Simon Tisdall

Last month in Tokyo, Bolton upped the ante again, accusing Iran of collaborating with North Korea on ballistic missiles.

Israel, Washington’s ally, has also been stoking the fire. It is suggested there that if the West fails to act against Iran in timely fashion, Israel could strike preemptively as it did against Iraq’s nuclear facilities in 1981, although whether it has the capability to launch effective strikes is uncertain.

The U.S. has been pushing other countries to impose de facto punishment on Iran. Japan has been asked to cancel its $2 billion investment in the Azadegan oilfield, and Washington has urged Russia to halt the construction of a civilian reactor.

Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. national security adviser, said last weekend there was a new international willingness to confront Tehran, but declined to rule out unilateral action if others did not go along.

That will fuel speculation in Tehran and elsewhere that the Bush administration may resort to force, with or without Israel, ahead of November’s election. Options include “surgical strikes” or covert action by special forces.

Such a move would be a high-risk gamble for George Bush. After the WMD fiasco, there would inevitably be questions about the accuracy of U.S. intelligence. In the past Iran has vowed to retaliate. Although it is unclear how it might do so, the mood in Tehran has hardened since the conservatives won fiddled elections last winter.

“I think we’ve finally got the world community to a place, the IAEA to a place, that it is worried and suspicious,” Rice said in one of a string of interviews with CNN, Fox News and NBC television. She vowed to aim some “very tough resolutions” at Iran this autumn. “Iran will either be isolated or it will submit,” she said.

Officials in London say she exaggerated the degree of unanimity on what to do next. Britain, France and Germany are the E.U. troika that has pursued a policy of “critical engagement” with Iran, despite U.S. misgivings.

Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, has invested considerably in resolving the issue, traveling to Tehran on several occasions. A diplomatic collapse would be a blow.

“There has been no such decision at all,” a Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday of U.S. efforts to take the dispute to the U.N. Security Council. “The dialogue [with Iran] is ongoing and the government still believes that negotiation is the way forward at this stage.” But Britain is in danger of being dragged down a path of confrontation that it does not want to travel.

Nuclear weapons are not Washington’s only worry. The U.S. charges include Iran’s perceived meddling in Iraq, where the blame for the surge in Shiite unrest is laid partly at Tehran’s door. It also takes exception to Iran’s ambiguous attitude to al-Qaida and Tehran’s backing for anti-Israeli groups such as Hezbollah. The recent Thomas Kean report on 9/11 detailed unofficial links between some of the al-Qaida hijackers and Iran.

Investigations into other terrorist attacks since 9/11, including this year’s Madrid bombings and failed plots in Paris and London, point to an Iran connection, though the extent of any government involvement is obscure.

While the Bush administration is set on a tougher line there is no consensus even in Washington on what to do.

A report by the independent Council on Foreign Relations says since Iran is not likely to implode anytime soon, the U.S. should start talking.

“Iran is experiencing a gradual process of internal change,” the report says. “The urgency of U.S. concerns about Iran and the region mandate that the U.S. deal with the current regime [through] a compartmentalized process of dialogue, confidence building and incremental engagement.”

That suggestion was mocked by a Wall Street Journal editorial as “appeasement.” Hawks say the nuclear issue is too urgent to brook further delay. And therein lies the rub. Bringing Iran in from the cold is a time-consuming business. But the Bush administration, as usual, is in a hurry.

That might sound a tad complacent. But the drama of the moment can be exaggerated, too, officials suggested. “In France and elsewhere, there was a big debate that reached far beyond the political classes. This is very welcome,” a senior European diplomat said Wednesday. “The referendums showed Europe is important to ordinary people. In France the turnout was 70 percent. That’s enormous. Of course, there are domestic factors. But for too long political leaders have been saying Europe is important but not asking the people what they think, doing it without them. Now the voters have said we want to be listened to.

“What they actually said is that they want more, not less Europe — a more social Europe, a more democratic Europe, a different Europe. That’s positive,” the diplomat said.

Doubts about whether these voters’ message will actually be absorbed and acted upon in Brussels and elsewhere potentially undermine such upbeat assessments. Even before the referendum results were known, Euro-enthusiasts were examining ways of implementing key parts of the treaty whatever the verdicts.

Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform, argued, for example, that plans to appoint an E.U. “foreign minister” need not be scrapped just because the treaty as a whole might fall. Grant has a good point, even if it does not appear particularly democratic. American neoconservatives will be immensely gratified if Europe retreats into more easily manipulated, opposing camps of nation-states.

A different perspective comes from Asia. China and regional states back a strong Europe as a balancing pole to U.S. unilateralism, although Beijing may try to exploit the E.U.’s confusion to get its way on issues including the arms embargo and textile exports.

For the emerging democracies of eastern Europe, any weakening of collective E.U. confidence and resolve is potentially far more serious. E.U. membership has become an almost existential issue not only for Bulgaria and Romania, due to join in 2007, but also for Turkey, the Balkan states, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Their hopes of membership have been continually raised, often irresponsibly.

But the E.U. now looks to have overreached itself. If Brussels accepts that one of the voters’ messages was opposition to further enlargement (and associated large-scale immigration), the geopolitical fallout could be severely destabilizing. Also obscuring the way ahead is the fact that key E.U. governments are badly placed at present to handle the crisis, let alone articulate a revamped European vision.

Germany and Italy are facing elections; French politics are in disarray; and Tony Blair, beset by Euro-skepticism, is a weakened figure. Yet it is Blair, taking on the E.U. presidency next month, who must try to sort out the various interpretations of what the voters really meant — and where Europe goes now.

Despite these myriad, unpredictable ramifications, the votes usefully focused minds on what was most important, according to the senior European diplomat. “Everyone knows the E.U. has brought peace to Europe. Everyone knows it has brought prosperity, although that prosperity is not equally shared. Everyone knows that individual countries cannot act alone when it comes to problems like the Middle East or Iran or crime and illegal immigration. They must work together. There is no choice.

“Europe must answer the people’s questions. They want to know who is in charge of my life? Who decides? But the ambition for Europe is still there.”

In a limited sense, the Syrian shift was a success for what Joseph Nye, a former Clinton administration official, has dubbed “soft power.” This means the evolution of foreign policy strategies that in their broader applications appeal to others’ self-interest, persuade rather than coerce, and subvert and convert rather than confront and defeat. “Soft power means that others want what the United States wants,” said Nye, now a Harvard professor. “It means there is less need to use carrots and sticks.”

Soft power emphasizes common aspirations such as democratic and individual rights, shared cultural values and enlightened policymaking. “It means we say to people, ‘We are going to help you achieve your goals.’ It’s not just a question of whose army wins but of whose story wins,” Nye said at Chatham House in London this week.

Soft-power theory — as opposed to “hard power,” broadly meaning coercive military force — is all the rage among governments scarred by the Iraq convulsions. In a way, it is a statement of the flaming obvious. But it suits preexisting European predilections for nonviolent solutions. The European Union’s eastward enlargement is now portrayed as a soft-power paradigm, predicated on attraction, not attrition.

In other forms, soft-power tactics involving externally supplied popular organizational, financial and information tools have been used by the U.S. in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine to facilitate peaceful democratic transformations where hard-power options were not available. Now even Russia, alarmed at its eroding influence in the “post-Soviet space,” has got in on the soft-power act, with President Vladimir Putin setting up a government department to project Russia’s “civilizing” mission in neighboring countries.

Whether an obvious stratagem or not, the overall neglect of soft-power imperatives by successive U.S. governments, coupled with the Bush administration’s militarily aggressive, unilateralist post-9/11 policies, has generated increasing international hostility, Nye said. This has undermined both U.S. hard power and U.S. objectives.

To American surprise, for example, Turkey’s Parliament refused to allow U.S. troops to pass through its territory before the Iraq invasion. In contrast, Osama bin Laden’s Afghan cave videos, a “malign but brilliant” use of soft power, won Arab sympathy for his cause.

Nye said U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, like other unilateralists fixated on American military superiority, had expressed difficulty in understanding soft-power concepts. This is a continuing problem, Nye said.

But there are signs that President Bush is embracing the idea in his second term, Nye said. This is evident in his more energetic promulgation of democratic values, in the increased funding for public diplomacy programs — and, perhaps, in his handling of Syria.

