Global Policy Forum

By William Pfaff

Despite Secretary of State Colin Powell's brief appearance center-stage last Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was the Bush administration's star of the week, seeking the political destruction of Chancellor Gerhard Schrí¶der and regime change in Germany. This seems the real current priority of the Bush administration and its more ardent supporters in the press. Germany seems to Washington the vulnerable member of the resistance by "old Europe" to the Bush administration's Iraq policy. France is regarded as a hopeless case.

President George W. Bush can hardly have been surprised that Schrí¶der made opposition to an Iraq war part of his campaign platform in the parliamentary election last September: Bush, too, is a killer politician who knows a winning issue and how to use it. But he is shocked that Schrí¶der has stuck with his promise to the electorate. The U.S. administration and its supporters believe that the precedent the chancellor set by running on an anti-American issue must not be allowed to stand. He must be humiliated as an example to others. The neoconservative theory that currently governs official thinking in Washington identifies Europe as the principal future rival and potential challenger of the United States. And Germany, whatever its current difficulties, is the most powerful economy in the European Union, and will remain a leader of Europe no matter what happens.

This is the first time that a German government has taken a stand against Washington and refused to back down. The chancellor who does this must not, in the current Washington view, be allowed to get away with it. What Schrí¶der has done is all the more dangerous to Washington because he reflects popular opinion across Europe. The statement by eight European leaders that was published Jan. 30 in European and American newspapers called for Atlantic solidarity and resolute application of Security Council resolutions, but did not endorse U.S. policy as such.

Its effect was nonetheless to align the conservative governments of Italy and Spain, subsequently joined by much of Central and Eastern Europe, with traditionally Atlanticist Britain and Denmark, in support of the United States and in opposition to Germany and France. The letter was meant to split Europe. It actually demonstrated that the split that exists is between politicians and public. While European governments do not have a common foreign policy, on some issues the European public does.

This is important. Prime Ministers Tony Blair of Britain, Silvio Berlusconi of Italy and José Maria Aznar of Spain are all - with qualifications - supporters of President Bush on Iraq, but the people they govern are not. The people can elect new prime ministers, but the prime ministers can't elect new peoples.

There is another split in Europe, a permanent one, between those who want Europe to be a united and autonomous actor in world affairs, and those who are frightened by the possibility that Europe might lose the Atlantic attachment. The latter is true for the former Communist countries, and some of the smaller West European states. It is a force in German opinion.

As there cannot be a wholly independent Europe which does not sooner or later experience some clash of interests or policy with the United States, it follows that only a small number of European states are serious candidates for a European foreign and security alliance capable of playing an influential role in world affairs. This group consists essentially of the core states of the old European Community, possibly without the Atlanticist Netherlands and Italy, and possibly including Spain - a nation with ambitions, an imperial history, and no great love for the United States.

It follows that while a common European foreign policy - concerned with other than trivial matters - is a quixotic ambition for a 25-member or larger EU, the core European states might conduct a common policy, with France and Germany at its center. Washington sees this as a threat, which in a sense it is. This explains why the Bush administration is determined to crush Germany's dissent on Iraq.

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