aria
Former Moderator
- Joined
- Dec 4, 1977
- Posts
- 39,546
For those keeping up on all the hoopla wink
I thought it tried to keep itself balanced and objective, giving a good description:
----------------------------
February 14, 2003
For Old Friends, Iraq Bares a Deep Rift
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
BRUSSELS, Feb. 13 — As antiwar demonstrators prepare for what they are saying will be among the largest protest marches in history this weekend, many in Europe are asking themselves: how did trans-Atlantic relations, which were so good so recently, get so bad so quickly?
What has become clear to many here is that the Bush administration's preparations for a possible war with Iraq have provoked something far beyond the normal disagreements that sometimes take place among allies — as happened many times during the cold war and more recently over such questions as the Kyoto Protocol on global warming or the International Criminal Court, both favored in Europe but rejected in Washington.
Now, something deep and fundamental in the different views of Europe and the United States seems to have been brought to the surface by the Iraqi crisis.
Several hundred thousand antiwar protesters are expected Saturday on the streets of London alone, and it has become clear that the European public, from Britain to Poland, from "old" Europe to "new" Europe, is against war in Iraq.
Indeed, it is almost as if President Bush and his administration have unwittingly brought about a popular unity on this continent that belies the sharp differences among Europe's governments, which are openly divided on the question of a war to dislodge President Saddam Hussein.
With turmoil in NATO, divisions on the Security Council and undiplomatically angry words being shouted across the Atlantic, many here have started to worry about the prospect of permanent damage to the very structures on which European peace and prosperity have been based for the past half century and more.
"Everything's falling to pieces; that's really the case, I believe," Michael Stürmer, a professor of history and an editorial writer at the conservative German daily Die Welt, said in a recent conversation. "We have various problems, all knotted together."
It may be — and some diplomats here in the seat of the European community are predicting this — that over the next few weeks the trans-Atlantic gaps are going to be bridged and that such alarming spectacles as the current disarray in NATO will disappear.
In this optimistic view, after the report of United Nations inspectors on Friday, the United States will manage to get a resolution passed in the Security Council that will authorize force, and then the French, who have led the charge against war, will move from opposing military action to taking part in it.
But such an outcome looks remote today. One of the reasons the leaders of Germany and France have so publicly defied the United States — in the United Nations as well as in NATO — is that it is popular to do so.
Certainly, it did not look like that just a few weeks ago. To be sure, American opposition to the Kyoto treaty, coupled with a kind of visceral distrust of the Bush administration, might have prepared the ground for widespread European opposition to American plans for war in Iraq.
But essentially, last fall, sympathy prompted by the losses of Sept. 11 was widespread, and on the strategic front, developments seemed positive.
Both NATO and the European Union were in the process of historic and tandem expansions, incorporating the former members of the Eastern bloc and spreading the net of military security, economic expansion and democratic governments to the very borders of Russia.
A majority of Europeans supported the United States in earlier military actions, from the Persian Gulf war of 1991 to the Kosovo war of 1999 to the action in Afghanistan after Sept. 11.
Now all that has been turned on its head. The German government, for the first time in its postwar history, has put itself in direct conflict over a major issue with the United States, and this is a very big change.
For years, even though Germany was a close partner with France when it came to powering the European Community forward, it always resisted the Gaullist impulse to keep a certain distance from America.
In only a few weeks, however, Germany, Europe's largest country and its most important economy by far, has entered into a sort of informal coalition whose very identity is opposition to a policy that an American administration deems vital to the security of the United States and the world.
To some extent, the divisions express what some have identified as growing fundamental cultural differences between Europe and the United States.
Most conspicuously, in the wake of Sept. 11, a gap has opened up in the European and American perceptions of danger. It is not too much to say that while Americans intensely sense a new vulnerability and an urgent new need for self-defense, Europeans, after the end of the cold war, do not. Put bluntly, the people of Berlin now feel safer even as the people of New York sense a new danger.
"I do think that there are different perceptions of risks on both sides," Javier Solana, the foreign affairs chief for the European Union, said in an interview.
