Thursday, December 18, 2003
GOOD AND EVIL
A Tigris Chronicle
The Arab world grapples with Saddam's captivity.
BY FOUAD AJAMI
Thursday, December 18, 2003 12:01 a.m.
We owe to Hannah Arendt one of the central insights of our time: the banality of evil. Arendt returned with that verdict after covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961. There were the monstrous deeds of Eichmann and the Nazi regime whose work he had done. But there was also the man in the glass booth whom Arendt saw and described: "Medium-sized, slender, middle-aged, with receding hair, ill-fitting teeth, and nearsighted eyes, who throughout the trial keeps craning his scraggy neck toward the bench . . ." There is a swindle, a disappointment to great evil. It never quite lives up to expectations. The image of Saddam Hussein in captivity was but the latest variation on Arendt's theme. The dazed and scruffy man in the "spider hole" was the very same tyrant who had inflicted unspeakable sorrow on his people, and on the peoples of two neighboring lands.
It adds nothing to say that the insurgency in that Sunni triangle of rage will go on with or without Saddam. Nor is it particularly insightful to assert that the jihadists who made their way to Iraq--across the Saudi or Jordanian or Syrian borders--are of a religious bent and had no use for the secular despot. In a highly personalistic culture susceptible to myth, the former dictator on the run had become a rebuke to American power, proof of our inability to penetrate an alien, seemingly inaccessible place. We had awed the region with our high-tech wizardry; so our enemies fell back on the consolation that we were strangers destined to lose our way in their cities and towns. Save for a minority of Arabs who cast their fate with us (I think of Kuwait and Qatar) we were in truth alone in an Arab world that wished us ill in this campaign. We had gotten our comeuppance, our enemies and false friends alike were happy to proclaim. The insurgents had bought time, and additional yarn, for Arab delusions; and the disappearance of the dictator fed the idea that we'd blundered into a place destined to thwart our power.
November had been the cruelest of months: our Chinooks and Black Hawks were being shot out of the skies over Tikrit and Fallujah and Mosul. There were rumors that we had begun to scramble for a way out. The capture of the dictator came in the nick of time. Our troubles are not over, not by a long shot. But the message has been received in Araby. The man who'd strutted around the region, who for all practical purposes dominated inter-Arab politics for nearly a generation, was found at the bottom of an eight-foot hole. Legends die hard. The crowd is, of course, what it is, and its capacity for self-delusion is bottomless. In the hours that followed the dictator's capture, and in the shadow of that image of him meekly undergoing a medical examination, the legend spread, in Ramallah and Cairo, and as far away as the Muslim suburbs of France, that it was all a trick, that the man had been drugged, that it had all been an American hoax.
The very same Arabs who had averted their gaze from the despot's mass graves were now quick to take offense that he had been exposed to public humiliation. This is the quintessential "shame culture," and we had snatched from that crowd a cherished legend. But we should not give up on the project we have staked out for ourselves: The quest for a decent political order that would take Iraq beyond its cruel history, and would demonstrate that despotism is not something "written"--maktoob--or fated, for the Arabs. For every Cairene and Palestinian, and for every "intellectual" in Amman, who was second-guessing the way we "processed" the dictator and displayed his surrender, the hope must be entertained that there are Arabs who saw into the tyrant's legend and his legacy. The celebratory gunfire in the streets of Iraq is proof that many of the dictator's compatriots, at least, are eager to be done with a legacy of radicalism and terror.
To the extent that a vast and varied Arab world can be read with reasonable clarity, a decent minority of Arabs has stepped forward to bury the dictator's legacy, to brand him a false savior who had promised the Arabs an age of chivalry and power only to hand them a steady flow of calamities. A noted Kuwaiti liberal, Ahmad Rabie, writing in the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat, gave the legacy of Saddam an apt summation. "Countless mothers will light candles and celebrate the tyrant's capture--mothers in all the cities of Iraq, in all the villages of Iran, in all the streets and quarters of Kuwait, everywhere the tyrant's cruelty was felt, and where his power translated into mass graves and mass terror."
