors to pay for its soldiers. Such large budgetary and external deficits mean an imperialist strategy is not possible in the long term. To be an empire you need to be able to pay for the colonies. You can’t beg when you want to dominate.

The present value of the dollar is a miracle and would have fallen much more if the US was not the kind of strategic country that creates a premium for the dollar. Furthermore, the US can’t be the new policemen of the world because they have no colonial experience, no colonial office. This could not be more obvious than it is in Iraq. I think that the British are doing much better in Basra than the Americans in the north of the country and the French are doing their job better in Cote d’Ivoire because they have the know how. In fact the US should have sub-contracted the management of Iraq to the British. You could have got money and it would have been much more efficient if it was managed by British generals who have read Lord Curzon’s memoirs. If the country was ruled by former British colonial officers, the situation would have been less dramatic. But I think that the US is not so conscious of that. Even on the military side the US has reached its limits. All of us know that the army is overstretched and cannot afford to face a second military crisis. They have the means to win technological wars but they don’t have the means to rule huge colonies. That means that in the long term the US will not be a worldwide empire because they can’t dominate and can’t take for granted that the world will obey them. They will be forced to have another strategy to save money, troops and world influence. You can’t be the policeman of the world and have the Chinese as your first creditor. The key point is that when you are an empire you do not have an exchange deficit but you have an exchange surplus and that really is a key point.

A third question: is our common space no longer strategic but economic? Strategically, I think that the links will grow weaker and weaker. NATO is an organisation without mission, philosophy or a goal. NATO is a tool for the US to prevent Europe from having a common defence and it is clear that, in Europe, there are different perceptions about the strategic relation with the US. The British distrust the Americans much more than we do but they think they are able to influence them. The Germans are becoming like the Swiss: peaceful public opinion, no strategic will and a kind of quietness, which is not presently compatible with worldwide policy. They presently pay lip service to the link with the US but it’s no more the core of their strategy. The French are reinventing the Bandung movements, it is clear that Jacques Chirac wants to be the leader of Bandung, a new unaligned movement. On a good day Chirac is Nehru and on a bad day he is Nasser, but he going from Nasser to Nehru. The Spanish consider themselves to be the leader of a new commonwealth that is Hispanic. That commonwealth creates a special link with the US and that is a link with the US and not with Europe. When you see how the French are able to make noise in the Francophone world consider the huge power Hispania will give to Spain. 350 million people speak Spanish worldwide and by 2015 it is predicted that there will be more Spanish speakers in the US than native English speakers. The Spanish are perfectly aware of this and that is the main reason behind Spain’s opposition to the Convention. When you are the leader of Hispania how can you accept to be treated as two-thirds of Italy? Italy is not a worldwide country. Spain is a worldwide power and that is one of Giscard’s failures that he had a problem with Spain. At the King’s coronation 30 years ago Giscard, at that time President, sent him some books, including de Tocqueville and that created the tension with the King. Giscard has never understood Spain. This was a mistake, we should understand in the long term that Spain will have the only special link with the US.

Strategically, Europe’s relationship with the US will remain important but will not remain the key relationship. We will retain strong ties and they will become stronger and stronger. First, our market economies will continue to work in the same environment and Europe has committed itself to the Anglo-Saxon style of capitalism. The commercial conflicts between us are outstripped by our common interests. As more solidarity develops between developing countries, the US and Europe will feel closer and closer whatever their disagreements are over agriculture, culture, steel and bananas. Cancun reflected this: the developed world, the US and Europe, were on the same side of the table and we will be so more and more. In ten years from now, our agricultural policies will be much closer and they will be contested by the developing countries and I think we will continue to be on the same side of the table. Our monetary competition between Dollar and Euro will be not transform itself into a conflict because we have the same interests in a stable and solid monetary system. It’s clear that our growing competition with China, India and all the new players will make us economically speaking closer and closer because our interests are the same and our markets are the same targets for the newcomers. Obviously, some economic differences will remain: the US will have a higher growth because of its demographics and also because we made a conscious choice in our social model. If you consider the balance between competition and protection or the balance between efficiency and solidarity there are two models: the American one and the continental European one, even though Britain is somewhere in the middle. The only area where you are the bridge is between the American economic model and the continental European model. So although there is a difference between the US and Europe this does not mean that our interests are contradictory. We in the capitalist system need balance between competition and protection, there are several ways of finding a balance between employment and wealth. You may have Swedish equality with a Swedish tax income, you can have US inequalities with the US tax system. The French are a special problem because we have American inequalities, with a Swedish tax system. That will force us to reform our welfare state.

Forth question. In this context what are the potential scenarios? I think there are four scenarios in the long term. The first is a kind of kind of minimum Atlanticism. A new administration would return to Clintonian multilateralism and that Europe will unify, creating a steady alliance between a multilateralist USA and a decently unified Europe. That’s a scenario that I don’t believe is possible. The second scenario is violent divorce and European unification itself and it’s clear that for this to happen, there must be no world wide threats so we are not unified by a common anxiety. The third scenario: imperialist domination. The new US exists but Europe manages to unify itself under overwhelming US domination. The fourth scenario: strong Atlanticism. This would suppose a very dramatic crisis such as China wanting to use all its strategic, nuclear, economic powers to gain a world wide position, or it may be nuclear terrorism. It is clear this new Atlanticism will only emerge from the existence of a very violent threat. My own forecast is a fifth scenario: soft divorce.

A fifth question, what about the British? Can you be the bridge between the US and Europe? If I may I will refer to old and new. However, this is not the old or new Europe in Rumsfeld’s world. In fact I think a more useful distinction would be between new and old America. I think that Britain can act as a bridge between Europe and ‘old’ America but cannot do so with ‘new’ America. I think from that point of view the Bush administration is a blessing because it can only push Britain closer to Europe. What did you get from the US after the Iraqi crisis? Did they understand that they could have relied much more on your experience and your knowledge of the country? Would the US have been able to be a little more modest and use you? British officials normally claim they had a discrete and very powerful influence. Let me say that if this had been the case then I am sure that things could have been much better. In the long term Britain will need to face new US political habits when you will have an Asiatic President with a Hispanic Secretary of State with an Indian Defence Secretary. What would Britain mean for them? The US political elite of the future will see Britain as average Europeans no more no less because they will not share your history, they will not share memories with you and their feeling of history will be elsewhere. They will share the English language but as far as it becomes the worldwide Esperanto, the linguistic link will become weaker. It is clear that they will consider that you are more sympathetic to them than the French. But that isn’t difficult. However, I think that with the changes taking place in US demographics and the growth of the Spanish speaking community, Britain is likely to be less important than Spain.

For Europe to be able to face up to the ‘new’ America it needs to have a hard core and this will only exist only if Britain is the core of the core by joining the Euro system and exerting its influence in the EU. I think the changes taking place in the US will push the UK to the heart of Europe.

Peter Mandelson The Prime Minister has invested a great deal in Anglo-Spanish relations. I realise now that it is because we look to Spain to provide the bridge between Britain and America. I would also like to add to that, if you describe George Bush as a blessing, as the chief factor which drives Britain to look to Europe, in my experience of British public opinion while it is true at one level that President Bush has caused more people in this country to look towards Europe, the moment they do so they tend to look back again.

Questions

Q1: To assume that population gives political power in the US in the short- term is a mistake. If you look at Black or Hispanic representation in the US political establishment now, you will see that it is extremely limited. So I think it will be quite a long time before we have an Indian Defence Secretary, a Chinese Secretary of State along with a Hispanic President and an African American Treasury Secretary. But I also want to get your thoughts on the model of the world Blair talks about, of a multi-polar system which includes the US, Europe and also China and after a time India. Is that something that fits with Chirac’s ambitions to sometimes be Nehru and sometimes be Nasser, and can that fit in your model of 20, 30, 50 years?

