Critics of the existing foreign or domestic order will not take over Washington this November.  As dangerous as it is, Bush's reelection may be a lesser evil because he is much more likely to continue the destruction of the alliance system that is so crucial to American power.   One does not have to believe that the worse the better but we have to consider candidly the foreign policy consequences of a renewal of Bush's mandate. Bush's policies have managed to alienate, in varying degrees, innumerable nations, and even its firmest allies--such as Britain, Australia, and Canada--are being required to ask if giving Washington a blank check is to their national interest or if it undermines the tenure of parties in power.  Foreign affairs, as the terrorism in Madrid has so dramatically shown, are too important to simply endorse American policies.  Not only the parties in power can pay dearly for it; more important are the innumerable victims among the people.   Germany has already called for European Union action to prevent repetitions of the Madrid catastrophe but nations that have supported the Iraq war  enthusiastically, particularly Great Britain, Italy, and the Netherlands, have made their populations especially vulnerable to terrorism.  They now have the expensive responsibility of protecting them--if they can. 

The Washington-based Pew Research Center report on public opinion released on March 16 showed that a growing and large majority of the French, Germans, and even the British want an independent European foreign policy and regard the U.S. less favorably than ever.  The issue now is also whether  nations like Italy or The Netherlands can afford to isolate themselves from the  major European powers and public opinion in order to remain a part of the increasingly quixotic  and unilateralist American-led "coalition of the  willing."  The President of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, a shrewd veteran political survivor,  gave vent to this growing mood when he complained in mid-March that the Bush Administration had "misled" him on WMDs in Iraq and that Poland might withdraw its 2,400 troops from Iraq earlier than previously scheduled.   The "rush for the exits," as a former Polish diplomat described it, was due to the fact that 53 percent of the Poles are opposed to having troops there as well as the fact Poland cannot afford to oppose France, Germany, and now Spain on this issue.  What has happened in Spain may be a harbinger of the future, further isolating the quixotic American government in its adventures.

The way the war in Iraq was justified compelled France and Germany to become far more independent, much earlier, than they had intended, and NATO's future role is now  questioned in a way that was inconceivable two years ago.  Europe's future defense arrangements are today an open question but there will be some sort of European military force independent of NATO and American control. Germany, with French support,  strongly opposes the Bush doctrine of preemption. Tony Blair,  however much he intends acting as a proxy for the U.S. on military questions, must return Britain to the European project, and his willingness  since late 2003 to emphasize his nation's role in Europe reflects political necessities.  To do otherwise is to alienate his increasingly powerful neighbors and risk losing elections.  His domestic  credibility is already at its nadir due to his slavish support for the war in Iraq. In a word, politicians who  place America's imperious demands over national interest have less future than those who are responsive to domestic opinion and needs.  The tragedy in Madrid and  the defeat of the ruling party in last Sunday's Spanish election is a warning that no politician in or out of power will ignore.

Even more dangerous, the Bush Administration has managed to turn what was in the mid-1990s a blossoming cordial friendship with the former Soviet Union into an increasingly tense relationship. Despite a 1997 non-binding American pledge not to station substantial numbers of combat troops in the territories of new members, Washington  plans to extend NATO to Russia's very borders--Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania especially concern Moscow--and it is in the process of establishing a  vague number of bases in the Caucasus and Central Asia.  Russia has stated that the U.S. encircling it  warrants its retaining and modernizing its nuclear arsenal--to remain a military superpower--that will be more than a match for the increasingly expensive and ambitious missile defense system the Pentagon is now building.  It has over 4,600 strategic nuclear warheads and over 1,000 ballistic missiles to deliver them.  Last month Russia threatened to pull out of the crucial Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which has yet to enter into force, because it regards America's ambitions in the former Soviet bloc as provocation.  "I would like to remind the representatives of [NATO]," Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told a security conference in Munich last February, "that with its expansion they are beginning to operate in the zone of vitally important interests of our country…."  The question Washington's allies will ask themselves is whether their traditional alliances have far more risks than benefits--and if they are necessary.

            In the case of China,  Bush's key advisers were publicly committed to constraining its burgeoning military and geopolitical power the moment they took office.  But China's military budget is growing rapidly--12 percent this coming year--and the European Union wants to lift its 15-year old arms embargo and get a share of the enticingly large market. The Bush Administration, of course, is strongly resisting any relaxation of the export ban.  Establishing bases on China's western borders is the logic of its ambitions.

The United States is not so much engaged in "power projection" against an amorphously defined terrorism by installing bases in small or weak Eastern European and Central Asian nations as again confronting Russia and China in an open-ended context which may have profound and protracted consequences neither America's allies nor its own people have any interest or inclination to support. Even some Pentagon analysts   have warned against this strategy because any American attempt to save failed states in the Caucasus or Central Asia, implicit in its new obligations, will risk exhausting what are ultimately its finite military resources.

There is no way to predict what emergencies will arise or what these commitments entail, either for the U. S. or its allies, not the least because--as Iraq proved last year and Vietnam long before it--its intelligence on the capabilities and intentions of possible enemies against which it is ready to preempt is so completely faulty.  Without accurate information a state can believe and do anything, and this is the predicament the Bush Administration's allies are in.   It is simply not to their national interest, much less to their political interests or the security of their people, to pursue  foreign policies based on a blind, uncritical acceptance of fictions or flamboyant adventurism premised on false premises and information.   It is far too open-ended both in terms of time and political costs. If Bush is reelected, America's allies and friends will have to confront such stark choices, a  painful process that will redefine and perhaps shatter existing alliances.  Independent, realistic foreign policies are likely to be the outcome, and the dramatic events in Spain over the past days have reinforced this probability. But America will be more prudent and the world will be far safer only if the Bush Administration is constrained by a lack of allies and isolated.

Gabriel Kolko is the author of Another Century of War?