It should not be lost on the potential foot-soldiers of religious terror pondering a passage to Tikrit across Iraq's borders that the man who had exalted "martyrdom" would not have it for himself. And it is not that hopeless a bet that after the crowds in Fallujah and Ramadi shout themselves hoarse in support of Saddam, they might come to a recognition that the cause is lost, and that the age of Sunni dominion has come to a close. In the same vein, the young Syrian ruler, Bashar Al-Assad, may insist that what happened in Iraq is no concern of his; but he knows better. The fate of Saddam is a crystal ball in which the rulers and the rogues in the region might glimpse the danger that attends them.
The capture of Saddam, like the war itself, is a foreigner's gift. This is a truth that stalks our effort in Iraq, and our determination to fight a wider Arab battle on Iraqi soil. Saddam was an upstart, it is true. The squalor he was found amidst was not unlike his own wretched beginnings. His path to power was paved with the Arab world's sins of omission and commission. He plucked potent weapons from within his culture's deadly dreams: anti-Westernism, a virulent hatred of Persia and Persians, the scorching of Israel with chemical weapons, the promise of nuclear weapons that would avenge humiliations inflicted on the Arabs. All those had been Saddam's arsenal. No one in the region had drawn limits for him. No "velvet revolution" within Iraq itself blew him out of power, no Arab cavalry had ridden to the rescue of Iraq's population. An American war disposed of this man.
Saddam, it is true, was alone in that "spider-hole" amid the litter of a run-down farm house. But he had been a creature of the Arab order; as late as March 2002, his principal lieutenant, the barbarous Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri (still on the run, an illiterate former street-vendor of ice who came into great power in the rise of the Tikritis) had come to an Arab summit in Beirut. He had been embraced by the rulers assembled there, and reconciliation was in the air. The crimes of the Baathist regime were papered over. It is not so difficult to see that a different destiny could have been had by that stupefied man flushed out of his "rathole" by soldiers of Task Force 121. He had once been the "knight of Arabism" marked by destiny to crush the "fire-worshipping Persians," and to lay to waste the Jewish state. The "knight" has stumbled, but those deadly dreams are not abandoned.
We are not yet readying to leave Iraq. But the dictator's capture lends the process of "Iraqification" greater legitimacy. With Saddam on the loose, our options were limited. We had full possession of Iraq, and we were responsible for everything under the sun. We now have room for maneuver, and the Bush administration has the warrant to grant Iraqis more power over their own destiny. We have given the best of ourselves in Iraq. We are not miracle workers, though. We can't wish for Iraqis more national unity than they wish for themselves, nor can we impose it on them. It is their country that is in the balance. It is they who must put behind them the age-old tyranny of the Sunni Arabs, and their pan-Arabism which was but a cover for sectarian hegemony, while keeping in check those who would want to replace it with a Shiite dominion.
Iraq, we must admit, has tested our resolve. We have not found weapons of mass destruction, and we may never do so. We found a measure of gratitude, but not quite enough. What we found was a country envenomed by a dictatorship perhaps unique in its brutality in the post-World War II world. We can't be sure that our labor in that land will be vindicated. There is sectarianism, and there are undemocratic habits, and a good measure of impatience. But the abject surrender of a tyrant who had mocked our will and our staying power, and whose very political survival stood as proof of our irresolution a dozen years earlier, can only strengthen our position in the Arab-Islamic world. In those unsettled lands, preachers and plotters tell about America all sorts of unflattering tales. The tales snake their way through Beirut and Mogadishu, and other place-names of our heartbreak and our abdication. It is different this time. The spectacle has played out under Arab and Muslim (to say nothing of French and German) eyes. We saw the matter of Saddam Hussein to its rightful end. We leave it to the storytellers to make their way through this American chronicle by the Tigris.
Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins, is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report.
A Tigris Chronicle
The Arab world grapples with Saddam's captivity.
BY FOUAD AJAMI
Thursday, December 18, 2003 12:01 a.m.
We owe to Hannah Arendt one of the central insights of our time: the banality of evil. Arendt returned with that verdict after covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961. There were the monstrous deeds of Eichmann and the Nazi regime whose work he had done. But there was also the man in the glass booth whom Arendt saw and described: "Medium-sized, slender, middle-aged, with receding hair, ill-fitting teeth, and nearsighted eyes, who throughout the trial keeps craning his scraggy neck toward the bench . . ." There is a swindle, a disappointment to great evil. It never quite lives up to expectations. The image of Saddam Hussein in captivity was but the latest variation on Arendt's theme. The dazed and scruffy man in the "spider hole" was the very same tyrant who had inflicted unspeakable sorrow on his people, and on the peoples of two neighboring lands.
