Regards, Ivan
Posted on 03/20/2003 6:00:07 PM PST by MadIvan
JUST 24 hours into the second Iraq war and it has already impinged on our daily lives in ways we never thought possible. Delayed or cancelled meetings, distracted phone calls and in the background radio or television "news" (sic) dominated by talking heads of rumour, supposition, guesswork - and time-filling waffle. Within hours, Britain became totally war obsessed.
For weeks we were told by experts of a huge bombardment in the first two hours, rockets that would knock Baghdad senseless by dawn. None of the above. But there was hardly an office in Britain yesterday, in which war, or rather unsubstantiated rumours of war, was not the central talking point. We crowded round televisions like voyeurs ready to feast on a dazzling spectacle of deadly fireworks.
For more than an hour yesterday, traffic in the centre of Edinburgh was backed up by a fresh demonstration of schoolchildren against the war. I don’t know quite at what point we embraced that worrisome feature of totalitarian regimes where children become the pawns of politics. But I cannot surely be the only one for whom this leaves a nasty and disturbing taste: classrooms emptied by agitprop teachers so that children can be paraded for "spontaneous" demonstrations, as if the debates, still less the votes in parliament were of no consequence.
At least the Komsomol and the Young Red Pioneers of the 1930s were smartly turned out with red scarves and trim scarlet piping on clean white shirts and blouses. They would demonstrate in line and march in step, which was not at all how it looked at the Edinburgh Central Primary for World Peace Against US Imperialist Running Dogs yesterday. How perfectly, I thought, the new breed of demonstrators mirrored the discipline and articulateness of their teachers.
In Dumbarton, public-sector workers were given an hour off work at taxpayer expense for anti-government demonstrations. A few more days like this and Tommy Sheridan will be handing out Heroes of the Red Banner medals for town halls brought to a standstill and buses abandoned. Hey, you Jimmy, what’s with this going tae work? Don’t you know there’s a war on?
At least after a bad air day we did not have to suffer with Tony Blair what had been described as "the dinner from Hell", with warnings from senior diplomats of a president "with boxing gloves on" and "electricity in the air". No, no, no, not Baghdad: dinner in Brussels with Jacques Chirac. Last night was the start of yet another EU summit. Despite the fusillade of official French protests at Britain this week, life must go on.
Lest the Prime Minister was unaware of any frisson in the air, Peter Mandelson pulled no punches in a forthright column in the Financial Times on Wednesday. "It is clear," he thundered, that "Mr Blair’s vision is not entirely shared by his allies in Europe and America ...That is something he will need to ponder when he reflects on his bruising Iraqi experience." Well, that’s telling him! Bruising experience? One rather thought it was Iraq that was suffering the bruising. But how the Prime Minister, having launched the gamble of his political life, must miss the incisive wisdom that support for the war "is not entirely shared". And how welcome must be the advice, after giving one of the most eloquent speeches ever by a British prime minister to the House of Commons, on the "need to ponder".
Mandelson, and the group he represents, seems not to have taken on board the scale and depth of the crisis that "Europe" and institutions such as NATO and the EU are now in. Like some hectoring nanny he would like nothing better than for Tony to stop showing off in the sandpit and get cleaned up at once to meet Uncle Jacques.
But the world he represents is tottering. The Laeken Declaration setting up the Convention on the Future of Europe, boldly declared: "The unification of Europe is near. At long last, Europe is on its way to becoming one big family." And while Tony Blair, like the vast majority of UK voters, had deep reservations about where that convention was going, and set them out in a major speech last November, he did so from a position of strong support for the EU. Indeed, Mr Blair has arguably been the most pro-EU prime minister since Edward Heath and has made no secret, not just of his wish that Britain should join the euro, but his belief that our destiny lay at the heart of Europe.
Where lies all of this now? The Iraq crisis has exposed the truth that there is no common European defence policy, or security policy, or a European army of any credibility. And the reason is not only that there is no common European demos, but also that there is no common European world-view. Indeed, such was the force of Chirac’s slapdown of some of the applicant countries for daring to speak out in favour of the British-US position, it would not be surprising if some were reconsidering whether to join the EU at all.
Even for Mandelson there is no easy way to paper over such fundamental disagreements. And this is not just a disagreement over Iraq. It is about a new geo-political order, and the need, as Chirac sees it, for France to lead a non-American coalition, because of America’s military and economic ascendancy: (relative) size matters.
That is not a world-view shared by the countries liberated from the former Soviet Union. And it is not the view of Britain, which would prefer to judge each foreign policy issue on its merits, rather than on the basis of a blanket, no-exceptions non-America ticket. In any event, the global vision with which Britain has been most comfortable was the one set down by the Labour foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, in the immediate post-war years: this was of a global Britain at the centre of three interlocking circles: North America, Europe and the rest of the world.
As for the three-member part of the EU for which France speaks, it cannot claim to be a credible federation, economically or militarily. Both France and Germany are suffering a sharp slowdown in their economies, with the real risk of recession by the end of the year. Both countries are in breach of the EU Growth and Stability Pact by running budget deficits in excess of the 3 per cent Maastricht ceiling, while Belgium and Germany also breach the pact with government debt ratios higher than the 60 per cent Maastricht Treaty limit.
It is a galling irony that the EU proclaims it seeks to be part of a post-war Iraq reconstruction, when under its own rules it does not have the funding wherewithal to commit any public money to reconstruction.
That is why it may well be that war in Iraq is the best possible news for the finance ministries of France and Germany. For it has handed them a great excuse to suspend the euro-zone rules on spending and borrowing.
However, the fundamental division of view at the heart of the EU is less easily repaired. It will put the brakes on the new constitution for Europe. And it could result in France and Germany being left to pursue further integration while other countries sign up to the North American Free Trade Agreement and realign their relationship through the European Economic Area. Not just Iraq, but Europe may be rewritten.
Regards, Ivan
Priceless. The Scots used to be the best-educated people in Europe. Now it sounds more like Berkeley, California.
ChIRAQ will rue the day he . . .
He has NO IDEA of the fury he's ignited in the U.S. Us "arrogant" Americans aren't easily riled, but when we are . . .
This is one of the many upsides to this war. It never was just about Iraq to begin with. It was also an assault on our enemies. The left. EU/UN/Russia/China etc. When the dust settles the left will be crippled. And they know it. That's why all the almost near panic protests aginst this war. It wasn't lost on them what this was all about. They will be irrelevant when this is over. Scrambling to put the pieces back together as the US leaves them in the dust. "Plan For A New American Century" I love it!
John..this MUST be one of the 'Quotes of the Day'.
Now that you've ruined your precious EU, the UN (the only place on earth where you could pretend to BE somebody), and even NATO - we'd like to thank you for the UN part - but we're still going to kick your ass. Just for fun.
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