AM: Let me start with Chirac. You must understand that Chirac considers all civilisations to be equal, he does not believe in the superiority of Western values. Democracy is a western value and while he believes we should live by democracy he feels that the Chinese and the Indians and others may have other values and that these values are equal and acceptable. That is behind the fact that he has no sense of a transatlantic link because for the transatlantic link you have to believe that Western values have to be the values of the whole world. That was Mitterrand’s but no Chirac’s way of thinking.

To come back to your point, as you may have noticed I have not quoted African Americans in my list. The US was a country managed by WASPS and Jews with Black servants. Blacks belonged to the Western world. When I say this to other friends they say, “but look the Secretary of State is African American and so the melting pot will also work for blacks”. It is not at all the same. The blacks do not have the identity that Chinese, Indians and Hispanics have. Ethnicity is an important factor. To come back to Blair’s vision of multilateralism, it is not contradictory to what I said in my lecture. I think this vision is clearly very long
term but it is contradictory with there being a long term American link but your Prime Minister cannot say it.

Q2: I think that fundamentally the UK will cycle back and forth between the US and Europe. The US is fundamentally a optimistic culture which believes in growth and that everybody will have their chance, whilst I believe Europe is a “divide the cake culture”. So when we are in good times we lean towards the US and when we are in bad times we go towards a more liberal democratic view and we will oscillate somewhere around mid-Atlantis and never fall into the arms of the US or the arms of Europe. Do you see those characteristics pertaining?

AM: I agree that as a “world country” the US will remain optimistic. However, in response to your question let me quote you some statistics, presently there are

300 million Chinese belonging to the middle class, 90 million Indians and 60 million Brazilians. In three years the size of the Chinese middle class will equal two-thirds of the European population. In Europe we don’t appreciate the genuine scale of this phenomenon like they do in the US. In many ways they are forced to understand for economic reasons. Presently the Chinese are buying $120 billion Dollars worth of US Treasury bonds per year, the present trade deficit between China and the US is $120 billion. These statistics show that there is a major economic shift taking place which is underestimated in Europe. From that point of view I think that Europeans also need to consider their relations with India. It is easier for Europe, in the long term, to have a relationship with India than with China. We have an asset there that we are underestimating.

Q3: I think that the whole idea of American pre-eminence is built on sand. The Fed boosted the boom till it nearly busted then stopped it from busting by flooding the markets of the world with money so that the imbalances that were created in the mid- 90s were still there. The stock exchange for tech stocks are bound to burst and the dollar could at any minute start to fall especially if the Americans really irritate the Chinese and the Japanese who are slowing the fall and so I think in some years time America will look a good deal less powerful so all the scenarios you put before us will have to be revised.

AM: I agree, the US is booming because it has followed the most Keynesian policy for decades, with a budget deficit of 5% and interest rates of 1%. That’s a temporary relief. The dollar should have fallen much more, I agree with that. While we have too many savings they have an economy that is built on debt. In Europe, the saving rate is nearly 15% of national income, in the US it is 5% of debt which is a dramatic problem in the long-term because you have to get rid of debt. There are many ways to do this: war, classical inflation, but this is not possible because of the high degree of competition in the globalisation process. The third way to get rid of debt is to have asset inflation and again we are seeing the first signs of an asset bubble. So I agree we may have an economic situation for the US which is mush less impressive that it is now but nevertheless the US will remain the laboratory of the world, even if factories are in China. Their entrepreneurship will mean that they remain the technological engine of the world. They have one strong advantage which is demography and this will be a strong growth engine. From that point view they have a much more favourable situation than we do.

Q4: There are a couple of reasons why I think you underestimate the reasons why Europe and the US need a closer relationship. Firstly, there is the issue of nuclear proliferation and the terrorist threat which I think is very real. Europe is more vulnerable than the US because it is nearer to the Arab world and it has Islamic fundamentalism in its own societies. The problems which lead to terrorism and nuclear weapons are as much of a threat to Europe as they are in America and that is one reason why we must stick closer together.

Secondly, as I go around the capitals of the new Europe, and this is a longer term thing, I do notice that there is a lot of residual fear of Russia. There is a lot of scepticism over Blair and Schroeder’s coupling up to Putin and about the threats that Russia will pose to the new democracies of Europe and in parts of the Europe there is, therefore, still a strong feeling that we should remain close to the United States because it is still the ultimate guarantor of our security.

AM: I agree with you that we should stick as close as possible to the United States. My point is that will the United States may not want to stick so close to us. With regard to European anxiety about Russia, do you consider that the US will jeopardise their relationship with the first worldwide oil producer for the sake of Ukrainia. Russia is not a nuclear threat anymore. It has power because it is an oil producer. From that point of view, before jeopardising their relationship with Russia, Russia needs to have created great disorder in the world. Why else do they tolerate the Chechnya affair? Because they need Russian oil. They produce more than Saudi Arabia and it will be easier to control them in the long run because they will belong to the capitalist world. I understand the Polish worry but I think that they are once again romantic. They are romantic vis-à-vis US solidarity with the new world.

Q5: On the India versus China question, I am not sure I share your views on the huge commonalities between Europe and India. I think that India is much more like the US and the things we feel uncomfortable about with the US (the development of an Imperial Republic, ambivalent about multilateralism and globalisation) are also true of India. However, whilst China seems to be going through more of shift towards global governance, you still have residues of Marxism, popular nationalism and traditional realism but alongside that there is a quite profound shift to a sort of liberal internationalism, a shift especially in terms of global institutions as something that is in China’s interests not just to protect it from US hegemony but also due to real recognition of the true benefits that China can draw from globalisation. This could turn China into a more post-modern country than India.

Your framework of thinking about great powers was fascinating. September 11th has been about the clashing of two global systems and the great power America reasserting itself among the rise of non-state actors. I was wondering how you see these two worlds fitting together. When you were talking about the economic dilemmas that the US is facing and the change in the exchange rate between military and economic power which is to do with the “New Middle Ages”, I was wondering what you thought this meant for the two worlds coexisting.

AM: I agree with you, but I also think it is easier for us to deal with India than China because China thinks only in terms of the US. The fact that India is protectionist makes them easier to be understood by the French. The Indian economic system is much easier to be understood by European countries than the Chinese one. American businessmen think they have an easier life in China than in India, India is not easy but neither is China. The idea of the “New Middle Ages” was that there was no homogeneity; that you may be a military superpower but that doesn’t mean that you will be an economic superpower and that in this world there are a lot of grey areas. There will be many regions and countries without any state and that is clear. As for terrorism, it is strange, almost astonishing, that no one has used nuclear weapons tactically. It is easier to steal a tactical nuclear weapon than to coordinate an attack like September 11th. That is probably a much greater threat than we think. To think only in terms of Islamic terrorism is to think only in terms of one kind of terrorism. One day the mafia will use these weapons to blackmail and this will force great powers to act together. We will have to work with the US just as they work with other countries. What I want to emphasise is that if terrorism was only directed at the wealthiest it would create a solidarity between the US and us. But this is not the case because terrorist targets today include Egypt and Turkey. The terrorist question is a worldwide question, not a western question.

Q6: In your presentation you discussed how the US has been transformed by migration. However, do current trends in Europe not reflect the fact that far from remaining a white continent, Europe is also becoming a ‘global’ nation like America?