It adds nothing to say that the insurgency in that Sunni triangle of rage will go on with or without Saddam. Nor is it particularly insightful to assert that the jihadists who made their way to Iraq--across the Saudi or Jordanian or Syrian borders--are of a religious bent and had no use for the secular despot. In a highly personalistic culture susceptible to myth, the former dictator on the run had become a rebuke to American power, proof of our inability to penetrate an alien, seemingly inaccessible place. We had awed the region with our high-tech wizardry; so our enemies fell back on the consolation that we were strangers destined to lose our way in their cities and towns. Save for a minority of Arabs who cast their fate with us (I think of Kuwait and Qatar) we were in truth alone in an Arab world that wished us ill in this campaign. We had gotten our comeuppance, our enemies and false friends alike were happy to proclaim. The insurgents had bought time, and additional yarn, for Arab delusions; and the disappearance of the dictator fed the idea that we'd blundered into a place destined to thwart our power.
November had been the cruelest of months: our Chinooks and Black Hawks were being shot out of the skies over Tikrit and Fallujah and Mosul. There were rumors that we had begun to scramble for a way out. The capture of the dictator came in the nick of time. Our troubles are not over, not by a long shot. But the message has been received in Araby. The man who'd strutted around the region, who for all practical purposes dominated inter-Arab politics for nearly a generation, was found at the bottom of an eight-foot hole. Legends die hard. The crowd is, of course, what it is, and its capacity for self-delusion is bottomless. In the hours that followed the dictator's capture, and in the shadow of that image of him meekly undergoing a medical examination, the legend spread, in Ramallah and Cairo, and as far away as the Muslim suburbs of France, that it was all a trick, that the man had been drugged, that it had all been an American hoax.
The very same Arabs who had averted their gaze from the despot's mass graves were now quick to take offense that he had been exposed to public humiliation. This is the quintessential "shame culture," and we had snatched from that crowd a cherished legend. But we should not give up on the project we have staked out for ourselves: The quest for a decent political order that would take Iraq beyond its cruel history, and would demonstrate that despotism is not something "written"--maktoob--or fated, for the Arabs. For every Cairene and Palestinian, and for every "intellectual" in Amman, who was second-guessing the way we "processed" the dictator and displayed his surrender, the hope must be entertained that there are Arabs who saw into the tyrant's legend and his legacy. The celebratory gunfire in the streets of Iraq is proof that many of the dictator's compatriots, at least, are eager to be done with a legacy of radicalism and terror.
To the extent that a vast and varied Arab world can be read with reasonable clarity, a decent minority of Arabs has stepped forward to bury the dictator's legacy, to brand him a false savior who had promised the Arabs an age of chivalry and power only to hand them a steady flow of calamities. A noted Kuwaiti liberal, Ahmad Rabie, writing in the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat, gave the legacy of Saddam an apt summation. "Countless mothers will light candles and celebrate the tyrant's capture--mothers in all the cities of Iraq, in all the villages of Iran, in all the streets and quarters of Kuwait, everywhere the tyrant's cruelty was felt, and where his power translated into mass graves and mass terror."
It should not be lost on the potential foot-soldiers of religious terror pondering a passage to Tikrit across Iraq's borders that the man who had exalted "martyrdom" would not have it for himself. And it is not that hopeless a bet that after the crowds in Fallujah and Ramadi shout themselves hoarse in support of Saddam, they might come to a recognition that the cause is lost, and that the age of Sunni dominion has come to a close. In the same vein, the young Syrian ruler, Bashar Al-Assad, may insist that what happened in Iraq is no concern of his; but he knows better. The fate of Saddam is a crystal ball in which the rulers and the rogues in the region might glimpse the danger that attends them.
