The Hour of Amateurs.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The Hour of Amateurs

Three pre-war victims: Europe, NATO and an old friendship

By Josef Joffe

Let's imagine a German history book in ten, twenty years. Let's hope that at the end of the "Gerhard Schröder" chapter we will not have to read something like this: "And then the chancellor decided to risk everything just to win the duel of strength with America. His reasons may have been noble or self-serving, correct or short-sighted. The consequence was the collapse of two columns of German foreign policy, which held for long fifty years: the German-American friendship and the Atlantic alliance. Schröders chancellorship did not survive this neck breaking play."

What began in the summer as a profitable move in an election campaign, has since grown to the worst crisis of the German foreign policy since 1949. The Iraq war has not even started yet, and there's already three bleeding victims lying on the stretchers. And even the apologists with a gift of the gab cannot prove convincingly, that Schröder's politics has had nothing to do with their fate.

Europe versus Europe

Victim number one are the common European foreign and security policies. Schröder and Chirac had during the 40th Anniversary of the friendship treaty believed to be able to polish up their tired "axis". Very soon however it became clear that they made their plans without the other 18 European landlords. First the "Euro-8", among them also London, Rome and Madrid, started to growl. Then the "Vilnius-10" came, from A such as Albania to S such as Slovakia. In plain words the message of the 18 said: "we resist the leadership claim of Berlin and Paris; forced to make a choice, we stand on the side of America."

No wonder. The closer to Russia a country lies geographically, the closer it wants to huddle politically to America - on the basis of a cool calculation that its security is getting a better care than under the heel of Paris and Berlin. Or: if dependent it needs to be, then rather on some distant superpower than on two assuming neighbors. For Madrid, Rome, London et al. it is an additional plus, that America makes for a nice additional ballast in the new play for Europe.

Thus it will take some time, before Europe speaks again "with one voice". The two conductors in the Elysée and Kanzleramt should have thought about this risk: Whoever acts unilaterally (more exactly: bilaterally), will reap resistance, not support. Besides it does not help one's credibility, if the same sins, which the Bushistas are rightfully accused of, are being committed. But this is not the worst malpractice error. More dangerous is the second hit, which the two, together with the chocolate superpower Belgium, scored on NATO.

This history is as trivial, as its end is possibly lethal to the alliance. The Trio wanted "to prejudice" nothing and therefore, with just an innocent bat of the eye, declared veto against simple basic NATO plans to protect Turkey. It would have been a small, but fine gesture in favor of an usually exposed NATO member - and still no yes to American war plans. But Chirac and Schröder were seemingly so obsessed to oppose Americans even in the smallest of details, that they right away forgot two things.

First of all: This alliance functions as long as the principle of "one for all, all for one" applies - in terms of deterrence and defense anyhow. Patriots are not offensive weapons. West Germany has for forty years flourished magnificently behind the NATO shield. Maybe this good deed has by now been used up and maybe gratitude is not behind every reason of state. However, whoever wants to throw this alliance out on the garbage heap of history, must have a conclusive reason (and weighty new allies) to do so - and not in order to add half a measure to a unilateral escapade.

Second: From which master of the statesmanship has Schröder stolen the dialectic summersaults that lead him ad absurdum? Because that's what an attempt to disarm a nerve-strong violent dictator (by categorically renouncing the Ultima Ratio) eventually means. He could not have learned that from Bismarck, not from Churchill. It would have been more useful to leaf through the Egyptian weekly Al Usbou. There Saddam Hussein reasoned in November: "The time is on our side. We must just win time, and the Anglo-American coalition will collapse." All those, who want to prevent the war, should wrench this play out of the hands of despots.

"Blue helmets" as a weather baloon

However it is getting really weird when SPIEGEL lets fly weather balloons, according to which "peacefully" invading blue helmets were to disarm Iraq. Logicians consider a "peaceful invasion" an Oxymoron - as a contradiction in itself. Or do the balloon fans believe that Saddam, with a merry "Salam" on his lips, is about let of his own free will his property become a "UN protectorate"? That he will lay at the feet of Europeans, what he slyly tries to rescue: his rule of fear? A commanding officer, who would send his troops on such suicide mission, should be court-martialed. Oh sorry, Americans may nevertheless please remain in position, "to force and secure" the invasion of the UN Europeans. The authors among the government officials must have seen too many bad Westerns: The Europeans, with France at the front, have the say, and the US cavalry gets them out of trouble.

The "plan", copied industriously from an old scenario of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, was naturally disclaimed immediately, but it gives an idea about how desperate the situation in the Kanzleramt must be. Because in the meantime it is not only Joschka Fischer who's getting an inkling, that beside Europe and NATO there could be a third victim: the German-American special relationship, something, that can only be described (with an understatement) as historically beneficial.

It is not a question of the old evergreens, that reach from the Marshal plan to the Berlin blockade is enough to the west integration to the reunification. That was during the cold war, and "gratitude" defines the national interest mainly when spoken of in Sunday speeches. Let's rather talk about state interests, about raison d'etat: is it in the German interest to have differences of opinion with America? After everything has been added up - election campaign and party atmosphere, provocations of some Rumsfeld just like attacks of some German politicians, finally the sober fact that Washington would have been content with a well-meaning "without us" plus use of air and bases - where is a halfway rational motive for Schröder policy?

From a stupidity to a tragedy

Probable only the hypothesis, that Schröder and (with some reserve) Chirac regard the development of American power or their triumph in the Middle East as an evil that's bigger than Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. That would lie in the classical logic of equilibrium politics. Since Gulliver has now lost his chains, Europe must take over the task of the former Soviet Union: the limitation and containment of American supremacy. In other words: the Balance of Power versus the USA.

Such was for many centuries the raison of any statesmanship. Why not again - in a kind of a reversal of alliances? Perhaps it may even succeed, perhaps diplomatic alliances between Paris/Berlin, Moscow and Peking, which are hectically rehearsed in these days, may eventually develop. Perhaps it also succeeds in stopping the American advance. The German risk, however, is very high.

That would be the end of NATO, the end of one once "beautiful friendship". And the beginning of a old-new equilibrium politics, which however the "Euro-18" and the Americans on the European stage can play at least as well as the big time strategists in the Kanzleramt. Besides, Germans had never any luck in trials of strength with America. The other way around, for instance since 1945, was more profitable. Finally: Moscow, Peking, also Paris, will weigh carefully whether they want to risk their relationship to Washington because of Saddam Hussein.
In these days one must be grateful for small things. For example for each little door, that the chancellor may leave himself open, so that stupidities do not turn into a foreign policy tragedy.

(c) DIE ZEIT 08/2003

transl DJ - http://www.xave.de/DJsCorner

[LT.Hit-Man]

Intresting.

[Coyote]

Exactly! The French, Germans, and Belians are more tha happy to symbolically hang Turkey out to dry just to prove a point to the US.

It is odd that the "civilized" European nations such as these are willing ot destroy everything they have to stick up for a despotic Muslim regime, while screwing over a moderate, modernist, open minded Muslim nation.

With friends like thse, who needs enemas?

[salm]

ah, that article was originaly published in "die zeit", good newspaper and extremely LIBERAL.

[Enforcer Talen]

good stuff.