AM: Vis à vis immigration we need a strong immigration movement. Half of Europe does not know how to achieve that. However, I think Europe’s inability to grasp the importance of immigration will be counteracted by immigration within Europe from the eastern side of Europe to the western side of Europe. It will only be a partial answer to our problem and it will happen partly because it’s easier to integrate Slovakians than Malians. Enlargement will have a similar impact on immigration and it will be much more important than we think. It will be an answer and we will be obliged to learn from the US.

The images of protestors burning British flags across the world last week signalled the start of a new diplomatic era of isolation and hostility unknown since the days when Maggie bestrode the planet wielding her handbag.
The tragedy for Prime Minister Tony Blair is that by following his convictions he has destroyed each of the foreign policy pillars that defined his worldview. He had a foreign policy that was based on the international rule of law, European engagement, and engaging the Americans in a progressive project for international community. Today he must face the facts: by exercising his incredible willpower to do the right thing, he has ended up in exactly the wrong place.

People I speak to from Sweden to South Africa warn that Blair is now widely seen as an American poodle who puts power politics above international law. A Saudi journalist describes the exasperation: “The British are trying to be more royalist than the king. It’s worse than Guam, and that’s a US territory.” A South African who knows Mbeki well, warns: “I’ve detected a major realignment, among those in power in South Africa, away from Tony and towards Jacques. We feel that Chirac is ‘someone we can do business with’. Let’s go for the cynical bastard who wants to rape us rather than the missionary who wants to save us”. Even in sympathetic European countries the outlook is bleak: a confidant of the Swedish Prime Minister fears that they will have trouble working with Britain “now that you have put your relationship with the Americans above international law”.

In short, the political capital and respect that was so hard won – and so vital to the success of Blair’s global strategy – in the years after 1997 has all but dissipated. So how can the diplomatic damage be repaired?

First, the European dilemma: how do we avoid being seen as “roast beef-eating war monkeys” on the margins of importance? While we were trying to re-order the world, Jacques Chirac was busy vying for leadership of Europe. Chirac may have upset “New Europe” with his offensive language, but we must not delude ourselves into thinking that it is the French who are isolated. No other centre-left party in the European Union shares the position of the Blair Government. Even the right-wing governments of Berlusconi and Aznar that supported US diplomacy have not committed any troops. The French and Belgians are already planning an inner core to co-operate on defence and other areas – leaving us on the outer fringes. The danger is of Blair becoming a leader with both hands tied behind his back – unable to act in the economic realm because of his “euro problem”, excluded from the political realm by his “American problem”.

Second, the transatlantic relationship. Far from being a bridge between America and the rest of the world Britain is seen by many as a shadowy continuation of a “rogue superpower” – subject to all the resentment which the toxic cocktail of Rumsfeld, Cheney and Richard Perle have stirred up. Blair’s principled attempts to multilateralise America are too subtle to be picked up by foreign publics and medias – who see him as simply falling into the template of knee-jerk support for the United States established by Thatcher’s support for the Libyan bombings. This perception is not simply damaging to British interests – it is also unhelpful to America. As one seasoned British diplomat remarked to me: “The Americans have been trying to trade on our credibility in the world. But we don’t have any to give – we need it all for ourselves”.

Finally, the transition from selfish Little England to ethical internationalist has been set back. In Blair’s first term he sought to undo the worst memories of unprincipled foreign policy with an appeal to a vision of an international community. “Beef wars” with Europe gave way to negotiated settlements; memories of Thatcherite support for Apartheid were banished by inviting Mandela to address the UK parliament; the ghost of inaction over Bosnia and Rwanda was laid to rest with swift humanitarian interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone. Britain placed itself at the forefront of moves to promote an International Criminal Court, rules for intervention in internal conflicts and multilateral regimes on everything from arms control to climate change. And yet, today, we are more likely to be seen as the country that ignored the UN charter and embarked on a new type of war, a pre-emptive strike in defiance of international law and global public opinion.

Even many of those who disagree with a war on Iraq cannot suppress their grudging admiration for Blair’s vision, idealism and energy. He is the Labour leader who has come the closest to articulating a vision of the international community which draws on and encapsulates the values of the centre-left. Blair is also a rare creature of his time. Instead of relying on narrow calls for national interest, he has always managed to frame his principles in a universal language which could touch people across the world.

Yet Blair now faces his biggest challenge so far: rebuilding an international policy that it is in tatters – not because he has consciously abandoned it, but because it has become a casualty of events. Blair realises that the first step is to reassert his attachment to principle and his independence from the United States by driving through a just peace in Iraq, as in Palestine, even if that may mean bloodying American noses along the way.

· Mark Leonard is Director of The Foreign Policy Centre (www.fpc.org.uk), and writes a regular online column for Observer Worldview

Will a war in Iraq set the Middle East and Muslims around the world on fire? That is the question which leaders of the Arab League are asking as they assemble in Egypt this weekend. The fear is that the results of a botched invasion could “open the gates of hell”, as the Secretary General of the Arab League put it, and reverberate across the world – from the streets of Cairo to Bradford.
Much British and American disquiet might be dampened by a second resolution from the United Nations but George Bush and Tony Blair will have their work cut out to reach out to what foreign policy anlaysts are calling the “Arab Street”. The eyes of the world will be on Baghdad – trying to see if any of the talk of democracy, human rights, the rule of law and the importance of international institutions is borne out in the postwar settlement. Western governments will, no doubt, launch a multi-million dollar communications strategy – including the establishment of more Arab language TV and Radio stations – to promote the benefits for post-war Iraq. But, as Conrad Smewing and I argue in a new report published this week, this effort will fall upon deaf ears if it is not matched by a new approach to the Middle East. This will require both a change in policy to help with the human development of the region, and an ambitious attempt to build relationships for mutual change.

First western policy needs to change. The reconstruction of Iraq will need to be placed into a broader context of progress on the Middle East, especially work towards a settlement on Israel/Palestine and an attempt to move beyond double standards on democracy and human rights. Of course moves towards a two-state settlement will never satisfy those who refuse to accept the existence of the Israeli State, but it will show that the West recognises genuine Arab grievances.

To make real progress, however, Bush and Blair will have to go further and call time on the stereotypes that have driven policy in the region. First to go must be the myth of the Islamic world as a single polity: the easy cliche of the Arabists that the allegiance of “the Arab” is first to first tribe and second to the Umma, and never to the nation state. This is one of the things that has driven the Faustian bargain of political and military support for autocratic regimes in exchange for free access to oil. One of the encouraging signs of the debate after September 11 is the growing number of policy-makers who argue that what was once seen as a bolster to regional stability is now clearly a source of hostility and terror. It has not escaped the more intelligent Middle Eastern governments that they need to change either.

Western governments must define a new approach to Arab governments which offers security guarantees and know-how in exchange for economic and political change. One reason why hostility toward the West is so strong is that people living in conditions of poverty, high unemployment and political repression do not have the freedom to protest about problems which are closer to home. Discontent is therefore deflected toward the West.

It has been suggested that a ‘new Marshall Plan’ to transform the Middle East is required. But the experiences of world war two do not provide a very good model for the region. The injection of American capital into post-war Europe was so dramatically successful because is catalysed the human capital that was already there. Europe had skilled workers and managers, strong educational, political and judicial institutions, but it did not have the factories and infrastructure to utilise them. According to the UN Development Programme’s Arab Human Development report the required catalyst in the Middle East is not cash – the region is already, as the UNDP put it, “more rich than developed”. The pressing need is for the institutional and educational reform needed to build and deploy the region’s human capital. So what is needed is, in fact, a kind of ‘mirror of the Marshall Plan’. Linking people and institutions with potential reformers in the region – the work at which organisations such as the British Council excel – would not only allow the region to progress along its own path but is also the best antidote to mistrust and suspicion of western motives.

