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Europe and Iraq - a question of war and peace?
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by Wolfgang Bücherl,
Research Fellow and Project Director on transatlantic
relations with the Center for Applied Policy Research
(C.A.P), Munich, Germany
04/04/2003 |
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For most European governments the core question concerning
the military campaign against Iraq is not one of war and
peace. Most European countries neither commit troops nor
do they have vital security interests at stake.
The real issue behind Europe's internal divide is the transatlantic
partnership: What kind of relationship do the Europeans
want to sustain with the US? Should Europe follow America's
lead or should it say "no" to the United States?
Today, the traditional disputes between "Atlanticists"
and "Europeanists" have emerged in Europe again.
Maybe the speed of European integration in the 1990s with
projects such as the internal market, the Euro, the cooperation
in Justice and Home Affairs, the Common Foreign Security
Policy (CFSP), or the European Security and Defense Policy
(ESDP) have blurred our understanding that the US still
is a European power. It therefore does - at least to some
extent - play a role in the process and every-day conduct
of European integration.
Just to name two examples for American leverage over Europe
since 9/11:
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The American Container Security Initiative
(CSI), that was passed after 9/11 to protect the US from
the import of potentially dangerous material, provides
for security checks of cargo in the ports of origin before
it is shipped to the United States. By concluding CSI
agreements with a number of individual EU member states
and not the European Community as a whole, the US has
circumvented the European Commission, that is the representative
of the EC in external trade and customs matters. The benefit
that the US is offering to the individual states is clear:
The US provides the ports of the countries, that take
part in CSI, with a comparative advantage over the ports
of other EU states, because cargo under CSI is imported
quicklier into the US than cargo from ports in countries
that do not sign CSI-agreements. The CSI example showns
that the attractiveness of the US as a destination for
exports gives the US some leverage in trade and economic
policy even towards the European Community, that is the
only market worldwide with a strength and importance equal
to the US.
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The Prague NATO-Summit was a demonstration
of America's resolve to set the Alliance on its track.
European NATO members accepted the American threat perception
and tacitly abandonned geographical limitations to the
Alliance's operational outreach. By inviting further countries
in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to join NATO, America
also become the security guarator for Eastern Europe.
The CEE states - quasi in return - support a US war in
Iraq politically. What followed Prague was the "letter
diplomacy" in Europe with the letters of the eight
and the ten, that made European divisions apparent. The
split is not only inside the EU, it will also perpetuate
into an enlarged EU and will hardly make it easier for
an EU of the 25 to reach common positions and strategies
inside CFSP.
Examples like these show that its status as the only global
superpower gives the USA considerable leverage over Europe.
America is Europe's most important trading partner and its
prime source of and destination for Foreign Direct Investments.
America is furthermore Europe's prime partner in security
policy and the only power that can provide security on a
transatlantic scale. It is, however, obvious, that the degree
of US leverage can vary. In economic and trade policies
the leverage of the US is far less significant than in security
policy, as the EU is a unified economic actor and contributes
a share to transatlantic trade that is virtually equal to
that of the US.
However, with a US administration, that is ever more assertive
in the unilateral pursuit of what it regards as America's
national interest, the disarmament of Iraq will not remain
the only case where the Europeans have to take sides in
favor of or against America.
America will continue putting European unity to the test.
copyright
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