Well truth be told.. most of Europe has a problem believing Tony's happy ending.
Indeed, Powell killed it in Brussels yesterday...
Since it has taken until now for the Germans and French finally to say in public that they hope Saddam will lose the war, there is hardly a close rapprochement on either side.. and thus the Blair-bridge vision halts...
Now.. one dislikes pessimism on the whole.. but the postwar landscape looks bleaker by the day..
International law fractured.. the UN, bust..
The only optimism comes from triumphalist White House hawks or from the Downing Street dream factory..though their visions are quiteunique..different.
Elsewhere it is hard to find observers who feel anything but alarm at what is yet to come.
The cry is 'Look back at Afghanistan, controlled by warlords still, severely underfunded and under-policed, all reconstruction money still spent on basic feeding, a place forgotten as the world moves on...'
Will Iraq fare much better?
Daft question actually.. of course it will. The Afghani's.. noble people they are.. haven't much of a market for their rocks and sand and such.. the Iraqi's do.
Mind..here is another faint streak of hope on the grey horizon, though Tony may not see it that way... a chance now that the shock of schism may shake Europe into a new unity.
All Europe, Britain included, is agreed that Iraqi reconstruction must be done under UN auspices.. and that means what it says.
This unity of purpose offers Britain's best chance to get back inside a newly purposeful Europe, with its own progressive mission as upholders of multinationalism and international law... should Tony want to pull Britain into the new European hegemony..
Powell offered only a dim UN role.. an appointee would act as "the UN's eyes and ears" on a US-run interim Iraq administration.
Now no amount of diplomatic verbiage can obscure the difference between a genuine UN operation and a nominal one.
Chirac having taken the high moral ground on the war, to enormous approval in the polls, will not endorse a 'fix'... doubtfull the Russians or Germans would miss their chance to snipe at George diplomatically either.. and what's more.. neither can Tony now.
Unless the White House has a remarkable conversion, this gap looks unbridegable and the prime minister will soon be confronted again with that choice he never meant to make.. the choice between the Atlantic and the Channel.
There are many who say it is crucial that this time he jumps back with Europe to support the UN.
Right across Europe there is a new sense of purpose, as people wake up to their new responsibilities now they realize they must let go of the American umbrella they have idled under lazily since the end of WW2.
When Joschka Fischer.. a Green minister in what's now an almost phobic pacifist nation.. can announce that Germany must at last help build a European defence strategy, then a stronger Europe may be in sight..
The French and Germans are not calling it a 'counterweight' to the US.. but less aggressively.. 'a weight'..
Whatever the name.. one can be sure it's going to be on the end of whatever's swung at George's head..