Posted on 02/12/2003 6:14:03 AM PST by kattracks
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- The most enduring foreign policy principle of the United States, which has lasted longer than the 40-year strategy of "containment" against the former Soviet Union, has been its unswerving support for a united Europe. The integration of the European continent, despite the potential for economic rivalry and despite the regular irritations of Paris, has always been deemed to be in the American national interest.
Just eight months ago in Berlin, President George W. Bush assured the German Bundestag that America's backing for Europe was unchanged. Just as the first President Bush, in the months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, had called for "a Germany whole and free in a Europe whole and free," so the second President Bush continued the grand tradition.
"When Europe grows in unity, Europe and America grow in security," Bush told the Bundestag, praising the euro currency and the development of Europe's ever closer union.
"In all these steps, Americans do not see the rise of a rival, we see the end of old hostilities."
Maybe it's time for a rethink.
Assume that the European Union continues on track with its enlargement to 25 countries and a population approaching 500 million. Assume further that the euro currency zone continues to hold together and that the Europeans overcome their customary differences and truly develop "a common foreign and security policy."
Assume moreover that the EU's fledgling Reaction Force grows from its current modest target of 60,000 troops into a serious European army, with a defense budget for credible military power.
Assume, as a result, that the United States finally faces the one other body on Earth that can within the decade confront Washington with the prospect of a strategic competitor, with the wealth and technologies and nuclear weapons to match. Would it be a comfortable prospect for future American administrations to see such a Europe echo the policies on Iraq exhibited by Paris and Berlin today?
It is easy to dismiss such fears. Berlin and Paris do not speak for Europe. They do not even agree among themselves. Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder says his country will not take part in military action against Iraq, even if the U.N. Security Council approves it.
French President Jacques Chirac carefully holds open the action of joining a military coalition against Saddam Hussein, and has even ordered his nation's one aircraft carrier, the Charles De Gaulle, on alert for possible deployment. (German newspapers warn Schroeder almost daily that Chirac will join the war at the last minute and leave the Germans in lonely humiliation; so much for Franco-German solidarity.)
Moreover, the governments of Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Holland, Denmark and most of the new members of NATO and the EU, (who learned in their years under the Soviet heel who their real friends were) have backed the American line. Even the Irish, who still refuse to join the NATO that so long buttressed their right to remain neutral, are offering their Shannon airfield for U.S. military aircraft.
These are comforting realities, which will be trotted out to calm those who fear the end of the Atlantic alliance. And yet the underlying political fact, as expressed in opinion polls across Europe, is that Chirac and Schroeder appear to be speaking for a great many more Europeans than is British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Monday's Forsa poll found 57 percent of Germans agreeing with the statement "the U.S. is a nation of warmongers." Britain's Channel 4 had a poll Tuesday that asked who is the biggest threat to world peace; 32 percent of Blair's voters answered the United States and only 23 percent said Iraq.
The Bush administration is almost certainly going to war, with British backing. And the bulk of the European NATO allies will go along -- this time. But Europe's capitals are assessing the draft of a new EU constitution that has just landed on their desks from former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who heads the current European Convention.
The draft calls, in effect, for the EU to become the United States of Europe, and Article 10 says: "The Union shall have competence to coordinate the economic policies of the member States ... to define and implement a common foreign and security policy, including the framing of a common defense policy."
That means Britain, France, Italy and the rest can forget about their foreign, defense and finance ministers. Europe will run those portfolios. Future U.S. administrations will face a united European front, and that future Europe is more likely to reflect the growing anti-Americanism in current opinion polls than the solid support of a Blair.
Looking at the current mood of Europeans, is a united Europe something the Bush administration still wants to support?
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