Ralf Goergens

That Had To Hurt

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The blockade that prevented NATO from helping Turkey to defend itself has finally been broken. The first reports were somewhat confusing, speaking of France having been shown the door. What actually happened is that the negotiations were moved to the defence planning committee where France has no seat and an unanimous vote is binding. That’s a lot smoother than France just being locked out of the decision-making process, if that can even be done to a member (I’m not that familiar with the procedural niceties of supranational organizations). This way an official insult to the French is avoided, but it still is a stinging diplomatic defeat. Even worse, de Gaulle once had taken France out of NATO as a gesture of national grandeur, and this has now come back to bite his successor Chirac. Talk about getting beaten with your own weapons (my apologies to Sylvain, but I can’t help gloating). Speaking of gloating: Reports claim that a compromise was worked out in the defence planning commitee, but that’s probably just supposed to help Schroeder and what’s-his-name from Belgium to save face. It’s much more likely that they simply didn’t have the guts to stand up to the others without Chirac at their side. Now, if only the Turkish government would find the guts to allow the deployment of American troops on Turkish territory…

New Weaselette Sighting

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Austria has decided to deny the USAF the use of its airspace and also prevents American troop-transports via train to Italy, as long as there is no new resolution by the UN Security Council authorizing the use of force. The troops probably will have to be transported by ship, via Rotterdam in the Netherlands, causing a delay of several days. I have never seen a weaselette myself, but I’m told they are just the right size to clean your pipe with. Sounds handy.

Heavy Suspicions

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I don’t want to brag, but it took me only a couple of seconds to see through last weekend’s harebrained peace plan cooked up by Schroeder and Chirac. That has nothing to do with superhuman powers of perception; living in Weasel Central I simply have more practice watching them and know which way they’ll jump in any given situation. This plan has the sole purpose of showing French and German voters that those two are doing their utmost to prevent the war and aren’t the ones to blame when it inevitably comes to pass. Some American bloggers, lacking my expertise with small furry mammals were suckered into fearing this may derail the Bush Administration’s carefully laid plans. They couldn’t have known how impotent and at the end of the day inept our politicians really are. Then again, for all their inability to achieve anything themselves they are still adept at throwing spanners into other people’s works. Their willingness to plumb new depths surprised even me. They acquired a little sidekick (a weaselette?) and blocked Turkey’s access to defensive equipment by their vetoes. Actually, only France and Belgium vetoed the decision. Germany merely let it be known that it “approves” of the French-Belgian decision, but timed its motion in such a way that it still amounted to a veto in practice. At the same time Schroeder is sending Patriot launchers and missiles to Turkey, just like the Netherlands, but they will be manned by Dutch soldiers; Turkey will also be guarded with AWACS planes, but these are going to have German crewmen on board. In hindsight I have to say this is vintage Schroeder; he doesn’t even have to fake the courage of his convictions by vetoing the decision himself, he can tell his voters that Germany will neither be involved directly nor via NATO while still helping Turkey to get the equipment it wants without putting German soldiers on the ground there. This begs the question what kind of mind it takes to come up with such a convoluted scheme; at this point Chirac must feel pretty uneasy when meeting his good buddy Gerhard. The Bush Administration for its own part seems to have given up any attempts to bring Schroeder around and is now apparently just minimizing the damage he can do until he has to leave office. The readiness of France and Germany to accept severe diplomatic, political and to a lesser extent economic damage as a price for their intransigence has renewed suspicions that France and Germany are trying to hide some terrible secret that would come out once the files in Baghdad are open to American and British investigators.Taking this premise to its logical conclusion this secret would have to be the arming of Iraq with WMD by Germany and France in order to use it as a proxy against America or at the very least the sale of equipment for the making of WMDs by German and French firms, with the official approval of both governments, just as Lexington spelled it out in this post. I myself am still convinced that the motivation for this behavior is electoral and financial opportunism, just as I wrote here. Schroeder and Chirac know very well that they can’t stop the war on Iraq, but for their own purposes it is enough to show the voters back home that they tried everything they could to stop it. Chirac also is trying to increase his bargaining power, so that the French industry’s contracts with and investments in Iraq won’t be lost after the war. From the point of view of Schroeder and Chirac it is consistent with their former words and deeds to block any help for Turkey via NATO because officially preparing for the war would undercut their pretense that it still is preventable. Those claiming that France and Germany intentionally made Iraq a country armed with WMDs also cite as evidence Iraq’s declaration of its weapons programs, leaked to the Tageszeitung and translated by Deutsche Welle, and also an article by the former head of the Iraq’s nuclear weapons program. Then again: Even if a firm illegally delivered such technology to Iraq it doesn’t mean that that country’s government knew of it or approved of it, much less was or is wishing to make Iraq a regional power with WMDs. These articles also aren’t the whole story. If you want to know which firms supplied Iraq, go to the Wisconsin Project’s Database of Iraq’s Suppliers and simply type in China, France, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom and United States to see lists of firms from these countries. The biggest number of firms comes from Germany, but with exceptions that was before Gulf War I. Back then Iraq was seen as a kind of bulwark against Iran and nobody was expecting that Saddam would employ use these weapons to occupy Kuwait and attack Israel. It makes no sense to retroactively interpret the events in the 80s in the light of Schroeder’s and Chirac’s behavior today. One more thing: At the time Helmut Kohl was Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder’s direct predecessor, one of the most pro-American German politicians. It is simply ludicrous to think that he would that have wanted to use Saddam against America, especially during the Cold War, even more so than it is ludicrous today to assume the same about Schroeder and Chirac. To conclude: Schroeder’s and Chirac’s behavior is stupid and wrong, but Germany and France haven’t become enemies of America, as some bloggers maintain, even if they aren’t behaving as allies should. Some firms may have broken the embargo, but there is no sinister plan to turn Saddam into a weapon against America.

