Donald Rumsfelds visit to the Middle East involved only the briefest of stops in Iraq, but it was evidently an occasion for celebrating a famous victory. In doing so, he made it clear that destroying the Saddam Hussein regime was only the first example of the US strategy of pre-empting possible threats.
This argument may lose some of its potency as a result of the failure to find the supposedly ready-to-use weapons of mass destruction, but this problem is hardly going to interfere with a triumphal good news story.
After all, a brutal and repressive regime in Iraq has been destroyed and a people liberated. Once again, the irony that in a previous existence, Donald Rumsfeld was leader of a US mission to Baghdad when Saddam Hussein was a valued ally can be conveniently forgotten. It is also best to dismiss the problem that so many Iraqis see the US forces as occupiers rather than liberators. The shootings in Fallujah reinforce this point, but again it is not something that will cause much concern in most of the US media, where the emphasis is on celebration.
France and the US: diplomatic fallout
In victory, the United States is already concerned with responding to those who did not offer it the support that was considered to be deserved, and France is the leading culprit in the league table of international bad behaviour. So far, the punishment has been light, but involves some exemplary actions that could foreshadow more serious moves. According to the US weekly Defense News, the Pentagon has taken the decision not to allow any US military aircraft to take part in the forthcoming Paris Air Show. Nor will it allow senior officials to attend.
This may seem a small issue, but the Paris show is, along with Farnborough, one of the worlds leading air events. It serves, in particular, as one of the main means for the French aerospace industry to demonstrate its products, and a high level of attendance from potential customers is essential. If the Americans stay away, this might seem to give the French free rein, but the grimmer reality for the latter is that US exhibits fresh from the Iraq war - and with combat proven plastered all over them - would have attracted more visitors who would then have also been exposed to French products.
Another ostensibly minor move was the reported decision by the Pentagon to refuse a French request to extend the tour of duty of its representative at the US Air Forces (USAF) Global Positioning System Program Office in California. Again, this may not appear significant, but GPS is the most widely used space-based navigational system and there is considerable symbolism in denying the request.
The extent of the hostility to France in Washington is hard to exaggerate. Rumsfelds special assistant for Europe in Brussels, Evan Galbraith, is quoted in Defense News as saying that the US and France may remain allies, but the rupture is the worst Ive seen since the Vichy Government was in power. Such a phrase is a calculated insult, given that Vichy France was little more than a Nazi puppet regime.
The decision to boycott the Paris Air Show comes at a time when the French aerospace industry is not faring too well and desperately needs a better export record, yet up to a third of all its exports go to the Gulf region which is now more firmly influenced than ever by the United States. As one French official remarked, Two years ago, if the Saudis, for example, decided to buy a French tank or fighter, it would have been possible. But today, can you imagine the White House letting the Saudis buy the Rafale for its Air Force? Its just not possible.
It is issues such as these seen as early signs of a further move to an aggressive foreign policy that are concerning France, Germany, Russia and other European states. They help explain this weeks meeting involving France, Germany, Belgium, and Luxemburg that discussed the further development of a European defence identity outside of Nato; they also illuminate the decidedly cool reception that Tony Blair received in Moscow.
Saying goodbye to Saudi Arabia
Meanwhile, the US decision to pull out most of its forces from Saudi Arabia is more complex than it first appears. It certainly serves the purpose of easing the domestic position of the House of Saud, not least because the US presence has been a powerful recruiting tool for al-Qaida, but the presence of American forces has also been difficult for the Pentagon itself.
In 1998, when the US staged its four-day air campaign against Iraq known as Desert Fox, the Saudis not only refused to let the US fly strike missions from its main Saudi base, but even refused to let the USAF re-deploy its advanced F-15E strike aircraft to available bases in neighbouring Gulf states. This time, too, the USAF had to refrain from using Saudi Arabia as a major launch platform for strike aircraft.
Moreover, the USs very presence in Saudi Arabia has been problematic for nearly a decade. There were a number of attacks on US personnel in the early 1990s, and these culminated in the attack in Dharhan in 1996 when a huge truck bomb exploded outside the Khobar Towers barracks block, one of a number that served what was then the main USAF base in Saudi Arabia. Nineteen Americans were killed and hundreds of people were injured. As a result, the US built a new base at a remote site at the heart of Saudi Arabia. The Prince Sultan Air Force Base cost $500 million and has housed up to 4,000 US personnel, with no less than 400 of them devoted entirely to perimeter security even though the base is in the middle of nowhere.
Because of its location, the base has been thoroughly unpopular with USAF personnel who have had to serve tours of duty there. This, combined with the security problems, provides a further reason for evacuating Saudi territory. Much of the relocation will be to facilities in Qatar, which is considered a much safer country for US personnel, but it will also be even more necessary to maintain a substantial presence in Iraq.
It is in Iraq, though, that the United States may find itself in an even worse situation than in Saudi Arabia. Virtually every day sees a deepening of the US security predicament in Iraq. It seems clear that US forces are not remotely interested in the creation of any kind of multinational stabilisation force to provide security for post-conflict peace-building, and it is becoming increasingly apparent that US combat troops are simply not equipped or orientated towards peacekeeping. The shootings in Fallujah come in addition to many smaller incidents over the past three weeks, and they suggest that Iraqi opposition to perceived US occupation is likely to escalate.
It would be a deep and bitter irony if the US forces end up facing in Iraq the kind of insecurity that they have experienced in Saudi Arabia and that is now one of the main motives for their intended withdrawal from the Kingdom.
