CALDEIRÃO DE BOLSA

U.S. to Europe: 'Who wants allies?'
William Pfaff IHT
Saturday, April 26, 2003

Trans-Atlantic angst

PARIS Washington's vow to punish France for blocking UN approval of the Iraq war echoes President Jacques Chirac's threat this year to the European Union candidate-members who supported Washington on Iraq: Both cases recall how dissent used to be handled in the Warsaw Pact.

Secretary of State Colin Powell made his threat to France on the day the European Union Strategic Studies Institute held its semiannual conference on trans-Atlantic issues. The conference confirmed that such pressures are having negative effects in both "old Europe" and "new Europe."

Retaliation for resisting the United States is a novel development in a NATO alliance supposedly composed of equals. But it seems to be of little consequence since - as this conference generally agreed - not much is left of the NATO alliance. Its security guarantees to the new members in Central and Eastern Europe will presumably survive, and there is new Washington interest in installing its military bases in those regions.

The "new Europeans" are probably wise to want those U.S. bases. They are a better guarantee of Washington's protection than promises, which these days tend to become forgotten. Neoconservative Washington has shown itself inclined to cancel treaty commitments when they become inconvenient. That's playing hardball.

In the past these EU-U.S. strategy meetings were usually occasions for American policy specialists and officials to give themselves a Paris weekend while conveying Washington's expectations of its European allies. It was the Romans keeping their Greeks in the picture.

This time, American participants told the EU meeting that Washington neither needs nor particularly wants allies.

The Europeans were told that they went too far in opposing the United States on Iraq. Something has broken, and there will be consequences. It was not only government opposition in "old Europe," but public and press opposition in new, as well as old, Europe that angered the Bush administration.

Western Europe is unimportant and irrelevant, the more severe of the meeting's American participants warned. Europe is economically stagnant, in demographic decline and militarily insignificant.

Apart from a few specialized units available for Pentagon use, NATO is of minimal value in composing the mission-defined coalitions of the future.

European participants were at the same time told - once again - that Europe must spend a lot more on arms to count in the world. This American emphasis on military capabilities as the measure of "relevance" comes in tandem with the argument that America is so powerfully armed that it doesn't need any help.

Governments that want to be "relevant" and have influence in Washington were advised not to bargain ahead of time, as Turkey did, but to back the United States from the start of a crisis, and afterward ask for a favor. President George W. Bush might then fly to Belfast for them, as he did for Blair.

People in Washington listen to Blair, the meeting was told. They don't pay much attention to what he says, but they like him on television with Bush. He is on the team. They did not add that on television he explains American policy more clearly than the president does.

Europeans at the meeting countered with the "soft power" argument. They said that Europe today deploys much more economic influence, diplomatic and developmental experience, skills in nation-building and peacekeeping, and cultural attractiveness than the United States does.

While there was no Rumsfeldian belligerence at the meeting, there was an angry undertone in much of what was said. The Americans were told that Washington's efforts to split Europe will backfire. Even German trade union resistance to German structural reform was said to be breaking down because the unions see that Europe is under U.S. challenge.

Europe's commitment to unity and multilateral action was defended as a matter of principle. A German editor said to the Americans, "I think you do not understand how much hostility toward you now exists in Europe." This did not seem of much interest. The American speakers seemed more interested in nuclear weapons in Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea - the next countries that need to be fixed.