While Americans recently experienced an attack on their mainland, Europeans, as Mr. Solana put this, are enjoying "the most secure period of our history."
Americans, aware of European peace and security, believe that these happy conditions were made possible by 50 years of American military expenditures and protection, which they feel that Europeans appreciate less than they should.
Europeans, while aware of American military protection, perhaps because of it, feel safe, safer than they should feel, in the view of some here.
"My father fought in two wars, but it's impossible to think that my sons will fight in wars in Europe," Mr. Solana said. "But we are not aware enough of the danger of weapons of mass destruction, and we have to correct that. Weapons of mass destruction are not just an American problem, they are a problem for all of us."
It is not that Europeans, a clear majority of whom are shown by polls across Europe to be opposed to war, have any kind regard for Mr. Hussein and his government.
But few of them seem really to believe that Mr. Hussein is anything more than another of the world's dictators, perhaps one of the most cutthroat of them, but not the most dangerous. Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, probably holds that distinction in the minds of many Europeans.
By contrast, in many quarters in Europe, the public deems unbridled American power in the service of a pre-emptive strike to be the greater international menace.
"What happens in the future if China or Russia decide that some other country is a threat to them, and they decide to go to war?" asked an editor for a Germany publishing company attending an antiwar demonstration in Munich last weekend. "What are you going to do then?"
There are those analyzing European-American differences who find this discrepancy in the view of threats could have a long-term effect on the main organizations of American-European cooperation, especially NATO.
"The North Atlantic alliance could survive without a common threat," said Jonathan Eyal, director of studies at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies, a British research organization. "Actually it has gone from strength to strength in the years since the end of the cold war. But it cannot survive without a common perception of what constitutes a threat."
Other cultural differences, many of them described in an article by Robert Kagan, an American analyst, read widely on both sides of the Atlantic, have been cited to explain the deeper reasons for the trans-Atlantic conflict. Europeans, embedded for decades by now in a community that has required ever more sacrifices of sovereignty, have come to see their future as part of a network of states, in which war, once so common and so devastating on this continent has come to be seen as illegitimate and unjustified, except in self-defense.
Americans, by contrast, are still fiercely attached to their sovereignty. Moreover, certain Americans, specifically the conservatives and neo-conservatives who make policy in the Bush administration, nurture a strong distrust of international organizations like the United Nations, which, in their view, is afflicted by a kind of unrealistic piousness, the first principle of which is that war is never morally justified except in cases of direct self-defense.
Matters are made more complicated by the fact that Europe itself, or, at least, European elites, are themselves deeply split on the question of Iraq.
Three weeks ago, a group of countries across Europe, a geographic sample extending from Britain in the north, to Italy in the south and to Poland in the east, signed a letter supporting the United States on Iraq.
A week later, on the very day of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's speech at the United Nations, 10 former members of the Soviet bloc signed a similar statement.
"The intention of the letter was not to divide Europe, as was being said in Germany and France," Alexandr Vondra, a deputy foreign minister of the Czech Republic, said.
"But a few weeks ago there we were listening to Chirac's message on Iraq stating European policy to be peace, peace, peace, and he didn't consult with us about it," he said, referring to President Jacques Chirac of France. "We had to hear it on the TV news."
"In economic affairs, on matters of European integration, Germany and France can do what they want, I suppose," he continued, "but when our relations with the United States are at stake, I think they have to be much more careful."
The divide inside Europe could also have long-term implications, since, even with populations that are antiwar, the countries of the old East are viewed as both more closely attached to the United States than those of the West and more suspicious of France and Germany, Europe's powerful major instrument.
"No country in Eastern Europe is going to be dictated to by Paris or Berlin," Mr. Eyal, the research director in London, said.
Mr. Vondra said, "For 50 years the United States helped us; now it's time for once for us to help the United States."
But if the Iraq question has created obstacles to a common European foreign and defense policy, there appears to be little doubt that the main divide remains between the European public and the American desire for a military solution in Iraq. That divide does not look likely to narrow soon.
