By Eileen Conrad

The war in Iraq has undermined the United States’ credibility abroad, and perceptions of American unilateralism are now widespread among European nations, according to a new book by Peter H. Merkl, a UC Santa Barbara political scientist.

He explores the events and conflicting political doctrines that led to this breach in foreign relations, especially with Germany and France, in “The Rift Between America and Old Europe: The Distracted Eagle.”

The underlying cause for the rift, Merkl writes, is America’s neo-imperial, unilateralist posture and policies, which stand in sharp contrast to Wilsonian internationalism. Under widely accepted internationalist doctrines, foreign policies dedicated to supporting collective security led to the creation of the United Nations and established a rule of law backed by the Security Council, a web of international treaties, and international courts.

“Today’s American leaders oppose European champions of an American-initiated international order while identifying themselves with the imperialist European doctrines and practices of another age,” explains Merkl, an emeritus professor who specializes in European politics.

The rift developed after a number of policy disagreements initiated by the administration of President George W. Bush, and dating to before the September 11 terrorist attack. The United States refused to continue negotiations over the Kyoto Protocols on industrial emissions and global warming, or to adopt the treaty establishing an International Criminal Court.

Instead, “Washington insisted on a free hand in pursuing worldwide, imperial American interests without being hampered by international obligations to the United Nations, to disarmament treaties like the Nuclear Test Ban, and to international law in general,” Merkl writes.

After the 9/11 attack there was an outpouring of public and governmental support from America’s European allies and much of the rest of the world. Shortly thereafter, according to Merkl, the Europeans were taken aback when the “neo-conservative Bush administration” scornfully rejected their well-meant offers of post-9/11 assistance.

Still, as an expression of their ongoing solidarity with the United States, most European allies enthusiastically joined the war on terrorism in Afghanistan and helped to expose terrorism cells in Europe. But for some, enthusiasm soon gave way to pacifist reactions when the United States switched the focus of the war from terrorism to changing the regime in Iraq, Merkl notes.

“Europeans were mystified by Bush’s ‘axis-of-evil’ reference in his State-of-the-Union speech before Congress in which he switched to a new enemy,” says Merkl, who conducted extensive research on European and American media opinion for the book. Early in 2003, the European-American estrangement led to an open break when Washington plunged ahead—overriding United Nations and allied support for weapons inspections in Iraq—to launch a “blitzkrieg operation” against Saddam Hussein, Merkl writes.

European resistance was influenced, according to the book, by recent failings of American democracy—the widely criticized ballot-counting problems in Florida in 2000 and the resolution of the presidential election by Supreme Court fiat—and that changes in American policy in the Middle East and toward the European allies seem dominated by rampant greed, especially for oil, and economic advantages at home and abroad.

Europeans perceive both as the corruption of an idealized image of democracy, Merkl concludes, and an important reason to balk at American leadership under President George W. Bush, especially in the Middle East.