on terrorism, anti-Americanism, and the "American Street."

The French and German objection, for reasons of calculated self-interest -- a very flawed calculation, I fear - to a routine American request to the North Atlantic Council to upgrade Turkey's defenses against the military threat from Iraq was a terrible injury to an Alliance that has served their broader interests well. For nearly three weeks, the United States, with fourteen of our eighteen European allies in the North Atlantic Council, has supported this necessary action, but has confronted a new unilateralism conceived in Paris and Berlin, a unilateralism that exposed the sneering in those capitals about the impulsive cowboy in the White House for the vacuous posturing and obvious misdirection it is. Whatever NATO decides, Franco-German unilateralism will have a lasting impact on trans-Atlantic security calculations. If this minority French-German obstruction is not overcome by NATO's deadline of Monday, France and Germany will have to answer to those who argue that Iraq could be to NATO what Abyssinia was to the League of Nations.



The United Nations Security Council risks that same fate should it not hold Iraq to account for its defiance. Patient American and British diplomacy at the U.N. delivered a unanimous vote in favor of Council Resolution 1441. France played a key role in negotiating the resolution and knew what they were voting for; Germany was fully aware1 of the debate as it prepared to assume the Council presidency in January. Americans, and many Europeans, were therefore astonished when France and Germany announced in advance of further consideration of the problem of Iraq that under no circumstances would they support enforcing the resolution's terms against Iraq.

Recent actions by Paris and Berlin in the most important international fora - the Security Council, the North Atlantic Council, and the European Union - raise serious doubts among nations on both sides of the Atlantic about their commitment to multilateral diplomacy and cause real damage to those institutions. The behavior of France and Germany has set back European unity and created a divided front that makes Iraq's peaceful disarmament less likely. Nations across Europe that have recently expressed a different view of multilateral obligations, including some of our oldest allies and our newest friends, expose the myth that France and Germany speak for Europe.

Those who deign to speak for Europe, notwithstanding the objections of elected governments across Europe, confuse consensus with effectiveness and appear to give priority to achieving a lowest- common-denominator result that preserves the illusion of unity at the expense of action to protect our security. Many Americans who support the historic project of European integration worry that rather than enhancing Europe's power in the world, the rush to integrate, and a cynical desire to define differences with America rather than meet common challenges together, reduces Europe's influence by turning the attention of European leaders inward, away from grave challenges to European security itself, and channeling their hostility toward the United States rather than our common enemies.



My prediction - if NATO ceases to exist within a year or two, today's veto will be the shot that killed it.