NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
COMMENTARY
February 11, 2003
Puffballs of spite
The future of the NATO alliance was called into question over the weekend by two events. The lesser was a French-German conspiracy revealed in the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel to sabotage the British-American war resolution about to come before the U.N. Security Council by inserting an earlier one. This will propose a U.N. force be dispatched to Iraq after awaiting Saddam Hussein's permission. It is in fact a carbon copy of what was done for Bosnia in 1995 -- the U.N. filling the country with blue helmets that Slobodan Milosevic could then use as human shields. The more serious challenge was a combined French German and Belgian veto of an urgent Turkish request to NATO. The Turks need AWAC surveillance planes to detect Scud launches towards them Patriot anti-missile defences to go with these gas masks and chemical suits decontamination units and pharmaceutical stocks for a variety of Saddam's known biological and chemical toxins especially nerve gas and anthrax -- as precaution against the increasing likelihood of Iraqi WMD attacks against Turkish civilian targets. By denying this request the French Germans and Belgians were more overtly than ever before attempting to backstab their American allies and increase political pressure to bring down Tony Blair in Britain -- a personal grudge shared by Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder which they have now elevated to a public vendetta. But the action they took did not merely stick it to President Bush and Prime Minister Blair. It was a seismic affront to the Turks coming on top of previous Franco-German efforts to prevent them from joining the European Union. The Franco-Germans were also sticking it to: Spain Italy the Czech Republic Denmark Greece Hungary Iceland Luxembourg the Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal and Canada. For all these other NATO members voted to help the Turks as they were arguably legally obliged to do. The 16 votes in favour were stymied by the three vetoes. To fully appreciate what the French Germans and Belgians did one must look at the context. Their delegates were present with the others to hear the intelligence briefing given on Iraq's threat to its neighbours by General Harald Kujat -- the German who is head of the alliance's military committee. This briefing was described privately by a Czech delegate as "frightening in its detail". He said it went "well beyond what Secretary Powell told the Security Council last week". NATO's secretary-general George Robertson characterized the briefing publicly as "pretty sobering". Moreover behind closed doors according to several diplomats who were present a remarkable debate took place in which not the Americans but the other European delegates made the most impassioned remarks. They spelled out the consequences to NATO of the French German and Belgian filibuster which a Polish delegate labelled as "a poorly-timed publicity stunt". Several did not stop at the question of honour -- explicitly reminding the French Germans and Belgians that in their desire to spite the U.S. they are forgetting that they owe their very liberty both from Nazi occupation and the Cold War threat of Soviet aggression to America. Yet even after this was said to them off the record -- by their fellow Europeans -- the French Germans and Belgians persisted with the specious argument that granting any kind of help to Turkey -- no matter how purely humanitarian or how urgent -- would "give the appearance" of endorsing U.S. preparations for war. Turkey has now upped the ante by repeating its request to NATO under Article IV which might be used to override individual members' vetoes. This means the whole debate is happening again within NATO as you read this; and that the poison continues to spread as I write. The Wall Street Journal was first off the mark with an editorial on its website suggesting the U.S. leave NATO and build a new alliance from scratch of nations that are serious about the double threat of genocidal weaponry and terrorism. It is a view that will resonate through many minds within the Bush administration. This will include that of Colin Powell who on my information is seething from direct encounters with both Chirac and Schroeder. It was Donald Rumsfeld curiously enough -- the "hawk" not the "dove" -- who diplomatically said NATO had had tiffs before and would have tiffs again -- though after calling the French German and Belgian behaviour "a disgrace" and "truly shameful". (Mr. Powell called it inexcusable .) The emotional depth of the American anger is something which seems so far to be lost on the French and German governments which in my view are too caught up in their own vanity to grasp the huge implications of their actions. Though it is possible that worse motives are being concealed from view such as fear of what the allies will discover about the degree of French and German perfidy after Saddam has been removed and they have access to his surviving records. In the short run NATO will almost certainly survive. It contains a great deal of useful infrastructure. In the longer run however it is becoming clear that an alliance that can be hamstrung by "allies" like France Germany and Belgium is merely in the way. A more elegant answer I suspect will not be to get rid of NATO but to remake it as a more international alliance and replace France Germany and Belgium with more serious countries such as Israel India and Taiwan. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top