Our New Best Friend

...Chirac also had a narrowly political motive for opposing U.S...

...In fact, only one "Old" European joined on with the United States: Tony Blair...

...Across the Rhine, Gerhard Schroeder was in as much political trouble as Chirac had been...

...He concludes by warning that if the U.S...

...In the process, Schroeder deliberately created an atmosphere of anti-Americanism, which gets Shawcross's dander up...

...In the early 1990s, oil company Total/Fina/Elf signed an agreement to share oil production in an area of Iraq close to the Iranian border estimated to contain 30 billion barrels of oil—enough to meet French consumption needs for 30 years—at only $2 a barrel...

...It's a perspective that Shawcross largely shares...

...The British prime minister had been a supporter of the U.S...

...His economic reforms failed to make a dent in rising unemployment, and the Wirtschaftswunder had become an object of ridicule...

...In Allies: The US., Britain, Europe, and the War in Iraq, Shawcross draws a bold line between Eurocrats like Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder and George W. Bush and Tony Blair, lonely soldiers in the battle to overthrow Saddam Hussein...

...He went on to say that the result of America's defeat in Indochina was catastrophic for millions of people in that part of the world...

...by every stratum of European society...

...French President Jacques Chirac considered Saddam his best foreign ally and would have faced a veritable insurrection from his country's over five million Muslims had he not come out strongly against the war...

...An alliance carefully stitched together over MARCH 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 59 BOOKS IN REVIEW nearly 50 years, by both Republicans and Democrats in the U.S., and Christian Democrats and Socialists in Germany, was in tatters, and will probably remain so for years to come...

...But as he said in a speech in October 2003, "given the horrors of what happened afterwards in Indochina I think that all of us who opposed the American war effort need to be very humble...

...After promising that he would not do so to American officials, Schroeder ran against invading Iraq and squeaked out a victory...

...He flew to Washington shortly after the Pentagon and Trade Center bombings to show his support, attended Bush's speech to a joint session of Congress on September 20, and would later, in July 2003, give a rousing speech to Congress himself...

...Is that the fault of the U.S., or the fault of our old European allies...

...Shawcross, you'll recall, gained notoriety in the 1970s with Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, which blamed the U.S...

...When one considers the role of the United States in the creation, protection, and encouragement of Germany since 1945," he fumes, "Schroeder's rhetoric appears graceless, reckless, and wrong...

...The battle for Iraq, he says, was pitched "between those who have committed mass murder or wish to, and those who seek a decent civil society...

...Sometimes," says Shawcross, "it almost seemed that [Blair] had become a hybrid creature: a British neo-conservative...

...deteriorated further, with accusations of fascism, war crimes, and immorality hurled at the U.S...

...He drives liberals and Europeans crazy because of his use of religious language, his desire to change the world, and what they see as his desire to destroy their domestic social welfare systems...

...S THE DEBATE AT THE U.N...

...Bush is, according to this observant Brit, one of the most controverAlfred S. Regnery is publisher of The American Spectator...

...This is quite a turnaround for a man once so critical of U.S...

...cannot successfully wage the war on terror, "dictators and zealots everywhere will rejoice at how easily the United States can be deterred, and all those countries that look to America to defend their stability and security will lose faith...

...It is the most important battle of our time...

...And the crook deflected a lot of criticism by campaigning against the United States...

...Shawcross now sees America and our one fast friend as the only countries willing to take on the hard fights, at our expense, that are crucial to peace and stability in the world in the twenty-first century...

...Local business interests also favored obstruction...

...and in the press over the Iraq war progressed, relations between what onald Rumsfeld dubbed "Old Europe" and the U.S...

...sial and radical presidents of modern times...

...prosecution of the Vietnam War for Pol Pot's bloody purges...

...Blair cared deeply about the U.S.-British "special relationship" and did not want to be remembered as the prime minister who had breeched it...

...from September 11 forward, and never wavered, even in the face of massive political opposition within his own party...

...and his native Great Britain in their role in the recent Iraq War...

...A4 60 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 2004...

...foreign policy...

...Shawcross argues that self-interest was the wedge that drove the two apart...

...But only in foreign affairs...

...In the runoff against Jean-Marie Le Pen, the race was dubbed "the crook versus the fascist...

...In return, the French bought oil for a song...

...Granted, the old Alliance is not—since the invasion of Iraq, and, indeed, since the battle in the United Nations preceding it—what it once was...

...Our New Best Friend Allies: The U.S., Britain, Europe, and the War in Iraq by William Shawcross (Public Affairs Press, 262 pages, $20) Reviewed by Alfred S. Regnery EADERS MAY BE SURPRISED to learn that William Shawcross has pubished a book that defends the role of the U.S...

...Allegations of corruption against him made defeat, and criminal proceedings shortly after, likely...

...French firms did billions of dollars worth of trade with Iraq's Ba'athist government, selling everything from basic goods to munitions...

...involvement in Iraq: his reelection, in the summer of 2002...