-------
<small>[ February 14, 2003, 04:55 PM: Message edited by: Bobak ]</small>
I thought it tried to keep itself balanced and objective, giving a good description:
----------------------------
February 14, 2003
For Old Friends, Iraq Bares a Deep Rift
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
BRUSSELS, Feb. 13 — As antiwar demonstrators prepare for what they are saying will be among the largest protest marches in history this weekend, many in Europe are asking themselves: how did trans-Atlantic relations, which were so good so recently, get so bad so quickly?
What has become clear to many here is that the Bush administration's preparations for a possible war with Iraq have provoked something far beyond the normal disagreements that sometimes take place among allies — as happened many times during the cold war and more recently over such questions as the Kyoto Protocol on global warming or the International Criminal Court, both favored in Europe but rejected in Washington.
Now, something deep and fundamental in the different views of Europe and the United States seems to have been brought to the surface by the Iraqi crisis.
Several hundred thousand antiwar protesters are expected Saturday on the streets of London alone, and it has become clear that the European public, from Britain to Poland, from "old" Europe to "new" Europe, is against war in Iraq.
Indeed, it is almost as if President Bush and his administration have unwittingly brought about a popular unity on this continent that belies the sharp differences among Europe's governments, which are openly divided on the question of a war to dislodge President Saddam Hussein.
With turmoil in NATO, divisions on the Security Council and undiplomatically angry words being shouted across the Atlantic, many here have started to worry about the prospect of permanent damage to the very structures on which European peace and prosperity have been based for the past half century and more.
"Everything's falling to pieces; that's really the case, I believe," Michael Stürmer, a professor of history and an editorial writer at the conservative German daily Die Welt, said in a recent conversation. "We have various problems, all knotted together."
It may be — and some diplomats here in the seat of the European community are predicting this — that over the next few weeks the trans-Atlantic gaps are going to be bridged and that such alarming spectacles as the current disarray in NATO will disappear.
In this optimistic view, after the report of United Nations inspectors on Friday, the United States will manage to get a resolution passed in the Security Council that will authorize force, and then the French, who have led the charge against war, will move from opposing military action to taking part in it.
But such an outcome looks remote today. One of the reasons the leaders of Germany and France have so publicly defied the United States — in the United Nations as well as in NATO — is that it is popular to do so.
Certainly, it did not look like that just a few weeks ago. To be sure, American opposition to the Kyoto treaty, coupled with a kind of visceral distrust of the Bush administration, might have prepared the ground for widespread European opposition to American plans for war in Iraq.
But essentially, last fall, sympathy prompted by the losses of Sept. 11 was widespread, and on the strategic front, developments seemed positive.
Both NATO and the European Union were in the process of historic and tandem expansions, incorporating the former members of the Eastern bloc and spreading the net of military security, economic expansion and democratic governments to the very borders of Russia.
A majority of Europeans supported the United States in earlier military actions, from the Persian Gulf war of 1991 to the Kosovo war of 1999 to the action in Afghanistan after Sept. 11.
Now all that has been turned on its head. The German government, for the first time in its postwar history, has put itself in direct conflict over a major issue with the United States, and this is a very big change.
For years, even though Germany was a close partner with France when it came to powering the European Community forward, it always resisted the Gaullist impulse to keep a certain distance from America.
In only a few weeks, however, Germany, Europe's largest country and its most important economy by far, has entered into a sort of informal coalition whose very identity is opposition to a policy that an American administration deems vital to the security of the United States and the world.
To some extent, the divisions express what some have identified as growing fundamental cultural differences between Europe and the United States.
Most conspicuously, in the wake of Sept. 11, a gap has opened up in the European and American perceptions of danger. It is not too much to say that while Americans intensely sense a new vulnerability and an urgent new need for self-defense, Europeans, after the end of the cold war, do not. Put bluntly, the people of Berlin now feel safer even as the people of New York sense a new danger.
"I do think that there are different perceptions of risks on both sides," Javier Solana, the foreign affairs chief for the European Union, said in an interview.
