Tony Blair may face the most difficult decision of his career when he meets George Bush in Camp David today, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
Could it be Vietnam all over again for George W Bush? Or another Suez for Tony Blair? These and other apocalyptic visions accompanied the British Prime Minister last night as he travelled from London to Spain en route to Washington and today's Camp David summit with the President Bush.
The drum beats incessantly for war against Iraq. And it will not be lost on Mr Blair that his Washington reception will prove a good deal warmer than that which would await him wherever Labour Party members are gathered across the length and breadth of Britain. It need hardly be said that the decision to commit troops to action is the most difficult and awesome for any democratic leader. If, as seems near-inevitable now, today's summit marks the countdown to conflict, for Mr Blair that decision may also prove the loneliest of his time in office.
Certainly for many Britons - some fearful for the Middle East and their own peace and security, others fuelled by anti-Americanism in general and passionate dislike in particular of a president they consider the worst possible combination of Texan oilman and cowboy - this is a journey too far for Mr Blair.
The latest opinion polls confirm that a deeply sceptical British public is as yet unconvinced of the case for war against Saddam Hussein, while on the Labour benches at Westminster the talk is of resignation and revolt. Even previously loyal MPs wonder "Where next?" as Mr Blair looks beyond Iraq to North Korea, and the left recoils in horror at the prospect of a rolling confrontation with rogue states and international terrorists at the behest of Uncle Sam.
Yes, they note the suggestion that post-Iraq Washington might turn its attention once more to the search for a Middle East settlement offering Palestinian security. But the left and many others divine stark differences between Mr Blair's template for conflict resolution there and the Bush White House vision for the democratisation of the Middle East. They see their prime minister fighting the good fight against weapons of mass destruction, all the while suspecting that, for the Americans, this is not really the issue at all.
As they allow themselves to imagine the shape and nature of the new world order envisioned by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, what, they ask, of Europe and Mr Blair's much-vaunted place at its heart? And for some Europhiles this in fact is where Mr Blair's journey to Washington ends - in the final implosion of his vision of Britain as bridge between Europe and America.
Mr Blair and his aides have no time for such fainthearts. Nor would the Euro-enthusiasts find any comfort in the terms by which their darkest fears are dismissed elsewhere in Whitehall. Citing yesterday's article in the London Times demanding that the UN Security Council resolutions on Iraqi disarmament be fully enforced, some senior British sources saw in this comforting evidence of a "new Europe" in which the powerful French/German axis was already out-dated.
As one source put it: "We [the EU] were fifteen and are set to become twenty five. These new entrants don't want to choose between Europe and America. They want US help, they want US investment. They don't want to have left the Cold War to find themselves in a new diplomatic war between Europe and America."
Interesting, here, the speed with which some British officials have echoed the disdain for the "old Europe" with which Donald Rumsfeld and others in Washington dismissed last week's warnings of French and German opposition to war. Mr Blair knows full well that the British public doesn't much like, and is distrustful of, President Bush. Pro-Europeans inside the Labour Party will also know that American antipathy to the French/German bloc will chime with British voters, deeply suspicious of recent French and German moves towards what many suspect is the intended prototype for a future European government.
MORE immediately and critically, Mr Blair has been significantly helped by Hans Blix's report to the Security Council this week cataloguing continued Iraqi evasions and deceptions and concluding that the regime in Baghdad is still not reconciled to the disarmament demanded of it by the United Nations.
Labour's anti-war party has sheltered thus far behind the insistence - voiced aloud by cabinet "doves" like Ms Clare Short - that Britain and America follow "the UN route" and take military action only with explicit UN approval in the form of a second resolution.
In fact Mr Blair has been consistent from the outset in deferring to the authority of the UN, while always adding the rider that the UN must be the means of resolving the problem and not of avoiding it. That was his message last September when he returned from holiday at the end of a summer-long "phoney war"in which Labour dissidents and anti-war churchmen had seemed to make all-the-running.
While making no exaggerated claims about his influence in Washington, Mr Blair was richly rewarded when President Bush himself spectacularly carried the challenge to the Security Council. And the Prime Minister now seems set to play the UN card back against his domestic opponents.
At Camp David today Mr Bush and Mr Blair will seek to agree their route to the point of decision about military action while maintaining the broadest possible international consensus, and the role further reports by the UN weapons inspectors might play in the countdown to confrontation.
The British expectation is that, once Iraqi non-compliance and "material breach" are finally determined, France and Germany will not want to stand alone alongside Saddam. At the same time Whitehall sources say they are taking nothing for granted and acknowledge they could well face a veto at the Security Council.
In that event, however, the view is already formed in Downing Street that that becomes a crisis for the UN and not for Mr Blair. As sources close to the Prime Minister frequently put it: "If the UN is not prepared to uphold its authority, then they're back to being the League of Nations."
In other words, Mr Blair will be claiming UN authority whatever the Security Council decides. He will be doing so, moreover, in clear repudiation of his reputation as the slave of the focus group and the prisoner of the latest opinion poll. Say what you like about this Prime Minister, but he's clearly prepared to take the lonely path.