Taking part in order of appearance:
Ana Palacio, Foreign Minister of Spain
Pierre Lequiller, Head of European Affairs Commission, French National Assembly
Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary
Nicole Gnesotto, Director of European Union's Institute for Security Studies, Paris
Timothy Garton-Ash, Director of European Studies Centre, St. Anthony's College, Oxford
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Leader of German Greens, European Parliament
Pavel Telicka, Czech Ambassador to the European Union
Sergei Karaganov, Chairman of Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, Moscow
Javier Solana, EU High Representative
Steven Everts, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Reform, London
CLARK:
The European Union has been shaken to its foundations by the conflict in Iraq.
Name-calling between the pro- and anti-war camps has created one of the worst atmospheres in Europe since
1945. And both sides insist that fundamental principles are at stake.
PALACIO:
Democracy, the respect for human rights and the rule of law - we have that in common with our American friends.
CLARK:
Ana Palacio, the Foreign Minister of Spain, which morally if not militarily
supported the Anglo-American action.
PALACIO:
We took a position that was not an easy one. We have had to face a very difficult situation vis-à-vis
our own public opinion, but we took this position on grounds of broad general interest and what we think
is the relationship we have to have with United States as allies.
LEQUILLER:
During this crisis, we've had the impression that the Americans didn't want Europe to be strong and
they were keen on dividing Europe.
CLARK:
Pierre Lequiller, a Gaullist who heads the European Affairs Commission in the French National Assembly.
LEQUILLER:
From the beginning, the British position has been to say we've got to be with the Americans anyway,
whereas we thought that we had to be frank with the Americans if we didn't agree. It's the first time
in the history of Europe that a few countries have decided to say we don't agree on this method; not on
the aim, but on the method.
CLARK:
Although the French insist that their disagreement was merely about methods and not the basic aim of
disarming Iraq, a chasm has opened up between Atlanticists and Gaullists in Europe. Each side makes
its case by appealing to lofty ideals - but could it be that old-fashioned national interests also
lurk in the background? And how serious are the issues at stake? British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw.
STRAW:
It's been a very serious crisis for the Union. I can't recall anything in the last thirty years quite
as serious as this where essentially there have been two parties inside the European Union, two sides.
What is reflected by this crisis is very different perceptions about the significance or otherwise of
what happened on September 11th and it's completely changed the psychology of the US. Some European
countries have factored that in, some have not.
CLARK:
Jack Straw argues that the French response, in particular, has been unrealistic and counter-productive.
STRAW:
Part of the French approach to the European Union at the moment is a view that you can create a bi-polar world.
Now there is something fatally flawed in the French analysis, which is to assume that it is possible to have
two poles where the poles are not of equal power. Since this is an analogy drawn from the laws of magnetism,
if one magnet is stronger than the other it's the stronger magnet which will attract. And if we try to create
a bi-polar world when the two poles of these two magnets are of very different power then you don't create a
balance, an equilibrium, you create a distortion, and what would happen if we tried this would be that over
time countries in Europe would peel off and form their own bilateral alliances with the United States.
CLARK:
In fact, individual European states are already peeling off and cosying up to the Americans. But these
arguments about the power of the American magnet don't impress French Gaullists, who insist that over
time, other poles of attraction will appear in the world, and Europe should be prominent among them.
Pierre Lequiller.
LEQUILLER:
In the future there will be anyway a multilateral world with a China which is going to emerge, with an India
which is going to emerge and probably other big powers in the world, and the problem is if we want Europe
to disappear or Europe to be a political power. Europe is now the first economic power in the world.
It's the first monetary power in the world. It can be the first political power in the world or any way
it can be a big power who works hand in hand with America but not obeying necessarily to all the American
wishes. In our friendship with America, we've got to convince them that they need a strong Europe.
GNESOTTO:
The objective of the United States is to prevent the EU to be a collective political actor. I mean they
say it every day.
CLARK:
Nicole Gnesotto, Director of the European Union's Institute for Security Studies in Paris.
GNESOTTO:
Since the beginning of this administration, they have played the bilateral relationship with all
European countries instead of playing the collective institution. And it's not even true for the EU.
It was true also regarding NATO at the first year of this administration. Remember when Rumsfeld himself
said the mission does the coalition and not the other way round.
CLARK:
In general terms, does one have to admit that the Americans have been quite successful in their game of
divide and rule?
