Population: One

Eugene Volokh provides me with an excellent launching point for some stuff I’ve been mulling over lately. He’s discussing recent polls which may show that the British public is not behind the US war on Iraq. In his wrapup, he says “I hope British public opinion is not being accurately reported here. But if it is, then just reflects the errors of the British public, not the errors of a hawkish policy.”

While (given his assumptions) there’s some validity to that stance, it fails to recognize that simply being convincing is an important goal for any diplomatic policy. If Bush’s hawkish stance turns Britain against the United States, and as a result Tony Blair is voted out and Britain joins the Franco/German coalition, it is not unreasonable to count that as a cost of the hawkish policy. At some point, one has to stand back and say “Wait a second. Perhaps it is not mere coincidence that the populace of so many European countries is upset with us; perhaps we might have put our case better.”

On my drive into work this morning, I was contemplating the rather aggressive actions France and Germany have taken lately. A lot of people are acting like this is some kind of inexplicable surprise. Well — you know, a lot of people warned of this several months ago. If the US takes unilateral action, they said, the world will turn against us. That foreign policy of Bush’s, they said, is going to make a lot of people very concerned. At the time, many claimed that the polls showing anti-American sentiment were just biased fluff, and that no rational nation would get upset about Bush’s preemptive doctrine.

Apparently, those who were concerned were right to be concerned. The question is not whether or not France and Germany are behaving rationally; the question is whether or not Bush’s policies will alienate much of the world. The answer, now, is obviously yes. Discussion of Bush’s policies must take into account the cost of that alienation; we can talk a lot about whether or not it’s worth it, but you can’t deny that it’s happening.

And in that regard, it might be wise to consider cautionary statements about the reaction of the Middle East to the actual invasion. Maybe — just maybe — those who warned us about the consequences in Europe are right about the possible consequences in the Middle East.

Baddish news on the UN front, from my point of view. Well, potentially bad. France, Germany, and Russia are working on a Security Council resolution which would do a number of things none of which include sanctioning a war on Iraq. It does include peacekeepers, which is interesting. Powell is upset that he learned about it from a press report. Takes respect to give respect, which Powell no doubt knows but he’s gotta register a complaint anyhow.

I regard this as potentially bad because I would like to see the Security Council agree on something, and increased divisiveness between the various factions ain’t gonna help anything. On the other hand, there’s a distinct possibility that this is a diplomatic ploy. The countries wanting something other than a US-led non-sanctioned war on Iraq haven’t had any coherent counter-proposal yet. If the Security Council winds up considering something like this, it gives in particular Turkey and the rest of the potential US allies in the region something to rally behind.

As Bush has demonstrated with his aggressive diplomacy vis a vis Saddam, it helps to have a stick. A resolution which might sap support for the US is definitely a stick. The question in my mind, however, is whether there’s a carrot in the other hand. Hope so.

I dunno, it’s like I feel some weird obligation or something. Saith Professor Reynolds: “essentially a pro-democracy, anti-dictator — and hence pro-war — student organization…”

It’s kind of hard to tell, since that’s a pretty terse argument, but I think that’s a fallacy of composition — he’s pro-war, as a consequence of his anti-dictator and pro-democracy stance, so everyone who’s anti-dictator and pro-democracy must therefore be pro-war. But since he doesn’t lay out the steps, preferring to just leap to the conclusion, one can’t be sure.

You gotta love these little self-fulfilling prophecies. The New York Sun tells us, in the course of arguing that anti-war protests should be forbidden, that “His [Thomas Friedman’s] point was that if terrorists strike again at America and kill large numbers of Americans, the pressure to curb civil liberties and civil rights will be ‘enormous and unstoppable.’ What we took from that was that the more successful the protesters are in making their case in New York, the less chance they’ll have the precious constitutional freedom to protest here the next time around.”

Well, the Sun writers clearly failed reading comprehension classes. What Friedman meant was that another 9/11 would make more people willing to listen to drivel such as the Sun is pumping out. It’s a warning against people like the Sun. Bah.