But even if Western policies do change, few will believe it unless policy makers deal first with the pervasive sense that Western policy is motivated by a hatred or fear of Muslims. This will mean adopting a very different approach from the past when the assumption was too often that the problem was a lack of information “over there”. George Bush, when asked about hostility in the Arab world, declared “I just can’t believe it. I know how good we are, and we’ve got to do a better job of making our case”. This analysis led the State Department to fund an advertising campaign during Ramadan which showed Muslims living in the United States. But people’s responses to America and other Western countries are much more subtle. Most already know a lot about America, and many want to live there: the UN’s development programme reported that fifty-one per cent of young Arabs want to emigrate to the West.

Much of the fear and suspicion towards the west arises because Arabs believe that western policy is Islamophobic. And they can find plenty of evidence to support this case. To many muslims, the attempted link between Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein reads implies that we cannot distinguish between Arabs – and that we see them all as terrorists. Polling by Gallup in the US and muslim countries showed that people in Iran, Lebanon, Indonesia, and Turkey are all more positive about US citizens, than the Americans are about them. And there is no shortage of material in the Arab media about western insensitivity to Islam – whether it’s a RAND report describing Saudi Arabia as a “kernel of evil”, televangelists like Jerry Falwell describing the prophet Mohammed as a terrorist, or the British columnist Melanie Phillips warning of a “fifth column” amongst British Muslims. Western Governments would do well to dealing with the sources of misperceptions of Islam. They could work together with Arab governments and intellectuals to examine the ways that the links between our societies and religions are represented in school textbooks and the media.

But they must careful about how they do this. Though western Governments attack the idea of a “clash of civilisations”, they are sometimes in danger of talking one into existence by adopting public diplomacy tactics which betray an “us” and “them” mentality. Official speeches talk about Islam as a religion of peace and Foreign Ministers work on plans for “civilisational dialogue”.

Instead of broadcasting adverts about how nice the “West” is to Muslims, the UK and US governments must work to broadcast debates which demonstrate that those categories aren’t meaningful. Information about divisions in western policy towards Iraq, and debates about the presence of Muslims in the “west” can all help to challenge the insidious logic of a clash between two monolithic civilisations.

Of course, the legacy of mistrust of the west is deep-rooted. Western governments’ long engagement with despots from Shah of Iran to Saddam himself, means that any change in policy will not be readily believed. But there are some reasons for hope too. First, the opening up of the Arab media with regional satellite channels such as Al-Jazeera signals a real challenge to the political stasis of the past. Secondly, demographic and economic pressures are forcing governments in the region to embrace reform.

And finally the shock of September 11 means that Western governments can see that the price of simmering resentment on the streets of the region is no longer sustainable. These trends are set against the biggest short-term crisis in the region for over a decade but this makes it even more important that western leaders lift their eyes to beyond the short-term, and ensure thet attempt to rebuild the relationships that will be shattered by a war which the vast majority in the region fear.

· Mark Leonard is Director of The Foreign Policy Centre (www.fpc.org.uk ) and writes a regular online commentary for Observer Worldview. He is author, with Conrad Smewing, of Public Diplomacy and the Middle East (£19.95) which was commissioned by The British Council

The Israeli election next week will trigger yet again the mixed feelings, discomfort and conflicting loyalties that define life as a Jew at the beginning of the 21st century. The sense that we will be implicated in the actions of a right-wing government that we can’t vote for and do not support is deeply uncomfortable. I have heard Jews complain bitterly that they are allowed to vote in lots of elections they don’t care about – to send an anonymous person to the European Parliament, or decide who collects their dustbins – while being totally excluded from a process that will impact on them and their families in an existential way.
Personally speaking, I have always had an ambivalent relationship with the collective pronoun, and felt strange when people have included me in the phrase “us Jews”. I have little knowledge of the religious and cultural aspects of Judaism. I have only once visited Israel itself. And yet the fact that my mother is Jewish is arguably the most important constitutive part of my identity. For me being Jewish is a fact dictated by history. The holocaust both explains why I have so few relatives on my mother’s side and also why I need to speak three languages simply to converse with her brother and sister who each live in different countries. I often wondered whether this feeling of confusion was related to the fact that my upbringing was secular. But the Sharon Government has meant that many now experience what the Auschwitz survivor Jean Améry labelled “the necessity and impossibility of being a Jew”. Each will do it in a different way, and my own expressions of discomfort are bound to alienate everyone else – Arab and Jew alike – involved in understanding their own responses to the dilemma.

First the necessity. The holocaust sealed the link between Jewishness and Israel – even for anti-zionists. The Israel in people’s heads means that “there is somewhere to go” should history repeat itself. And Israel certainly cashes in on this feeling. Many have written of the Jewish diaspora’s support for Israel – financial through remittances and political through the lobbying of national governments. But the diaspora provides the state of Israel with something that goes far beyond material help: legitimacy. Most travellers to Israel will stop at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. Etched into the stone of one of the monuments are the words: “from their death our life”. This is a graphic recognition that the existence of Israel rests on the rock of the six million.

The necessity of being a Jew is reinforced by perceptions of a “new wave of anti-semitism” sweeping Europe. It is understandable that Americans see the rise of the far right, the desecration of synagogues and Jewish graves as echoes of the 1930s. But much of this new anti-semitism tends to be contingent – more a reaction to the situation in Israel-Palestine than an essential hatred of Jews. Socially excluded youths of Arab origin (subject to a good deal of racism and abuse from the far-right themselves) identify their own difficult circumstances with the plight of the Palestinians they see on the TV news and take action. But it is precisely this solidarity for the “oppressed” that adds a new dimension to the conflict with the Palestinians.

Sometimes it looks as if the “zero-sum” logic of Jews who argue that the conflict is irresolvable is less about land, water and security than Israel’s claim to a monopoly of victimhood. Some, such as the playwright Arnold Wesker, have even suggested that the biggest challenge to Israel’s existence comes not from the explosives of suicide bombers but from the Palestinian ability to be seen as greater victims than the Jews. For Jews, victimhood is a birth-right. Elie Wiesel once said that being Jewish is “having a long memory” – and that memory stretches back through two thousand years of forced evictions, pogroms, and massacres. Many Jews cannot understand how the suffering of two generations of Palestinians, can out-victim the most oppressed people in the history of mankind. This leaves the historical tragedy of two wronged people continuing to inflict damage on each other.

But this necessary attachment to the existence of an Israeli nation – and the need to identify with Jews – is mirrored by an equally strong feeling of alienation. The bundle of feelings that Améry called “the impossibility of being a Jew”, has different roots for different Jews. But a number of recent developments are making these dilemmas more acute.

First there is Sharon. It was difficult not to share Israeli doubts about Arafat when he walked away from peace and sealed Barak’s defeat in the 2000 general election – but the total unreason of Sharon’s Government has stretched the loyalty of even the most steadfast allies of Israel to the point of destruction. This goes beyond his self-defeatingly violent tactics. Few people can identify with the systematic way Sharon has set about putting peace beyond reach, and the almost casual humiliation of sympathetic leaders: Blair, Colin Powell and even Bush himself.

Secondly, the changing demography of the promised land. A short trip to Israel is enough to tell me that the over-educated, idealistic European emigres of my grandmother’s generation are in short supply. The freedom Israel has accorded to North African and Eastern European Jews goes to the heart of its moral purpose. But implementing of the vision of the secular humanists who founded the state has now had the unintended consequence of changing its nature.