While Americans recently experienced an attack on their mainland, Europeans, as Mr. Solana put this, are enjoying "the most secure period of our history."
Americans, aware of European peace and security, believe that these happy conditions were made possible by 50 years of American military expenditures and protection, which they feel that Europeans appreciate less than they should.
Europeans, while aware of American military protection, perhaps because of it, feel safe, safer than they should feel, in the view of some here.
"My father fought in two wars, but it's impossible to think that my sons will fight in wars in Europe," Mr. Solana said. "But we are not aware enough of the danger of weapons of mass destruction, and we have to correct that. Weapons of mass destruction are not just an American problem, they are a problem for all of us."
It is not that Europeans, a clear majority of whom are shown by polls across Europe to be opposed to war, have any kind regard for Mr. Hussein and his government.
But few of them seem really to believe that Mr. Hussein is anything more than another of the world's dictators, perhaps one of the most cutthroat of them, but not the most dangerous. Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, probably holds that distinction in the minds of many Europeans.
By contrast, in many quarters in Europe, the public deems unbridled American power in the service of a pre-emptive strike to be the greater international menace.
"What happens in the future if China or Russia decide that some other country is a threat to them, and they decide to go to war?" asked an editor for a Germany publishing company attending an antiwar demonstration in Munich last weekend. "What are you going to do then?"
There are those analyzing European-American differences who find this discrepancy in the view of threats could have a long-term effect on the main organizations of American-European cooperation, especially NATO.
"The North Atlantic alliance could survive without a common threat," said Jonathan Eyal, director of studies at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies, a British research organization. "Actually it has gone from strength to strength in the years since the end of the cold war. But it cannot survive without a common perception of what constitutes a threat."
Other cultural differences, many of them described in an article by Robert Kagan, an American analyst, read widely on both sides of the Atlantic, have been cited to explain the deeper reasons for the trans-Atlantic conflict. Europeans, embedded for decades by now in a community that has required ever more sacrifices of sovereignty, have come to see their future as part of a network of states, in which war, once so common and so devastating on this continent has come to be seen as illegitimate and unjustified, except in self-defense.
Americans, by contrast, are still fiercely attached to their sovereignty. Moreover, certain Americans, specifically the conservatives and neo-conservatives who make policy in the Bush administration, nurture a strong distrust of international organizations like the United Nations, which, in their view, is afflicted by a kind of unrealistic piousness, the first principle of which is that war is never morally justified except in cases of direct self-defense.
Matters are made more complicated by the fact that Europe itself, or, at least, European elites, are themselves deeply split on the question of Iraq.
Three weeks ago, a group of countries across Europe, a geographic sample extending from Britain in the north, to Italy in the south and to Poland in the east, signed a letter supporting the United States on Iraq.
A week later, on the very day of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's speech at the United Nations, 10 former members of the Soviet bloc signed a similar statement.
"The intention of the letter was not to divide Europe, as was being said in Germany and France," Alexandr Vondra, a deputy foreign minister of the Czech Republic, said.
"But a few weeks ago there we were listening to Chirac's message on Iraq stating European policy to be peace, peace, peace, and he didn't consult with us about it," he said, referring to President Jacques Chirac of France. "We had to hear it on the TV news."
"In economic affairs, on matters of European integration, Germany and France can do what they want, I suppose," he continued, "but when our relations with the United States are at stake, I think they have to be much more careful."
The divide inside Europe could also have long-term implications, since, even with populations that are antiwar, the countries of the old East are viewed as both more closely attached to the United States than those of the West and more suspicious of France and Germany, Europe's powerful major instrument.
"No country in Eastern Europe is going to be dictated to by Paris or Berlin," Mr. Eyal, the research director in London, said.
Mr. Vondra said, "For 50 years the United States helped us; now it's time for once for us to help the United States."
But if the Iraq question has created obstacles to a common European foreign and defense policy, there appears to be little doubt that the main divide remains between the European public and the American desire for a military solution in Iraq. That divide does not look likely to narrow soon.
-------
<small>[ February 14, 2003, 04:55 PM: Message edited by: Bobak ]</small>
