Moments like this recall Harold Macmillan's well-worn dictum. Politics is shaped by the unexpected, by what the former Conservative prime minister aptly described as "events." A week ago Spain's center-right government was gliding toward a third election victory. Now, more than 200 lie dead after the bombing of Madrid and the Socialists are back in power. Terrorist-inflicted tragedy and electoral upheaval remind us that the world is still suffering the aftershocks of the geopolitical earthquake that was September 11, 2001.
There is room for argument as to what weighed most heavily with Spanish voters on Sunday. Was it that the carnage in Madrid reminded them that the government of Jos? Maria Aznar had defied the people to back the U.S. war in Iraq? Or was it that the government was suspected of manipulating the evidence about the authors of the atrocity for narrow electoral advantage? Most likely there was an elision of the two.
Until last Thursday, the shocking images of New York's collapsing twin towers had begun to fade. For all its continued attacks in the Middle East and beyond and the suicide bombings in Iraq, in Europe at least al-Qaida had come to seem a rather more distant peril -- still dangerous, certainly, but no longer the existential threat implicit in America's global "war" against terrorism.
A week before the Madrid bombings Britain's Tony Blair warned against complacency. The danger from Islamist terrorism, he said, was as clear and present as it had ever been. Much of the succeeding commentary was scornful, accusing the prime minister of willful scaremongering to justify his own part in backing President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq.
After Madrid, his speech seems grimly prescient, yet Blair is deemed one of the losers from the Spanish poll. Aznar, after all, was a close friend and ally. In the topsy-turvy world of European politics, where attitudes toward Washington have supplanted the old dividing lines of right and left, a victory for the center-right in Spain would have been seen as a boost for Blair's center-left government.
Instead, Jos? Luis Rodr"guez Zapatero, the new socialist prime minister-elect, has put Spain firmly in the Franco-German anti-war camp by reaffirming his pledge to withdraw his country's troops from Iraq. Zapatero remarked rather sharply Monday that Bush and Blair might like to "reflect" on their decision to remove Saddam Hussein. Blair is not threatened by any immediate political challenge, not least because Britain's Conservatives backed the war. But he begins to look ever more isolated as Bush's chum.
The further fracturing of European relationships will be taken by al-Qaida as a famous victory. The terrorists will claim they can exact a terrible price from those who ally themselves with Washington. European voters, now nervous again each time they board an aircraft or walk into a railway station, can scarcely be blamed for thinking there might be something in that.
The truth, of course, is that Sept. 11, 2001, happened some 18 months before the Iraq conflict, and the attack on the United States was itself only the latest and most lethal in a long list of terrorist outrages committed by al-Qaida. Though it may suit the extremists now to single out America's closest allies as their first targets, their twisted brand of Islamist theology marks out every European nation as an enemy.
As Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, put it, "nobody should believe they can opt out of the war against Islamic terrorism." Al-Qaida demands surrender or nothing.
The lesson for Europeans is not to allow their (entirely legitimate) differences about the Iraq war to breach the common front against terrorism. Zapatero has an electoral mandate to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. But to make a connection between that decision and Islamist terrorism is to do al-Qaida's bidding.
The message for Bush is that, for all his coalitions of willing friends, the resentment bred by U.S. unilateralism has become a serious danger to America and its allies alike. The president has been right in judging that the campaign against Islamist terrorism is one that will have to be fought and re-fought over many years. All the more reason to build a stable and durable international consensus.
Establishing the United Nations as the legitimate authority in Iraq would be a small step in that direction, with the beneficial side-effect of ensuring Spanish troops could stay.
Re-engagement in the Middle East is a sine qua non. Of course, al-Qaida will never support a just settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, but a U.S.-brokered peace would deny the extremists vital oxygen. None of this requires altruism of from Bush; just a willingness to shape events.
Philip Stephens is a columnist for the Financial Times, where this comment first appeared.
There is room for argument as to what weighed most heavily with Spanish voters on Sunday. Was it that the carnage in Madrid reminded them that the government of Jos? Maria Aznar had defied the people to back the U.S. war in Iraq? Or was it that the government was suspected of manipulating the evidence about the authors of the atrocity for narrow electoral advantage? Most likely there was an elision of the two.
Until last Thursday, the shocking images of New York's collapsing twin towers had begun to fade. For all its continued attacks in the Middle East and beyond and the suicide bombings in Iraq, in Europe at least al-Qaida had come to seem a rather more distant peril -- still dangerous, certainly, but no longer the existential threat implicit in America's global "war" against terrorism.
A week before the Madrid bombings Britain's Tony Blair warned against complacency. The danger from Islamist terrorism, he said, was as clear and present as it had ever been. Much of the succeeding commentary was scornful, accusing the prime minister of willful scaremongering to justify his own part in backing President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq.
After Madrid, his speech seems grimly prescient, yet Blair is deemed one of the losers from the Spanish poll. Aznar, after all, was a close friend and ally. In the topsy-turvy world of European politics, where attitudes toward Washington have supplanted the old dividing lines of right and left, a victory for the center-right in Spain would have been seen as a boost for Blair's center-left government.
Instead, Jos? Luis Rodr"guez Zapatero, the new socialist prime minister-elect, has put Spain firmly in the Franco-German anti-war camp by reaffirming his pledge to withdraw his country's troops from Iraq. Zapatero remarked rather sharply Monday that Bush and Blair might like to "reflect" on their decision to remove Saddam Hussein. Blair is not threatened by any immediate political challenge, not least because Britain's Conservatives backed the war. But he begins to look ever more isolated as Bush's chum.
The further fracturing of European relationships will be taken by al-Qaida as a famous victory. The terrorists will claim they can exact a terrible price from those who ally themselves with Washington. European voters, now nervous again each time they board an aircraft or walk into a railway station, can scarcely be blamed for thinking there might be something in that.
The truth, of course, is that Sept. 11, 2001, happened some 18 months before the Iraq conflict, and the attack on the United States was itself only the latest and most lethal in a long list of terrorist outrages committed by al-Qaida. Though it may suit the extremists now to single out America's closest allies as their first targets, their twisted brand of Islamist theology marks out every European nation as an enemy.
As Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, put it, "nobody should believe they can opt out of the war against Islamic terrorism." Al-Qaida demands surrender or nothing.
The lesson for Europeans is not to allow their (entirely legitimate) differences about the Iraq war to breach the common front against terrorism. Zapatero has an electoral mandate to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. But to make a connection between that decision and Islamist terrorism is to do al-Qaida's bidding.
The message for Bush is that, for all his coalitions of willing friends, the resentment bred by U.S. unilateralism has become a serious danger to America and its allies alike. The president has been right in judging that the campaign against Islamist terrorism is one that will have to be fought and re-fought over many years. All the more reason to build a stable and durable international consensus.
Establishing the United Nations as the legitimate authority in Iraq would be a small step in that direction, with the beneficial side-effect of ensuring Spanish troops could stay.
Re-engagement in the Middle East is a sine qua non. Of course, al-Qaida will never support a just settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, but a U.S.-brokered peace would deny the extremists vital oxygen. None of this requires altruism of from Bush; just a willingness to shape events.
Philip Stephens is a columnist for the Financial Times, where this comment first appeared.
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