The capture of Saddam, like the war itself, is a foreigner's gift. This is a truth that stalks our effort in Iraq, and our determination to fight a wider Arab battle on Iraqi soil. Saddam was an upstart, it is true. The squalor he was found amidst was not unlike his own wretched beginnings. His path to power was paved with the Arab world's sins of omission and commission. He plucked potent weapons from within his culture's deadly dreams: anti-Westernism, a virulent hatred of Persia and Persians, the scorching of Israel with chemical weapons, the promise of nuclear weapons that would avenge humiliations inflicted on the Arabs. All those had been Saddam's arsenal. No one in the region had drawn limits for him. No "velvet revolution" within Iraq itself blew him out of power, no Arab cavalry had ridden to the rescue of Iraq's population. An American war disposed of this man.
Saddam, it is true, was alone in that "spider-hole" amid the litter of a run-down farm house. But he had been a creature of the Arab order; as late as March 2002, his principal lieutenant, the barbarous Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri (still on the run, an illiterate former street-vendor of ice who came into great power in the rise of the Tikritis) had come to an Arab summit in Beirut. He had been embraced by the rulers assembled there, and reconciliation was in the air. The crimes of the Baathist regime were papered over. It is not so difficult to see that a different destiny could have been had by that stupefied man flushed out of his "rathole" by soldiers of Task Force 121. He had once been the "knight of Arabism" marked by destiny to crush the "fire-worshipping Persians," and to lay to waste the Jewish state. The "knight" has stumbled, but those deadly dreams are not abandoned.
We are not yet readying to leave Iraq. But the dictator's capture lends the process of "Iraqification" greater legitimacy. With Saddam on the loose, our options were limited. We had full possession of Iraq, and we were responsible for everything under the sun. We now have room for maneuver, and the Bush administration has the warrant to grant Iraqis more power over their own destiny. We have given the best of ourselves in Iraq. We are not miracle workers, though. We can't wish for Iraqis more national unity than they wish for themselves, nor can we impose it on them. It is their country that is in the balance. It is they who must put behind them the age-old tyranny of the Sunni Arabs, and their pan-Arabism which was but a cover for sectarian hegemony, while keeping in check those who would want to replace it with a Shiite dominion.
Iraq, we must admit, has tested our resolve. We have not found weapons of mass destruction, and we may never do so. We found a measure of gratitude, but not quite enough. What we found was a country envenomed by a dictatorship perhaps unique in its brutality in the post-World War II world. We can't be sure that our labor in that land will be vindicated. There is sectarianism, and there are undemocratic habits, and a good measure of impatience. But the abject surrender of a tyrant who had mocked our will and our staying power, and whose very political survival stood as proof of our irresolution a dozen years earlier, can only strengthen our position in the Arab-Islamic world. In those unsettled lands, preachers and plotters tell about America all sorts of unflattering tales. The tales snake their way through Beirut and Mogadishu, and other place-names of our heartbreak and our abdication. It is different this time. The spectacle has played out under Arab and Muslim (to say nothing of French and German) eyes. We saw the matter of Saddam Hussein to its rightful end. We leave it to the storytellers to make their way through this American chronicle by the Tigris.
Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins, is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report.
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Follow Healingiraq!
From CNN.COM
'A dark era is over'
Saddam captured in raid
• President Bush: "A dark and painful era is over. A hopeful day has arrived."
• Former Iraqi president was wearing pistol but did not fire it
• Saddam being interrogated at undisclosed location
• 600 U.S. troops staged lightning raid on rural hiding place
• Saddam was "very disoriented" at the time of his capture
• Baghdad streets fill with celebration
'A dark era is over'
Saddam captured in raid
• President Bush: "A dark and painful era is over. A hopeful day has arrived."
• Former Iraqi president was wearing pistol but did not fire it
• Saddam being interrogated at undisclosed location
• 600 U.S. troops staged lightning raid on rural hiding place
• Saddam was "very disoriented" at the time of his capture
• Baghdad streets fill with celebration
Hearts and Minds
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
ISTANBUL
There was a special event last Tuesday at the Kennedy Center in Washington: the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra, direct from Baghdad, played together with the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, with an Iraqi and an American taking turns conducting. For one brief, shining moment, Iraqis and Americans really played the music of hope together.
If only life could imitate art.
