POLITICS: Divided Europe Now Gets Confused

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Julio Godoy

BERLIN, Apr 16 2004 (IPS) - The growing anarchy in Iraq and the terror attacks in Madrid are having opposite effects across Europe. One confirms the broad European opposition to the war on Iraq, the other is encouraging an uncompromising stand against Islamic militancy.

A commentary by Mathias Nass, foreign affairs correspondent with the liberal German weekly Die Zeit illustrates this duality.

Die Zeit had strongly supported the U.S.-led war against Iraq a year ago.. This week Nass said the U.S. policy in Iraq had been unconvincing from the very beginning.

After pointing out that “the weapons of mass destruction (that Saddam Hussein allegedly stockpiled) were never found,” Nass said Iraq had become a playground for Islamic terrorism “only after the U.S. invaded the country.”

Nass also condemned “the irresponsible U.S. behaviour after the war.” He wrote that an alliance of “secret service agents, dubious Iraqi expatriates and ideologues had conveyed an extremely illusory positive image of Iraq (without Saddam).”

But Nass warns against withdrawal of U.S. and European troops from Iraq. “Nobody, even those who considered the U.S. decision to attack Iraq one year ago as dead wrong, can now stand for a precipitate withdrawal of troops.”

At the same time Nass said the attacks in Madrid March 11 show that Europe will stick together with the United States. “Islamic fundamentalism, which nourishes hatred against the U.S., has also declared war on liberal, secular Europe,” Nass added.

Dualities are arising all over Europe along these lines.

The German government rejects demands to send troops to Iraq or to join the U.S.-led NATO force in the Middle East. And yet minister for foreign relations Joseph Fischer is distancing himself from his own earlier positions to speak of a “reconstruction of the West” in the face of the Iraq crisis and what he calls Islamic fascism.

“Yes, I stick to the transatlantic approach,” Fischer says, referring to the central role played by the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

Besides repeating terminology coined by U.S. neo-conservative ideologues after the attacks of Sep. 11, Fischer now affirms that a German-French nucleus – which had opposed the U.S. war plans in Iraq – would be counterproductive for Europe.

Fischer had until recently defended this nucleus as “a gravitational centre” for the development of the European Union (EU).

The Iraq crisis had split the EU in two. Led by Washington, London and Madrid, a “new” Europe supported the U.S. war designs, opposed to the “old” Europe around the French-German nucleus.

But mounting evidence that the U.S. government lied in order to justify the war on Iraq has weakened its old allies in the EU, and created a new momentum for Fischer’s old proposal of a European nucleus built around the Berlin-Paris axis.

New Spanish head of government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has declared that he will work closely with Germany and France in the EU.

He has announced also that his government would withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq by June 30 unless a United Nations (UN) mandate legalises their status, an announcement welcomed both in Berlin and in Paris.

Leaders in Poland, another member of the occupying coalition, also say now that the U.S. government deceived them into joining the war. “We have been misled into the war,” Polish President Alexandre Kwasniewski said last month, referring to U.S. claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

But Kwasniewski said Polish troops would remain in Iraq. “We cannot end our mission in Iraq if that would increase instability,” he said.

Friction is developing also between the United States and Britain, so far the most firm ally of U.S. President George W. Bush in Iraq.

Michael Rubin, a former aide to U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq L. Paul Bremer has gone so far as to accuse Britain of betraying common objectives by negotiating agreements with former followers of Saddam Hussein in the Iraqi city Basra, and with Iranian groups in British controlled southern Iraq.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair first met UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York Thursday evening before a scheduled meeting with Bush Friday. Blair is now seen to be setting some distance from the policies of Washington.

These developments still do not mean that Europe is setting itself apart from the United States. “Small European thinking doesn’t work against the totalitarian Islamic threat,” Fischer says.

Fischer also maintains that NATO must maintain its military role, but with a “new balance between the U.S. and Europe.” Fischer says only a united Europe would have the “strategic dimension” to influence the mapping of a new world order. But he does not say how Europe can be united diplomatically.

Many German observers believe that Fischer is only demonstrating his thinking efforts. “Many people in Berlin presume that Fischer is only trying to cope with a profile problem,” says Richard Meng, commentator with the left- wing daily Frankfurter Rundschau.

But it might also be, Meng adds, that “in these intricate times, Fischer is trying to cope with his own thoughts.”