BEHIND TRANS-ATLANTIC CORDIALITY: A LITTLE GIVE AND TAKE

 Artículo de RICHARD BERNSTEIN en “The New York Times” del 11/06/2004

Por su interés y relevancia, he seleccionado el artículo que sigue para incluirlo en este sitio web. (L. B.-B.)

BERLIN, June 10 — A bit over a year ago, as demonstrations against the Iraq war mounted and the leaders of France and Germany campaigned passionately against the United States in the United Nations, the question was, how did trans-Atlantic relations get so bad so quickly?

Now, with France and Germany signing an American-sponsored Security Council resolution on Iraq, the reverse question seems to be in order. Why are the former opponents of the Iraq war in "old" Europe suddenly being so conciliatory, so nice, to the United States?

"We're moving toward more balance and moderation on both sides," said Dietrich von Kyaw, a former German ambassador to the European Union.

In other words, the more cooperative attitude in Germany, at any rate, was at least in part a response to the modest move toward multilateralism shown by the Bush administration in seeking the latest Security Council resolution.

"Mr. Schröder needed to show, since the Americans are being more reasonable, that at least he can be more reasonable too," Mr. von Kyaw said of Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor.

Essentially, the unanimous Security Council resolution has given a bit of vindication to both sides in the great Iraq war debate. The Europeans can say that the Bush administration's move toward multilateralism is an indirect way of saying that Europe was right, that going it alone on Iraq would not work. The Bush administration has learned a lesson, this reasoning goes, and has therefore dropped its philosophy of unilateralism.

The Bush administration meanwhile is getting full international legitimacy for what it has sought in Iraq all along, namely the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the creation of a new, if struggling, Iraqi government.

"Bush is the driving force behind this, at least until the U.S. elections," The German Financial Times said in an editorial Thursday, elaborating the view common among Europeans that they have won the debate. The American administration's newly discovered multilateralism is a defeat for the members of the unilateralist, pro-Iraq-war faction in Washington, the newspaper argued. "The Iraq fiasco," it said, "has discredited them in the eyes of the president. Their influence will dwindle even if Bush wins the election."

The new, lighter trans-Atlantic mood does not mean that all problems have been solved. True, President Jacques Chirac and President Bush made a great show of cordiality at the recent D-Day anniversary celebrations and in Mr. Bush's stay in Paris. And, of course, Mr. Chirac voted in favor of this week's resolution, even though France had to drop an earlier demand that the interim government have a veto power over the American use of force in Iraq.

But while both Mr. Chirac and Mr. Schröder accepted the overall Security Council package, it is clear that they will continue to oppose the Americans on a lot of the details, most important on the use of NATO troops in Iraq, which both leaders have said they oppose.

In other words, they may have given some legitimacy to the outcome of the Iraqi war, but they are not about to bail the United States out of the very dangerous and uncertain Iraqi situation. There will be no sharing of the military burden and no sharing of responsibility if the American-endorsed solution in Iraq falls apart.

Still, as the European and American leaders continued their series of get-togethers, currently at the Group of 8 meeting in Georgia, analysts say that neither Germany nor France sees any advantage in perpetuating the animosities and tensions of the recent past.

"The French want to avoid a confrontation, because the collateral damage of last year's crisis was such that there is no particular taste for repeating it in the absence of high stakes," said François Heisbourg, the director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.

Last year, he continued, "it was whether the French would succeed in blocking the legitimacy of the war in Iraq or not. But in the current situation, the Americans are asking to be able to continue what they are already doing. They want to have the last word on the use of force in Iraq. Do the French want to get into a big fight on that? I don't think so."

For the Germans, in contrast, the near rupture of the trans-Atlantic relationship was far more traumatic — or, as Mr. Heisbourg put it, "the French were just more bloody minded than usual, while the Germans changed their whole operating system."

In this sense, you can almost hear the sigh of relief in the German foreign policy establishment as the disagreements over Iraq have faded. For Mr. Schröder himself, who faces an uphill battle for re-election two years from now, the political advantage he once gained from opposing the Iraq war would probably disappear if he now was unable to repair the damage.

Mr. Schröder has seemed warmer personally to Mr. Bush than to Mr. Chirac in this sense, and more cooperative. He not only agreed to the Security Council resolution, but he has said he will do his best to meet another American demand, that at least a major part of the Iraqi debt be forgiven. This Mr. Chirac has so far refused to do. There is also something in the body language shown by Mr. Chirac when he is in Mr. Bush's presence that suggests how difficult the French-American reconciliation is for him personally.

But while differences between the French and the Germans remain, there are clearly benefits for both countries in a trans-Atlantic reconciliation. A major one has to do with healing the wounds within Europe, which was also fractured into "old" and "new" halves by the Iraq debate.

Only a year or so ago many of the former eastern countries signed a letter protesting French and German opposition on Iraq. This led Mr. Chirac to one of the all-time greatest undiplomatic gestures, when he said the eastern Europeans had "missed a chance to shut up."

"Being nice to George Bush also has a European dimension," said Andreas Falke, a foreign policy analyst at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. "It means being nice to Tony Blair. It's healing the European rift, which Europeans don't want any more."