If only the Bush team could orchestrate all the players involved in rebuilding Iraq, the way the maestro, Leonard Slatkin, conducted these combined orchestras, we might get a decent outcome in Baghdad.
But I worry. Friends, we have a hearts-and-minds problem with Iraq: we've given them our hearts, and we've lost our minds. Our intentions are good in terms of what we wish for Iraq. But it is possible to do a good thing really badly. Yes, nation-building is always a messy enterprise, especially in a complex place like Iraq. As the saying goes, never watch sausage being made. But what about sausage being mismade? Now that is really ugly.
What prompts these thoughts is a series of conversations over the past month with a variety of officials involved in Iraq policy making — both Iraqis and Americans. Everyone agrees that the goal is some kind of democratic Iraq, but I have yet to come away from any of these conversations with a clear sense of how we are going to get from here to there, or even who exactly is the overall conductor of this diplomatic, financial and military symphony. I keep meeting with people, expecting to hear "The Plan," but I never quite hear it.
What I hear a lot of, though, are horror stories of Pentagon and White House red tape for anyone who wants to go to Baghdad to work in our mission there; continued guerrilla warfare between the State Department and the Pentagon and between the C.I.A. and the Pentagon, which borders on one quietly hoping for the other to fail; and a shocking lack of continuity in the U.S. team in Baghdad. I hear the U.S. civilians in Baghdad complaining that we need more troops and security — if we are going to set up a legitimate Iraqi political authority — and I hear the U.S. military complaining that the key to better security is setting up a legitimate Iraqi political authority, so Iraqis will know who and what they're fighting for. Local U.S. commanders in Iraq are running dangerously low of walking-around money to buy friends, and we've even managed to start a fight with Qatar (over news broadcasts), where we have our regional military headquarters.
I just arrived in Istanbul and a Turkish friend, Soli Ozel, an international relations professor, remarked to me that the U.S. had so badly mangled the postwar honeymoon in Iraq, even Turkish conspiracy theorists were baffled: "People simply can't believe that with all your human and financial capital you didn't think about the day after."
It's understandable that the Bush team wouldn't rush to give reconstruction contracts to France, Germany and Russia, but why shove that in their faces while we're asking them to forgive Iraq's debts? Why not just tell them the more they find ways to help us, the more we'll cut them a slice of rebuilding projects? It's fine to have a president who is a chairman of the board, above the process, setting the broad guidelines — if you have an administration that is unified within itself and with its key allies. But I fear we have a president who is setting the broad guidelines, above a squabbling bureaucracy and a divided alliance — and no one is cracking heads. You can't succeed in a place as difficult as Iraq without a workable plan to produce a broad-based government and without a unified team at home and abroad to execute it.
This is not pessimism. It's realism. Iraq is full of surprises, and some will be good. But my gut tells me we still don't have our act together. We've got the good heart thing down, but that's not enough. We must do better.
What prompts this outburst? It was a picture on Thursday's front page of this paper of a U.S. soldier being hugged by his young kids as he left for Iraq, just before Christmas. That picture left a real lump in my throat. It prompted me to ask myself whether, given everything I knew, I could tell that soldier's kids that their government was doing everything it could to make sure their dad comes home both safe and successful. I could not tell his kids that right now — and that really bothers me.
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
ISTANBUL
There was a special event last Tuesday at the Kennedy Center in Washington: the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra, direct from Baghdad, played together with the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, with an Iraqi and an American taking turns conducting. For one brief, shining moment, Iraqis and Americans really played the music of hope together.
If only life could imitate art.
If only the Bush team could orchestrate all the players involved in rebuilding Iraq, the way the maestro, Leonard Slatkin, conducted these combined orchestras, we might get a decent outcome in Baghdad.
But I worry. Friends, we have a hearts-and-minds problem with Iraq: we've given them our hearts, and we've lost our minds. Our intentions are good in terms of what we wish for Iraq. But it is possible to do a good thing really badly. Yes, nation-building is always a messy enterprise, especially in a complex place like Iraq. As the saying goes, never watch sausage being made. But what about sausage being mismade? Now that is really ugly.
