WESTERN EUROPE/US: NATO rift poses strategic risks

Analysis

Two days after the extraordinary move by France, Germany, and Belgium to block formal approval for NATO contingency planning to begin for the provision of military support to Turkey in the event of an attack by Iraq, the diplomatic atmosphere is steadily deteriorating. It is possible that a compromise to the immediate problem will be obtainable ahead of Friday's report by UNMOVIC head Hans Blix to the United Nations, and in any case, the decision to block formal approval will not prevent Turkey obtaining military aid bilaterally. However, whatever immediate solution is found, the wider issues underlined by the NATO crisis -- and the disputes over alternative solutions to the Iraq disarmament question -- have now been exposed to full public view.

Key issues. There are essentially three levels to the current crisis:

Superficially, the dispute, which divides the United States from France and Germany, is one about political signalling and short-term military tactics within NATO, and about complying with the rule of international law by means of UN authorisation for war.

At a second level it is about the more important matter of whether war -- be it now, after a second UN resolution in a few weeks or months, or indeed at all -- is an advisable or necessary method of dealing with Iraq, or any other similar 'rogue state'.

At the most fundamental level, it is about US dominance of the Atlantic alliance in a post Cold War world in which the United States is the only superpower, and operates -- still in the name of the Alliance -- in areas of the world and in types of operation that were impossible before 1989, and does so through bilateral 'coalitions of the willing', rather than through broad consensus.

At some point, it was probably inevitable that the unarticulated tension between parts of Europe and the United States on this most fundamental issue would come out into the open. In some respects, the present dispute has not quite reached that point, but two key players -- France and Germany -- have come close to it, while others for now, including several states of the 'new' Europe (accession candidates in Central and Eastern Europe), continue to back the United States. This split was evident in the newspaper article of January 30 signed by eight countries (United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic), which was an implicit criticism of Franco-German statements made during celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the Elysee Treaty on and around January 22 (see NORTH KOREA: Crisis continues despite diplomatic flurry - OADB, January 22, 2003, II. ). There was considerable resentment that Paris and Berlin were presenting so publicly a line that was not shared across Europe.

However, even if three of the largest current EU members have not joined France and Germany, public opinion has most definitely done so:

Across Western Europe, opinion polls indicate little support for a military conflict without further explicit UN authorisation and some scepticism about the need for precipitate military action against Iraq at all. Moreover, elite opinion --- in parties (including government parties), in parliament, and even among foreign policy and strategy communities -- evinces much scepticism about the US position.

Even in the United Kingdom, whose government leads the pro-Atlanticist current in Western Europe and has committed 30-40,000 military personnel to a potential military conflict, opinion is deeply hostile to war. In the most recent poll, only 9% of those asked said they would back a war without a new UN resolution. This rises to 49% with a resolution, but with 60% still believing that Iraq does not possess weapons of mass destruction.

Franco-German attitude. However, what has been unexpected is the strident, determined, and highly public way in which France and Germany have come to present their case in recent weeks. This has had several consequences:

It has drawn attention to the fact that there is indeed now a yawning gulf between these countries and the United States about unilateralism in general, as well as about the tactics of dealing with the Iraq case in particular.

It has reinforced elite and -- to some extent public opinion -- in all three countries in support of their own national positions, and has raised the domestic political stakes, making it far harder for each government involved to back down. By going public, France and Germany reduce the scope for back-channel influence of the type the United Kingdom has been pursuing with quiet determination throughout the crisis.

Strategic risks. However, the longer-term risk for Europe -- or key European countries -- in alienating the United States is that there is a clear need for European defence capacities to be built around a close relationship with the United States:

The last decade has exposed Europe's incapacity to look after its own security and defence needs on numerous occasions, both in its own backyard, and in terms of broader geo-strategic interests.

The emerging European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) is still in its infancy, with defence spending remaining generally low. Taxpayers and national treasuries are still unwilling to sustain the long-term financial commitment necessary to make an EU military capacity truly independent, and the military and technological lead enjoyed by the United States suggests that it might in any case be futile to entertain the notion of real military 'autonomy'.

Clearly, the ESDP cannot develop except in close cooperation with the United States, as several EU member states continue to insist. One difficult problem for governments is that public opinion has little understanding of, or interest in, the problems of European security, which will continue long after the present Middle East crisis has passed, and which will be made much more acute because of the way the crisis has been handled.

Furthermore, whatever its faults, NATO still remains an example of what most Western European countries are working to retain: multilateral institutions with the United States fully engaged. This cause will be undermined if this week's crisis persuades the United States that it can do without NATO -- a negative outcome for Western Europe.

Next steps. France and Germany in particular now face a difficult task in re-establishing effective working relationships with the United States. For France, the dilemma will become acute in coming weeks given its key position within the UN Security Council. It has allowed itself to take up a position from which retreat will be politically extremely difficult; while Paris would probably be reluctant to veto outright a second UN resolution supporting military action, its position is increasingly hardline. At the same time, like Germany, the country's long-term security interests remain closely, if uncomfortably, tied to a United States that is unlikely, very quickly, to lose sight of the way it considers key allies to have sought to undermine its position at a moment of dramatic international exposure.