Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=02/13/03

TYPE=INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

TITLE=BRUCE JENTLESON, TERRY SANFORD INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC POLICY, DUKE UNIVERSITY

NUMBER=3-539

BYLINE=TOM CROSBY

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

INTERNET=

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HOST: Secretary of State Colin Powell says he hopes reluctant U-S allies in the United Nations will support authorizing military action to disarm Iraq. Among the reluctant allies are France and Germany. Germany last week (Feb 7-9) played host to the Munich Conference on Global Security, where the differences between the Europeans and the United States over possible military action in Iraq surfaced again. The U-S delegation to the conference included U-S Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman. Also in the U-S delegation was Bruce Jentleson, a former State Department official in the Clinton administration, who was involved in Middle East arms control and peace negotiations. He now heads the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University in North Carolina.

Mr. Jentleson says it became evident at the conference that, despite the differences between those European nations and the United States, there are still significant areas of cooperation. But he also tells V-O-A's Tom Crosby, reasons for those differences over Iraq are quite evident.

MR. JENTLESON: There are a couple of factors that come into play. One, I think, is kind of the accumulated effects of the ways in which the Bush administration is viewed in Europe as being anti-multilateralist; that it created a context, through its opposition of the Kyoto Treaty, the International Criminal Court, certain aspects of U-S peacekeeping, that was part of the context and part of the split in foreign policy approaches, before the Iraq issue came around.

Second is this sense of a genuine, substantive debate about the best way to proceed. And my own sense is that, where the Germans, I think, have made a mistake is in not distinguishing between their unwillingness to support the use of force outside the U-N and saying they're unwilling to support the use of force even if the U-N endorses it. In some respects, I think they have put themselves in a little bit of a box on that, and there is even splits -- it was apparent -- the Christian Democrats did not share that view within Germany, as well as splits with others.

But part of the problem, I think, that this administration has created for itself is not just what it does but how it does it. And its rather heavy-handed, "we know best," often arrogant approach really rankles many others in the world.

MR. CROSBY: But you talk about a split within the United Nations. Clearly, this is also a split within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

MR. JENTLESON: Yes, very much. And so the differences between the United States and France and Germany that have been in the U-N are now playing out in NATO. And one of the issues, I think, in which the French and Germans really overplayed their hand was this question of beginning contingency planning for defense of Turkey. And that should be automatic. There should be no question in an alliance that we may or may not defend each other based upon whether we agree on this or that issue.

And there was a lot of discussion at the conference this week and since then about that issue. And I think that is one where the Europeans, in some ways, got themselves into a position of opposing almost everything the United States does.

MR. CROSBY: Is there also -- and do you sense this among the conference participants -- a different view of where the Alliance should be going, where its mission should be? And that is, we tend to think that the Bush administration views the Alliance as not just defending Europe against aggression but perhaps having a more global reach.

MR. JENTLESON: Well, this whole question of out-of-area role, I mean, historically this has been a tough issue for NATO all along. Even during the Cold War, some of the greatest conflicts in NATO were the question of what role should it have on so-called out-of-area conflicts. And so, in some respects, this is an extension of that.

The most disturbing thing to me is that, when you get below the political level in the debate over Iraq, the kind of cooperation that is going on on other fronts of the war on terrorism, on border security and intelligence-sharing and breaking up cells, breaking up financial networks, there is quite excellent cooperation going on. And we were told this by the American ambassador and by high NATO officials. And my own sense is that, if we lose that kind of cooperation, which, in my view, is absolutely crucial to the war on terrorism, then we've really made a bad trade, and we have let the Iraq issue [prevail], which, to me, is less of a threat. There is a threat from Saddam Hussein, but our primary threat is from al-Qaida, and we are getting cooperation. And that tells me that the allies still see that they have a lot of shared interests. They know we're in this war on global terrorism together. And on the particular issue of Iraq, I think they strongly disagree with us, but in the overall war on terrorism, the Alliance, I think, is doing quite well.

HOST: Bruce Jentleson, a member of the U-S delegation to last week's 39th Munich Conference on Global Security. He is also the author of "With Friends Like These: Reagan, Bush, Saddam 1982 to 1990."

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