What prompts these thoughts is a series of conversations over the past month with a variety of officials involved in Iraq policy making — both Iraqis and Americans. Everyone agrees that the goal is some kind of democratic Iraq, but I have yet to come away from any of these conversations with a clear sense of how we are going to get from here to there, or even who exactly is the overall conductor of this diplomatic, financial and military symphony. I keep meeting with people, expecting to hear "The Plan," but I never quite hear it.
What I hear a lot of, though, are horror stories of Pentagon and White House red tape for anyone who wants to go to Baghdad to work in our mission there; continued guerrilla warfare between the State Department and the Pentagon and between the C.I.A. and the Pentagon, which borders on one quietly hoping for the other to fail; and a shocking lack of continuity in the U.S. team in Baghdad. I hear the U.S. civilians in Baghdad complaining that we need more troops and security — if we are going to set up a legitimate Iraqi political authority — and I hear the U.S. military complaining that the key to better security is setting up a legitimate Iraqi political authority, so Iraqis will know who and what they're fighting for. Local U.S. commanders in Iraq are running dangerously low of walking-around money to buy friends, and we've even managed to start a fight with Qatar (over news broadcasts), where we have our regional military headquarters.
I just arrived in Istanbul and a Turkish friend, Soli Ozel, an international relations professor, remarked to me that the U.S. had so badly mangled the postwar honeymoon in Iraq, even Turkish conspiracy theorists were baffled: "People simply can't believe that with all your human and financial capital you didn't think about the day after."
It's understandable that the Bush team wouldn't rush to give reconstruction contracts to France, Germany and Russia, but why shove that in their faces while we're asking them to forgive Iraq's debts? Why not just tell them the more they find ways to help us, the more we'll cut them a slice of rebuilding projects? It's fine to have a president who is a chairman of the board, above the process, setting the broad guidelines — if you have an administration that is unified within itself and with its key allies. But I fear we have a president who is setting the broad guidelines, above a squabbling bureaucracy and a divided alliance — and no one is cracking heads. You can't succeed in a place as difficult as Iraq without a workable plan to produce a broad-based government and without a unified team at home and abroad to execute it.
This is not pessimism. It's realism. Iraq is full of surprises, and some will be good. But my gut tells me we still don't have our act together. We've got the good heart thing down, but that's not enough. We must do better.
What prompts this outburst? It was a picture on Thursday's front page of this paper of a U.S. soldier being hugged by his young kids as he left for Iraq, just before Christmas. That picture left a real lump in my throat. It prompted me to ask myself whether, given everything I knew, I could tell that soldier's kids that their government was doing everything it could to make sure their dad comes home both safe and successful. I could not tell his kids that right now — and that really bothers me.
December 14, 2003
European Union Can't Reach Deal on Constitution
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
RUSSELS, Dec. 13 — The leaders of 25 current and future members of the European Union failed to reach agreement on Saturday on a draft constitution, stumbling on a problem familiar to Americans: how to apportion power among large and small states.
At issue was a proposal to discard a voting system agreed upon three years ago that gave Spain, a member of the union, and Poland, which joins next year, almost as much voting weight each as Germany, which has more than twice the population of either. Spain and Poland insisted on retaining the expanded rights.
Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, called the summit meeting "largely a failure," and said, "We don't have a consensus on a constitution here because one or another country put the European ideal behind national interest."
Officially, the leaders said they would meet to try again next year. But the failure touched off bitter recriminations that underscored differences between current and soon-to-be members of the union. The war in Iraq also played a part: the deep divisions in "old" and "new" Europe over whether to go along with the United States' military action contributed to the wedges driving the leaders apart.
France's president, Jacques Chirac, said the failure galvanized his interest in creating a smaller union in the form of a "pioneer group" — perhaps of the union's six founding countries, but open to others. He framed it as something that would accelerate integration. "It would be a motor that would set an example," he said at a news conference after the talks. "It would allow Europe to go faster, better."
But others read it as a move toward scaling back Europe's unification. Mr. Schröder, acknowledging the temptation to do so, said, "We will work that it not happen."
Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, chairman of the talks, agreed. "I am not a partisan of the idea of six countries," he said.
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who had sought unsuccessfully to soften the Spanish and Polish positions, said, "It is in my view entirely sensible that we take the time to get it right." He added, "To look at this in sort of apocalyptic terms is, I think, rather misguided."
