It's Britain's Blair against Europe on Iraq
By James O. Goldsborough
Coulmnist
The SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
January 23, 2003
Palmerston said it best: nations have no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.
Personal relations, the British foreign secretary might have added, whatever the myth, don't mean much in foreign relations. Any leader who trades away national interests because he likes the guy he's trading with should be dismissed.
These thoughts come to mind because of events in Europe. The leaders of France and Germany, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, each closer personally to Britain's Tony Blair than to each other, have been thrown back together. Blair is dancing in Washington, not in Europe.
The Franco-German motor that historically drove the European Union but then went sputtering, is humming again. The cause is Iraq.
Monday, France warned that it would not support a U.N. Security Council resolution backing immediate war with Iraq. France has a veto. Germany, a non-permanent council member without a veto, supported France.
The Franco-German position causes big problems for Blair, whose job likely rides on a successful outcome to the Iraq drama. Blair wants Security Council backing for war, backing the council is not ready to give. The Bush administration, restless for action, doesn't care about council backing, and thus could drag Blair into war without it.
The Bush-Blair meeting next week will be crucial for Blair. The prime minister justifies his pro-U.S. stance to Britain's EU partners and his public as a restraining influence on the Bush administration. Still, he needs some proof. British public opinion opposes war without U.N. approval.
Blair walked into this trap eyes open. President Bush has never hidden his scorn for the United Nations and has said all along he did not need a second council resolution to make war. Blair tried to split the difference by arguing that while a second resolution was not required, the council would vote one if Iraq was shown to be "in breach" of U.N. Resolution 1441.
But there's no agreement on breach. Bush says Iraq is in breach, but France, Russia and China, all with vetoes, disagree. Blair is left badly needing a favor from his friend Bush.
Despite his war lust, Bush may opt to give inspectors more time – not just for Blair's sake, friendship has its limits – but because he needs his own cover. Polls show Americans no keener on war without U.N. backing than are Brits. Bush's "coalition of the willing," a euphemism for war without U.N. support, needs someone willing.
Blair has missed a grand opportunity. Despite some dust-ups with Chirac over farm policy, Blair, with Chirac, has been a prime mover in the EU's rapid defense force and in the successful operation in Bosnia.
Chirac and Blair have more affinity for each other's language and culture than either has for German language and culture. Schroeder has not been an appealing figure in France, and Chirac openly preferred Edmund Stoiber in the recent German elections. Blair and Chirac see the EU in similar terms, not as a federal union, as Germany sees it, but as a cooperative of nation-states.
Without Blair's defection, EU policy on Iraq would be unitary, and would be a powerful restraining influence on Bush. There would be no coalition of the willing without Britain, and America would be isolated within NATO.
True, perhaps Bush would not have taken the matter to the Security Council the first time without Blair's influence. But in that case Bush would be facing war with Iraq without support from any ally, meaning America would face all the costs, casualties and consequences of war alone, something opposed by strong majorities of Americans in every poll.
Follow European politics and you understand why Blair has felt personally closer to Chirac (and vice versa) than to Schroeder, and Schroeder has felt closer to Blair than to Chirac. But these personal feelings have been eclipsed by national interests. Blair has moored Britain to America and removed himself from the European equation. This has thrown France and Germany back together.
There will one day be an EU foreign policy, and there should be. The world of one superpower is not working. Far from being the "end of history," as it was called, the post-Cold War world has delivered us a new and dangerous history. This world needs multiple power centers – not a single power center – to re-establish equilibrium.
It looks like Europe will have to create its common foreign policy without Britain, or at least without Britain under Blair. France and Germany are grandly celebrating at Versailles the 40th anniversary of the Franco-German friendship treaty this week and are proposing new ideas (an elected president, an EU foreign minister) to give the EU greater international status. Britain won't be there.
Blair can't be happy how things are going. More Europhile than other prime ministers, still determined to take Britain into the euro, a co-founder of the EU's common defense force, a full collaborator in the splendid work in Bosnia, he has opted out on Iraq. His fate is in the hands of another leader. Friend or not, that is not a happy position for any statesman.
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James O. Goldsborough is foreign affairs columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and a member of the newspaper's editorial board, specializing in international issues.
Goldsborough spent 15 years in Europe as a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, the International Herald Tribune and Newsweek Magazine. He is a former Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign relations and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment.
He is the author of Rebel Europe: Living with a Changing Continent, and of numerous articles on foreign affairs for national publications.
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