The Atlantic alliance needs to face up to its divisions (and so does EU)

Financial Times ^ | 2 July 2004 | Philip Stephens

[ScaniaBoy]

(excerpt of article copied from hard copy edition of FT)

- SNIP -

These testimonies to irrelevance recalled themselves on the eve of this week’s Nato summit in Istanbul. As we gazed sout-east over the Bosphorus in the direction of Iraq, one of those charged with drafting the leader’s communiqué remarked that the outcome had been another bad-temepered compromise. Nato ambassadors had sweated long and hard to gloss over their differences. But, though thickly applied, the gloss was patchy. The ambiguities of the text, this official said, had left room for the obligatory public spat between France and the US. Sure enough, Jacques Chirac and George W. Bush spent to days sniping at each other.

It is tempting to see these clashes between the US and French presidents as one of temperaments as much as substance. The body langiuage certainly says that the animosity is heartfelt. Mr Bush, everyone knew, had come to the summit to show voters back home that the difference with America’s allies about Iraq was in the past; that the US had friends again. Mr Chirac obviously, was not about to be a party of anything that might enhance Mr Bush’s re-election prospects in November.

Such bickering is not confined to Paris and Washington. We live in times when the political and personal have become dangerously entwined. Mr Chirac’s relationship with Britain’s Tony Blair often seems as bad as that with Mr Bush.

Another senior official in Istanbul recalled the angry summit of EUropean Union leaders two weeks ago in Brussels. Mr Chirac had crossed the room to threaten publicly Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi for backing Mr Blair in refusing to support France’s candidate for president of the European Commission. In the manner of a jilted spouse, Germany’s Gerhard Schröder had shouted at the British prime minister that their relationship was “finished”. So much for the trilateralism supposed to see Germany, France and Britain set the political direction of the newly enlarged EU.

Sadly, there is more to these playground tantrums than personal jealousies and egos. It was apparent in Istanbul that the fundamental divisions within the alliance exposed bu the Iraq war has not been closed. Mr Bush, some European leaders would concede, had made an effort. The White House had compromised at the United Nations Security Council on a new resolution framing this week’s handover to an interim Iraqi government. It had stepped back from a confrontation with North Korea and withdrawn from a long dispute with the UN about whether US troops could be tried for war crimes in an international court. For France and Germany, though, these represented tactical shifts to help Mr Bush win re-election rather than any fundamental reappraisal of his unilateralist instincts. Messrs Chirac and Schröder are betting the bank on a victory for Mr Kerry , the Democratic candidate, in November’s poll.

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[Malesherbes]

"...Chirac and Schroeder are betting on a victory for Mr. Kerry..."

If Kerry wins, buyer's remorse will quickly set in: a weak, unlikable President, narrowly squeaking in without a mandate, unable to persuade the (still) Republican Congress to support his latest flip-flop, facing a shaky stock market and sceptical business community, and an emboldened (Madrid syndrome) terrorist movement.