By Martin Sieff
United Press InternationalFebruary 17, 2003
The Atlantic Alliance was already in bad shape before the mass demonstrations throughout Western Europe this weekend. It is in terminal crisis now.
The problem for the venerable Transatlantic partnership that won the Cold War is not merely that nearly 4 million people took to the streets across Western Europe Saturday to protest the expected U.S. war on Iraq. It is where the biggest protests took place.
The protests were relatively smaller, though still impressive, in France, Germany and other countries whose governments had already come out strongly in opposition to the Bush administration over Iraq. But they were truly colossal -- and unprecedented -- in Britain, Italy and Spain -- the three countries whose governments had all defied Paris and Berlin to support U.S. policy.
That means the political impact of the demonstrations will be far greater on the very governments that the Bush administration was relying upon for support. And they look likely to derail even broader, long-term Bush strategies towards Europe.
For despite fierce French and German opposition to the looming war, backed by Russia, Bush strategists in the White House, National Security Council and Department of defense had been congratulating themselves over the past two weeks on what they thought were profound shifts in their favor in Europe.
First, France and Germany were taken by surprise by the decisive action of 10- European governments, including Britain, Spain, Italy, Portugal and the new Central European members of the European Union in breaking with them and supporting America.
This split boosted hopes within the administration and conservative think tanks supportive of it that France and Germany would not be able to maintain their traditional domination of the EU, which only in December expanded from 15 nations to 25 at the Copenhagen summit. The more pro-American new Central European members, it appeared, would make common cause with the pro-American governments of Spain and Italy to split the EU from within and neutralize its traditional Franco-German power center.
But now the huge protests in Barcelona and Rome -- not to mention the unprecedented colossal one in London -- is sending precisely the opposite message. It is telling the British, Italian and Spanish governments that their support for the war is massively unpopular with their own populations and that the policies of France and Germany are not just popular at home, they also have immense support in other Western European nations, too.
This news could not have come at a more opportune time for German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. He has been reeling in recent weeks over the heavy-handed way their overplayed their opposition to U.S. policies on Iraq while the consequences of Schroeder's failure to pull the ailing German economy out of its doldrums have dominated domestic political discussion. Schroeder has just been humiliated by a sweeping state election loss. And no one doubted that if last September's federal elections were held again now, he would go down to sweeping defeat at the hands of a resurgent Christian Democrat opposition led by Angela Merkel.
But the scale of this weekend's demonstrations, not just in Berlin, where half a million people turned out in the biggest German popular demonstration since the collapse of communism, but throughout the EU, puts Iraq rather than the economy back on center stage. And it is likely to give the stumbling Schroeder a new lease of political life.
The effect of the demonstrations may be even more dire for the Bush administration in Italy and Spain. Both countries hold key strategic positions in the Mediterranean and along air supply routes to the likely Middle East battlefronts. And Bush strategists were counting on the free use of their air bases in the expected war.
That may still happen. But the governments of Prime Ministers Silvio Berlusconi in Rome and Jose Maria Aznar in Madrid will now have to be far more cautious about fully and uncritically cooperating with Washington. If they go too far, they could even be thrown out of office by parliamentary rebellions responding to enormous popular pressure.
The situation is even more dire for Bush's only fully militarily supportive major power ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Blair was already increasingly isolated and unpopular in his own restive ruling Labor Party even before Iraq. And polls now show an extraordinary 90 percent of the British public rejecting his position on the war. The London demonstration was unprecedented in its scale. No protest in British history over the last century and a half came to anything near such a scale -- even on domestic matters.
Blair remains determined to send 42,000 British troops to fight alongside U.S. forces against Iraq. But if the war should drag on longer than its projected three weeks, should public opinion in Britain and elsewhere get inflamed over massive civilian Iraqi casualties or -- even worse -- if Britain should suffer significant military casualties in the conflict or be mauled by some new mega-terrorist attack associated with the war then, as one Labor Party insider told United Press International, "Blair's gone."
It appears increasingly possible, as UPI Editor at Large Arnaud de Borchgrave has steadily predicted since the Seattle World Trade Organization protests two and a half years ago, the scale and impact of the demonstrations across Europe may see the revival of the militant left in a new anti-globalist and anti-free trade grouping, with a power and popularity not seen in over 30 years.
But even if that does not happen, or if it does not happen yet, this weekend's demonstrations are already transforming the diplomatic map of Europe, and in ways that Bush administration planners never expected and certainly do not want.
More Information on NGOs
More Information on Protests Against War on Iraq
More Information on the Threat of US Military Action Against Iraq
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