The most alienating consequence of this – particularly for secular Jews – is the growing power of the ultra-Orthodox Jews, whose black hats and black coats are increasingly visible in the Knesset. The growing influence of the Haredim – and their ability to blackmail Likud governments with the threat of withholding political support – means that Israel retains some of the trappings of a theocracy: only religious marriages are legal, huge amounts of public money flow into religious schools, public services including buses close down on the Sabbath, and religious scholars are exempt not only from military service, but tax as well. Despite the fact that the majority of Jews in Israel are secular, they have been powerless to stop these developments.

Finally, there is the generational change. The fact that discrimination is becoming something that Jews in developed countries learn about, but do not experience themselves, is bound to have an impact in the long-term. Young Jews are acutely aware of their moral duty to ensure that the experience of the Holocaust is not forgotten – but their support for Israel is bound to be more contingent than it was for a generation who experienced its consequences at first hand. This contingency is given added weight by the growing rumbles of dissidence within Israel itself: the conversion of young army recruits to the peace movement, the determination of Labour Leader Amran Mitzna to return to the negotiating table, and the emergence of Shinui, the anti-orthodox party, under the leadership of the charismatic Yosef “Tommy” Lapid.

And yet for many Jews, whatever deep differences of policy they have with the Israeli Government, the necessity of supporting the idea of Israel often outweighs the impossibility of the contemporary Jewish dilemma. In a strange way this echoes the special relationship between Britain and America. Britain might feel deeply uneasy about American actions, but ultimately each episode is reduced to a black-and-white loyalty test which no British Prime Minister has flunked.

The peculiar genius of Sharon has been to demand support by conflating the war to defend Israel’s existence, which all Jews can relate to, with his personal war to defend a greater Israel that runs from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. It must be said that this mirrors the political tactics on the Palestinian side. In the last two years, the increased intensity of suicide attacks against Israelis has meant that the Palestinian struggle for functional statehood has become blurred with the quest of those who dream of driving Israel into the sea. The chants of “death to Jews” at Palestinian demonstrations rekindle the inherited memories of victimhood which make it politically impossible to separate the moderate from the ultra-orthodox Jews, and so help to maintain Ariel Sharon in power. As long as this happens the two-state solution that everyone knows will have to be adopted in the end will remain beyond reach.

· Mark Leonard is Director of The Foreign Policy Centre (www.fpc.org.uk) and writes here in a personal capacity. He writes regularly online for Observer Worldview.

Every war in history has had unintended consequences. As Tony Blair returns from his Texan hoe-down having firmed up British support for “regime-change” in Baghdad, a regional war in the Middle East and a political war inside the Labour Party are being widely predicted. But there may be another unexpected casualty of an Iraq war: British membership of the euro.
For Blair to convince his country and party of the need to help take out Saddam, he will need to prove that the Iraqi dictator poses the gravest threat to global and western security. But, for a Prime Minister pledged to “focus like a laser beam” on the problems of the public services to also resolve Britain’s long history of ambivalence towards continental Europe would mean fighting a political “war on three fronts”. This may not be impossible – but it would take a feat of political leadership unparalleled in Britain since 1945.

The conventional wisdom is that the impact of September 11 smoothed Blair’s path to the euro. Certainly the euro’s opponents believe so. The Eurosceptic Telegraph splashed with “A New Currency for a New World Order” following Blair’s party conference address last autumn, capturing the scale of the project Blair set out for “a new age of international community” and a new spirit of interdependence in which nations were ready to work more closely together than ever before. In the same breath he delivered his most ringing endorsement of the euro so far.

The euro’s supporters were cock-a-hoop in Brighton too. After many months and years cajoling and calling for clear leadership from the top, it had arrived. Who could now doubt that it would be successful? Fear of those persistently hostile polls was forgotten. Prominent pro-Europeans predicted privately that the government could win a crushing majority, comparable to the two-thirds who voted Yes in 1975. With Britain’s resolute “shoulder-to-shoulder” participation in the Afghanistan war, how could the euro’s opponents cast any doubt on Blair’s patriotism or his transatlantic credentials, and ability to combine influence in Europe with a place at the top table in Washington. By January this year, with the glitch-free launch of the new currency across Europe, the “europhoria” had reached new heights. Charles Clarke and Peter Hain were given a licence by Downing Street to sell the benefits in principle. Union leader Ken Jackson even called for a referendum this Autumn. The battle, it seemed, had begun.

On the surface, little has changed. Yet much of this enthusiasm has gone, to be replaced by an uneasy mood among pro-Europeans. While the merits of an Iraq war and euro membership are quite separate issues, there are a number of reasons why the political strategies required to achieve these objectives may become intertwined.

The most important issue is that of timing. For all of the heated media debate about Saddam now, there will need to be a long diplomatic and military build-up to any offensive, most likely to occur this autumn or next spring. Yet the autumn has also long been seen as the key moment for a major, public pro-European push. As much of the British public return from continental holidays having experienced the tangible reality of the shiny, new currency, the pro-euro arguments could expect a better hearing than ever before. Pro-Europeans hope that the Queen’s Speech will include a Bill paving the way for a referendum. The late autumn is also exactly the time when Gordon Brown is due to start his official assessment of the economic tests.

But it is at precisely this time that Tony Blair will have an intensive role as international cheerleader for the War Against Terrorism Phase 2 – rallying opinion, smoothing egos and painstakingly constructing global coalitions. Any modern war is a battle for public opinion. Western nations do not risk losing wars like those in Kosovo, Afghanistan or even Iraq on the battlefield: it is the “wobbles” at home and on the international diplomatic scene which are the primary threats to the success of prolonged military missions. Can Blair win the public argument for the war and at the same time make the argument for the euro? High summits in Damascus won’t leave much time for the kind of Town Hall Meetings in Dagenham that will turn public opinion on the euro around. And a media distracted by war will work in favour of the euro-sceptics who have an interest in closing down debate and keeping public opinion where it is.

The politics of combining these two campaigns may prove impossible. Blair is rightly neuralgic about being seen to lose touch with domestic political priorities. The Prime Minister’s biggest political priority, beyond the prosecution of an Iraq war, will be to show that he remains motivated by the manifesto pledges on schools, hospitals and the economy on which Labour will be judged by the electorate in 2005-6.

Ever since Kosovo, Downing Street has feared that admiration for Blair’s resolute international leadership may not prevent this “disconnecting” him from those who have voted for an ordinary, “in-touch” family guy who shares their priorities. Blair seeks to square the circle by stressing the gravity of the international crisis and the changed nature of an interdependent world in which he cannot deliver domestic success without international engagement. But the penance for each day spent ciricling the world on BlairForce One is three days of visits to cancer wards in the West Midlands. The Conservative opposition have finally shifted their tactics to put health and education first. Yet the government’s need to do likewise plays into the “no” campaign’s comfort zone, with their Sex Pistols-inspired slogan of choice: “Never Mind the Euro. What about Schools and Hospitals?”

Blair will also need to consider the impact of a euro campaign within the Labour Party. The euro issue may not seriously split the Labour party, but it will require a debate within it, not least about political priorities. Labour has very few modern sovereigntists to take up the mantle of Peter Shore while the Keynesian left, concerned with the ECB’s monetarism, are much weaker than they were at the time of Maastricht. But dissent on Iraq and growing backbench grumblings over the domestic agenda could play into the euro debate in unpredictable ways.

Fourthly, there are the economics. Gordon Brown remains as Delphic as ever on the euro. But concerns over the cost of the war and increased spending on the military and security services will increase his bargaining power, while the unpredictable economic impact of a Middle East campaign could prove destablilising. An economic downturn in the Eurozone could shelve any hope of a referendum at all.