GNESOTTO:
Well, sure, they have been successful, but it would be unfair to say that the Europeans are divided only
because of this US attitude. The Europeans are divided also because they don't agree between themselves of
what they want for the future of Europe. And maybe if there is one good lesson to draw from this crisis,
it is that at least now that we are so divided publicly we can begin to talk seriously of what we want for
the future of the EU.
CLARK:
So something good may come of the row, after all. What hope do the French have of winning the argument
within Europe and transforming the Union into a global actor? They have had one important asset - the revival
of their special relationship with Germany, which in its sharpest break with America since 1945, eagerly
joined in opposing the use of force against Iraq. As war loomed, a third party was added to the older
Franco-German axis: Russia. But there are limits to how far this unwieldy troika can travel. Timothy
Garton-Ash is Director of the European Studies Centre at Saint Anthony's College, Oxford.
GARTON-ASH:
The big argument in Europe is between an Atlanticist and a Gaullist vision of Europe. And the Poles
and the Czechs and the other East Europeans have been reaffirming their view that Europe belongs with
the United States in one community and not with Russia. And the Gaullist view has always been, if you
like, Eurasian; that's to say De Gaulle always said Russia belongs in Europe, America does not.
And so it is no accident that the Franco-German axis in trying to create Europe as a sort of rival
super power to the United States should look to Russia. So I don't think that is incidental.
I think it's a reflection of two profoundly contrasting visions of what the role of Europe should
be in the world.
CLARK:
You've invented a rather interesting term: Chiraco-Putinesque. Does that actually describe something real -
I mean some at least fairly serious convergence of interests at the present time between those two leaders?
GARTON-ASH:
I wouldn't attach too much significance to that phrase. It was slightly tongue in cheek because I don't
think one can seriously argue that there's a major convergence of interest between Vladimir Putin and Jacques
Chirac. Can we seriously imagine any operation anywhere in the world where you would have a Franco-Russian
military operation as we have an Anglo-American campaign in Iraq? It seems to me unthinkable. In other words,
this Eurasian axis is an axis of refusal. It can only work in saying no. And that is why, in my view, the
Gaullist conception is ultimately a hiding to nowhere.
CLARK:
As Tony Blair found in Moscow earlier this week, Russia's President Vladimir Putin is still saying nyet
to Anglo-American policy in Iraq. But far from rallying continental European against America, the axis
of refusal between Russia, France and Germany has so far had almost the opposite effect. Daniel Cohn-Bendit,
a veteran of the 1968 student uprising in Paris, now leads the German Greens at the European Parliament.
Though close to Germany's foreign minister, Joshka Fischer, he's surprisingly candid about the over-exclusive
partnership between his two homelands.
COHN-BENDIT:
I think they made a mistake, the French and the Germans, not to understand that this deep common interest
should be in the framework of a more European position, you know. And I think the danger is that against
the Anglo-Spanish position, the French and the Germans want to lead Europe. I think it's wrong. The
German-French response was a response first to England, because before there was a discussion in Europe,
Blair said "I'm with Bush." He didn't discuss it in Europe. Then the French and the Germans say:
"We have another position". But then they said this is a European position, and there were a lot of
states who said: "We are not comfortable with it, not because we don't share even this position, but
we want to decide for us what is our position, and not let the French and the Germans decide it for us".
This is a critique that I can understand.
CLARK:
Irritation over grandstanding by Paris and Berlin was one of the factors which prompted the centre-right
governments of Spain and Italy to line up on the other side. It is remarkable how far Spain in particular
went, given that public opinion at home was overwhelmingly hostile to the war. Foreign Minister Ana Palacio
believes her government did the right thing.
PALACIO:
Unfortunately some demonstrations and some attitudes in the media could give the impression that there is
an anti-American attitude in Europe. I think we have to work on that because you can have at a certain
moment, as we have had in Spain, a difficulty with explaining to our public opinion why we were taking
the decision we took. In Europe, I would say that there is a very old and very profound attitude against
any war. We have had too many wars in our territory not to be aware of what the tragedy of war is.
This attitude was very clear in '90-'91, it was very clear with respect to Kosovo. But these same citizens,
after the military interventions are over, they have understood the reasons, and they have backed very
clearly the results of these interventions. And I hope that this time we will have exactly the same
experience.
