It was quite a weekend at the annual meeting of defense ministers known as the Wehrkunde Conference. The interior minister of Bavaria, Guenther Beckstein, apparently choked on his beer when he heard that the U.S. State Department was cautioning American citizens to avoid downtown Munich, what with anti-war protests weighing in against America. “American citizens,” the Bavarian growled, “are safer in Munich than they would be if they took a walk in San Francisco or LA.” Well, there are those of us who remember the performance of the Munich constabulary back in 1972, when Arab terrorists murdered the Israeli Olympians. They botched it at the Olympic village and then, again, fatally, at Fuerstenfeldbruck, the airfield where the whole story ended. Anyhow, the carfuffle with Herr Beckstien was all about what was happening out on the streets.

Inside, an ambush was being hatched by the French and the Germans, who want to beef up United Nations arms inspectors in Iraq with a contingent of blue-helmeted U.N. troops. Though their ostensible purpose would be to back up the inspection team, the real purpose would be to make it more difficult for America and our allies to enforce the Security Council Resolution 1441 or, more importantly, the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 and the set of American policies that flows from it. Tempers were clearly running hot. UPI reports that Americans countering this little demarche were re minding the conferees of Srebrenica, where, in July 1995 in a U.N.-designated safe area, Bosnian Serb units killed 8,000 Muslim men and boys.* So much for the United Nations’ bona fides.

In related shenanigans, Germany and France and a few others were trying to block a NATO proposal to send reinforcements to the NATO member most exposed on the Iraq front, namely Turkey, which needs Patriot missiles as well as a surveillance plane and chemical and biological detectors. Given the defensive nature of the weapons, the drive to block their delivery to the Turks is an extraordinary departure for signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty. Secretary Rumsfeld was given thundering applause when he called it “beyond comprehension.” He made it clear that if NATO doesn’t approve the protective measures for Turkey, America will provide protection independently. “Turkey will not be hurt,” he said. “What will be hurt is NATO.”

Senator McCain, who was there, was quoted by UPI as saying that the opposition to the Turkish proposal “exposed the sneering in (Paris and Berlin) about the impulsive cowboy in the White House for the vacuous posturing and obvious misdirection that it is,” and also exposed “the myth that France and Germany speak for Europe.” McCain also accused them of “America-bashing to rally their people and other European elites to the call of European unity.” But UPI also quoted Senator Lieberman as saying he understood part of the rift, attributing it to the Bush administration’s balking at the Kyoto global climate change treaty, the international criminal court and the abrogation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. “I fear during the last two years our administration has not listened to Europe,” said Mr. Lieberman.

We thought Mr. Rumsfeld summed things up pretty well. He used the word “breathtaking” to describe the fact that “these acts of irresponsibility could happen now, at this moment in history.” He said the maneuvering “will be marked in the history of the United Nations as either the low point of that institution in retreat, or the turning point when the U.N. woke up, took hold of itself and moved away from a path of ridicule to a path of responsibility.” This led the German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, the former Green Party street fighter who has been trying to get people to take him seriously in his new post, to lose his cool entirely, switching to English and shouting, “I’m not convinced.” Lord Robertson, the alliance secretary general, was quoted as saying it makes “good political theater but does not amount to a breakdown in the alliance.” Maybe, but the fact is that for thousands who took the words of the Atlantic Treaty at a sacred text, an exemplar of Western courage and principle, the alliance has reached a nadir.

* Even after this massacre, the French would not countenance air strikes to defend Srebrenica.