Poland's prime minister, Leszek Miller, left Brussels and was expected to call a cabinet meeting to discuss the outcome, Polish diplomats said.
The meeting was not without its successes. On Friday, the leaders took a first important step toward striking a deal on the constitution's draft text, the subject of almost two years of discussion, when they agreed unanimously to a common defense policy that included planning abilities independent of NATO.
The constitution is considered crucial in light of the coming enlargement, by which the union, which began as a customs union of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, will become a 25-member club, bringing into its embrace many former East Bloc states, including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia.
"The striking thing is that 95 percent of the issues are largely resolved," said Kevin Featherstone of the European Institute at the London School of Economics.
He said it was the very fact that agreements had been reached in most areas that had narrowed the room for the usual horse trading that lies at the heart of European compromises. With little else to decide, the voting rights issue became "crystal clear."
But he also said the stewardship of the talks might have contributed to the failure. "Berlusconi has this putting-your-foot-in-it tendency," he said.
As with the American leadership in Philadelphia in the 1780's, Europe's leaders are acting because they recognize that the challenges facing an enlarged union require more efficient government structures. Recent moves, including the introduction of the euro and the creation of a central bank, have fueled the drive beyond simple economic integration toward common policies in defense and foreign affairs.
The analogy with the United States, which moved in the 1780's from a confederation to a stronger national government under the Constitution, has not escaped the Europeans. When Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president and chairman of the convention that framed the draft constitution, left for vacation last summer, he took along a copy of David McCullough's best-selling biography of John Adams, the author of the Massachusetts Constitution, the oldest such text still in use.
Mr. McCullough said by phone from his home in Massachusetts that in Philadelphia, "all the small states were afraid of the large states; they feared they would take the ball and run with it." To provide equal weight in the councils of power, the founding fathers created the Senate, where all states are equally represented. "They called it the balancing wheel," he said.
Europe's leaders toyed in the past with the idea of transforming the Council of Europe into a kind of senate. But the idea was discarded in favor of a voting system agreed upon three years ago in Nice, France, that gave mid-sized countries like Poland and Spain almost as many votes each in the European Council as heavyweight Germany.
Poland and Spain are now relatively isolated, because the Nice system has been jettisoned in favor of an arrangement known as the double majority, which seeks to assure the rights of smaller states by defining a voting majority as at least half of the member states representing at least 60 percent of the total population.
Poland's foreign minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, had dug in his heels on Saturday morning. "If it is not possible to agree on the change today we shall wait," he said before the day's talks began.
Large countries like France, Germany and Britain, which embraced the double majority because of a worry about the risk of giving too much voting power to the smaller states, have also built measures into the constitution that would assure their continued influence.
Largely at British insistence, the states will retain veto rights over fiscal matters, leaving the door open to divisive issues like one that erupted recently over decisions by France and Germany, two of the largest nations, to run budget deficits that exceed limits governing the euro.
Veto rights will also be kept in matters of foreign and defense policy and changes to European treaties.
For the moment, other differences appear to have been overshadowed by the issue of voting weights. Some countries, including Poland, have in the past insisted that the preamble of the constitution evoke Europe's Christian heritage. The draft text refers to Europe's "cultural, religious and humanist heritages."
Mr. Featherstone, of the European Institute, said there was not a sense of immediate crisis if the states failed, "but there is a climate of ideas across Europe that something must be done."
European Union Can't Reach Deal on Constitution
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
RUSSELS, Dec. 13 — The leaders of 25 current and future members of the European Union failed to reach agreement on Saturday on a draft constitution, stumbling on a problem familiar to Americans: how to apportion power among large and small states.
At issue was a proposal to discard a voting system agreed upon three years ago that gave Spain, a member of the union, and Poland, which joins next year, almost as much voting weight each as Germany, which has more than twice the population of either. Spain and Poland insisted on retaining the expanded rights.
Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, called the summit meeting "largely a failure," and said, "We don't have a consensus on a constitution here because one or another country put the European ideal behind national interest."
Officially, the leaders said they would meet to try again next year. But the failure touched off bitter recriminations that underscored differences between current and soon-to-be members of the union. The war in Iraq also played a part: the deep divisions in "old" and "new" Europe over whether to go along with the United States' military action contributed to the wedges driving the leaders apart.
