[salt&pepper] The paradox of a powerless Europe
GIACOMO FILIBECK - "It is becoming clear that the United States is making a political and strategic mistake. In the end, this could be fatal for the West, destroying a necessary alliance between the democratic countries of the Northern Hemisphere, and fatal for the entire Middle East."
EUOBSERVER / SALT&PEPPER - The events these past few days have raised fears among some that barely a decade after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the West will become divided into two new new blocs: an anti-American bloc and an anti-European bloc. I do not believe this to be a real prospect. The dispute between the US administration and certain European governments does not greatly involve the peoples of the two sides who are often critical of their own governments.
In an editorial on 9 March, the largest newspaper in the United States, the New York Times, clearly spoke out against an armed intervention in Iraq without the legitimate backing of the UN. The daily also published an article by former US President and winner of the 2002 Nobel peace prize Jimmy Carter who vigorously defended the stance that an attack that was not under the auspices of the United Nations would constitute a violation of international law. It would also be unprecedented in the history of civil nations and contribute to the decline of American prestige on the international scene.
Infatuation with power This reading of recent events is undoubtedly a reply to the analysis of the Democrats that is today shared by a large portion of US public opinion: for them, a unipolar, hegemonic and authoritarian system cannot produce the correct results in terms of achieving peace and democracy around the world. On the contrary, a system like this damages America’s soft power, which until now has been a successful weapon of the United States in international relations.
The true error of the George W. Bush administration from this point of view would be its infatuation with power. The illusion of the empire (hard military and economic power) would make it blind to the need to find solutions with the international community in order to achieve political stability, economic growth and democratic values.
There is no doubt that the painful events of 11 September have affected the policies of the US administration. The now famous "National Security Strategy" presented by President Bush to Congress on 17 September 2002 is extremely clear. America is facing a new and extremely serious challenge. On the one hand international terrorism is penetrating open and democratic societies, using against them modern technologies (that they themselves have produced). On the other hand, the anti-American rogue States are supporting terrorist networks, offering them hospitality and funding and through them waging a non-conventional war against the "Evil Empire".
The wrongs of preventive war In the face of instruments of mass destruction made possible by new technologies and suicide fighting techniques, it would appear impossible for a society open to the movement of goods, people and capital to fight terrorism, leaving it vulnerable to new disastrous attacks. Therefore, the preventive war would be the only possible way of defending one’s own territory and one’s own cultural model. The new and extremely dangerous corollary of this theory is, however, unilateralism whereby if the United States decides an armed intervention it can intervene regardless of the consensus of the United Nations, in contempt of international law and in total disagreement with international public opinion.
There is also another extremely weak element in the theory of preventive war: nowhere is there a direct strategy to get to the root of international terrorism, which finds fertile ground in the despair and poverty of the countries of the Third and Fourth Worlds. Today, a quarter of the world’s population consumes three quarters of the energy, food and natural resources available on this planet. The gap between North and South continues to grow, and new countries end up being sucked into the whirlpool of poverty (witness what is occurring in Argentina and Venezuela).
Snowball effect In this context, as many analysts have already underlined these past few weeks, a unilateral intervention by the United States in Iraq, with the consequent dissolution of the Iraqi State, would probably have a snowball effect and lead to more instability in the Middle East. It could further antagonise the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (already there have been dramatic first signs of this), feed fundamentalist terrorism, weaken moderate Arab governments, trigger migrations and produce a crisis in oil production.
It is therefore becoming clear that the United States is making a political and strategic mistake. In the end, this could be fatal for the West, destroying a necessary alliance between the democratic countries of the Northern Hemisphere, and fatal for the entire Middle East, destroying once and for all the legitimacy of the international institutions and their peace-keeping role. Also, it is becoming obvious that an alternative solution has to be found together with an international interlocutor capable of implementing it in the eyes of the US administration. However, as the situation stands, neither one exists.
A new Marshall Plan As regards Europe, the position taken by France, Germany and Belgium of opposing US intervention gives expression to the will of international public opinion but looks doomed to fail, because alone these countries are unable to express a Middle East foreign policy different from that of the United States. Such a policy should clearly be based on a plan of economic aid and investment, support for local production, education and social development, through the added value of international solidarity, and all this with the purpose of exporting democracy to create peace: in short, a new Marshall Plan.
The radical change in American foreign policy and the consequent Iraqi crisis have occurred at a time when the countries of Europe still do not have the instruments for a common foreign policy. In this way, the EU countries have reacted according to their own national interests, with the result that the total of individual diplomacies has not produced a common position. France’s resistance in the UN Security Council and its heightened opposition to the position of the United States have brought to the fore the paradox of a powerless Europe.
American unilateralism is in fact the product of the political inconsistency of the European Union and its incapacity to propose diplomatic alternatives to the United States’ stance. The uncoordinated national diplomatic efforts of the individual European states express nothing other than an empty game of power and sovereignty, incapable of producing any concrete result. On the other hand, there where a result could be expressed, at the level of the Community institutions, a democratic government of the Union responsible for foreign and security policy is lacking.
Citizens in charge of own destiny And this is what 80% of the Union’s citizens, many of whom demonstrated through the streets of Europe on February 15, are calling on the Convention to create. A European government would have the diplomatic strength to launch a Marshall Plan for the Middle East that brings with it development, peace and democracy and that guarantees disarmament. The Union’s citizens know that they will be in charge of their own destiny only when Europe speaks in the world with a single voice.
They also know that by maintaining sovereignty for foreign affairs, Europe’s individual states are dooming themselves to division, subordination and decline. Europe’s citizens know the paradox of a powerless Europe that is leaving Europe without the capacity to act: only Europe’s leaders seem deaf to their requests and blind to the needs of the world.
The only hope is that the Convention will be able to see what the governments are not seeing and will listen to the voice of European citizens. If this occurs, the lessons of these past few days will not have been in vain and will write an important page in history. It takes courage, the courage that Europe’s citizens are asking the members of the Convention to have.
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GIACOMO FILIBECK - President of the European Youth Convention and of the European Youth Forum Website European Youth Forum European Youth Convention Written by Giacomo Filibeck Edited by Honor Mahony