PROXY WAR

As things stand tonight, essentially two countries are fighting to control Iraq's destiny. Those two countries are the US and France, but we're not really fighting each other directly. It's become a diplomatic proxy war, a sort of chess match, with each side somewhat ironically offering up a proxy as possible casualties. For the US, where President Bush rests secure in a fixed term in office, that proxy casualty is British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who because of the structure of Britian's government could be removed from office at any time. For France, whose President Jacques Chirac (or is that Chiraq?) rests secure in a fixed term in office, the proxy is Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose Red-Rreen parliamentary coalition is hanging on to power by a thread. The US wants Schroeder gone, for reasons mostly having to do with his anti-American campaign which kept him in office, and because Germany has allied itself to the French anti-war position. Knocking off Schroeder and replacing him with a friendlier face might not necessarily turn Germany's UN votes to our favor (though it well might), but Schroeder's ouster would signal clearly to others backing France that they could suffer similar fates, and would signal to France that its worldwide support is tenuous. For France, a regime change in London would probably take the UK out of our column and render it either neutral (most likely) or shift it to France's side. Such an outcome would obviously be terrible for the US--outside our own troops and arms, the UK is supplying the bulk of the international forces arrayed against Saddam. The UK's presence in the coalition gives us the veneer of multilateralism, and adds to our moral case for war. Tony Blair has perhaps been the most eloquent spokesman for the need to remove Saddam--his political death in a no-confidence measure would take out the most philosophical warrior on the American side.

So the stakes are very high in the this proxy war. Schroeder is currently the weaker of the two proxies. Currently, his government is caught up in a nasty scandal relating to its knowledge of huge stockpiles of Iraqi bioweapons, and the fact that it concealed that knowledge for purely political reasons. The Red-Green coalition got into office on a strongly anti-American, and therefore anti-war, platform--acknowledging that Iraq does in fact possess banned weapons that are in fact highly dangerous to the German public during the campaign would have undercut their entire strategy, to say the least. Adding to this problem, Foreign Minister Joscka Fischer has made threatening gestures over recent disclosures that Schroeder had essentially negotiated an Iraq strategy with France without telling him. He's the Foreign Minister, and the leader of the Green Party which makes up a sizable chunk of the coalition--Schroeder's actions amount to cutting out the legitimate deal-maker and showing him the highest disrespect. If Fischer resigned over this issue, which is common in parliamentary systems, and took a few of his Greens with him, Schroeder's government would collapse. What makes this scenario somewhat unlikely is that Fischer is no friend of the US, as I've mentioned before. He has a checkered past to put it charitably when it comes to terrorism, having lived as a young man either on the fringes of such activity, or in the middle of it sucking up terror-sponsoring funds from the KGB, depending on who's talking about him. Whichever is true, it's certainly the case that he's a far left-winger, a supporter of Arafat and the Eurabian idea in its essentials, and doesn't want to make any moves that could possibly strengthen the US. But the bioweapons scandal is a large threat, and may yet undo Schroeder all by itself. Not far behind that, while the German public does not support war, it won't long support a government that willfully destroys its relations with the US, especially if such a souring results in American military bases leaving German soil. The US has been making sideways threats that it just might move its massive bases to friendlier states to the east, thus further weakening Schroeder's position.

News coming from London tonight is that things aren't much better for Blair, Britian's Prime Minister and America's proxy. His own Labour Party only supports his tough stance on Iraq up to about 44%, meaning that the majority of his own party is still against him. Fortunately for Blair, no backbenchers have yet risen to challenge him, and no likely challengers seem to be coming over the horizon. Labour's lack of qualified candidates helps an otherwise weakened Blair. Meanwhile the Tories, usually the most pro-American of the UK's major parties, has never had a majority supporting war, and word is that its support is slipping even as Blair is making his final push to get the British public on his side. Among Blair's most visible critics are MP John Gunner, a Thatcherite, and Douglas Hogg, who led Britian's relations with the Middle East during the 1991 Gulf War. These two are no rabid lefty anti-Americans--they're run of the mill Tories, usually strong on British national defense and on its "special relationship" with America. Clearly, Blair has his work cut out for him if such Tories are still skeptical of the case for war.

Whichever proxy falls first could well determine whether Saddam Hussein finishes out 2003 as Iraq's dictator. Let's hope Blair can hang on, and that Washington can find a way to (politically) hang Schroeder.