Davids Medienkritik blog
Little Respect for Europe
Fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen! This comment from Jochen Buchsteiner in Germany's conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) hits European policy makers right between the eyes. Buchsteiner - while no friend of the Americans - critizes Europeans for being nice but not effective in helping tsunami victims.
Little Respect for Europe
By Jochen Buchsteiner
Europe is not projecting a positive image these days. There is no lack of dismay and sympathy – that can be seen in the huge volume of donations coming from private citizens and the generous pledges of financial aid coming from the politicians. But this has so far has had very little effect along Asian coastlines on the victims’ acute sufferings. The first help they are seeing comes from others – from Australians, Indians and, above all, from Americans. ...
While American soldiers were delivering emergency supplies to isolated disaster areas and Australian doctors were treating the injured, Europeans were having meetings or, worse yet, trying to set dates for meetings. The French Minister of Public Health, Douste-Blazy, posed a rhetorical question while visiting Sri Lanka: was it "normal" that his colleagues in Brussels held their first discussions on the subject a full ten days after the catastrophe? His answer was devastating – Europe’s actions were "not concrete.". ...
We have resigned ourselves to an EU that cannot speak with one voice, never mind act independently, on issues of foreign policy such as the Balkan crises or the Iraq war. Now Europe has had its weakness exposed in precisely an area it always believed itself to be strong, even stronger than the Americans – in providing immediate humanitarian assistance. ...
Europe has neither the power, nor the position, nor the material to make a logistic contribution worth mentioning. It is the strong, not the likable, who can provide effective help. Help is provided not by freighters, but by aircraft carriers. The starter’s gun for this massive humanitarian action was fired in Washington, not in Brussels or Berlin. ...
Asia, which now looks like a huge catastrophe area but will be a major winner in globalization over the long term, is getting daily lessons about how the former colonial powers are losing ground. If this major natural catastrophe can be overcome with hardly any European action, then Asians can do without Europeans in other areas of endeavor as well. To consider this worthy of concern is not misplaced chauvinism.http://medienkritik.typepad.com/blog/2005/01/no_respect_for_.html |
