Europe's impotent outrage

Officials across the Atlantic are steaming about President Bush's "axis of evil" rhetoric, but there's not much they can do about it.

By Steve Kettmann

Feb 14, 2002 | Once again, as in the infancy of the Bush presidency, European leaders are complaining about the arrogant unilateralism of his administration. Only this time, there's no room for debate over whether a new president might be mistakenly sending mixed signals to valued allies. It's all too clear that President Bush and his advisors knew his "axis of evil" State of the Union speech would stir up key European partners to varying degrees of anger -- and didn't care.

There is almost no support in European capitals for a military strike against Iraq, and even less backing for moves against Iran or North Korea, Iraq's putative partners in the so-called axis. The spectacle of normally consensus-building Secretary of State Colin Powell suggesting to Congress Tuesday that the U.S. might have to go it alone in a military action to topple Saddam Hussein pushed many partners over the edge.

On Wednesday, Turkey warned the U.S. it would "not tolerate" a strike against Iraq. "We do not want to experience chaos on our borders with unpredictable consequences," Deputy Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz said in a speech. Turkey has been a key ally in the Afghanistan-based war on terror, a majority Muslim country lending not just verbal support but soldiers to U.S. efforts there. Turkish leaders -- along with other NATO allies -- are angry that the U.S. hasn't even shared whatever intelligence led Bush to threaten to widen the war beyond Afghanistan.

"So far as NATO has been concerned, we have not been formally informed of any country besides Afghanistan sponsoring terrorism," Turkey's ambassador to NATO, Onur Öymen, told Salon Monday in a phone interview. "We know some countries are considered not dependable governments, but we have not heard concretely about any other governments sponsoring terrorism." Öymen says Turkey has even made an effort in recent days to serve as a go-between, given the frost between Baghdad and Washington, but little had come of that effort so far.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, widely respected in Europe, offered perhaps the most pointed rejoinder to the talk coming out of Washington.

"The international coalition against terror is not the basis to take action against someone -- least of all unilaterally," he told Die Welt in Tuesday's editions. "All European foreign ministers see it that way. This is why the phrase 'Axis of Evil' leads nowhere ... An alliance partnership among free democrats can't be reduced to submission. Alliance partners are not satellites."

But as passionately as Fischer and other European leaders have spoken out against Bush's tendency to go it alone, despite his consensus-building efforts after Sept. 11, others in Europe are trying to draw lessons from the latest political rebuff. Rather than seeing U.S. unilateralism as some bad habit the world's only superpower can be talked out of -- or scolded out of -- these voices are focusing more on getting Europe's house in order, so that America has no choice but to listen.

"America is more powerful, Europe is less," Dominique Moisi, a leading French commentator on U.S.-European relations, said in a phone interview. "Emotions of the Europeans are quite different from the emotions of the Americans. Europe feels that America is the other, despite of the fact that we said we are all Americans, we are all New Yorkers. Nevertheless, America is the other. What happens next all depends on the American strategy. If the Americans were to attack Iraq, and if that attack was not immediately successful, that would necessarily disrupt the coalition."

Some analysts think Bush's lack of regard for Europe may be just what the continent needs to show the kind of resolve it often lacks. They point to the way his rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming actually helped push that stalled agreement toward greater acceptance. Until Bush rejected the international agreement on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, most experts thought it was in trouble, and unlikely to be adopted by many countries. Since then, the Europeans have surprised their critics -- and the White House -- by forging ahead with an agreement on pursuing a watered-down version of Kyoto by themselves.

But so far, at least, Europe remains far too weak economically and politically to be taken as a serious force by Bush and his aides, let alone seen as any kind of real partner to be consulted, rather than merely informed of decisions. As the front page of Germany's influential weekly Die Zeit put it, "With, without or against America -- that is not the question. Only an economically strong Europe will find itself heard in Washington." Those words appeared under an illustration of a giant cowboy hat settling down over planet Earth and over the words "Neue Weltordnung," or "New World Order."

Next Page: Will Tony Blair join the chorus of critics?

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