The impact of the 11 September attacks on international relations has been misinterpreted, with much reference to Pearl Harbor to justify Washington's new interventionism. Following the Clinton administration's "humanitarian war", the Bush administration is using the "war against terrorism" to bring the world into line, while the US State Department tries to communicate a message (taken up by the media) that the US now favours a multilateral approach, although the new White House team initially seemed against it (1).
We should compare current events with the Gulf war. Then, to reconcile his country and public opinion to the war, George Bush senior was careful to surround himself with an international coalition (2), cloak himself in United Nations resolutions and secure the active or passive complicity of Moscow and Beijing. All this was crucial to getting Congress to approve the use of US armed forces, which it did by a small majority in January 1991.
Ten years on, far from reviving multilateralism, George Bush junior is creating "unilateralism" disguised as a coalition. As French foreign minister Hubert Védrine says, "The US remains unilateralist in its re-engagement" (3). In the Gulf war, the US acted under a Security Council mandate even though, in practice, the war was waged in the name of the UN but not by it, as then secretary-general Javier Pérez de Cuellar pointed out. The Bush senior administration used the UN mandate's limits and regional partners' wishes as a pretext to justify failing to send the army into Baghdad to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime. This time, in the words of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "The mission determines the coalition, and we don't allow coalitions to determine the mission" (4). The mission is decided by Washington.
The US deliberately rejected the Security Council's offer, in resolution 1368 of 12 September, to do everything necessary to respond to the attacks in accordance with the UN charter. It declined the offer quickly made by the US's closest allies to invoke for the first time Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty, under which an attack on one member of the Atlantic Alliance is an attack on them all. Instead, the US went to war alone, with only Britain's loyal prime minister, Tony Blair ("vice-president Blair"), at its side, calling for individual military contributions from allies as it suited the US, on its own terms and under its sole command.
"Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists," Bush famously declared to Congress. When Bush received French president Jacques Chirac on 6 November, he warned: "A coalition partner must do more than just express sympathy; a coalition partner must perform. I have no specific nation in mind. Everybody ought to be given the benefit of the doubt. But over time, it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity."
This was clearly directed at Muslim countries, far fewer of whom have taken the US side than did in 1991, and with less commitment. But it was articulated in the presence of one of Washington's Western allies. France, while being part of the expression of solidarity with the US and sending troops to assist, in a measured way, in Afghanistan, had once again proffered the US leaders unsolicited advice. It had urged them not to react too brutally or unilaterally, but to go through the UN, and it was backed initially by its EU partners.
Events brought renewed disappointment to all who had hoped that a united and independent European attitude would emerge towards the US in politics and war. Following Blair's lead, German chancellor Gerhard Schröder risked a major political crisis in his own coalition by dispatching German troops at Washington's behest; he had already sent Awacs radar surveillance aircraft to help protect US air space. Silvio Berlusconi's Italy was not idle, either. That these, and other EU members, responded individually to US demands makes clear the limits of the "common foreign and security policy".
If a turning point in international relations has been observed, it has been in Washington's relations not with its traditional allies, but with China and Russia; recent years have seen closer military and political cooperation between these powers, united in their opposition to the US. But there can be no comparison between the US bombing of Afghanistan and of Moscow's and Beijing's ally, Serbia. Moscow and Beijing are as much against "Islamic terrorism" as Washington; together with three former Soviet republics of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan and Tajikistan), they formed a "Shanghai group" in 1996 for the joint struggle against Islamic militancy. This June, the group became the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, with Uzbekistan its sixth member. Russia and China were predisposed to support an international struggle against radical Islam.
But since 11 September, while pledging support in principle for the fight against terrorism, Beijing has had reservations similar to those it expressed by abstaining in the Security Council at the time of the Gulf war. Anxious not to offend Washington before China's admission to the World Trade Organisation, agreed in Doha in November, the Chinese leadership nevertheless tempered their support. They wanted the response to the attacks to be under UN auspices and asked for reciprocity — support for their own struggle against "Islamic terrorism" in Xinjiang and against Taiwanese "separatism".
Beijing has many reasons to be concerned. There is the prospect of US forces being stationed on China's western borders long term. Washington's closer ties with Pakistan and India have reduced China's room for manoeuvre, since it supported the former to neutralise the latter. Japan has recovered a political capacity for military intervention abroad. The US has stepped up pressure on China to stop supplying military equipment to countries accused of supporting terrorism, while refusing to cut US arms supplies to Taiwan. And there is the rapprochement between Moscow and Washington, which China fears may signal Russian acquiescence to America's anti-missile shield project.