CLARK:
By no means all Europeans feel even now that war over Kosovo was unavoidable, but Ana Palacio has a point
when she says Europeans will adapt to the new state of affairs in Iraq. As a rule of thumb, Europeans
tend to live with the status quo, while the Americans challenge it. That's how it was during the cold
war, when American politicians often seemed keener to roll back Soviet domination than their European
allies were. The ex-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe still remember that. Hence the
provocative claim by Donald Rumsfeld, America's Defence Secretary, that the former Soviet satellites
are part of a new, Atlanticist Europe. Timothy Garton-Ash knows those ex-communist countries well.
GARTON-ASH:
Some Gaullists see them as America's fifth column. Quite a lot of Americans see them as sort of
America's special forces in Europe. Both are mistaken. Most of my friends from the anti-communist
opposition are very pro-American because they know that the United States did more to support their
struggle for freedom than almost anyone in Western Europe. They are somewhat frightened of Russia
still and they believe in a transatlantic community of values. But these countries are coming into Europe,
not into the United States, and over a number of years they will, I am convinced, become more European in
their identification. So it would be a great mistake for the United States to believe that in ten or
fifteen years time, they'd still have these little American allies in Central and Eastern Europe.
TELICKA:
For us Czechs, the US is a different story than Russia. We consider ourselves to be a firm ally to the US.
For me, this is really a crucial alliance that we want to keep and the relations with Russia are of a different
nature. So I don't want to make choices, but if you really were to push me hard then I think that my reply
tells you quite transparently how we see the relations with the United States of America.
CLARK:
Pavel Telicka, the Czech Ambassador to Brussels, has been chief negotiator for his country's bid to join the European club.
TELICKA:
I think that if we want to have a policy which will be operational, which will be efficient, then we need
to subscribe to the same values. I'm sure that we have in this respect a lot more in common with the US
than with some of the countries to the east of the Czech border.
CLARK:
Ambassador Telicka speaks for a nation with a historic fear of Russian ambitions in Europe. But these days,
Russia itself has little desire to be tied down with commitments in Europe. Sergei Karaganov is a presidential
adviser and Chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, a leading Moscow think-tank.
KARAGANOV:
Russia would like to belong to the European security structure, of course. The only problem is that the
European security structure is fading away. There is also a bright side to this problem and that is that
European security problems - most of them, thank god, hopefully - have been settled and we don't need a
strong European security organization. New security alliance should not be devoted mostly to Europe but
to global problems. I believe that we need to develop a new concert of nations of major powers of the new
age including Asian, including United States. It's not the old concert of European nations. Now we
will be working when it is possible with Western Europe, but on many issues we are closer in our philosophy,
for example, to the United States.
CLARK:
Could you just elaborate a little bit on which kind of issues Russia feels closer to the American position
than to the European one?
KARAGANOV:
On the need of use of force against states which support terrorism, on issues of war and peace sometimes.
Now Europe - I mean the old Europe - has developed a philosophy of the belle époque because it was defended
for fifty years from a threat which was diminishing and then evaporated. So far the aims of European defence
policy has been a bit too modest to the new world which is becoming more and more dangerous. I mean
when European defence policy is aimed only at keeping peace in Macedonia, it is sad. At least it should
be Middle East.
CLARK:
The Russians, as President Putin made clear this week, are still not willing to accept an American-led
reconstruction of Iraq. But given their own, very troubled southern borders, they are much closer to
Washington on the principle of using military force than they are to European pacifists. When Donald
Rumsfeld pours scorn on a soft-minded, old Europe, grown complaisant after half a century under NATO's
umbrella, the Russians don't altogether disagree. And in Paris, too, the Russian troika is seen as a
brief liaison, not a stable relationship. Nicole Gnesotto.
GNESOTTO:
To believe that this will be a counter alliance against the US is just stupid. The only thing we can say
is paradoxically Mr Rumsfeld was right and now the mission does the coalition. That is to say the Iraqi
mission has created a coalition where the French are with the Germans, the Russians and some others.
But this is true for this crisis. On another crisis, you may have a totally different coalition.
And I'm sure, for example, on North Korea the French will be with the US and not that much with the Russians.
A coalition depending on one mission is not at all the same thing as a permanent alliance and the French
make very much a distinction between this ad hoc coalition on the Iraqi mission and the permanent alliance
that they still believe they have with the U.S.
