Wanna see media bias in action? The EU Observer writes in today’s newsletter that the German press casts doubt about Joschka Fischer’s possible nomination as a future European Foreign Minister. What? The German press? Well, if you check the article it’s actually only the FT Deutschland… and suddenly all makes sense again.
Schlagwort-Archive: European Politics
I know what Robert Kagan is doing tomorrow.
Well, I don’t. But as he lives in Brussels, he might very well check out the European Institutions on their open day (from EUobserver.)
Quicklinks, Tony Blair, And The Borg
Sorry for the apparent recent lack of updates. Not that there’s not enough stuff I’d like to comment on, I just did not find the time lately.
But there’s exciting news, too. Look to your left, my gentle readers, and you’ll find a seamlessly integrated second blog called “Link Of The Minute.” This is where I hope to post even when I don’t find the time to put my simple opinions into overly complicated writing. The “Quote Of The Minute”, on the other hand, has moved to the right (and will also be blog powered soon, now that I have found a way to integrate more than one blog on one page with Javascript. It’s actually quite simple – here’s how the magic happens.
Alright, more tomorrow. Expect me to be rather critical of the “European-defence-summit” in Brussels tomorrow. The history of this summit is just one more example how elections even in a small country like Belgium could have important international ramifications. But not this time, I suppose, as the US are apparently trying to play divide et impera by beginning to mend things with the German government while bashing France – think of last week’s “there will be consequences, and it will hurt”-statement by Colin Powell, who is coming to Germany in May, and statements from “beltway-insiders” who suddenly seem quite relaxed about the future of US-German relations.
Given this seeming American recognition that it is not in the US’ interest to force Germany to opt for an all-francophone foreign policy, I do not quite understand today’s “resistance is futile”- declaration by the American ambassador to Europe, the British PM Tony Blair.
All he is doing is increasing the perception that the coming world order is indeed one in which Jean-Luc will have to become Locutus of Borg. If this is what he wants to achieve, then fine. But what is really needed right now is someone who explains that a unipolar world would not be a unilateral one.
Especially for the British PM it ould be important in days like these not to repeat the mistake Churchill made after WW2, by outlining three spheres of British interest – being the US’ junior partner, the Commonwealth, and Europe, in that order.
The US never wanted a junior partner telling them how to run the world during the cold war. They wanted to use a British membership in the EU to gain influence in Brussels. Early in the 1960s the US government told the British that they would have their “special relationship” with Germany instead if the UK would not join soon. Well, it took more then ten years to get in, as Général deGaulle understood precisely what was at stake.
So he vetoed the British membership in the EU until the common agricultural policy was finally agreed upon – in a way that favoured France and would seriously disadvantage the UK once it entered the EU. So the British influence in Europe was severly hampered by this and the fact that the 1970s brought economic gloom rather than glory.
To cut a long story short – Churchill’s three spheres seemed to be a good idea back in 1945. But they turned out to be a horrible mistake. And while everyone knows that history does not repeat itself in detail, I might – as I already said last December commenting on Blair’s European ideas and the Turkish application for membership – repeat itself in structure.
Whatever Blair’s judgment about the extent of American primacy in the West – it does not matter at all if resistance is actually futile or not: there will be resistance if it is perceived necessary. Blair’s talk raises the chances it will.
And so it looks like the British government is – again – underestimating the European dynamics. It looks as if Capt’n Tony should have watched more StarTrek – NextGeneration” recently – instead of dubbing “The Simpsons” ;-).
Ah, thinking about all this, a very good book regarding the British-European relations post 1945 is: Stephen George, An Awkward Partner: Britain in the European Community. Well… I liked it a lot.
Tongues Against Terror
A very European joke I had in mind since I first read about those Congressional “Freedom Fries”… should anyone be interested in a larger version, let me know. I thought it would be a good idea to post it before making fun of the US Supreme Commander would likely make me an enemy combattant and strip me of my human rights. Besides, the next weeks very likely are not going to be too funny, as warNow! will probably begin Tuesday or Wednesday night.
As for those 24 last hours of diplomacy, I still think there’s a slight chance to preserve peace for the time being, peacefully disarm Iraq through UNMOVIC and, most importantly, allow W a face saving withdrawal.