Old vs. New Europe?

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The German-French deal for the future of the EU has angered most of the other member nations and has even given rise to the hyperbolic accusation that the two countries are trying to erect a kind of new Holy Roman Empire. I think that it also was a factor that motivated the eight statesmen to write their letter of support for the American position on Iraq. Being thus isolated is embarrassing for Germany and France, but not as dramatic as many American commentators and bloggers think, just as Americans tend to take the EU itself much more seriously than it really deserves. The EU is about to expand to 25 members, which makes the costs of further integration unsustainable for many years to come, rifts in the EU or not. Having the opponents for further integration assert themselves is nothing but an expression of this reality. In a way it also is business as usual to have (mostly smaller) EU members side with the US to counter the influence of France and Germany. The small members of the EU have nothing to complain about anyway. Voting power in European Commision, parliament and council is weighted in favor of the smaller countries. Each country gets to send a representative to the Commision, regardless of population numbers, for example. Some reforms are planned, but a German or British candidate for a seat in the European parliament will still need 800.000 votes to get elected, while a colleague in Luxembourg needs less than 80.000. This bias in favor of small countries makes any talk of a French-German power-grab ridiculous. This dispute won’t endanger the existence of the EU anyway, since without it the small countries would have little sovereignty, making them unwilling to leave it. That is not to say that they would be militarily intimidated or even conquered by the larger countries, they would simply have little choice but to go along with decisions made by others. One example: The European Union effectively was a German Mark zone before the Euro was introduced; the German Bundesbank (central bank) set interest rates as it saw fit and the others (even France, Italy and some extent Britain) had to follow. The Euro meant a loss of formal sovereignty for everybody, but they finally have a say in monetary policy (not always to German delight). This concept of shared instead of formal sovereignty is central to the European Union. It also is anathema to many Britons (and by far the most Americans, of course) and is in my opinion the strongest motivation for the downright visceral hostility against the EU. That the alternative to shared sovereignty would be almost no sovereignty as far as the smaller member are concerned is rarely if ever considered. One example is Norway: They decided to stay out of the EU, but have to follow most of its rules and regulations, without being able to influence them. Denmark, an EU member, has opted out of the Euro, but at the same time has no monetary policy of its own, the Krona being firmly pegged to the Euro. Both examples have nothing to do with any malevolence on part of the EU, they simply follow from the difference in sizes. Based on all this I feel confident to say that the EU will survive and that Britain will very likely remain to a member, Anglosphere or not,. Political and cultural affinity are one thing, trade and economic another. Once the EU finally drops its silly pretense of becoming a competitor to America even a transatlantic free trade zone is not out of the question (it was seriously considered in the 90s, but the French blocked it with their veto-power). In the short term I hope to see some benefits from the more market-friendly attitudes of the Eastern European countries, once they become full members in 2004. One is a comprehensive reform of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (without quite so many subsidies), the other the abolition of the ban on GMOs.