www.iht.com/articles/113629.html
LONDON A potential trans-Atlantic breach has opened in the aftermath of the Iraq war that seems to leave Britain wavering between its exclusive, pro-American commitment to NATO and involvement in a European Union defense initiative pushed by France and Germany. So far the British and Americans have wadded their differences in gentlemanly exchanges. Still, it is now certain that Blair in late September shifted Britains position from no to yes on whether the country would take part in a developing a spearhead defense group within the European Union. That group would allow a handful of countries notably including France, Germany and Britain to carry on, unencumbered by the rest of the membership, with what the EU calls structured cooperation, be it procurement, strategy or the engagement of troops. British officials hold that there is nothing ominous about this for the trans-Atlantic relationship since Britain regards NATO as having clear primacy except where it is specifically transferred - a recent African operation run out of French national headquarters is an example - to wholly European auspices. And the officials say they will not accept a French-German initiative to create an operational planning headquarters for the EU separate from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a so-called red-line item for the Americans. Privately, the British assert that they reject the idea of those in France and Germany who would seek to manipulate the vanguard group to assert a European defense identity both decoupled from the United States and NATO and signaling an institutionalized separation between the trans-Atlantic allies. All the same, said an American official, regarding the situation far from London, the British had caved in on a key issue. From its previous resistance to structured cooperation as superfluous and divisive, he said, the Blair government had turned the concept into a fact. That would depend on developments, he went on, but I dont see it as a tectonic shift. But that hardly modulated the view of those who describe the developments in epochal terms. In the long run, all this will be seen as having been the thin end of the wedge. Its the beginning of a separation, said Julian Lindley-French, director for European security at the Geneva Center for Security Policy. Blair is absolutely not averse now to tweaking the tail of the American tiger. This, for Lindley-French, fit into the context of a British effort to assert a leadership role in the area of European defense. In this sense, he said, the discussion has nothing much to do with defense. For Bernard Jenkin, the shadow secretary of state for defense of the Conservative Party, the governments action breaches the fundamental undertaking Blair gave to Bush on Europes relation to America. If the government were really asserting NATOs primacy, he said, it would be asserting the primacy of the Berlin Plus accord weve agreed to which provides for separable but not separate EU forces. By Jenkins standard, the awful thing about structured cooperation is that you cant control the agenda and you lose your implicit threat of a veto within the EU. The gravitational pull toward Europe will be immensely strengthened. An informed French view hardly contradicted the emphasis on the significance of the turn. Franois Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris, reached back to the Suez crisis of 1956 to find a comparison for what he regards as the current movement for change in both London and Paris. Those orientations have now run out of potential for realistic decision-making in both countries, Heisbourg said. Following Iraq, he said, the British now wonder whether it will be wise to reflexively turn to Washington ahead of Europe in marking out their defense orientation. The British are clearly giving themselves the opportunity to look and debate. This attitude was accelerated, Heisbourg believed, by what he describes - without a trace of acknowledgment from the French government - as post-Iraq Frances realization that neither Europe nor European defense will be created in its own image. The British, Heisbourg thought, had recognized what he contends is this major shift in the French mind-set. For all these years, said Heisbourg, when we didnt like what the Europeans thought on defense, wed go off on our own. What you can say about the Europe to come is that it will be heavily un-French and that is the context in which we will work. In the coming months, it will be pushed into making its position publicly explicit. Because the EUs current Inter-Governmental Conference, meant to come up with a final version of an EU constitution, will involve debate on how defense decisions are made and on rules for vanguard groups, Britain will run the risk of confrontation with either the United States or Germany and France. To ensure that the vanguard defense group does not get out of its hands, the British are saying that all of its decisions will have to be unanimous ones. And to make certain that the group has a more Atlanticist tone than that of the four countries Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Germany which originally offered themselves up last April for the Tervuren initiative, the Blair government wants to see countries like Spain, Poland and the Netherlands join as participants. Operational planning, in the British view, would be accomplished within the NATO framework, or in the case of a specific European military undertaking, through the national headquarters of one of the vanguard groups members. All this, including what is described here as the French and Germans continued attachment to a visibly separate EU operational planning operation, makes for excruciatingly difficult choices for the Blair government in the relatively near term. With this in mind, the British say clearly that making Europe work is very much their wish, but not at any price. An impasse in relation to France and Germanys notions of European defense, they say, is a real possibility. Having eventually to back off from their new move in Europes direction would be a humiliating defeat for Blair and his European leadership ambitions.
|
http://csua.com/feed/