France's president, Jacques Chirac, said the failure galvanized his interest in creating a smaller union in the form of a "pioneer group" — perhaps of the union's six founding countries, but open to others. He framed it as something that would accelerate integration. "It would be a motor that would set an example," he said at a news conference after the talks. "It would allow Europe to go faster, better."
But others read it as a move toward scaling back Europe's unification. Mr. Schröder, acknowledging the temptation to do so, said, "We will work that it not happen."
Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, chairman of the talks, agreed. "I am not a partisan of the idea of six countries," he said.
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who had sought unsuccessfully to soften the Spanish and Polish positions, said, "It is in my view entirely sensible that we take the time to get it right." He added, "To look at this in sort of apocalyptic terms is, I think, rather misguided."
Poland's prime minister, Leszek Miller, left Brussels and was expected to call a cabinet meeting to discuss the outcome, Polish diplomats said.
The meeting was not without its successes. On Friday, the leaders took a first important step toward striking a deal on the constitution's draft text, the subject of almost two years of discussion, when they agreed unanimously to a common defense policy that included planning abilities independent of NATO.
The constitution is considered crucial in light of the coming enlargement, by which the union, which began as a customs union of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, will become a 25-member club, bringing into its embrace many former East Bloc states, including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia.
"The striking thing is that 95 percent of the issues are largely resolved," said Kevin Featherstone of the European Institute at the London School of Economics.
He said it was the very fact that agreements had been reached in most areas that had narrowed the room for the usual horse trading that lies at the heart of European compromises. With little else to decide, the voting rights issue became "crystal clear."
But he also said the stewardship of the talks might have contributed to the failure. "Berlusconi has this putting-your-foot-in-it tendency," he said.
As with the American leadership in Philadelphia in the 1780's, Europe's leaders are acting because they recognize that the challenges facing an enlarged union require more efficient government structures. Recent moves, including the introduction of the euro and the creation of a central bank, have fueled the drive beyond simple economic integration toward common policies in defense and foreign affairs.
The analogy with the United States, which moved in the 1780's from a confederation to a stronger national government under the Constitution, has not escaped the Europeans. When Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president and chairman of the convention that framed the draft constitution, left for vacation last summer, he took along a copy of David McCullough's best-selling biography of John Adams, the author of the Massachusetts Constitution, the oldest such text still in use.
Mr. McCullough said by phone from his home in Massachusetts that in Philadelphia, "all the small states were afraid of the large states; they feared they would take the ball and run with it." To provide equal weight in the councils of power, the founding fathers created the Senate, where all states are equally represented. "They called it the balancing wheel," he said.
Europe's leaders toyed in the past with the idea of transforming the Council of Europe into a kind of senate. But the idea was discarded in favor of a voting system agreed upon three years ago in Nice, France, that gave mid-sized countries like Poland and Spain almost as many votes each in the European Council as heavyweight Germany.
Poland and Spain are now relatively isolated, because the Nice system has been jettisoned in favor of an arrangement known as the double majority, which seeks to assure the rights of smaller states by defining a voting majority as at least half of the member states representing at least 60 percent of the total population.
Poland's foreign minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, had dug in his heels on Saturday morning. "If it is not possible to agree on the change today we shall wait," he said before the day's talks began.
Large countries like France, Germany and Britain, which embraced the double majority because of a worry about the risk of giving too much voting power to the smaller states, have also built measures into the constitution that would assure their continued influence.
Largely at British insistence, the states will retain veto rights over fiscal matters, leaving the door open to divisive issues like one that erupted recently over decisions by France and Germany, two of the largest nations, to run budget deficits that exceed limits governing the euro.
Veto rights will also be kept in matters of foreign and defense policy and changes to European treaties.
For the moment, other differences appear to have been overshadowed by the issue of voting weights. Some countries, including Poland, have in the past insisted that the preamble of the constitution evoke Europe's Christian heritage. The draft text refers to Europe's "cultural, religious and humanist heritages."
Mr. Featherstone, of the European Institute, said there was not a sense of immediate crisis if the states failed, "but there is a climate of ideas across Europe that something must be done."
