Bulletin de liaison etd'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Baszn Özeti
International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, February 19,2002
Washington ought to listen • By Michael Naumann
Europe doesn'twant war in Iraq
. HAMBURG.
InJune 1981,Menachem Begin, ordered a posse
of F-16.jets to take out Saddam Hussein's two
nuclear reactors. With vast petroleum reserves,
-.Iraq haq no imaginable need for nucléar energy
- exceptto make bombs. And Saddam had openly
declared his intention to attack Israel.
. Publicly, Prime Minister Begin was scorned for
.his outrageous breach of internationallaw.
Privately,
however, many politicians agreed: Why not destroy
Iraq~s potentially murderous nuclear toys? Saddam
did go on to start twO wars. But he lost both, and if
he had been armed with nuclear bombs, world his- ,
,tory could have taken a very ugly turn.
. However, while the man is dangerous and crazy,
we do not know that he has weapons of mass destruction.
He seeIlll! to have had precious little connection
to Sept. n. Hisarmy has been destroyed
Therefore, two decades after Begin's attack, America's
European' allies would deplore a repetition of
the Gulf War. Their doubts are born from an ingrained
sense of realpolitik. ,
Europe learned a lesson in World War I. Slipping
into a conflict became a basic fear. Europeans' great
source of anxiety was the prospeCt of being caught
in an uncontrollable military escalation.
The trauma ofWorld War II, and the experience of
senseless and genocidal colonial wars before and
after it, combined to telescope this fear into a collective
memory tha~ we have today. While American
patriotism. proudly ,celebrates its armed forces'
power and victories, Europe's diverse loyalties and
identities are formed by a war-weary pessimism
thoroughly grounded in our history.
Wars can be just, certainly those fought in self-defense
can; but they can be bloody useless, too. This
pessimism may shade, potentially, into appeasement,
yet its roots are real. They explai,n :Europeall reluctance
to intervene quickly in Bosnia..;...a deplorable
reluctapce, in hindsight - and the present refusal to
joJn a~s with the United States agairist Iraq.
This time, however, the powder keg is not the Balkans
but the highly armed, explosive MideasL Too
many guns are drawn, too many fingers are on the
triggers, and some of them could be on nuclear
bombs. This should be the hour of forceful diplomacy,not
to be mistak~n for appeaseme~t.
The distance between Europe's leaders and the'
Bush administration continues to grow. The existence
of a new threat, global terrorism, is undisputed
But Washington's unilateralism looks from here like
simply a form of America's long-standing isolationism,
whi~h' is to say that the distance is created by
America, not by Europe.
Perhaps NATO members should not whine so
much about being left out of Pentagon planning sessions.
But the Unit~d States might benefit from reca~ling
the late Senator, J. :William' Fulbright's '
diatribes against "arrogance of power."
T!!chriological breakthroughs may have enforced
a n~w military paradigm in the Pentagon. High-tech
wars at a distance'are now feasible and less dangerous
for American forces. Yet the old conundrum of
' military history, what to do with the losers, remains
unsolved. Who would govern Iraq after Saddam? '
And would theshaky mullahs in Tehran take
"anti-American" revenge on their domestic reform-
,ist opponents (and seize Iraq's south)? '
. Would Vladimir Putin be able to corral his restl~ss
opposition in the underpaid and corrupt Rus-,
SIan Army? He would certainly renew Moscow's refl~x,
in times ~of trans-Atlantic disagreement, to
drIve a wedge mto the Western alliance, this time
on the strength ofRussia's oil reserves.
, In the meantime, general elections are looming in
France (May) and ~ermany (September), along
with possible realignments that could draw Europe
away from the United States. .
, . A war in Iraq would strengthen Germany's pacifISt
Party of Democratic Socialism at the expense of
;th~ ~reens and th~ir pro-American
.MinIster Joschka FIscher.
leader, Foreign
' '
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder succeeded by just a
few votes in getting approval for German troops to
,help ke~p the peace inKabul. Conflict in Iraq would
fo~ce hIm to !ßa.ke the most difficult political com"
mltment of hIS lIfe - to follow America, come what
may. !hat could cause him to lose in September.
NeIther Jacques Chirac nor Lionel Jospin would
support war in Iraq. And Tony Blair? He is many
t~ings, but he is not Margaret Thatcher. He was in-'
dlcating before anyone even asked that Iraq would
be, for him, an adventure too far. '
, Ultimately, Washington should return to the fold
of its once strong Atlantic partnership even if it
I!leans !osing milit.ary momentum. A fragmented allIance
ID Euro~e I~ much more difficult to repair
,t~n a brok~n plpel~ne. A truly enforced policy of serIOUSsanctIons
agamst Iraq - and persuading Turkey
to .stop breaking them - would bemore useful.
, AskIng French, English, Russian and German businesses
to suspend their lucrative dealings with Sadda~'s
corrupt cronies; having governments freeze
• theIr bank accounts; rekindling negotiations be-
.tween Israel and the Palestinians - all that would be
..l,essspectacular than cruise missiles and Navy Seals
televised in green night vision. But it could dislodge
the enemy with~>Utda~ag~ng valued frie~dships.
In the meantime, let s fmd Osa ma bin Laden to-
,gether. If alive, he is certainly not in Baghdad. '
!he writer, a former German minister of culture, is
e~ltor and publrsher of the weekly Die Zeit. He con-'
trtbuted this comment to The New York TImes.
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