Relations between Beijing and Washington have become more strained because of the US refusal to lift the sanctions imposed on China this year for supplying Islamabad with equipment that could be used to manufacture missiles, (the Chinese leaders deny this). They find it irritating because, after 11 September, the US lifted sanctions on Pakistan and India to prevent nuclear proliferation. This weighed heavily on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shanghai in October, which was to have been an occasion for countries to affirm solidarity with the US at war. Despite officially announced satisfaction, the outcome was a disappointment for Washington. The summit's final resolution failed to express direct support for the US offensive and stressed that action against terrorism should be taken under UN auspices and in accordance with international law.
The summit was the occasion for a meeting between Presidents Vladimir Putin, Jiang Zemin and Bush. On 19 October Bush met with Jiang Zemin but failed to convince him of the merits of the US anti-missile shield. Next day the Putin-Jiang meeting ended with a joint call for a swift end to the bombing of Afghanistan, reaffirming both countries' attachment to the anti-ballistic missile treaty, which Bush considers obsolete. A day later, the meeting between Putin and Bush ended better for Bush, with Putin saying he was sure they would be able to reach an agreement on anti-missile defence and Bush calling for them to put the cold war behind them.
This match, in which Putin is the star player and knows it, did not start recently.
Since Putin came to power, he has had two international priorities, in line with the interests of Russia's two biggest exporters, the hydrocarbons and arms industries. To Washington's dismay, he has strengthened ties with the buyers of Russian weapons, China, India and Iran (5). He has also courted the two main potential customers for Russian oil and gas: China, which will receive Siberian oil through a 2,400 km pipeline by 2005, and Germany. Moscow already supplies most of Germany's gas and much of its oil and Germany heads the list of Russia's creditors. Putin has strengthened Moscow's ties with Baghdad, looking forward to the time when the end of the embargo on Iraq will release the promising contracts awarded to the Russian oil industry.
The Putin who signed a 20 year cooperation and mutual assistance treaty with China in Moscow in July, with political clauses implicitly directed against the US, is the same Putin who has met Bush four times since Bush took office, always with expressions of friendship and understanding. The reason for this mutual solicitude is obvious. The cool reception Bush received from Europe after his election taught him that he needed to mollify Russia if his allies, and his fellow-Americans, were to accept the anti-missile shield project, which is important to him. Putin has realised that the project could become a valuable bargaining counter in relations with the US, since it will have no neutralising effect on the Russian nuclear deterrent in the foreseeable future.
Moscow's wish list, including compensation for acquiescence to the Bush administration's desire to cancel or radically amend the 1972 treaty so that it can conduct unlimited new trials of anti-missile missiles, has grown longer lately. It includes a further symmetrical contractual reduction in strategic weapons; Russia wants to reduce the costs of maintaining a nuclear strength that is now far greater than it needs for deterrence so that it can increase the budget for conventional forces. Moscow is also seeking a reduction in the external debt to government creditors of the Paris Club, American support for Russia's application to join the WTO by 2004 and the removal of such obstacles as the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment (6).
After 11 September, Putin immediately seized the opportunity to improve his bargaining position, while scoring points with Germany and the Europeans (7). The new understanding in the West towards the Russian war in Chechnya is likely to soften opposition to the concessions Moscow wants, as shown by the warm welcome given to Putin by the German lower house, the Bundestag. Intoxicated by the sudden improvement in his relations with Nato, Putin allowed himself to dream of Russian involvement in Atlantic Alliance decisions or of Nato becoming a political organisation, including members with no military status (8). Russia was also rewarded by the the US oil giant Exxon's announcement of an investment soon of $4bn in the Sakhalin 1 oilfield in Russia's far east.
Putin's attitude will not cost Russia much in the short term — unlike 1990 when Mikhail Gorbachev sacrificed one of Moscow's favourite clients, Iraq, to relations with the West, after giving up an empire. The Afghanistan of the Taliban has long been in Moscow's sights, and Russia threatened to bomb it in reprisal for Kabul's support for the Islamist faction in the Chechen rebellion. The US and Russia had already collaborated against Kabul after Washington broke with its Taliban friends; a working party on Afghanistan, set up by Presidents Clinton and Putin in June last year, has been meeting ever since.
