Quotes of the Day

Pity Richard Haass. For the first two days of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, the director of policy planning at the U.S. State Department wandered around the conference like a walking sideshow in a circus; wherever he was, people lined up to throw verbal beanbags at him. By the end of Friday, Haass could at least look forward to the arrival in town of a bigger target — his boss, Secretary of State Colin Powell — and the certainty that the bashing of any member of the American Administration who braved the snowy streets would continue.

Whatever the text was meant to be of Davos sessions this year, the subtext was clear: the U.S. isn't trusted. Indeed, a poll commissioned by the WEF in 15 countries, released earlier this month, found that American political leaders are less trusted not just than those of any other nation, but even less than the bosses of multinational corporations, who are supposed to be the favorite whipping boys of our time.

To an extent, this is neither new nor surprising. Despite the influx of American CEOs and political leaders in the last few years, Davos remains at heart a non-American event — that's why some of us like it so much — full of worthies from the developing world and European business leaders. Peter Foges, a filmmaker from New York, once described the conference as "one great adult education class for the Mittelstand," as good a description of the long weekend of seminars and skiing as you'll get.

To be sure, there have been exceptions to the rule that Americans don't go down well in Davos. Bill Clinton, Europe's favorite American President, was received rapturously here in 2000. But when representatives of the hegemony brave an audience made up of those who are jealous, resentful, incensed or just awestruck at the reach of American power, they should not be taken aback if — like a Roman senator braving the groundlings in the forum — they occasionally get ordure hurled their way.

Still, as old hands gathered at the traditional parties, there was a consensus that nobody could remember a time when the criticism of American policy had been so loud and sustained. The tone was set at the very opening of the conference, when Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said: "You cannot trust someone who says [he] will go along with other people, but if they don't want to follow, [he] will go on [his] own." And that, of course, was a message in easily deciphered code that U.S. determination to disarm Iraq, with or without the sanction of the United Nations Security Council, was deeply unpopular. "The alienating thing is Bush's rhetoric," says Jusuf Wanandi, a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Indonesia. "His words are awful and alienating. He is courting disaster and damaging America's reputation."

One man who manifestly does trust America, and its President, is British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair will visit Camp David this weekend as the most significant political leader offering Bush unstinting support. In the past two weeks, he has reiterated, in language stronger than ever, that though he would prefer clear U.N. backing for a war in Iraq, Britain's troops will fight alongside their American counterparts if Washington judges that Saddam Hussein is not making a good-faith effort to disarm.

Blair's commitment to Bush is a huge gamble, twice over. He is risking his position as the dominant figure in British political life, and he is placing in jeopardy one of his long-term goals — that Britain should be at the heart of an attempt to make the E.U. a dependable global partner for the U.S. Domestically, the threat comes not from the pitiful opposition Conservative Party, but from the fact that many of his own Labour Party members are implacably opposed to a war without U.N. sanction.

Blair, unfortunately, did not come to Davos this year. In his absence America's supposedly arrogant, unilateralist, riddled-with-double-standards foreign policy was trashed in session after session. Haass himself conceded — as Powell has done — that the Bush Administration has not yet succeeded in convincing the rest of the world that the case for military action in Iraq is ironclad. Privately, a senior member of the U.S. Congress made the point — which is evident from opinion polls — that the Administration hasn't done that great a job convincing its own voters back home.

To an extent, this marks a reversal in America's fortunes. After all, it was just a few months ago that President George W. Bush electrified the U.N. General Assembly with an impassioned case for disarming Iraq. After some skillful American diplomacy, the Security Council voted unanimously for a tough resolution, whose implication was that if Iraq did not disarm soon, a U.S.-led military action would do the job for it. So the real question from Davos was this: Why was the Administration finding it so hard to win the trust of others in January, when it had seemed able to do so in November?

In two senses, Washington's problems are not of its own making. Political developments have moved in ways that have made it more difficult for the Administration to get others to salute smartly and march to war humming The Star-Spangled Banner. In Turkey, the election of the energetic, ambitious new government of the pro-Islamic Justice and Development (AK) party — well represented in Davos — has changed the strategic balance. Ankara still wants to be close to its traditional American ally — not least because of the assistance that Washington offers in its long campaign to become a full member of the European Union — but its policy is now shaded by a desire, epitomized by last week's conference of Iraq's neighbors, to identify itself as a political leader in the Islamic world.

And in Western Europe, the political situation has changed in unexpected ways that have diminished Washington's clout. Last fall, when French President Jacques Chirac all but openly campaigned for the election to the German chancellorship of Edmund Stoiber, the Christian Democrat candidate, it seemed highly unlikely that France would ever be able to revivify an alliance with a German government led by Gerhard Schröder, the narrow victor in the election. Yet that has happened. Propelled largely by a desire to forge a common position on the future constitution of the E.U., Paris and Berlin have rediscovered the virtues of their alliance, and extended it from narrow European concerns to wider issues. Last week, at an elaborate ceremony in Versailles to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty that cemented French-German unity, Chirac and Schröder agreed on their opposition to any early military action in Iraq. At the same time, the voice of Britain, Washington's principal ally, in European debates has been diminished by the growing realization that early British entry into the common European currency system looks increasingly unlikely.

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.

• MICHAEL ELLIOTT / Davos
• Mistrust of the U.S. is high on the agenda this year