CLARK:
So Russia seems unlikely, in the long term, to be part of any European concert of nations standing up to
the Americans. But without Russia, how far can the French and Germans get? After 40 years of close partnership,
they still differ hugely over defence. France is a global military power with nuclear weapons, while Germany
is cautious about any use of force. As the French well know, the only other European country with a high-tech
military capability is the United Kingdom. It was Jacques Chirac himself who called Britain's forces the best
small army in the world. Earlier this week, he met the leaders of Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg to talk
about accelerating Europe's drive to self-sufficiency in defence. And although the British were notably
absent, moderate Gaullists like Pierre Lequiller insist they can't be excluded.
LEQUILLER:
Our idea is not to make a Franco-German-Russian construction. Our idea is to make a European construction -
a real common defence and foreign policy of Europe, including Great Britain, because we're absolutely
convinced it can't be done without Great Britain. Great Britain has with the French the first army in Europe.
I mean we can't build a European defence without Great Britain. I think that if there's not strong co-operation
between Great Britain and France, there won't be any Europe.
CLARK:
And in various ways, from Balkan peacekeeping to designing helicopters, British and French soldiers do still
co-operate. But given their deep estrangement over Iraq, is it really worth knocking heads together in pursuit
of a common foreign and defence policy? Don't recent events suggest that the higher the stakes in a crisis,
the less likely Europe is to respond cohesively? Javier Solana is supposed to personify the EU's foreign
policy as high representative of its council of ministers.
SOLANA:
Whenever the European Union has a crisis, the crisis is overcome by flying higher, not by flying lower.
Out of this crisis that we are going through now, I'm sure that it will be a European Union more coherent,
more united, with a more clear perception of what is the role of the European Union in the world.
CLARK:
Can you ever imagine the day when the European Union will make war or peace by majority vote?
SOLANA:
I don't think that this is something that can be conceived in the foreseeable future.
War and peace is something that is so linked to the nation state that it seems to me that by a qualified
majority countries will not accept to send their people to war. I think that like it is in NATO, that has
to be achieved by consensus. It's normal, it's understandable, that the nation state concept still is very
much alive.
CLARK:
When the EU is so divided by national rivalries, it's not clear how it can mend its broken wings and soar
heavenwards. Perhaps one way forward would be to fall back on proven strengths, which tend to be civilian,
not military. European politicians are sometimes good at nipping conflict in the bud, and even better at
repairing war-torn societies; the EU is supplanting NATO as the main peacekeeper in the Balkans. Timothy
Garton-Ash says it should go further.
GARTON-ASH:
The most urgent task in front of Europe at the moment is to work out what we think should be done in the
Middle East. At the moment what happens is that Washington proposes and Europe complains.
The Middle East is an even more vital interest of Europe than it is of the United States - it's just next
door. We are getting millions of immigrants from these countries, the instability and the terrorism is
more likely to come to Europe than it is to the United States. It's our vital interest and it is absurd
that we have no European strategy for the Middle East. You remember Talleyrand once said:
"You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them. This is a lesson that Donald Rumsfeld
does not seem yet to have learnt. You cannot bring democracy to the Middle East from the barrel
of a gun. When it comes to aid or reconstruction or development, Europe is a larger player than
the United States.
CLARK:
It's interesting that you've singled out the Middle East as the testing ground for European foreign policy
and not the Balkans.
GARTON-ASH:
Well you know the famous quip: America does the cooking, Europe does the washing up. I think, as indeed in
a marriage, that that is a rather unhealthy division of labour. And the problem is precisely that in the
Balkans European policy failed dramatically for ten years to resolve problems in our own back yard and in
Bosnia and Kosovo the United States had to come in to do the cooking. We're fine at doing a little washing
up afterwards in a country like Macedonia, but I would argue that Europe needs to be doing some cooking.
And the place where the cooking is really needed is the Middle East.
CLARK:
But won't America always retort that too many cooks spoil the broth? Some Europeans insist that during the
1990s, they did a respectable job of promoting peace in the Balkans, and it was the Americans who kept
spitting in the soup. And in the Middle East, where the Americans have huge strategic interests, will
they really let the Europeans in? Anyway, whenever they want to neutralize Europe's influence, all the
Americans need do is dangle a few carrots. Steven Everts is Dutch and a senior research fellow at the
Centre for European Reform, a London think-tank.
