Rice tells Europe to follow the lead of U.S. on nukes

The Bush administration yesterday urged its European allies not to “put a check” on American power but to stand firmly with the United States in its effort to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction and other modern ills.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice warned the Europeans that only a united front in pressuring rogue states like Iran and North Korea to abandon their nuclear ambitions would help to avoid military confrontation.

“We don’t ever want to have to deal with the proliferation issue again the way we dealt with Iraq,” Miss Rice said at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “If you don’t want a made-in-America solution, then let’s find out how to resolve the North Korean case and the Iranian case.”

Addressing an audience that has often expressed distaste for the administration’s policy of pre-emption, she offered assurances that Europe has nothing to fear from a “unipolar” world, in which the United States is the only superpower.

“Why would anyone who shares the values of freedom seek to put a check on those values?” Miss Rice asked, adding that Europe and democracies around the globe should follow Washington’s lead instead of trying to balance it with competing policies. A text of the speech was released by the White House.

She dismissed a vision of “multipolarity” advanced by French President Jacques Chirac and others, calling it “a theory of rivalry, of competing interests,” which “only the enemies of freedom would cheer.”

“We have tried this before,” she said. “It led to the Great War, which cascaded into the Good War, which gave way to the Cold War. Today, this theory of rivalry threatens to divert us from meeting the great tasks before us.”

Mr. Chirac spoke about multipolarity during the Iraq debate earlier this year when France tried to prevent the United States from going to war. He threatened to block any resolution at the United Nations authorizing the use of force, causing Washington to invade Iraq with only British and limited Australian help.

Apparently concerned about U.S. dominance, Paris insists that all major decisions affecting international order be taken by the U.N. Security Council, where it has a veto.

At the annual summit this month of the Group of Eight — the world’s leading industrial nations and Russia — in the French town of Evian, Mr. Chirac invited leaders from a dozen developing and other nonmember states, in a symbolic demonstration of his multipolar vision.

Even before September 11, the Bush administration was often accused abroad of being unilateral and allergic to multinational treaties, ignoring the views of other countries and bullying them into obliging the superpower.

But Miss Rice said the United States should not be feared and opposed just because of its unparalleled might. She argued that other nations can put their mark on history by joining forces with Washington to battle terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and other post-Cold War security threats.

“Power in the service of freedom is to be welcomed, and powers that share a commitment to freedom can and must make common cause against freedom’s enemies,” she said. “This is not a description of a unipolar world.”

Quoting the administration’s National Security Strategy, Mr. Bush’s adviser said: “There is little lasting consequence that the United States can accomplish in the world without the sustained cooperation of allies and friends.”

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