Uncle Sam, your aim may not ring true but thanks for the protection
He has decided to send his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, instead. It's a bad decision by Bush. Not because his absence will make much difference to environmental protection or the alleviation of world poverty. It won't, but it sends a negative message about the US at a critical moment in its war on terrorism.
Many European commentators have fixed views about Bush and his foreign policy. They particularly dislike his proposal to invade Iraq, arguing (unlike American critics of an Iraqi war who believe it would not be in America's interests) that the US wants to protect its oil supply, not just rid the world of Al-Qaida.
America isn't automatically hostile to repressive dictators who develop nuclear weapons, its critics argue. Didn't Presidents Reagan, Bush Snr, Clinton and Bush Jnr all fail to attack North Korea, a country which could make atomic weapons and nuclear missiles, but couldn't feed its own people? And isn't Bush Jnr turning a blind eye as his ally, Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf, decides to hold on to power for at least five more years?
Unlike North Korea and Pakistan, however, Saddam Hussein may be about to share weapons of mass destruction with Al-Qaida. Since 1998 Saddam has refused to allow UN weapons inspectors into Iraq and defectors from the regime say there are now "mobile germ laboratories disguised as milk delivery trucks, and a network of underground bunkers for chemical and biological weapons production."
Whether this amounts to a case for war depends on who you ask. Some argue that America should let well enough alone. Saddam, if cornered, may unleash the contents of whatever deadly arsenal he has and the US-led war against terror may take us into a terrible new phase of human history.
But evidence from one defector suggests that Iraq has not gone nuclear yet. Khidhir Hamsa, the former head of Saddam's nuclear weapons programme, estimates that Iraq would not be ready for nuclear weapons until 2006. If this is true, then perhaps there is a case for 'preventative war' nasty as that phrase may sound.
Saddam would hardly hesitate to turn his nastiest weapons on America and its allies, but his links with Al-Qaida are still unclear. Czech intelligence officials say they have a photo of Mohammed Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers, meeting with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague. And it is also alleged that aides of Osama Bin Laden met Iraqi officials in Baghdad.
But if America attacks Iraq without support from its usual allies, a military victory may do no good. The Arab world already sees America as aggressively pursuing its own military and economic interests and extreme Islamic terrorism can only gain if such a perception is further fuelled.
That is why President Bush's absence from the Earth Summit, and America's opposition to the newly-established International Criminal Court, are unhelpful. Both suggest that, for America, global justice and freedom from hunger come a poor second to its own economic and military interests.
This is partly true. The Bush administration is suspicious of multilateral agreements, such as the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gas emissions or the International Criminal Court, because America has more to lose than anybody else.
American politicians of all persuasions were opposed to Kyoto because the US, with its huge industrial production, was being called on to make the biggest sacrifice. Likewise with the International Criminal Court. For good or ill, the US has taken it on itself to intervene militarily all over the world ostensibly, at least, in the cause of peace and justice. But the US fears the International Criminal Court will become politicised, and that prosecutions under the vague heading of 'aggression' will criminalise American military personnel for actions which the US government would deem justified.
Reining in America might seem like a good idea. But if the result is to dissuade America from intervening militarily abroad, maybe not. The crux of the issue is this: we may not like American military intervention, particularly when it happens without UN approval; we may suspect America of acting out of self-interest; we may think the US heavy-handed in its approach to the war on terror. But do we want a world without the US as global policeman all the same? Imagine the vacuum that might result if America withdrew. And what might try to fill it.
Proponents of an enlarged, militarised and politically-united Europe suggest that a new democratic superpower would fill the vacuum quite well, or at least rival America by providing international peacekeeping of a morally superior kind. But would the existence of two western superpowers make the world a safer place? And can we wait while the EU gets its act together, if it ever does?
Right now it looks like we are entering a new cold war phase as Islamic countries get closer to possessing weapons of mass destruction. This fear is real while Russian President Vladimir Putin declares his support for the war on terror, his government is still expanding nuclear and conventional arms co-operation with the Islamic Republic of Iran. If Iran acquires an offensive atomic capability we had better hope that liberal democracy, and not Islamic fundamentalism, prevails in that country.
Rather than wait for this to happen the more America can do to destroy international terrorism the better. The problem for the international community is that it is nearly impossible to test America's claims to be acting in the world's best interests, because we lack much-needed legal and moral yardsticks.
Legally at least, the US seems to have gone offside by forging ahead without a UN mandate. But the UN is slow moving, and American initiatives would be subject to vetoes from Russia or China, Britain or France. Which is why the US has claimed legitimate self-defence as the basis for its war, instead of calling on any international legal order.
Perhaps more serious is the absence of a moral reference point. Just war theory suggests that an attack on Iraq is not justified since all non-violent options should be exhausted before the use of force. But original just war theorists did not foresee weapons of mass destruction, and the terrible threat they pose. So new moral thinking is needed.
The third big problem is the difficulty in assessing America's own motives. Is it just out to secure cheaper oil by invading Iraq? Even if this were true, however, there might be positive consequences for the war on terror. Access to Iraqi oil could bring down oil prices and break Saudi Arabia, with consequences for Al-Qaida: of the 19 terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks, 15 were Saudis. And several members of the Saudi royal family are being sued by relatives of the September 11 victims for their complicity in the twin tower attacks.
Such arguments may be hard to stomach because for long enough the US was happy to put up with Saudi dictatorship, corruption and cruelty. Islamic fundamentalism was seen as a bulwark against communism during the Cold War and America benefited from Saudi oil supplies and Saudi investment on the stock market.
At the very least, the US should be candid about its different interests in the war on terror. But Europe must be realistic as well. For good or ill, America is our protector, and we should be thankful that the reigning world superpower at the beginning of the 21st century is a democracy, whatever the imperfections in its foreign policy.
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