The Continent's Misplaced Hysteria.(Europe on the War on Terrorism, 2001-)(Brief Article)

By whatever lingua franca, "unilateralist" has become Europe's latest dirty word. But there's also a word to describe European reactions to America's go-it-alone policy toward Iraq and possibly Iran or North Korea. That's hysteria, and it seems to be contagious.

France's Hubert Vedrine was first to catch the transatlantic bug. "Where would such policies take us?" the foreign minister fretted, branding the United States' seemingly reckless approach to terrorism as "simplistic." Germany's Joschka Fischer, not normally prone to America- bashing, quickly followed with a warning to stop treating friends as though they were no-account "satellites" of empire. And Chris Patten, the British foreign-affairs commissioner of the European Union, decried the United States' "absolutist" tendencies, calling on Europeans to act before Washington lurches into "unilateralist overdrive." As though Europe sees the United States as a runaway race car, about to blow some geopolitical gasket and send the world careering into catastrophe.

Secretary of State Colin Powell has tried to calm the jitters, insisting to any and all who would listen, including the U.S. Congress, that there's no plan for early military action to topple Saddam Hussein. No executive order is sitting on President George W. Bush's desk, awaiting his initials, Powell emphasized last week. However the United States ultimately decides to handle Iraq, the decision would come only after careful deliberation, in extensive consultation with friends and allies. "Chris worked himself up a bit," Powell joked with the Financial Times, as though Europe should get a grip and stop hyperventilating. As for cher Hubert, he's got a case of the "vapors."

It was yeoman spinmanship. But was anyone convinced? Not after Bush went beyond the secretary's message last week to say, "Make no mistake. If we need to, we will take necessary action to defend the American people." If there's such a thing as a Bush Doctrine, there it is-- unapologetically unilateralist, when necessary. But that, precisely, is the vital nuance Europe ignores, at least as the Bush administration sees it. "When necessary" is a phrase both Powell and the president take care to use whenever they speak on the matter. Richard Haass, director of policy planning at the State Department, thinks it wrong to label this "unilateralist." The new policy might better be thought of as "a la carte" or "hardheaded multilateralism," he says. The United States should go solo only in the last resort and under the most immediate threats to national security.

How to apply that test of "last resort"? At a confab of ...