Any second resolution would have to involve a common global threat of military action against Saddam Hussein’s regime – France, Germany, and Russia would have to accept some version of the British bullet point list and commit themselves not only to political support, but also to significant military engagement in a future war, should UNMOVIC not decide at the agreed date that Iraq’s compliance is in the 99th percentile (100% is impossible, as there will always be misunderstandings that could then be used by one party or the other to back their non-agreed-upon actions – recent stories about how the US forged intelligence and how the latest British Iraq dossier has its main origin in a political science paper – don’t get me wrong here, I studied that myself – it’s just that you would assume that MI6 has more resources than a library). Basically, it would involve to credibly back up the European formula of war as last means.
In this case, I believe, it would be hard for Bush and even more so for Blair to renounce this offer. And more time would, first and foremost, allow everyone in the game to reposition themselves and explore new options – apart from Saddam Hussein, given the scrutiny that he is under these days.
So will it happen? I doubt it. Mostly because personal stakes have been now chained so firmly to national positions. Just imagine Schroeder or Chirac trying to explain this to the German or French public. Moreover, if everyone believes that the US would not accept a positive UNMOVIC verdict in the end, US unilateral action would be even worse for global governance than it will be now when everybody can still pretend that resolution 1441 does indeed offer some legal recourse for lonely unilateralists.
So it is very unlikely that tomorrow’s UNSC session will yield something like the strategy I sketched above. But don’t say that diplomacy is dead until it really is.
May the force be with them.
Paris, Texas.
Could it be that there is something going on we don’t really know about? Spiegel online [link in German] is suspicious that Joschka Fischer’s surprise visit at the Quai d’Orsay today could be induced by a possible UNSC-voting-moodswing of Jaques Chirac. I don’t know. Not that I am actually convinced he would not change his opinion, but I just can’t see what could possibly have led to this change right now? The French humouristic weekly “Le Canard Enchainé” apparently reports that Chirac told people in private on Feburary 26 that a French UNSC veto would be useless given the Bush administration’s determination to go to war.
Hmm, what is being played here? Seriously, why would anyone allow this kind of speculation just now? With Blair cornered in the Commons, Turkey’s decision to wait and see befoe more US troops could be allowed to enter the country, and last week’s capture of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Pakistan, some people already see (saw?) the possibility of a non-war exit strategy for the US president given the opposition in the UN –
“‘The arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed gives us some breathing room,’ says a Bush strategist. ‘We can concentrate on the favorable publicity generated by the arrest and the valuable intelligence we have gained from that event.’ … Right now, only the U.S., Britain and Spain favor immediate military action against Iraq. With most of the other allies lining up against the U.S., Bush faces both a diplomatic and public relations nightmare if he proceeds against Hussein without UN backing. ‘We’ve always needed an exit strategy,’ admits a White House aide. ‘Circumstances have given us one. Perhaps we shouldn’t ignore it.'”
Well. If Spiegel Online is right, they can safely ignore it.
What’s going on in Paris?
Now Wash Your Hands! I
I suppose it’s quite unusual for a German to agree with a headline of the British tabloid “The Sun“. But here I do (I did not bother to read the rest of the article – so if I say headline, I mean headline…). I think President Chirac has clearly sent the wrong message to the world about his motives for military restraint in the ongoing quarrel with Iraq when inviting Robert Mugabe, the Zimbawean dictator, to the Franco-African summit held in Paris this week.
And it’s not just “The Sun”. More important for Mr Chirac, “Le Monde” is also pretty clear in its judgment of the invitation – albeit not mentioning the probable Iraq-related repercussions of such a move –
“La présence de Robert Mugabe à Paris pour le 22e sommet franco-africain est une insulte pour les victimes de son règne arbitraire au Zimbabwe.”
Translation (my own) –
“The presence of Robert Mugabe in Paris for the 22nd Franco-African Summit is an insult for the victims of his arbirtrary reign in Zimbabwe.”
It’s hard to argue with that.
In recent weeks, Chirac has repeatedly proven his political and diplomatic talent, managing to become the key player regarding a second UN resolution explicitly allowing war on Iraq. But starting with the over-the-top and entirely unnecessary threats against Eastern Europe earlier this week, he has shown his uglier face. Drunk on power? I certainly hope he’s not. That would indeed make poor Gerhard a lonely man.
