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But if events outside Washington's control have made the job more difficult, the main reason for its failure to win support for its Iraq policy lies on the shoulders of the Administration. Time and again at Davos, the complaint was heard that the Bush team simply has not done enough to make the case that the weapons of mass destruction supposedly held by Saddam Hussein's regime represent a clear and present danger to the security of the world. U.S. leaders say that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 puts the onus for proving that it has disarmed squarely on Baghdad, and that Iraq should — as South Africa, Ukraine and Kazakhstan have done in the past — abandon its weapons program and come clean.
But at Davos, this argument didn't cut it. The cry was repeatedly heard that if the U.S. and Britain have convincing evidence that Iraq is hiding weapons, they should produce it. Haass suggested that in time there would be more evidence forthcoming — with all the usual caveats that the U.S. did not want to reveal the "sources and methods" of its intelligence in Iraq. But the message from Davos was clear: if others are to be convinced of the case for war, that evidence needs to be produced — and soon.
As always, much of the criticism of U.S. policies in Davos was offered more in sorrow than in anger. "The whole of the world," said Gareth Evans, former Foreign Minister of Australia and now president of the International Crisis Group, "really wants to believe in America." With very good reason; American policies designed for a purely domestic audience have profound impacts far away. At an opening session on the world economy, economist Stephen Roach pointed out that the international economy was now more "U.S.-centric" than it had been for years. With sluggish growth in Western Europe and Japan — indeed, everywhere but China — internal decisions on the shape of the American economy ripple across the globe. And American decisions to toughen up on immigration, though they may have been taken for purely domestic reasons of homeland security, have both political and economic impact far from U.S. borders.
The central truth, which the Bush Administration still does not acknowledge with the wholehearted commitment that it might, is that the U.S. needs the rest of the world. As the wave of recent terrorist arrests in Indonesia, Britain, France and Spain have demonstrated, the success of the war on terrorism depends just as much on law-enforcement authorities outside the U.S. as it does on the actions of the FBI.
In the event of a war in Iraq, there will be little domestic appetite in the U.S. for a sustained American presence reconstructing the country. American voters, said one political leader in Davos, want to be sure that their sons and daughters come home soon. In practice — as in the Balkans and for that matter Afghanistan — the job of rebuilding Iraq will be largely in the hands of non-Americans.
For the Bush Administration to get the support it needs, it will have to do a better job than it has yet done of explaining why it takes the decisions it does, and why — as the Administration clearly believes — those decisions are in the interests of everyone, not just Americans. "Trust," said George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, at the opening session, "must be earned." In the eyes of the rest of the world, so far, the Bush Administration hasn't earned it.
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