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Monday, February 17, 2003
posted by gbarto at 12:13 AM:
European Union Faces Big HurdleSpecifically, that it isn't one. We know that NATO finally came to a compromise on Turkey. It did so by shutting out the French - they weren't invited to the talks. Meanwhile, the EU has been trying in vain to come to an Iraq policy compromise that looks more meaningful than nine for France, six for the US, but wait until next year. But in order to get France comfortable with the discussion, they had to lock out several Eastern European countries that will join the EU in the next two years. Bottom line, France and Germany are trying to assert themselves at the levels of NATO, the EU and the UN because if they can't take charge of the functioning of those bodies with their intransigeance now, they'll be rendered unimportant in them later. In the EU in particular, the Franco-German reasoning carries the day with the current 15 members. But when there are 25, they'll be outvoted unless they can either woo an Eastern Europe away from the US - an Eastern Europe that remembers France cozying up to the Soviets even as the US fought to free them - or make it seem that France and Germany being in charge is just the way things work. And they're scared. Forget sweetheart oil deals, forget everything. Two nations that held center-stage - for good or ill - during most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are on the verge of becoming just two other countries. And they don't like it. The question is how many lives will be jeopardized - even lost - before the two recognize that unless they create something new in the workings of the world and among nations, their time will be up as leaders. There is talk of American hubris, but American hubris has a massive army, a massive economy and the second largest free population in the world behind it. The Hexagon acts as though these are all unnecessary, as though being French should be enough. That's hubris.
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