KEEPING ALLIES

It is hardly shocking that members of the European Union are saying ever more loudly that they resent the United States throwing its military weight around. The United States has a lot of military weight; from the continent, its slightest nudge looks like a body slam. It is the U.S. diplomatic weight the EU might fret about, which is more than a bit light on the scale.

Take some of the events since that “Axis of Evil” line. President Bush tried to confer a level of coordination among Iran, Iraq and North Korea and force attention on these nations rather than on other weapon proliferators, such as China or Russia. He succeeded – now commentators point out that his words sent the moderates in Iran into retreat, gave Iraq’s Saddam Hussein an opportunity to rally support and made North Korea’s talks with South Korea and the United States far more difficult.

The president followed up his “axis” comment to observe that North Korea was “despotic,” prompting North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to call President Bush the “kingpin of terrorism.” If only the name calling was over comic books or marbles, then everyone else could let them go at it up to and including a climactic “did, did-not” to routine. Unfortunately, the potential results are too dangerous to allow, and so newspapers last week broadly reported on the observation of Howard Baker, the U.S. ambassador in Tokyo, that the president was making a larger policy point. “I think clearly he got their attention,” Mr. Baker said of the president’s remark. “… They may be on the brink of deciding well, you know, we’re about to mess up again and we’re about to lose what we thought we had advanced. I think he’ll make them focus on the importance of addressing these issues.”

No doubt much of Asia, South Korea in particular, hopes the president’s strategy works out – their lives may depend on it. The Europeans seem mostly to want to know what the plan is and how they are affected by it. EU countries seemed to have learned this much: The U.S. plan to combat terrorism is largely military in nature and the EU militaries aren’t needed. In a strict sense, this may be true. Diplomatically, it certainly isn’t because the last thing the United States wants in this war is a single Us vs. a many Them. For international policing, surveillance, intelligence and subsequent rebuilding, the EU is an invaluable ally, but to get this part of their cooperation, over the long term, they need to be regarded as equal partners over all.

The Bush administration has the skill to add heft to its diplomacy by including countries eager to take on terrorism and coming to agreement on the best approaches to take. For inspiration, it might recall that the last “axis,” some 57 years ago, was defeated not by a single nation but by allies working ardently if not always happily together.