The Rationale Behind Open Opposition
Joshua Micah Marshall offers one more reason behind the unusual open and vocal Old European resistance to the Bush administration’s policy on Iraq.
“… The fact that Brent Scowcroft, the president’s father’s foreign policy guru, keeps on having to resort to the opinion pages to warn the president away from some new foreign policy disaster? (These public missives, of course, are widely and I think correctly seen as veiled messages from former President Bush.)”
Now if even Bush senior is going through the media to talk to his son, I think the conclusion becomes unavoidable that talking to W does not really help to influence his policy decisions. So which option remains for those sceptical of his course? They have to take their opinion out to the street… and there we are.
Further Right.
An article published by Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at Washington’s libertarian Cato Institute and former advisor to Ronald Reagon, indicates to me that the real rift concerning foreign policy could be neither the Atlantic nor the middle aisles in the chambers of the US Congress. It indicates to me that there seems to be a deep divide between socially conservative Republicans and Libertarian Reoublicans in the US.
The conservative, traditional, hierarchical model of social coordination favoured by the former is usually abhorred by the latter’s assertion that laisser-faire is the only just way to organise a society/economy. Of course, a two party system does not offer too many alternatives if you want to “make votes count” (Gary W. Cox’ book is really brilliant!), so both faction have teamed-up due to their even stronger disgust of the plans for social and! economic reengineering proposed by those who sit on the other side of the aisles. But from time to time, the internal divisions surface. Current US foreign policy is an example thereof.
In this article, which appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung last Friday (link in English), Bandow pratically asks France and Germany to stand firm in their opposition to a US led war on Iraq –
“If Berlin and Paris back down after publicly avowing their opposition to war in such strong terms, they will reinforce the justifiable contempt in which they are held in Washington. And U.S. administrations will continue to ignore them in foreign crises. The credibility of European and other critics of Washington is at stake. Giving in will feed Washington’s conviction that it can impose its will without constraint.”
Bandow’s opinion does not look too isolated if you have a look at this page, which is listing the body of work Cato scholars have done since 911 regarding a potential U.S. war with Iraq.
However, if you compare Bandow’s view (or even the piece by Eric Alterman I already linked some days ago) to this interpretation of the US-European problems by the Carnegy Endowment’s (neoconservative) Robert Kagan, you’ll clearly sense a difference not only in style, but in content, too.
Kagan is a vocal proponent of what he calls “American benevolent hegemony“. And it seems, those who share his opinion are willing to pick up the tab for continued American hegemony – inducing all the parallels I already referred to on January 20th. Bandow, on the other hand does not see a point in paying for hegemony – and this is not just a different financial assessment. It’s a different world-view.
“Still, it is understandable why Europe has so little influence over American policy. Europe as a whole is a security black hole for America. … Providing a handful of special forces and lending a couple of AWACS planes would not have been necessary were the U.S. not devoting a substantial share of its military to defending Europe.
The Europeans would do far more for America by simply garrisoning their own continent, instead of expecting the U.S. to maintain 100,000 troops to protect populous, prosperous industrialized states, as well as another 13,000 to enforce order in the Balkans, a region of no strategic interest to America.”
He realises that Europe’s attitude may be one of rational free riding. But that, of course, feeds US demands of eternal subservience, which Europe is seemingly less willing to swallow these days.
In the end, the Iraq crisis is teaching all parties involved that it’s impossible to have the cake, and eat it, too – in Bandow’s words (from last September) –
“… neither side has conducted itself with much maturity in the ongoing international spat. The Bush administration believes that allies such as Germany should do what it says, no questions asked. The Schroeder administration believes that Germany deserves a significant say in international relations, while shrinking its military and relying on Washington to resolve tough global problems. … The administration wants doormats, not allies. Germany and Europe don’t have to remain irrelevant, however. The Schroeder- Bush fight offers Berlin and other European states a unique opportunity to strike a more independent course. It’s time for Washington to encourage such a change.”
As for the last sentence of the quote, the current administration does not seem to listen to Mr Bandow. At least, not yet. As always, time will tell.
