Squandering American power: A view from Europe
By Ehsan Ahrari
COMMENTARY
Asia Times Online
April 23, 2002
Being in Paris at a time when the political situation in the Middle East was continuing to deteriorate was like leaving the bleachers of an important contest and following its unfolding from a remote area. I describe my experience as such because I was overwhelmed by the feeling during my brief sojourn in Paris that Europe no longer matters in the Palestinian Liberation Organization-Israeli tragedy.
All European eyes were glued on US Secretary of State Colin Powell while he was taking his time visiting "other" Arab leaders while the Israelis and Palestinians were blowing up each other. The London Times and the International Herald Tribune were stating in their banner headlines that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon snubbed Powell. The French newspaper Le Figaro had front page pictures of Javier Solano, secretary general of the Council of the European Union, conferring with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. Ironically, both these individuals were exercising only their moral force but had no political power, while the sole superpower's secretary of state was being proven ineffective in his attempts at persuading Sharon to cease his campaign of dismantling the last semblance of the Palestinian civilian infrastructure.
Turbulence within the Middle Eastern region of pax Americana was only being watched with concern by the European states. The European public was clearly unsympathetic to what Sharon was doing to the Palestinians, but had no clue what it could do to restore peace in the troubled Holy Land.
Perhaps the French sentiment was heavily colored by the memory of what their own country had done to Algeria before it dawned on France that Algeria was not its integral part - an earth-shattering realization, indeed. But by the time it decided to end its enslavement of Algeria, 5 million Algerians had died attempting to liberate their homeland, much the same way the Palestinians are doing today.
The sidelining of Europe from the heady issues of today is regularly brought home in France. At least England came to grips with the reality of the "loss" of British Empire within a decade or so after World War II. After that, it found a niche in becoming a second banana to the United States in world affairs. As long as they were on the US side, the top leaders of Great Britain figured, they would continue to enjoy ample international limelight without necessarily influencing world events. A good example of that role emerged in the manner Prime Minister Tony Blair trotted through the Middle East in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in the United States, but before the initiation of the US military actions in Afghanistan, promoting President George W Bush's version of the then impending "global war on terrorism" (GWOT is the newest addition to the Pentagon's seemingly ever changing "acronymese").
France, on the other hand, lived in its own version of grandeur, about which one of its great sons, Charles de Gaulle, said, "France cannot be France without greatness." That very sense of grandeur led it to develop its own nuclear force, Force de Frappe. Even though it became one of the "Perm Fives" of the UN Security Council, the Gaullist notion of grandeur kept it apart from the United States. Even though France is a part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization today, its forces are not integrated in that alliance. France's participation in NATO's military operations is also decided in Paris on a case-by-case basis. Thus, the United States has never really looked upon France with even half the affinity that it has manifested toward the UK.
It is safe to suggest that in order to be close to the United States, a nation has to not only publicly clarify its own lack of significance through its policies, but also consistently support American policies in global affairs. And, especially since September 11, the United States has manifested an insatiable appetite for demanding unquestioned support of its policies, no matter how remotely those policies are related to GWOT. That general American attitude has created tensions with the European Union (minus Britain, which remains a loyal American supporter), but since it is expected to follow the US lead in global affairs, the Bush administration is not paying much attention to the EU's criticism or different perspectives.
This very American attitude has caused ample tension and resentment of the United States in the Middle Eastern states, which are becoming vociferously critical of the US posturing related to GWOT. The trouble with George Bush - which may only be part of his continued manifestation of noviceness vis-a-vis world affairs - is the utter lack of understanding of what makes Muslim nations tick.
And Ariel Sharon exploited that weakness of Bush when he (Sharon) started calling Yasser Arafat the "Osama bin Ladin of Israel" back in October when the United States was conducting a military operation to capture or kill bin Ladin in Afghanistan.
Even if Bush failed to draw the line on that silly phrasemaking of Sharon, he should have never adopted his posture of condemning Arafat for violent events in the East, but initially condoning Israeli targeted assassinations of Palestinians and then even Israeli invasion of the Palestinian administered territories as "legitimate response to terrorist acts". That was all Sharon needed to realize his dream of dismantling the administrative apparatus of the fledgling Palestinian state, and thereby pushing the emergence of independent Palestine into the distant future. In realizing his dream, Sharon has created so much resentment and hatred of Israel and the United States in the Muslim and Arab world that Washington might reap the whirlwind of those actions for years, if not decades, to come.
As I was flying out of Paris, I was still struck by a feeling of the growing irrelevance of Europe to all that was happening in the Middle East. The French edition of the Herald Tribune, perhaps, had the most appropriate front-page headline: "In French election, blame for a nation's decline". As great a nation as France was in past centuries, at the beginning of the 21st century, it was trying to come to grips with the reasons for its "catastrophic" decline (a French version of "what went wrong?", so to speak), and for its "laggard place in Europe and among world players in employment, individual purchasing power and revenue per inhabitant". But the rest of Europe was not much different.
So, at this particular moment of history, while Europe was wondering about how to regain its erstwhile significance in global affairs, the lone superpower was determined to squander its extant awesome political power.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, writes from Norfolk, Virginia.
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