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.As Annan put it after a 15 0 vote inwhich Washington conceded it would not attack until the Security Coun-cil could consider the results of UN weapons inspections, I think [theFrench] feel they have struck a blow for international law and [the pri-macy of] the Security Council. v ² UN negotiations finally collapsed overthis issue in March 2003, and Bush went to war virtually alone.Yet after citing Saddam for defiance of the Security Council, Bushcould not so easily defy the will of the Security Council himself in decid-ing to go to war.Even in justifying war he invoked UN resolutions, seek-ing to appease world and U.S.opinion, and fearing a new wave of anti-American hatred (and terror acts).Meanwhile, the hardheaded realists inhis administration Þöincluding the president himselfÞöbegan to focusmore on the neoconservative (and Wilsonian) agenda of democracy pro-motion.They saw democracyÞöan opportunity for self-expressionÞöas theonly long-term solution to the endless spiral of anger and quashed hopesthat autocracy has brought to the Arab world.Bush, to his last day as president, would probably never admit that hewas evolving.Certainly he would never admit that perhaps Bill Clinton,for all his very real mistakes, had not been so far off the mark as the newpresident had thought, at least when it came to nation building andacknowledging the international system.If, as the saying goes, a conserva- Navigating the Permanent Quagmire 63tive is a liberal who s been mugged, then it is equally true that a liberalinternationalist can sometimes be a conservative who s been terrorized.Finding a Middle PathTo recap, the real problem that the Bush administration faced in its earlyyears was that both views of the worldÞöthat of the Clinton/Powell mod-erates, on one hand, and that of the hegemonists, on the other Þö wereright.On one hand, the strong assertion of U.S.power was necessary, as Ihave suggested.On the other, the hegemonist view of the world tended togive short shrift to the tools of an entire global system.Ken Adelman wascorrect in saying that consensus was hard, and the disparity in power cer-tainly argued for forthright U.S.leadership, as the hegemonists main-tained.But in the global system the Bush team was given responsibilityfor, there was no way around working toward consensus on broad strate-gic goals such as the war on terror or Iraq.There needed to be a middlepath through the Permanent Quagmire.Perhaps nothing demonstrated the need for a middle path more thanthe challenge posed to America and the international community by thethreat of weapons of mass destruction in the era of terror.If there wasany single long-term threat that animated the Bush team, it was that wenow live in an era when zealots who value death over life, as Bush put it,and hate America and Western civilization will only find it easier toobtain and use such weapons.For many years to come, the main threat toAmericans will not be nuclear-tipped ICBMs launched from a rogue statethat knows it will face massive retaliation; it will more likely be a nuclearor biological or chemical weapon loaded into a trunk, boat, or truck by asmall number of hate-filled, superempowered people who are notimpressed by deterrence theory and lack a return address. Missiledefense won t work here, and a beefed-up homeland defense will onlymarginally improve our ability to stop them before they are used.It was this threat that drove the campaign against Saddam Hussein,for example.The Bush team believed that Iraq s relentless attempts toobtain weapons of mass destruction were proof of the uselessness of arms 64 At War with Ourselvescontrol. We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants who solemnlysign nonproliferation treaties and then systemically break them, Bushsaid in his West Point speech. The era of arms control is dead, said asenior official
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