Seriously, guys.
Sorry for the lack of updates. I will write more later, but this one could not wait.
I just checked the MIT’s blogdex and found an “instapundit.com” entry ranked #38. The entry links this article concerning the increasing isolation of France and Germany following yesterday’s Aznar-Bush advertising campaign. Today, Slovakia and Albania signed up, too. Remember Albania? The county that virtually attacked the US in Barry Levinson’s “Wag The Dog“?
Anyway, Albania is not what I wanted to talk about. As Glenn Reynolds rightly notices –
The article goes on to minimize (if that’s possible) the military importance of Albania and Slovakia.
But then he says something which I could not find in the article he linked to and which really makes me wonder about the quality of information out there these days.
He goes on to say –
“But that’s not the point. The point is that — despite (or because of) their diplomatic anschluss — France and Germany are now isolated within the E.U. Indeed, there is now talk that the E.U. may splinter as a result of their anti-American efforts.”
Excuse me? Let me repeat it for your reading pleasure.
“Indeed, there is now talk that the E.U. may splinter as a result of their anti-American efforts.”
How far is Europe from the US again? Seriously guys, it does make a huge difference to say that
a) the joint European position, which EU foreign ministers agreed on last Monday is about to splinter as a result of non-reconcilable positions – as actually stated in the linked article – or that
b) the EU, a supranational entity with a common market, which is performing governmental, legislative and judicial functions for its member states could be disbanded because of a foreign policy dispute regarding Iraq. However important the Iraq-question may have become – such a proposition is sheer and utter nonsense.
Mr Reynolds also rather doubts the proposition, adding that –
“[t]hat probably won’t happen…”
No, it will CERTAINLY NOT happen. I really wonder if this proposition has actually been made, and if so, by whom? And why?
It is this kind of avoidable disinformation does make me angry. Seriously.
Now we’re talking…
Now look at that.
If ‘old’ Europe’s support were indeed as damn irrelevant to the US administration as many of its senior officials have repeatedly stated – why, then, would someone like Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon’s defense advisory board and one of the key figures behind the Bush administration’s Irak policy, find the time to appear on German tv for a six minute interview on the day of the President’s “State Of The Union” address?
And believe it or not – while firmly restating the well known simple WMD based argument for attacking Iraq – he often referred to European “friends“, not weasels, that do not share the US administration’s point of view in many respects. I have to say, for someone who (seriously?) stated after last year’s German election that
“[t]he best thing would be for [German chancellor Gerhard Schröder] to resign…”,
this appears to be a quite remarkable change of communication strategy.
So maybe Bush won’t add France and Germany to the “Axis of Evil” tonight ;-). And maybe, his speechwriters have realised by now that they are not simply writing for their neoconservative constituency. Maybe, they have realised that a lot of Americans do care about the world’s, and thus – also – ‘old’ Europe’s opinion, and that international opposition can damage approval ratings – at least before America goes to war. Maybe they have realised that Harvard’s Joseph Nye may have had a point (even though he was a Clinton official, and thus also some sort of honorary weasel) when he described The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone. Maybe they have realised that, tonight, their words will be examined by the entire world.
Maybe this is wishful thinking. But maybe, the world will be spared from another “Axis of Evil” tonight – I certainly hope so.
I recently read a review of “The Right Man”, a book containing some insights into the Bush administration, written by David Frum, a former speechwriter. In this review, Jeffrey A. Tucker writes –
“Remember the famous “Axis of Evil” phrase? It was originally “Axis of Hatred,” and it was written by Frum. Why? Frum writes: “Bush decided that the United States was no longer a status-quo power in the Middle East. He wanted to see plans for overthrowing Saddam, and he wanted a speech that explained to the world why Iraq’s dictator must go. And from that presidential decision, bump, bump, bump down the hierarchy… to me.”
Again, what can this mean? Bush knew he wanted to get rid of Saddam but didn’t know why? He hires people like Frum to drum up some, any, rationale?”
Stories like these do not automatically disqualify the political goal to oust Saddam. But they are clearly not helpful to win a sceptical world’s support. So now, let’s hear what the US President is going to tell us this year. Oh, and while we’re watching, we might as well have a little fun.