EVERTZ:
The Europeans didn't have the political discipline to resist that temptation for America to you know play
off one against the other or to deal with that bit of Europe that supported it and ignoring or isolating
the other bits that didn't to disaggregate Europe, and that's a new element of US strategy that the Europeans
have to think about how they want to deal with.
CLARK:
So one could say there are many different fault lines in Europe, but the biggest single fault line and the
biggest single source of division is differing reactions to the new America?
EVERTZ:
I think that is the organizing principle of Europe at the moment: how do you view America - as a force
for good that you need to coach in the right direction, or as something that has embarked on a revolutionary
strategy that you think is dangerous? That is the rough divide in Europe, and I think at the moment that is
the organizing principle.
CLARK:
The recent summit in Athens, where European leaders exchanged olive branches, was a brave attempt to overcome
this basic divide. In this climate of kiss-and-make-up, even some of those whom Donald Rumsfeld had welcomed
as part of the New Europe are reluctant to accept such a divisive compliment. Ana Palacio.
PALACIO:
Prague or Toledo or Madrid is as old as Paris and London and Rome. I think that there is no such division
as Old Europe and New Europe. We Europeans, we are very used not to coincide in issues. This one has
been a difficult one, but we will overcome it. After we overcome this Iraq crisis, we will see that it
has acted as a catalyst of many issues that were in the air, and we will go further into the construction
of a foreign common policy of the European Union. And I'm sure that after the Convention and after the
reform of the treaties, we will have made a big step into having a common foreign and security policy.
CLARK:
If new institutions were the only thing Europe needed, then some progress is being made. Under a constitution
drafted at the Convention on the Future of Europe in Brussels, the Union may soon have a powerful President,
and a full-blown foreign minister. But to count in world affairs, it would also need to make careful strategic
judgements about how much leverage it really has and where best to apply it. Steven Everts reckons that
Britain's loyal but critical support for America may yet be vindicated against the odds.
EVERTZ:
Blair has sold his strategy to the rest of Europe of being loyal in public to Bush because he thinks he's
got a promise, for instance, from Bush to get really engaged now on the Middle East peace protest, the road
map and all that. Now if there is no movement on Israel-Palestine in say twelve months, then I can guarantee
you that the divisions in Europe are going to re-emerge. Some people are going to say:
"Oh, the time has come for a European peace plan. See - you know the Americans, they take you for a
ride, they take your support, but they give nothing in return". So the nature of US policies towards
the Middle East have the potential to split Europe again, as it has in the past. At the moment it's
looking fine - at the moment the Europeans are together on Israel-Palestine, they are together on Iran,
they are together on Syria, and on all of these issues they are more together than Britain is with the
United States. But what happens if the United States starts to apply pressure? That's the key question.
CLARK:
So in a word, how can we have at the same time a widening transatlantic gap and an avoidance of any deepening
of the internal divisions in Europe?
EVERTZ:
You need Blairism with a bite. If the United States does not deliver on its promises on, for instance,
on Israel-Palestine, then it would be right and proper for Tony Blair to say: "Listen, we thought we had
a bargain, we thought we had a deal. You have to live up to your side of the bargain".
CLARK:
As an objective calculation of how Europe could gain influence, Blairism with bite sounds plausible.
But there are problems. First of all, most European governments are reluctant to pander, even tactically,
to what they see as the Bush administration's jingoism. Second, America, especially after its victory in
Iraq, is in no mood to accept a friendly nudge from Europe, let alone a bearing of fangs. And thirdly,
Britain is in no hurry to sink its teeth into the hand of American friendship. Jack Straw insists that
this has nothing to do with canine devotion.
STRAW:
What we want is critical friendships with all our allies. I don't understand this argument which asserts
that we should always be very diplomatic in our dealings with our European allies and we should minimize
the differences with them, and yet with our American allies we should maximize the differences. I don't
see diplomacy as beating our breasts against our allies. I'm extremely comfortable, however, about the
fact that we make our own decisions. One of those decisions is that we work within the European Union
very closely and we have a very strong and powerful alliance with the United States.
CLARK:
So while the Gaullists say that friendships in Europe must come first, Britain demurs. Meanwhile, both
America and its foes are bent on changing the global equilibrium. And the Gaullists are right to fear that
the European Union will allow itself to be sidelined. It will continue to be a huge and perhaps growing
player in global monetary affairs. But in matters of war and peace, it seems likely that the field will
be left to Europe's ancient nations - and their perpetually shifting alliances, both within the continent
and beyond it.
