All for themselves ...

Vaiju Naravane

GUESS WHO'S coming to dinner? Last Sunday, gate-crashers stormed Mr. Tony Blair's elegant sit-down dinner for four, turning it into a noisy, argumentative buffet for nine, with the last self- invited guest turning up embarrassingly late.

It was meant to be a quiet, exclusive meeting between Europe's top three players with Mr. Blair playing host to Germany's Chancellor, Mr. Gerhard Schroeder, and France's twin-headed executive, the President, Mr. Jacques Chirac, and the Prime Minister, Mr. Lionel Jospin, (cohabitation oblige!). The agenda: the military campaign in Afghanistan.

But the others were having none of it. First Italy, then more indignantly Spain asked to be invited. ``Why aren't we in,'' demanded the Dutch. Belgium, current President of the European Union, made such loud coughing noises they could be heard across the Channel. In the end, the recipients of Mr. Blair's reluctant hospitality included Italy's Prime Minister, Mr. Silvio Berlusconi, Spain's Mr. Jose Maria Aznar, Belgium's Mr. Guy Verhofstadt, the E.U.'s foreign policy chief, Mr. Javier Solana, and finally, The Netherlands' Mr. Wim Kok. One would think they had learnt their lesson at the disastrous European Summit in Ghent, Belgium, on October 19, when a separate pre-summit, mini- summit, again attended by France, Germany and Britain had caused intense heartburn among the excluded and brought forth bitter criticism from the E.U. Commission chief, Mr. Romano Prodi, and the Union's President.

The second mini-summit in London last Sunday reinforced the impression that despite regular ``for the record'' statements in support of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, the European Union is deeply divided over international security issues. And these divisions are not just about the right approach to take or the tactics to adopt, but about the very definition of end goals. The result is that the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan, instead of becoming a rallying point for European unity, has turned the E.U. into a snapping, jostling congregation of rival interests riddled with factionalism and petty jealousies.

This is leap years away from Europe's avowed goal of adopting a single defence and foreign policy. While these divisions persist, Europe will remain an economic club, devoid of a true political and military identity, the ultimate objective it so desperately craves.

All of these divisions have to do with how the 15 E.U. member- states see themselves within Europe and, when the occasion demands, see it as members of the NATO, as well as actors on the international stage. France and Britain have traditionally been the big European players in the international arena. Both controlled huge colonial empires and both have attempted, Britain through the Commonwealth and France through various institutions such as the Franc zone in Africa, regular Franco-African and Francophone summit meetings, to retain their spheres of influence. But now another major actor, Germany, is emerging from political dwarfdom and is fighting to push France to the third position among the most influential European powers. Jockeying for position on the fringe are Italy, Spain and Portugal.

Europe's four neutral states - Austria, Ireland, Sweden and Finland - have consistently laid the accent on humanitarian aid as has The Netherlands, while Belgium, which has vainly tried to take an independent approach saying the E.U. should not blindly follow the U.S. lead, has seen its imprecations impatiently brushed aside by the big three.

So far, the E.U. members have avoided publicly expressing doubts about the lack of specific goals and focus in the U.S.-led military campaign and its fallout in terms of civilian casualties, a huge refugee crisis and an almost inevitable upheaval in the Muslim world. But their hesitations, questions and above all, their refusal to comment on the logic and increasingly worrying developments in the campaign themselves speak volumes.

It isn't as if the Europeans wholeheartedly approved of the U.S. actions. As the French Foreign Minister, Mr. Hubert Vedrine, aptly remarked, ``the Europeans themselves have no alternative suggestion.'' So, instead of directly criticising the war on Afghanistan, the Europeans adopted a more oblique strategy to make displeasure and worry known. They talked about the failure of the peace process in West Asia and about the urgent need to get humanitarian aid into Afghanistan to prevent large scale starvation and famine.

During his recent dash to Washington, Mr. Chirac gave the U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, a three-fold message: military operations are necessary but not sufficient; they should be accompanied by an active search for a post-Taliban political solution. Two, humanitarian aid must reach Afghanistan fast if the coalition is to hold. And thirdly, the U.S. should increase pressure on Israel to end the present cycle of violence in West Asia. Another factor that further complicates the European scenario in relation to the war on Afghanistan is that major European countries are competing for positions of influence. In a unipolar world, that influence is conditioned by the U.S. view. Britain, as America's general factotum has carved a special niche for itself. France, Germany and Italy are trying to outdo each other, vying for U.S. attention and approval.

During the Bosnian crisis, Germany had already come out of its political shell and sent in a 5,000-man force as part of the NATO's deployment. Now, Mr. Schroeder has announced he will commit 3,900 troops as well as extend help with Fuchs armoured vehicles capable of detecting nuclear, biological or chemical (NBC) weapons. As if thumbing his nose at the Chancellor, Mr. Chirac announced rather grandly in Washington that 2,000 French soldiers were already fighting for the coalition and that more help was on the way. Italy then announced that 1,000 soldiers would be committed.

France, as far as the U.S. is concerned, suffers from a credibility deficit compounded by the ``Arab factor'' - the presence on French soil of nearly five million Muslims of mainly North African extraction. France would like nothing better than to play a pivotal role in the West Asia peace process but is perceived by Israel as pro-Arab and pro-Iraqi. The Israelis would be far less suspicious of Germany and its Foreign Minister, Mr. Joshcka Fischer has been tireless in his efforts to build bridges in West Asia.

The French are not enamoured of Mr. Blair and are worried that the Franco-German locomotive, which has so far dominated the politics of the European Union, could be pushed aside by an Anglo-German combine.

France has, therefore, plumped for Afghanistan and floated its own ``plan'' for seeking a political solution there. So keen is France on not losing ground to the Germans that a rapprochement between Paris and Islamabad cannot be ruled out.

Last Sunday, after Mr. Blair's dinner party, Mr. Chirac once again underlined that it had become imperative to find a political solution for Afghanistan ``in the shortest time-frame possible''. He has proposed an international conference on Afghanistan and has asked the Security Council to formally support the peace efforts of the Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Anann's special envoy to Afghanistan, the Francophone Algerian, Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi.

An added advantage is the fact that Germany does not have a Security Council seat. It favours an oversight committee based in part on membership in the G-8 group of industrialised nations, a position supported, for obvious reasons by Italy.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Opinion
Previous : Subdued, for now
Next     : Saddled with an ally's brashness