The Price of Opposition

One reason the Bush administration attracted less diplomatic support than it should have for the war in Iraq was the perception in many nations that President Bush had conducted foreign policy with an arrogance and unilateralism that made the United States appear threatening. After not just strategic adversaries, such as Russia and France, but also dependable friends, such as Chile and Mexico, failed to back the American position at the U.N. Security Council, the administration might have drawn a lesson that it should seek to repair its international relations after the war. Instead, there are signs that the White House has adopted the opposite approach: Rather than swallowing a dose of the humility that Mr. Bush once promised in foreign affairs, the administration is making a show of punishing countries that opposed the war. Senior policymakers met last week to consider a range of sanctions for France, brushing off President Jacques Chirac's phone call to Mr. Bush and his offer of "pragmatic" conciliation. Now officials have let it be known that Chile, a Latin American democracy and a rare success story in a troubled region, will have to suffer the delay of its free-trade agreement with the United States. This mean-spirited payback will only compound the damage to America's standing in the world.

Administration spokesmen contend that France, which succeeded in making U.S. power rather than Iraqi disarmament the focus at the Security Council, must "pay a price" for its behavior. Yet Mr. Chirac has already been chastened by the scenes of Iraqis celebrating the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and will suffer still greater political losses if U.S. forces succeed in uncovering Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and guiding Iraq toward democratic government. Overt U.S. measures, such as excluding France from NATO decision-making, will only help Mr. Chirac prove the point he has been trying to make to Europe and the rest of the world - that the United States has become a reckless colossus and needs to be balanced by coalitions of other nations. Such steps may also ensure that rather than "pragmatically" accept U.S. plans for postwar Iraq, France will continue to obstruct them in the Security Council.

The attack on Chile is even more senseless. For two decades Chile has been far and away the leader of the Latin American movement toward free-market economic policies and the clearest success story; for the past dozen years it has also been a model of moderate and stable democratic politics. As many of its neighbors, including regional powers Argentina and Brazil, struggle to make open economies work and debate whether policies that draw them closer to the United States still make sense, the free-trade pact with Chile offers the Bush administration a chance to demonstrate that such strategies pay off. It is also a teaser for the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas that the administration once described as a top priority - and a rare positive step by this administration in a region it has badly neglected. 85% of Chileans opposed a war in Iraq; their government responded by supporting a compromise in the Security Council that was intended to delay the war while making possible its eventual endorsement. If this solid hemispheric citizen is now to be punished for failing to fall in line with the United States, the world will indeed take a lesson - and not the right one.