Europe Must Adapt to U.S. View on Terror, NATO Chief Says

NY Times ^ | November 11, 2004 | WARREN HOGE

[neverdem]

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 11 - The head of NATO said today that there was a critical "perception gap" between Europe and the United States on the subject of global terror and that Europeans must move closer to the American view of the seriousness of the threat.

"Your country focused very much on the fight against terror while in Europe we focused to a lesser extent on the consequences for the world," Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO's secretary general, said in an interview. "We looked at it from different angles, and that for me is one of the reasons you saw such frictions in the trans-Atlantic relationship."

As a result, he said, Europe was lagging behind the United States in merging external and internal security to combat terrorism, and Europe had to catch up.

"If the gap is to be bridged, it has to be done from the European side and not from the United States," he said, adding that the conflict in Iraq, the issue that helped divide the alliance, now provided an opportunity for uniting it.

"Where allies very much agree and must agree is the fact that whatever ways they have looked at the war in Iraq and the run-up to it and the split we saw, we cannot afford to see Iraq go up in flames," he said. "It is everyone's obligation that we get Iraq right."

Mr. de Hoop Scheffer is a former Dutch foreign minister who backed the Bush administration on the war in Iraq without alienating other European leaders and became NATO's head on Jan. 1. He said that a meeting he had with President Bush in Washington Wednesday should be taken as a sign that trans-Atlantic frictions had eased.

"It's not as if I came here with doubt and my meeting with the President washed it all away,'' he said. "I have never doubted that commitment, but whatever way you look at it, the fact that the secretary general of NATO is the first foreign visitor that President Bush has met since the election is a clear sign sign of the full commitment of this administration and of this president to the trans-Atlantic alliance."

NATO has been asked by the Iraqi government to train its security forces, and Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said that 10 of the 19 member states were contributing to that training, both within Iraq and in places outside Iraq, the preference of France, Germany and Spain - like Jordan and European military schools. He said he hoped to have the program fully operational by the end of the year.

The experience of Iraq had taught him two lessons as a European and an Atlanticist, he said.

"The first is that if Europe sees its integration process as one directed against the United States, it will not work because the result will be a split in Europe, and that is an ambition that no European should have,'' he said.

"The second is that if you want to have a trans-Atlantic dialogue between grownups, I know that any president and any American administration is willing to listen to the European voice as long as it is one European voice. If it is five different voices, they will not take the trouble to listen and they will wonder what is Europe."

NATO has 9,000 troops and a broadening reconstruction campaign under way in Afghanistan, but Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said his greatest concern there now - one he planned to raise in a meeting with Secretary General Kofi Annan today - was the explosion in the heroin trade and its threat to the country's political future and to NATO's work there.

"Poppy fields are growing in large parts of the country, certain warlords are financed from the revenues of the crop and the economy of Afghanistan is dominated by the illegal profits of this growth," he said.

While the mission was one for the international community and not for NATO, he said, it could end up undermining his organization's effort to secure and stabilize the country.

"My point,'' he said, "is that if the international community doesn't take this problem head on, then what are we doing there?"

[veraamhang]

As I can see here are only Americans taking. I am from good old Europe and found your website in google and I am very interested in this news and your comments.
I just want to show you my opinion that's typical European:
We know that we are no superpower and we know that it is the USA. But why should be our right place under the thumb of the USA? At the moment there's a big gulf between Europe and the USA. We aren't interessted in a fight against the USA (there would be no reason)but we don't think that the arguments for the iraq-war are right.
But why do you think we would submit to you and your ideals? We would never do that! and we would never dare to attack you!
but what I've read here really shocked me and let me feel very angry!We arent inferior, just because we don't call us America! May you don't see it, but we are a free, democratic countries!
I see you are talking about Europe, but I don't think it's the real Europe you are seeing. As a world power you would really have to know something about the rest of the world!
In American films I always hear something about your freedom, peace and liberty.
There is just a little difference to Europe:
We aren't talking about freedom... we are livin' it!

[AFPhys]

You are free "democratic" but SOCIALIST countries, for the most part.

You also are more and more willing to submit to terrorism as a political tool, as recently demonstrated by Spain as well as your submission to other policies in an attempt to appease terrorists. That way lies to breakdown of society into "city-states" and to the Dark Ages. It will not lead to freedom and liberty.

In addition, untill you throw off the way socialism penalizes your economy, you will continue to sink lower and lower.

Twenty five years ago, the US produced about a quarter of the world's economic output. We now produce about a third of it, despite the burgeoning output of China, and increasingly, India.

How do you expect to get stronger? Meanwhile, in America there is an increasingly powerful movement toward more conservative principals, and away from the welfare goverment approach we embarked on in the '60s and before. That will decrease your competitiveness with America even more!

I did not ever say that you should be "under the thumb" of America, but why on earth are "typical European" thoughts be that America must be OPPOSED essentially solely because it is the most powerful and successful country in the world? What possesses you "typical Europeans" to work against the one and only reason you are not all speaking German under a Nazi or Soviet government? What possesses you to work against the strongest economic engine the world has ever known, rather than working with it to help pull yourself up? Why do you continue to increasingly adopt the socialist policies that resulted in the economic death of the Soviet Union? Why do you continue to espouse such foolishness as the Kyoto "treaty" whose sole purpose is an attempt to slow the economic engine of the world, and which is based on nothing less than JUNK "science"?

Get real!

You and your neighbors were WRONG about Hussein, and the BRIBING of the UN and journalists and EU industry with the "oil for food" programme resulted in the death of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of Iraqis, including some friends of mine. Admit at least that! Perhaps your socialist press has not yet let you in on the UN's dirty little secret about that. Google "Kurdistan Regional Government" for a nice little list of links the UN don't want you to see. The French and Germans leading the UN's delay of our purging Iraq allowed Hussein to hide and move and redeploy weaponry, and organize terrorism and the "resistance" to the new Iraqi democratic government. I, and many others here at FR, thought that President Bush was wrong to go to the UN for their blessing, and that view has been proven best, but you and your foolish buddies got the delay you wanted, and it resulted in even more casualties there.

I can not think of a single good thing that has been accomplished by the UN or our association with Old Europe since 1992.

I have no need to ask you "submit to [my] ideals"; the way you are going you will all be "Third World" countries soon enough - replete with an economy and barbarian practices most prominently associated with Africa of a century ago. And as far as being concerned you would "attack" us --- with What? That most certainly doesn't concern me! Frankly, if I were concerned at all about that, I would encourage that you simply continue for the next twenty years on the path you've been on the previous twenty.

Appeasement of terrorists - the ticket to freedom - sure, just ask Poland and Chamberlain!

Socialism - yeah, that's the ticket to prosperity! Just ask Krushev!
/