Finally, there is the danger that a European rift over Iraq will cool Blair’s ardour for the European project and his ability to sell it as Britain’s necessary destiny. Blair’s core pro-European message – encapsulated in his “superpower, not a superstate” soundbite – is that being part of Europe enables Britain to have a voice on the world stage and punch above our weight. This has been underpinned by the claim that “Europe is going our way” – from economic reform to the loosening of the “ever closer union” project of earlier generations, especially in the light of EU enlargement. Blair’s claim is that we need not be afraid of Europe distorting British priorities, because we are setting its course and leading the way. But if the focus of future European summits were to be a recalcitrant Europe trying to block British-backed US military action, both of Blair’s claims would be undermined.

This is the pro-European nightmare scenario. Did Blair’s unguarded aside at the Barcelona Summit that “it was a joy, as ever” mark more than the frustrations of anyone esconced in an conference centre on a Saturday afternoon? Were they the words of someone who has grown tired of the laborious deal-making and compromise that dominates the EU, with its all-night squabbling over QMV re-weighting and the next small steps towards CAP reform? Is Blair not tempted to contrast the frustrations of Euro-summitry with those homely chats on the Presidential ranch where two men can make clear decisions and back them with force?

This danger, at least, is overstated. Blair’s ability to win standing ovations in small-town Texas does not make him Margaret Thatcher in a Paul Smith suit. Those who believe that in power projection and the unique virtues of the transatlantic bond may have a flush in their cheeks – but their passion for Labour Prime Ministers will go unrequited. Anyone who thinks that Blair will deliberately opt for splendid isolation alongside the US underestimates his strategic vision. Blair’s project is a fundamentally multilateral one – this was the message he took to an American audience, and one delivered with European support. He may be uninterested in the politics for politics’ sake which is the hallmark of Brussels summitry, but that is no reason to suspect he has taken his eye off the bigger picture.

And the Iraq issue itself is not yet decided. Blair backed US objectives last weekend, but stressed that the means remained open for discussion. The object of controversy may yet narrow from an attempt to topple a world leader into a mandate for controlling weapons of mass destruction. UN backing will be sought and Arab acquiescence found – however grudgingly – before Blair commits himself to another desert adventure. The tactic of stoking up a debate about worst case scenarios and following it up with sweet and reasonable reforms will be familiar to anyone who has watched a New Labour Budget in the making.

But while Blair has more influence in Washington than any other international leader, he does not control the agenda on Iraq. The danger for the euro may not be one of principle, but it could involve a major clash of political priorities. The fate of the euro debate may seem relatively trivial compared to either the imminent loss of life or the danger of Saddam’s WMD arsenal. But this is precisely the point. The unerring ability of British governments to miss almost every opportunity in our relations with continental Europe for almost fifty years has seldom been based on principled euro-scepticism. The story has always been of priorities slipping, of the time not being quite right, of other issues needing to take precedence.

Pro-Europeans fear that, if missed in this parliament, the euro opportunity may not present itself seriously again for a decade or more. Blair’s own view appears to be that he can pull it – all of it – off. The Prime Minister reportedly sounded more pro-European than ever at a private meeting of Labour MPs and if anyone has the guile to fight this “war on three fronts” it is Blair. But for pro-Europeans a niggling doubt will remain. They have been jilted at the altar one too many times.

Mark Leonard is Director of The Foreign Policy Centre and co-editor of The Pro-European Reader(Palgrave £16.99). He writes a monthly online column for Observer Worldview.

In the black and white world of President Bush, the European left is as soft as Saddam is evil. And the White House seems to be as uninterested in persuading the left to back a war in Iraq as they are in negotiating with the Iraqi leader about readmitting weapons inspectors.
The Republican right may believe that pacifism is so firmly ingrained in the psyche of the left that all arguments will fall on deaf ears. But are they right to cut their losses? Maybe the strategists at the Pentagon should take a little time off from studying the politics of the Iraqi opposition and spend some time understanding their potential allies. There was, in fact, an extraordinary turnaround in the sensititivities of the left on questions of war and peace in the 1990s. After the cold war baby boom leaders who had been brought up on a diet of protest and peace marches became the most hawkish political generation yet. In Britain, Robin Cook, Clare Short and Peter Hain made the case for intervention in Kosovo with the same passion that they had called for world peace in the CND salad days of the 1980s. In Germany, the former revolutionary Joschka Fischer and student activist Gerhard Schroeder over-turned half a century of German Constitutional law to allow them to deploy troops abroad.

Cynics may claim that this was just more selling out on the road to power but that simply doesn’t explain why so many on the left changed their minds. The feeling of powerlessness in the face of genocide in Bosnia and in Rwanda meant that when European centre-left parties came to power, and had the chance to do so something about ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, they were determined to act where their predecessors have failed. The embrace of military power in support of humanitarian values was driven by the heart-rending ineffectiveness of diplomatic solutions and sanctions, which the left had previously pinned their hopes on during the last Gulf War in 1991.

This meant coming to terms with the use of power. The psychological hurdles to doing so were higher because of the innate, and largely justified, suspicion of Cold War military adventurism in Suez, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Yet the left found it could rediscover an older tradition – the universalist impulses that led their fore-runners to support military action during the second world and the Spanish civil war. Today as Bush threatens action on Iraq, the hawkish rhetoric of the post-Cold War era has given away to dove-like caution. In Britain, Robin Cook and Clare Short have quietly voiced their concerns about military action while the usually outspoken Peter Hain has been silent. In Germany Schroeder and Fischer are competing with each other to pour cold water on Bush’s plans as the German Chancellor declares that German troops will not be involved and that the “cheque book diplomacy” of the last gulf war (where Germany and Japan bore 80% of the costs) will not be repeated this time round.

So was the militarised left simply a flash in the pan? Was it simply a 1990s fad that was swept away in a cloud of dotcoms? Some of the reasons for the change in perspective are circumstantial. First, many on the left are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and are worried that a war in Iraq could further exacerbate the violence in the region. Second, opinion polls show the broader public is sceptical about military action, to say nothing of what most party activist think – and, of course, Germany is entering the final stages of a General Election campaign.

But some of the opposition is disingenuous. The intransigent demands for a UN mandate – reinforced by the Church of England’s recent updating of Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of the just war – would not be a definitive stumbling block if the left really believed in the case. Their primary concern is with justice and the project of building a rules-based global order. The UN can be an important part of this order but its decision-making can epitomise the worst of realpolitik. Because of the Russian and Chinese vetoes on the Security Council, the United Nations has at times been as much a barrier to justice as a source of it – neither Rwanda nor Kosovo were the subject of a UN mandate.

Of course, the left’s ambivalaence about war also has a lot to do with who is calling the shots. During Kosovo, it was the Europeans who were setting the pace and convincing a reluctant America to get involved – although the opposite was true over Bosnia. Over Iraq, Washington is clearly in the driving seat. A former ministerial aide blames the residual power of anti-Americanism: “The natural reaction of the CND lot is to see any American intervention as imperialism. There is a knee-jerk reaction that if it is supported by a rightwing government it must be bad. It hasn’t helped that the Americans are being so uniliateralist and pulling out of treaties left-right and centre. You can understand why the left think that this isn’t about international order but about George Bush Junior finishing off his dad’s work – but their prejudices are blinding them to the real issues.”

