[A-List] Europe/US rivalry

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Inside Europe

Ian Black
Monday October 7, 2002
The Guardian

It is sometimes hard, discreet diplomats joke, to know exactly what has been
said when Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, has one of his regular
phone chats with Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief. Powell has to
be careful because he worries what Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld might
think he says to those spineless wimps and appeasers on the old continent.

Solana's problem is that he has no operational budget and calls Washington
on an insecure mobile phone without an official to take notes. The "high
representative for common foreign and security policy" - the cumbersome
title reflects the awkwardness of his position - speaks for Europe on a
shoestring.

Recently he had to fight to stop the 15 member states, which reluctantly
pick up his bills, from cutting off cash to the special envoys who keep the
blue and yellow starred banner flying in far-flung trouble spots. His man in
the Middle East was told to give up the armoured car he uses to visit Yasser
Arafat and take taxis instead.

Solana's job was tough before September 11. Now, as the Iraq crisis
escalates daily and the transatlantic gap yawns ever wider, the former Nato
chief has his work cut out to paper over the cracks in EU ranks. The strain
of keeping Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder on the same side - and still
getting through to Powell - is starting to show.

Solana was furious at Nato's meeting in Warsaw the other day when Donald
Rumsfeld snubbed Germany's defence minister after the Hitler-Bush election
campaign contretemps. This is both personal and intensely political:
America's new strategic doctrines of pre-emption and regime change are
cruelly exposing Europe's multiple weaknesses. "Allies," growled the
normally feline Spaniard, "participate not only in the execution but also
the formation of policy. Ad hoc coalitions of docile followers to be chosen
or discarded at will are neither attractive nor sustainable." Worryingly, he
was talking about Nato - the very embodiment of euro-Atlantic solidarity -
as well as the EU.

With the Americans demanding a new hi-tech alliance "response force" to
fight anyone, anywhere in the world, Europeans dream of cold-war certainties
and bleakly ponder their shrinking defence budgets and unhappily named
"rapid reaction force", mired in paper-clip wars and Greece-Turkish
tensions.

Over in Chicago, meanwhile, Chris Patten, the commissioner for external
relations, was suggesting the US learn from European multilateralism and not
go down the "very dangerous path" of acting outside the UN.

He urged Americans to think about the causes of terrorism and not just rely
on force to eradicate it, smartly anticipating the coming row about who
(begins with an E) will pay to rebuild Iraq once Saddam has gone.

Patten argues that Europe cannot hope to match American military power (the
US spends over twice as much as all 17 European members of Nato combined)
and that the "soft security" of development aid and tackling the dark side
of globalisation is likely to make the world a safer place than smart bombs
and laser-guided missiles.

Viewed from Brussels, these should be thrilling times for the EU. Eastern
enlargement is poised to unite the continent and boost membership to 25; the
euro is up and running; novel constitutional arrangements are being thrashed
out in Giscard d'Estaing's convention, where enhancing Europe's global role
is one important question. Stumping up more money for Solana will not be an
adequate answer.

But the mood is grim as transatlantic "drift" accelerates, with incalculable
consequences for the future. Whatever else happens on the road to Baghdad,
we can only hope it forces Europeans finally to start getting their act
together.