Allies Disagree On War's Next Phase

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the world was united in protest. Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher immediately urged U.S. President George Bush to stand up to Saddam Hussein's aggression.

In the following months, Britain and the U.S. assembled the broadest and most powerful military coalition ever. The two countries formed the core of the international alliance to confront the Iraqi dictator and provided most of the forces for Operation Desert Storm.

Other European countries pledged support and shared the burdens. France, for instance, signalled immediately that it would be necessary to fight Saddam Hussein. Only a few days after Iraq invaded Kuwait, French soldiers were on their way to the region.

Germany meanwhile provided financial and logistic support for Operation Desert Storm, since its military forces at the time were prohibited from taking part in action outside NATO territory.

A new world in 2002

Eleven years on, the world looks very different. When U.S. President George W. Bush named Iraq as one prong in an "axis of evil" in his State of the Union address last week, his country's European allies winced.

The scripted remark suggested that Bush wants to move the "war on terror" into a second phase.

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U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz seconded the President when he spoke at an international security conference in Munich this past weekend.

"The best defense is a good offence," Wolfowitz said. "Our approach has to aim at prevention and not merely punishment."

But the United States' European partners in NATO don't see it quite like that.

Many of them see the possible U.S. operation against Iraq merely as America's desire to wrap up an "unfinished war".

Grounds for concern

European leaders and diplomats have expressed concern that an attack against Iraq could cause violent upheavals in the Middle East and spell the end of the international coalition against terror.

Former US national security adviser Brent Scowcroft already sees the Americans and the Europeans "drifting apart", after political leaders in France and Russia expressed concern over Bush's comments.

Russia's defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said "We will not be supporting military action on that level in other countries." Ivanov added there was no evidence that Iran had connections with terrorist organizations. He defended Russia's diplomatic and trade ties with Iran and said they would not be cut.

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German criticism

But the US has long viewed France as a weak link and Russia, since the fall of the Soviet Union, as a mixed blessing.

The strongest worries focus on countries that traditionally stand alongside US military action, and Germany is a prime example.

Prominent German politicians have indicated that unconditional solidarity with the US must not mean blindly following all American initiatives.

Ludger Volmer, Minister of State at Germany's Federal Foreign Office, said there was "no indication" that Iraq was involved "in the kind of international terrorism we've been talking about for the past months."

Angelika Beer of Germany's Greens, a party in the governing coalition with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats (SPD), acknowledged the risk that Iraq could may be developing weapons of mass destruction, but she said such danger cannot be eliminated with airstrikes.

Franz Müntefering, General Secretary of the SPD, said Germany is willing to take on risks but would not partake in "adventures".

Anglo-American dissent

These days, even Britain, the US's closest ally in the 1991 Gulf War, is among the skeptics.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw attributed Bush's comments about the "axis of evil" to US election-year politics.

Straw said that Britain would continue its dialogue with reform-oriented politicians in Iran and that it would keep building bridges with North Korea.

On Monday, US Undersecretary of State John Bolton rushed to London to explain to British officials what President Bush had meant by "axis of evil".

"I wish the reaction internationally had been more positive," Bolton said. "It clearly indicates that we have a lot more work to do, and we have already started."

Bolton said Iraq was still blocking the return of United Nations weapons inspectors, saying there are grounds to believe Baghdad would continue to be "just as obstructive as before".

With threats from Washington mounting, Iraq has meanwhile offered a "dialogue without preconditions" with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

But the offer is viewed cautiously by many in the UN, and overtly in the US, as suspect.