So is there anything that could make the left change its mind? What would the conditions be for a war that the left could support? Rock-solid evidence of a real and imminent Iraqi threat to the west or the region would probably produce acquiescence for action, but it is unlikely to mobilise their hearts and minds. For a progressive case to do that it would have to be based on the principle of humanitarian intervention. The liberal philosopher Michael Walzer has described how the left’s opposition to the war in Afghanistan faded because of the enthusiasm with which so many Afghans greeted that success: “the pictures of women showing their smiling faces to the world, of men shaving their beards, of girls in school, of boys playing soccer in shorts… was no doubt a slap in the face to leftist theories of American imperialism, but also politically disarming… it was suddenly clear, even to many opponents of the war, that the Taliban regime had been the biggest obstacle to any serious effort to address the looming humanitarian crisis, and it was the American war that removed the obstacle. It looked (almost) like a war of liberation, a humanitarian intervention”.

Could the same thing happen with Iraq? The left is acutely conscious of the double burden of suffering which Saddam’s continued presence places on the Iraqi people. His own mass killings, summary executions, detentions, and attacks on minorities have been well documented by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations Commission for Human Rights. And this record of suffering is overlayed with the collateral damage of a decade of containment: comprehensive economic sanctions, no-fly zones, periodic military attacks. Opponents of war are making the case that containment works. But that also means that, as long as Saddam remains in power, so too will these policies. Yet there has been no clear picture of a post-Saddam Iraq. If it could be credibly shown that changing the regime in Iraq would mean ending sanctions and creating a functioning democracy, the case for action might persuade more people.

But that will not be the case which President Bush makes this Autumn. After September 11 it is inevitable that America’s self-defence will weigh more heavily domestically than the welfare of the Iraqi people. And Bush’s strategy for the mid-term elections is based on keeping America mobilised. If European citizens were more inclined to take the threat of attack seriously, this would no doubt be their first priority too. But focusing on exclusively on self-defence rather than talking up the benefits for the Iraqi people is likely to further fuel the suspicions of the left who fear that a western-imposed military government will only be marginally less oppressive to Iraqi civilians than Saddam Hussein.

Tony Blair has kept his powder dry so far, but if he decides to back a military offensive – and it is extremely unlikely that he would break with the Americans – his dossier of evidence would have to show how the suffering of the Iraqi people and Saddam’s external threat are linked and how a plan for regime change can get rid of both. That is his best hope of persuading some of those who supported the west’s military interventions in the past but who remain to be convinced this time round.

· Mark Leonard is Director of The Foreign Policy Centre (www.fpc.org.uk) and writes a monthly online commentary for Observer Worldview.

In reacting to the horrific bomb in Karachi yesterday President Bush spoke about the Pakistani casualties and addressed the muslim world as well as his own citizens: “They claim they are religious people, and then they blow up Muslims”, he said of the perpetrators. Back in 1998, when the American Embassy in Nairobi was bombed, even President Clinton focused much more heavily on the Americans injured even though many Kenyans had been killed. While President Bush was criticised for showing a similar insularity in his talk of crusades days after September 11th, yesterday’s remarks show how the administration has realised that America needs to change the way it speaks to the rest of the world.
Bush’s remarks reflected a major overhaul of the way America is seeking to get its message across. The administration has realised that it can’t only talk to client regimes through diplomats if it wants to get public opinion onside. Realising the depth of hostility to the US in much of the world, the American administration’s first instinct was to look to Madison Avenue. When Colin Powell appointed Charlotte Beers as assistant secretary of state, he said: “I wanted one of the world’s greatest advertising experts, because what are we doing? We’re selling. We’re selling a product”. As Chief Executive of the advertising giant, J Walter Thompson, Beers hit the headlines by eating the dog food she was promoting to prove how tasty it could be. Her role now is to mastermind “a hundred years war” to convert the Arab and Muslim worlds to American values.

But Beers will not be doing the browbeating that many will associate with the American “hard sell”. She says that the key is to start with her audience’s priorities (or “walk in their shoes” as she puts it). She wants America to engage them emotionally – not bombard them with “megaphone diplomacy”. The American propaganda in Afghanistan last September ranged from “leaflet bombs” showing women beaten by the Taliban with the message: “is this the future you want for your children and your women?” to single channel wind-up radios that only tune into the Voice of America.

Beers favours a different approach. One of her early initiatives was rebranding the Voice of America’s Arabic service as ‘Radio Sawa’ (‘Radio Together’). Gone are the hours of US government monitored talk which attracted a small audience of older decision-makers. In its place is a fast-paced music channel aimed at the young who subliminally ingest news bulletins in between blasts of Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. Beers also plans to launch a 24-hour Arabic satellite news channel which will take on the mighty Al-Jazeera.

Her other projects include airing short videos which profile the lives of Muslim Americans – teachers, basketball players, firemen. The intended message is that the United States is an open society, tolerant and accepting of all religions. What is more, they are backed by serious money – $900 million for promotional materials, cultural and educational exchanges and launching radio and television channels in the Middle East.

But America must realize that it starts from a very low base. A senior official in the White House conceded to me that it will take a lot to overcome Middle Eastern cynicism: “We’ve made no attempts to communicate with ordinary Arabs unless we are bombing them or imposing sanctions on them – I wouldn’t like us if I were them”.

And the deeper problem is that a communications strategy can’t work if it cuts against the grain of American foreign policy. It will be impossible to win hearts and minds unless the people being targeted get a sense that America really cares about them as individuals – not just because Americans are scared that they might become terrorists. This administration, in particular, has demonstrated that it values coercive power above all else. This means that public diplomacy can only be seen as the projection of power. Sophisticated attempts at building relationships with foreign publics will be undercut by unilateralist policies that always put American interests first. Radio Sawa will not be able to defeat the censorship of other governments because its own editorial content will still reflect the views of the American Government. For all Charlotte Beers’ good intentions, American public diplomacy could become mired by these contradictions – a velvet fist in an iron glove.

Europe, on the other hand, does not have the same problems as America. This could open up an important space for Britain to lead the European Union in providing an alternative to public diplomacy. Because Europeans do not rely on the hard power which America takes for granted, Europeans have had to draw on other sources of influence. When Tony Blair appears on the world stage, he draws as much on his moral authority and success in Northern Ireland as on his formal economic or military power. Europeans are also well-versed in how public opinion in other states affects our own politics – whether it is Danes or Irish who enjoy saying No in referendums, British Euro-scepticism, or French paranoia about British beef. Ask Romano Prodi.

The European history of multilateralism also brings a different – and less messianic – tone to dealings with the rest of the world. It is highly unlikely that any European leader – Berlusconi perhaps excepted – would talk about an axis of evil. Europe’s public diplomacy institutions are not seen as conveyor belts for propaganda: the Goethe Institut and the British Council talk about ‘mutuality’ and ‘building relationships’ rather than selling British or German values. The BBC’s international broadcasting channel is called the “World Service”, not the “Voice of Britain”.

So can Europe play the same role in the battle for public opinion as America does in the air and on the field?

On the surface, it looks promising. Even at a purely economic level, if you add up the budgets of all the European countries they dwarf American expenditure (Britain alone spends half as much as America, while France and Germany spend even more). But as in so many areas Europe punches below its weight because it spreads its resources too thinly – and often even competes against itself. Robert Templer, of the International Crisis Group, cites Afghanistan as “a conspicuous failure of public diplomacy”. Western nations have concentrated on branding their aid and assistance in a competitive fashion. Templer claims this has robbed the fledgling central Afghan administration of profile, legitimacy and, ultimately, stability. The French, for example, have proudly reopened the Lycee in Kabul and played on old links to Ahmed Shah Massoud in an attempt to promote their influence in the area. They also undermined the unifying symbolism of the return of the old King, Zahir Shah, by very publicly receiving the Defence minister who had snubbed the King by being in Paris at the time of his return.

