LONDON, 6 August — What Europe finds difficult to realize is that it is already a superpower and is able on most of the things that count to say "no" to America if it chooses. There does not have to be a "United States of Europe" for a powerful Europe to exist — the common market culminating in the final step toward the creation of the euro currency on Jan. 1 has seen to that. It may not, and will not ever, have the hardware to compete in the military stakes, but its economic and political muscle already give it the power to determine what goes on in large parts of the world, even if it means flying in the face of Washington. Yet there seems a crisis of confidence that inhibits Europe from taking the next steps forward. Indeed if anything it is losing position.
Two months ago, George Bush went to Moscow and seemed able with a few deft ploys to take Moscow out of the European arena, where it had long aspired to be, and engage it in a bilateral meeting of the minds with Washington. Bush’s embrace of Putin will do wonders for Russia’s ongoing economic recovery and will enable Putin to continue to deny precious government expenditures to his military. In return, Putin’s embrace of Bush will do wonders for Bush’s foreign policy whether it be his support of Ariel Sharon’s government in Israel, his aim to topple Saddam Hussein or indeed his bloody-mindedness over issues like the International Criminal Court or the Kyoto global warming treaty, which Russia has never been enthusiastic about.
The Europeans are finding themselves sidelined, just when they should have been gearing themselves up to pick up the ball that Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterrand kicked up-field, for welcoming a reformed Russia into a close orbit with the European Union, perhaps even one day as a member. So absorbed have the Europeans been with the complexities of dealing with the coming admission of Eastern European members — which has thrown up not just the expected economic and financial problems but the fundamental question of the constitution of a united Europe — that thinking about Russia has got pushed down to the bottom of the agenda. So has thinking about the bad world outside Europe.
At last, last week there was a glimmer of European public angst (there has been a lot of it in private) at what Washington was giving its backing to in the Middle East. Prime Minister Sharon’s decision to bomb the apartment complex in which lived a Palestinian militant, killing not only him, his family but other families with children too, was met with the normally cautious Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh’s comment, "a crime against international law". Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, known for his conviction that Europe must work closely with the US, laid it on the line. "This extra judicial killing", he called it.
If Europe does truly feel that Sharon, with Bush behind him, is systematically destroying any hope of a Middle East settlement between Jew and Arab and if it really is convinced (Tony Blair apart) that a war with Iraq is both unnecessary, counterproductive and deeply destabilizing, as many of its senior policy makers (even British generals) say in private, then it should use its strength as a superpower to try and stop these policies in their track and to take the lead with new ones. It does not need its own military power. It just needs its own alternative policies.
Europe can quietly tell Washington that it will say "no" to the US if Washington requests the use of NATO assets in an attack on Iraq. Neither will it help with the war’s enormous cost. This will hurt America but it dare not retaliate because in a post Cold War world, when Europe no longer has enemies to the east, NATO is vastly more important to the US than to Europe. For Washington NATO legitimizes America’s military presence on the Eurasian landmass. At a minimum a European "no" would delay an American attack for a long period; probably it would sabotage it.
Europe likewise needs to cut across American diplomacy in the Middle East. If America will not immediately call an international conference to discuss a peace treaty Europe must do so. The terms of a fair settlement were worked out in detail by negotiators from Israel and Palestine at the Taba conference, held a couple of months after the breakdown of Camp David. Europe, if it chooses, has an immense amount of leverage on Israel, as its principal trading partner. Even if the attempt to get a peace conference off the ground failed because of the intransigence of Israel and the US, it would send a clear signal both to Arab governments and their peoples that a major part of the Western world is prepared to take some important risks for a fair peace.
This is important if the present silent majority of Al-Qaeda sympathizers in the Arab world are to be made to realize that the "Christian" world is not so one-tracked as it has been brainwashed to believe.
The more Europe prevaricates, refusing to grow into its responsibilities as a superpower, the more it is in danger of losing its appeal to Russia but, even more important, the chance history and destiny have bestowed upon it of heading off the twin catastrophes of US policy in the most dangerous corner of our planet.