Moscow has done little more than provide Washington with intelligence about al-Qaida, the sworn enemy of both countries; it would not make a direct military contribution to the war, but Russia opened its air space to US craft, officially only for humanitarian flights. It also promised to take part in operations to retrieve US airmen, although it knew that the likelihood of the Taliban shooting down aircraft was minimal. It has increased military aid to the Northern Alliance, which it has been supporting for a long time and would like to see in power in Kabul, unlike Pakistan, Washington's favourite regional ally. For further good will, Moscow also decided, with little regret, to dismantle electronic listening posts in Vietnam and Cuba, the latter covering the US (9).
But Putin's most spectacular assistance to Washington was his permission for the deployment of US forces in the former Soviet republics bordering on Afghanistan. This concession is not as great as might first appear. The US was actually cooperating militarily with Uzbek president Islam Karimov's authoritarian regime before 11 September, and had been for more than five years (10). Putin would have been unable to deny Washington access to Uzbekistan, where American servicemen were already stationed. Moscow's attitude remains ambivalent about Tajikistan: when Rumsfeld visited Dushanbe recently by way of Moscow, he got no definite answer whether he could use airfields in Tajikistan, so much dominated by Russia.
The greatest risk Putin is taking, meeting the most reticence and criticism in his own entourage and army, is the risk that the US might now have a military presence in Afghanistan and Central Asia long term; that would greatly strengthen its position in the strategic stand-off over oil there (11). But Russian generals believe that Afghanistan is such a problem that Washington will never be able to control it; some are glad at seeing the US and its allies in the fatal trap that once held the Soviet Union. Putin was nevertheless careful to inform his generals of an army pay rise and an increase in the military budget the day before he left for Washington.
The Americans are not as gullible as Bush affects to be in his relations with Putin. At the mid-October summit Bush conceded nothing of major importance; he unilaterally announced the reduction in the US nuclear arsenal to the level deemed sufficient by the Pentagon while refusing to be controlled by a new Start treaty like the one Clinton and Yeltsin envisaged and Putin is demanding; he restated his determination to cancel the ABM treaty unilaterally if necessary to go ahead with his antimissile plans.
The two rival gurus of American "realism" in international relations, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, have expressed what is behind Washington's thinking. Both have recently stressed the importance of the US's determination to act unilaterally and have singled out Iraq as the next target for US action (12). So 11 September has accentuated the US's new unilateralist course since the end of the cold war.
* Lecturer at the University of Paris VIII (Saint-Denis), author of La Nouvelle guerre froide, PUF, Paris, 1999
(1) A good illustration of this effort and a definition of the new multilateralism, illuminating despite its diplomatic language, can be found in the statement by Richard Haas, Director of Policy Planning at the State Department,"After September 11: American Foreign Policy and the Multilateral Agenda", Office of International Information Programs, US Department of State, Washington, 14 November 2001.
(2) That is what Edward Luttwak, forgets when, in "New Fears, New Alliances", New York Times, 2 October 2001, he writes that "a great-power alliance for international order" like the present one has been unparalleled since that which faced down the revolutionary movement of the mid-19th century. He believes we are seeing the dawn of a "revolution in American foreign policy".
(3) Le Monde, 16 November 2001.
(4) "Face the Nation", CBS, 23 September 2001.
(5) On 2 October 2001, during the honeymoon between Russia and the West, Russia signed an agreement to supply $7bn worth of arms to Iran.
(6) Originally intended to force Moscow to allow Russian Jews to emigrate, it stands in the way of the permanent normalisation of US trade relations with Russia, since they must be approved annually by Congress.
(7) See Nina Bachkatov, "Russia: winning without fighting", Le Monde diplomatique English edition, November 2001.
(8) Without one or other condition, Moscow says it will be unable to agree to the Baltic States joining Nato, which will be on the agenda of the Alliance's Prague summit in November 2002.
(9) Russian chief of staff General Anatoly Kvashnin has said that the rent paid for the Lourdes base in Cuba, $200m a year, would be enough for Russia to build and launch 20 military satellites and set up many modern radar stations. Vietnam was asking for $300m annual rent for the Cam Ranh base, originally used to spy on the Chinese navy.
(10) See C J Chivers, "Long Before War, Green Berets Built Military Ties to Uzbekistan", New York Times, 25 October 2001.
(11) See Vicken Cheterian, "Afghanistan: the fault lines", Le Monde diplomatique English edition, November 2001.
(12) Zbigniew Brzezinski, "A New Age of Solidarity? Don't Count on It", Washington Post, 2 November 2001; Henry Kissinger, "Where Do We Go From Here?", Washington Post, 6 November 2001.