"When in doubt, equivocate!" This was the advice that the Roman poet Horace gave to his slave Davos who had a habit of responding to every question by a clear yes or no. The result of Davos' directness was often quite a bit of embarrassment for the poet and a lot of ruffled feathers among his friends.
As a diplomatic technique, equivocation could have more disastrous consequences. And yet, equivocation is the method that the European Union has chosen for the conduct of its diplomacy.
The union shuns taking a clear stand on any issue. It supports measures to save the global environment but comes up with a set of compromises in the form of the Kyoto Protocol which, if applied, could actually raise pollution levels. The union also supports the idea of bringing Africa out of poverty but opposes the removal of subsidies to European farmers to give African agricultural exports a chance to compete. The union claims to be scandalized by George W. Bush's attack on "the axis of evil" but refuses to state publicly that the regimes mentioned - Iraq, Iran and North Korea - are not evil but good.
The list could become longer.
The European Union has tried to build a global policy based on what former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing called "the yes-but" position. That position is at the heart of the postmodernist view of the world which regards the taking of a clear position on any subject as either impolite or downright perfidious. The reason is that the postmodernist view excludes the possibility of any moral judgment. In it, there is no right or wrong, only different positions. Nor are there any beliefs, only opinions that must be treated as having equal validity. Needless to say, such a worldview also rejects the Aristotelian hierarchies that indicate the respective positions of friends, neutrals and adversaries on the political chessboard.
Consider the statements made by French Foreign Minister Eubert Vedrine and Chris Patten, the European Union's foreign affairs commissioner, about the so-called "axis of evil". Both have mocked Bush's phrase and proposed talks "between the two sides". This means that, to them, the United States is the same as Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
The postmodernist has no friends and no enemies, except when his own interests are threatened, at which time he will fight tooth and claw to defend his steak and French fries, as the Parisians say.
The danger of this postmodernist equivocation is that it could send wrong signals to the wrong people at the wrong time. Saddam Hussain, for example, might conclude that he could continue playing cat-and-mouse with the United Nations, and inflict more tragedy on the Iraqi people, because the EU might prevent punitive action.
Iran is another example. The hard-liners who have paralyzed the process of decision-making in Tehran publicly say that they count on Europe to protect them against any action by Washington. At the same time, they reward Britain, which took the unusual step of sending its foreign secretary to Tehran twice in three months, by rejecting London's nominee as ambassador.
North Korean politics is too hermetic to read with certainty. But even there, the illusion that Europe could tone down US policy may well be factored into any equation.
The most tragic example of European postmodern equivocation came in the 1990s during the breakup of the Yugoslav Federation. The European policy, which meant taking no clear position and treating all sides with equal deference, gave enough assurances to Croats and Slovenes to fight for independence. At the same time, it gave enough encouragement to the Serbs to fight to prevent the Croats and Slovenes from becoming independent. Had the union recognized the independence of Croatia and Slovenia right from the start, it is unlikely that the Serbs would have followed Milosevic in a forlorn mission to keep Yugoslavia intact. Conversely, had the union made it clear that it would not recognize the breakup of the Yugoslav Federation and that only the federation could have a hope of one day joining the European Union, it is possible that the Croat and Slovene secessionist might have been defeated in their own camps.
Postmodernist equivocation is also the chief feature of the European Union's position with regard to the Palestinian issue, a position that has seduced a few naive people in the Arab world. This is not even a position, since the EU, while making noises sympathetic to Palestinians, takes absolutely no action against Israel.
The EU has never come out with concrete proposals for resolving the Palestine conflict nor initiated any move in the UN on the subject. The result is, once again, a set of wrong signals. Some Palestinians may be deluded with dreams that mighty Europe might one day do something to save them from Israeli occupation.
That illusion could, in turn, prevent the Palestinians from developing realistic and pragmatic policies either to accept an imperfect peace or to continue fighting Israel till the end of time. EU's equivocal position also weakness the peace movement in Israel by endorsing the view of the Israeli hawks that the Jewish state, surrounded by enemies, has no friend but the US.
Patten and Vedrine have called for a "just peace" between Israel and the Palestinians. Neither has bothered to explain what is meant by that essentially meaningless slogan. There has never been a just peace in the entire human history simply because justice and peace do not go together. Peace is always the result of a compromise in which former belligerents abandon their conflicting visions of justice in exchange for a pragmatic settlement. In most cases, it is the victor that imposes his peace, as was the case in both world wars.
From the Palestinian point of view, justice is the return of the entire historical Palestine to its original and legitimate owners, that is to say the abolition of the state of Israel. From the Israeli point of view, justice is the revival of the biblical Jewish state which means the expulsion of the remaining Palestinians from the West Bank. To the outsiders to this conflict, the only just solution is one that works, that is to say one with which both sides can live, even though reluctantly. To foster illusions that either side could end up receiving more than that is a disservice to the cause of peace.
The Palestinians have the choice of either accepting an imperfect peace, one that will be far from just, or to revert to a policy of "rejection" and fight for as long as it takes until they can impose their own peace. In 1999, the Palestinians leadership decided to abandon its quest for justice in favor of seeking peace.
That may or may not have been the right decision. But the fact is that the current equivocal position is far worse. It prevents the mobilization of forces needed to support a policy of justice as opposed to be policy of peace. At the same time it strengthens the position of the war party in Israel. The EU's current doubletalk on Palestine encourages equivocation on the Palestinian side at a time that hard decisions must be taken either to seek peace or reorganize for what could be years, if not decades, of violent struggle.
