Posted on 11/19/2002 3:13:07 PM PST by knighthawk
Our political editor talks to Chris Patten, the EU's External Affairs Commissioner
EUROPE should be prepared to back the United States in action against Iraq if President Saddam Hussein fails to comply with the recent United Nations Security Council resolution on weapons of mass destruction, Chris Patten, the European Union’s External Affairs Commissioner, says in an interview with The Times.
Talking in his office in the European Commission’s Charlemagne building, he argues that there is “an obligation to play the resolution straight down the middle. The US should give Hans Blix and his team a chance to establish whether Saddam Hussein will co-operate. But if Saddam does not comply, then the EU is obliged to support the US in what it does next.”
Mr Patten has become one of the most vocal critics of unilateralist tendencies in the Bush Administration. But his perspective is very different from the anti-Americanism of some German and French politicians, since he talks as a lifelong Atlanticist.
Charges of “Euro-wimpery” from Washington are just “as damaging to the relationship as the silliness of some Europeans in thinking of America as a lot of cowboys”.
Looking ahead to this week’s Prague summit of Nato leaders, he says that some Americans “fail to understand the difference between Nato and the EU”. They ignore the coming enlargement of the EU, “the most significant foreign policy change in dismantling the Soviet Empire without a hard landing”.
Highlighting a more harmonious age of transatlantic relations, Mr Patten quotes “the tough-minded, generous view of the world” of General George Marshall, the postwar Secretary of State and author of the plan that assisted European recovery.
According to Mr Patten, what he calls the “sovereigntists” ignore both America’s long internationalist tradition and what Europe is doing now, for example, in helping to “bring the Balkans back from the brink of destruction”.
The “extremely positive” response to his recent lecture in Chicago, entitled “America and Europe: an essential partnership”, confirms “my feeling that American attitudes to international co-operation have not really changed. There is not a massive embrace for unilateralism”.
Mr Patten aligns himself with Colin Powell, another former general turned Secretary of State, in Washington’s fierce inter-agency battles, to the annoyance of many others in the Administration.
“The main argument against the sovereigntists / unilateralists is that the US should not contract out of leading the international community or institutions which it did more than anyone else to create. Leading those institutions of global governance is part of the job description of any American President.
“Europe’s role is to help America in that task. Many of the things that Europe wants to achieve are incomparably more difficult if America is not on the same side.”
Mr Patten acknowledges Europe’s own weaknesses. “The most valid criticism of Europe is the gap too often between rhetoric and what it is prepared to put on the table.” While Europe will never spend as much on defence as the US, it “is awfully difficult to convince the US that we are serious in our aspiration to play a bigger role in security terms unless we are willing to dig a bit deeper and to spend better”.
Moreover, the “very imbalance in military technology has encouraged some Americans to think that our commitment to multilateralism is a consequence of our weakness”. Noting that Europe spends four to five times more than the US on development assistance, he emphasises “soft power”, as opposed to military strength, which “matters a lot more than Americans sometimes suggest”. But he points, for instance, to the benefits of shared responsibility in reconstructing Afghanistan — despite the continuing problem of the warlords and the big increase in the poppy crop.
When I turned to the state of the Conservative Party, Mr Patten paused, and sighed. “First of all, I welcome the fact that we are at least addressing public services, the issue that so concerned the electorate. The existential question for the Conservative Party is: do we see our future role in the EU or not? If we do, we are far more likely to get the sort of Europe we want to see. We cannot carry on with the nervous breakdown in which the European argument is hugely exaggerated.
“Do we want the independence of Norway and Switzerland, sitting ourselves outside the EU, our major market, and seeing other people take decisions? We are natural members of the EU.”
Mr Patten dismissively remarks that “it is very interesting that the Conservative Party is still debating its view of the EU when things are changing fundamentally, with ten countries and over 100 million people about to join”.
But he concedes that France, Germany and Britain all have a problem about Europe. France has been poised between the Monnet Community and Gaullist nationalist approaches, but “ran the whole show anyway for a long time, so didn’t have to choose. But it now faces that choice. Germany was determined to be a good European by agreeing to pay for everything. That is no longer true, which is welcome. But what is the German view? And Britain still has a crucial, existential argument: do we want to be part of the enterprise at all? “So there is a lack of leadership from the three biggest countries in dealing with economic and global problems.”
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BARF! This guy has NO clue.
I think I know, teacher! Call on me! Me!
It's simple. NATO has teeth. We pay lots of money to make it so. The EU does not, and does not.
How'd I do?
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