“Soft power won the cold war,” Nye said. Ideas, not armies, eventually brought down the Berlin Wall, although hard-power deterrence was crucial, too. This victory could be repeated in the struggle for hearts and minds in the Arab world.

“There are signs we can do this again. But there is a long way to go.”

The timing was probably not coincidental. Along with a host of world leaders, U.S. President George W. Bush will be in Moscow on May 9 to mark the 60th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s defeat. Bush, who backed Ukraine’s pro-democracy “orange revolution” last year, will also visit Georgia, where the U.S. launched a $50 million military training program over the weekend and where it has become Saakashvili’s principal ally.

It is no accident, either, that the U.S. leader will visit Latvia, which, like Lithuania and Estonia, escaped Moscow’s clutches in the 1990s and joined NATO and the European Union. They are now viewed as role models by several post-Soviet states.

Last week’s fleeting visit to the Kremlin by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was meant to smooth the way for Bush’s meeting with President Vladimir Putin. But her comments on regional issues, coupled with the latest machinations of Moscow’s unforgiving former satellites, exacerbated Russian geopolitical paranoia.

Denouncing the Belarus government of President Alexander Lukashenko as Europe’s last dictatorship, Rice said it was “time for a change.” She hinted that forthcoming elections there could be the next target for the U.S. “soft power” pro-democracy pressure tactics perfected in Serbia in 2000. Unfortunately for Putin, benighted Belarus is just about the only Russian neighbor that still follows an unequivocal pro-Moscow line. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told Rice to mind her own business.

Russia’s once unchallenged influence in Central Asia is also slipping. The United States has established military bases in the area since Sept. 11. And as recent upheavals in Kyrgyzstan suggest, regime change can be catching.

In this atmosphere, the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States’ summit in Moscow on May 8, which includes Ukraine and Georgia, could prove a schismatic, even terminal meeting. In a country historically fearful of encirclement and fragmentation, these accelerating neighborhood trends are seen by many Russians as externally threatening and domestically destabilizing.

In his book “Cold Peace: Russia’s New Imperialism,” Janusz Bugajski said that Moscow’s neighborhood botch stems from internal weakness as much as foreign policy bungling. Russia “gained an empire before it became a state or a coherent nation,” he wrote. Contrary to its vital interests and despite reduced capabilities, Russia continued to brandish regional ambitions like “phantom limbs,” Bugajski argued.

But while the result has been repeated humiliations, rising hard-line nationalism and falling confidence in an increasingly dictatorial Putin, Russia’s leader retains several trump cards. Rice admitted the U.S. needed a “strategic partnership” on nuclear proliferation, the Balkans and the Middle East, and terrorism. And then there are Russia’s vast energy resources, on which the West increasingly relies. As at their Bratislava tete-a-tete in February, Bush can be expected to balance “freedom’s cause” with pragmatic calculations when meeting with Putin.

Says analyst Anatol Lieven, “Putin may be an uncomfortable partner, but the West is unlikely to get a better one.”

Washington hopes the democratic revolutions in the “post-Soviet sphere” will ultimately spread to Russia itself. But it knows such a transformation runs the risk of a disastrous, post-Putin relapse into unrestrained authoritarianism and an anti-Western siege mentality.

According to Kazuya Sakamoto of Osaka University, Japan and Britain are central to a far-reaching, post-9/11 U.S. review of its overseas force deployments. “The basic idea is that the U.S. will gradually withdraw from the Eurasian landmass while assigning the two island nations at the east and west of Eurasia, Japan and Britain, even greater importance as strategic bases to ensure stability in Europe and Asia,” Professor Sakamoto writes in the current issue of Japan Echo magazine.

An important element in this transformation fell into place last week when Japan agreed in principle to allow the command headquarters of the U.S. Army’s 1st Corps to transfer from Washington state, on the U.S. Pacific coast, to Camp Zama, near Yokohama, south of Tokyo.

The 1st Corps has responsibility for operations in the Pacific and Indian oceans, extending to the conflict zones and oil fields of the Gulf. The primary focus of its forward deployment is likely to be the defense of Taiwan, regional challenges posed by China’s military expansion and the nuclear standoff with North Korea. But the United States has also reportedly proposed that command operations of the 13th Air Force, now on Guam in the Pacific — a base for long-range bombers and tanker aircraft frequently deployed in the Middle East — be moved to Yokota Air Base in Tokyo.