European, or western, cooperation has been hampered by different national interests. In developed countries – and even some regional powers like Nigeria or South Africa – it will always be necessary to compete for trade, investment and political influence. But Britain, or any other European country for that matter, cannot really claim to have a national interest of its own – distinct from western or European interests – in more than perhaps fifty countries – a quarter of the UN’s membership. In most of the world, competition will be counterproductive, wasting resources while undermining the West’s objectives in those countries. Each country should focus national promotion on the few key countries where they have a real bilateral interest. The starting point for a new approach, which Tony Blair should propose at the Danish EU summit this autumn, is for the European Union to develop a plan for co-operatively funded public diplomacy in countries where it has no differentiated interests, but a pressing communal need.

If European countries are serious about developing a common foreign policy they should play to their strengths rather than their weaknesses. Instead of crippling ourselves with envy of American hard power, we should commit serious resources to developing an arsenal of soft power. While the contradictions in American public diplomacy remain, it will become even more important that Europe find the credibility to build real relationships with citizens around the world.

· Mark Leonard is Director of The Foreign Policy Centre. His report Public Diplomacy (£14.95), written with Catherine Stead and Conrad Smewing, will be published on Tuesday 18 June. To order a copy, email: info@fpc.org.uk

At the end of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington a middle-aged woman with a weather-beaten face and a brown wig sits on a milk crate. Surrounded by placards calling for nuclear disarmament, she hands out cheaply produced leaflets to passers-by. This remarkable woman has been holding a vigil outside the White House day and night for 21 years – sleeping, in a sitting position, for just 3 hours a night, so as to avoid breaking the stringent DC vagrancy laws. It is impossible not to be moved by her conviction and moral rectitude; it is equally impossible not to be depressed by the futility of a cause which has robbed her of the best years of her life.
It does not take long for Americans to figure out that Concepcion Picciotto is European. Like Concepcion’s faith in world peace, the European belief in multilateralism and the human rights of prisoners seems weak and unworldly – a luxurious delusion which post-9/11 America can no longer afford.

I went to Washington and New York last week to take the temperature of American foreign policy. If there was one theme that united policy-makers in the White House and State Department with academics and analysts from a range of think-tank and media perspectives, it was that America will only listen to Europe if we can come up with new arguments or strategies that will surprise and interest them.

The post-9/11 belief that Americans had learnt the necessity of multilateralism has been reversed; Americans seem to have learnt only the impatience and frustrations of a multilateral approach. Even NATO – practically the leanest and most targeted institution around – is seen as terminally bureaucratic.

A grizzled old hand like Marvin Kalb, a news anchor at NBC for two decades, described the new impatient mood: “Up until 9/11 we were willing to stay up all night and talk through the issues. Now people are not interested in your pious, well-intentioned advice. 9/11 was an intellectual slap across the head”.

So Americans seems as little inclined to listen to lectures from European governments as from Concepcion’s pavement protestors. So what should Europe do?

Tony Blair’s answer has been to be unflinching in his public support for the United States. The left dismiss this as weak or opportunistic, and believe Blair is deluded in believing that such solid support will enable him to influence, or extract concessions, later. Does he really think Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld will listen to him?

The latest dispute over steel shows that, though Condi Rice may have been reduced to tears by the playing of the star-spangled banner at Buckingham Palace, the Republicans’ gooey sentimentality does not infuse their political strategy or weigh heavily when it comes to paying back domestic political constituencies.

Many Americans compared Blair’s plight to that of the long-suffering Colin Powell – arguing about the detail and reluctantly making concessions in the hope that more influence can be exerted from the inside than by sniping from the sidelines. By its nature, this form of influence cannot win spectacular public victories. It seeks to work at the margins, in the tactics and implementation of policy rather than at a strategic level. But the complexity of US foreign policy-making, and the continued importance of the State Department in making and implementing this, has been understated in much recent media commentary.

Francis Fukuyama became famous for his confident belief in the global triumph of liberal democracy. He does not believe that the events of 9/11 change this fundamental analysis. But he tells me that the differences between us are about much more than policy or interests, they are existential: “The US and Europe come at international law from such different angles. Every country in Europe has been busy divesting itself of sovereignty with the Euro and Maastricht. Americans still have an abiding belief in American exceptionalism and sovereignty. The American government still thinks that sources of legitimacy are national and that there are no higher sources of legitimacy. The traditional concern is that a lot of international law has been made by governments which are less democratic than the US”. In fact, Fukuyama claims that Americans are so suspicious of international law that they don’t even think that Europeans themselves believe in it, “A lot of my friends think that Europeans do not really take GMOs or global warming seriously – they think these are just deliberate ploys to hobble America”.

But other Americans cite examples of European influence. Joseph Nye – who was in the Pentagon during the Clinton era and now runs the Kennedy School at Harvard – thinks we need to pick battles in areas where we have some influence: “There is a tendency for Americans to think that Europeans don’t matter. But – on the extradition of suspects, bargaining on the trade round, the fact that GE couldn’t merge with Honeywell – they do. Europeans should remind Americans every now and again that if they want co-operation it is a two way street. There is a tendency to think that Europe is controlled by a bunch of whining lefties. So when criticism comes from unexpected directions – such as Chris Patten’s recent outburst – it is more difficult to dismiss.”

But Blair’s apologia is not just aimed at the residents of the White House. The primary audicence is the rest of the world. It would be straightforward to stand aside with our principles intact while the US acts in a unilateral way. But that could have an even more corrosive effect on liberal internationalism than explaining and supporting their actions (even if you have to occasionally swallow hard). The idea of an international community based on rights and responsibilities is a public good – and one that Europe has more to gain from than anyone else.

The hard truth is that this international order, simply to exist, will continue to depend heavily on American power. So the legitimacy of this “European project” of creating a rule-based world order will remain umbillically linked to America’s standing in the world. Blair is accused of simply supplying a multilateral fig-leaf for US actions, but the alternative may be no international legitimacy at all. This may be strategic tight-rope walking and nobody can be confident that it will succeed. Many American actions risk unpicking all the painfully extracted advances of the late 20th century – from the International Criminal Court and Kyoto to the WTO and Kosovo. But if the American administration remains unintertested in framing its actions in ways that appeal to wider audiences, it is safer for Blair to take on this role than let no one do it at all.

The European perception that this makes him simply cheerleader-in-chief is simplistic. This must be a three-pronged strategy; not simply an ambassadorial role. And at least as important as consultations on how to implement strategy is the humanitarian aftercare role that Europe can supply for military interventions. Some British diplomats and soldiers may bridle at a role that could be caricatured as international social work. But prevention and reconstruction is the vital part of the jigsaw which bores the Americans. This is where Europe has the capacity to make a meaningful contribution.

In many ways Europe’s role in global society mirrors Germany’s role in the development of the European Union. While France and Britain have asserted the national interest and bristled at the idea of becoming net contributors to the EU, Germany has made a long-term investment in the structures and quietly paid for the EU’s development and smoothed the disagreements between its more nationalistic fellow member states.

Blair is riding sky-high in American opinion despite having slipped a principled universalism into the coalition’s rhetoric. The necessary contradiction of his position – that he is supplying legitimacy for actions and events over which he lacks ultimate control – puts him in permanent danger of losing credibility. But his energetic attempt to square this circle has to be a better bet than principled irrelevance.

Mark Leonard is Director of The Foreign Policy Centre (www.fpc.org.uk) and editor of the forthcoming collection “Reordering the World: the long-term implications of September 11th”. This is the first in a series of monthly online columns for Observer Worldview. You can email the author at mark@fpc.org.uk.