A war won with such devastating clarity as that conducted against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq should change the atmosphere of global politics entirely.
As the Iraqis collect the pieces of their lives and attempt to build a new future out of the ashes of war, the rest of the world struggles the grasp the dimensions of a new world order. It is a brave new world that cannot be fully understood using concepts from the past.
The atmosphere is just now beginning to transform. The indications are emerging rapidly. North Korea, for instance, has expressed surprising readiness to negotiate nuclear weapons control presumably in exchange for economic support. Syria has toned down its militant rhetoric. The Lebanese government has purged radicals from its fold. Iran has maintained a healthy peace for itself.
Among the great powers, too, there is much diplomatic flurry.
As the US Cavalry entered Baghdad, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted a summit of sorts for Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder and France’s Jaques Chirac. The three powers share a common predicament: they were most vociferous in opposing coalition military action in Iraq.
The hastily assembled "summit" created transient speculation that a new "pole" was emerging in global politics to counter the "coalition of the willing"– composed of the US, the UK, Spain, Italy, Australia, Turkey, the Netherlands and others, including the Philippines.
Britain’s Tony Blair quickly confronted such speculation with remarkable eloquence and rapid-deployment diplomacy. British foreign minister Jack Straw was all over the place. So was US secretary of state Colin Powell.
In the end, the Russia-France-Germany "summit" quickly melted to the margins of the news. In the aftermath of a quick and decisive war in Iraq, those who did not have the courage to participate in the coalition did not have anything important to say.
Jaques Chirac was briefly in the news after he publicly expressed joy at the downfall of the tyrannical Saddam Hussein regime. But that statement merely underscored the fact that had the French position pervaded, Saddam would still be oppressing his people and terrorizing his neighbors today.
The predicament of the French leader might as well be called the Chirac syndrome.
When global opinion was opposed to French nuclear testing at Muroroa atoll a few years ago, Chirac proved to be a stubborn leader. He went on with the tests, despite demonstrations before French embassies everywhere, confident that domestic public opinion was behind him.
But when domestic French opinion was against taking action against the rouge Saddam regime, Chirac buckled. He discarded the strategic view and bowed to cheap populism.
He kept France out of the war. But that also meant keeping France out of any meaningful role in shaping the global future. Paris has lost its prominence as a voice of the civilized against the modern scourge of organized terror.
There is no Blair syndrome on the other end of the spectrum. Britain’s Tony Blair simply exercised statesmanship.
When Tony Blair decided to stand as a staunch partner of the "coalition of the willing", he took a great political gamble. At the onset, he was supported only by a fraction of British public opinion. At the end of a triumphant war, Blair now enjoys overwhelming public support.
Add to that his present global stature as an eloquent voice of modern democracy.
Such is the burden of democratic statesmanship in this age of micro-constituencies. The public tends to have a worm’s eye view of the world. The leaders of nations, by contrast, must insist on a bird’s eye view of events. They must look over the horizon even as their respective publics fear peering above the top of the trench.
There will always be tension between the demands of statesmanship and the qualms of the popular view.
Public opinion is always hesitant, fearful, and timid. Statesmanship must be visionary, imaginative and bold.
It is not true that never the twain shall meet.
If the choices made by statesmen turn out to be educated, and if the public they lead prove to be educable, then the view of the man on the street eventually comes around to the view ventured by the leader. But that requires that the leader invest some effort at public diplomacy.
Tyrannies are governed by force. Democracies are governed by words.
Democratic leaders need to renew their legitimacy daily by educating their constituencies on the strategic bearings of decisions taken. In the wild whirl of events, democratic leaders need to be constantly engaged in public diplomacy.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo did not fall into the Chirac syndrome even as leftist agitators, some of them funded by Saddam’s dirty money, took to the streets daily to oppose a far-sighted foreign policy decision to be part of the coalition of decisive democracies. She brought the Philippines well into the coalition of the willing and then took every precaution to minimize the adverse effects of war on our people.
She defied the low-grade chatter of parochial politicians and the demagoguery of ideologically motivated peaceniks to position the Philippines well in the mainstream of a changing global reality. Her statesmanship will reward our people well in the future.
But she fell short of doing a Blair.
She did not educate our people in the same way Blair relentlessly educated his about the strategic underpinnings and moral dimensions of a decision that deeply divided public opinion. She did not work our Congress with the tirelessness that Bush worked his.
As a consequence, as the war broke out, the gap between a courageous foreign policy decision and a parochial domestic opinion reflected in that yawning negative approval rating detected by the SWS. The outcome of the war, along with the relative safety of our economy in its aftermath, should correct that gap.
Still, it remains a measure of a leadership style that, during a critical moment, lacked assiduousness in conducting public diplomacy.