“The ramifications of this would be that Japan would essentially serve as a front-line U.S. command post for the Asia-Pacific and beyond,” said Christopher Hughes of Warwick University in a paper published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The American forward deployments are certain to be viewed with suspicion in China and farther afield — and face political opposition in Japan. The U.S.-Japan security treaty states that U.S. bases may only be used “for the purpose of contributing to the security of Japan and the maintenance of international peace and security in the far east.” It says nothing, for example, about Iran.

But Hughes said that since Japan had given the United States a free hand to use its bases for previous Middle East operations, Tokyo “might have to accept its enhanced role as a fulcrum for U.S. military commands.”

Japan’s worries about China are the main reason for acquiescing in U.S. plans that effectively shatter any remaining pacifist illusions. But Tokyo is in any case growing more militarily assertive under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Japan sent noncombat troops to Iraq, while its navy has joined the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative. Military cooperation with Australia, South Korea and Southeast Asian states is developing.

Japan is acquiring a ballistic missile defense system and new satellite intelligence capabilities. It has pledged to help keep the peace in Taiwan. And there has even been talk of preemptive strikes against North Korea and a Japanese nuclear deterrent. In short, Japan, emerging from the shadow of its past, is again becoming a military power with a global role and hopes of a permanent U.N. Security Council seat.

China’s actions may thereby be more easily explained. But further demonstrations of hostility will only exacerbate the slide toward an Asian cold war.

Kate Allen, U.K. director of Amnesty International, said after visiting Kathmandu last week that the human rights situation was extremely worrying. The judiciary is barely functioning and journalists are being jailed or harassed. “What really struck me was how seriously personally afraid everyone was,” she said. “It’s all about intimidation and control. It’s nasty and it’s probably going to get much nastier. But it’s absolutely clear that people don’t want to give up on democracy.”

Amnesty has called on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights to send an investigator to Nepal. Many Nepalis believe that resolute U.N. action in Geneva could force the king to retreat. But although there was a token release of politicians before the U.N. meeting, protest rallies by students and rights activists are routinely broken up by the riot police, backed by the army, and hundreds are in jail.

In a report this month Human Rights Watch said the Nepalese army was “one of the world’s worst perpetrators of enforced disappearances.” Its spokesman said: “Given the scale of the documented disappearances, the heightened role of the army after the king’s seizure of power is frightening.”

Meanwhile, the brutal Maoist insurgency, the pretext for Gyanendra’s takeover, shows no sign of abating. The rebels’ leader, known as Prachanda, has demanded a general strike on April 2. The rebellion feeds on the chronic poverty of most of Nepal’s 24 million people. Yet despite their liberationist ideology, the rebels have killed more civilians than soldiers in nine years of civil war that has cost 11,000 lives.

Until recently they were said to be losing popular support. But far from deterring them, the emergency may be helping. According to Gareth Price of the think tank Chatham House, the Maoists are “the clear winners” in the post-coup period.

India’s decision to strengthen border security has underscored its nervousness about what one minister called possible “spillover effects in neighboring states.”

Stephen Cohen, a senior South Asia analyst and author based at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said such fears were well founded. “Nepal has to be seen in the context of failed states,” he said. “The central government has no capability. Democratic forces are fragmented. Then there’s the Maoist rebellion. It’s a perfect storm. The only thing lacking is WMD.”

Nepal needs outside help, Cohen said, but there is no sign that any country is prepared to step in. “This is primarily India’s baby. This is a country where India will have to take the lead. They may have to think about an international stabilization force and a Bonn-type process of nation building, like Afghanistan.”

Analysts suggest that the worsening instability could draw in neighboring China. And an offer from Pakistan of arms in place of those withheld by India illustrates the potential for stoking regional tension.

But an Indian government spokesman said New Delhi has no plans to lead an international intervention and was principally relying on diplomatic pressure. “What we want is to see democracy restored. We have said this to the Nepalis in no uncertain terms. We don’t see Nepal as a failed state. But it certainly is a bit of a mess.”