Eight months later, a poll published in the German magazine Der Spiegel asked Europeans whether the attacks were against the entire Western world, as Le Monde’s headline implied, or just against the United States. By a 3-1 margin, the Europeans said it was an attack on Americans. Nothing to do with Europe.
Nothing sums up better the deep divide between Europe and America and how they see the world.
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The United States is fighting a war against terrorism. Europe says there is no war on terrorism.
The U.S. government says terrorism is an evil to be eradicated. European governments believe it is one problem among many–a serious problem, to be sure, but not an obsession and probably one that can be controlled but not solved.
“Americans do feel they are at war,” said Gilles Andreani, a French foreign policy analyst. “Europeans feel there’s a problem at hand, part of which requires a military action.”
From this flow the different views, even goals, of the Atlantic alliance over how the world should be run. An alliance that once cooperated in the defense of Western values against the threat of communism cannot even agree today on what the threat is and frequently is at odds over values.
On Sept. 11, an outpouring of sympathy and grief across Europe united Americans and Europeans. The emotion was genuine. In Brussels, the 19 NATO nations met and, for the first time in the bloc’s 53-year history, invoked their treaty’s Article 5, which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all. If America wanted to strike back at the terrorists, Europe was ready to help.
The trauma of that day remains vivid in America. But, perhaps inevitably, it has faded in Europe, 5,000 miles away. Much of the sympathy remains, but European governments, unlike the U.S. government, are unwilling to subordinate all aspects of policy to the fight against terrorism.
There are many reasons for this.
First, the Bush administration publicly welcomed but privately put little stock in the NATO offer of help. The American response, according to one diplomat, was “don’t call us, and we probably won’t call you.” In the end, some NATO nations contributed peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan, but the alliance itself was sidelined.
“When the Pentagon turned down our offers of help, that was the turning point,” said Hubert Vedrine, who was French foreign minister at the time. “Many Europeans were demoralized. The military alliance doesn’t make much sense any more.”
Second is the passage of time. Most Europeans seem to believe that the Americans must put the attacks, like any catastrophe, into the perspective of other events, and then get on with their lives. Europe doesn’t understand that Americans have found this emotionally impossible.
Allied to this is the European refusal to elevate the struggle against terrorism to the status of “war,” demanding the total resources of government. In addition, the Europeans reject the Bush administration’s reliance on military action as the best way to fight terrorism. Virtually all European officials argue that military action must be coupled with “soft” solutions to fight poverty and disease, to ease the conditions that they believe breed terrorism.
Different views of war
Moreover, Europeans and Americans take a starkly different historical view of war.
For Europe, war over the past century has produced only losers, devastation and horror. As a result, Europeans feel a deep revulsion for civilian casualties of armed conflict that the U.S. minimizes as “collateral damage.”
For the United States, war has long helped advance national interests. In the 19th Century, wars made America a continental power. The Spanish-American War enabled the U.S. to project its military strength. World War II led directly to superpower status, without nearly the death and devastation and suffering at home that afflicted Europe. Much of America’s predominance in the world today rests on its military power, which the Europeans cannot match.
Europeans concede their relative military weakness, but they say it has helped them focus more on non-military means, making them better and more patient when it comes to programs aimed at aid and development.
“The United States can stop the Taliban,” said Karl Kaiser, director of the Research Institute of the German Society for Foreign Affairs, “but it can’t create the conditions so the Taliban won’t come back. We can do this.”
Terrorism in Europe
Another reason is rooted in Europe’s own history with terrorism–the Irish Republican Army in Britain, the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, Basque terrorists in Spain, Arab terrorists in France and Austria.
None launched a single attack as destructive as the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. But over the years, they assassinated Cabinet ministers in Britain, leading bankers in Germany, the prime minister of Italy, generals, police officers and hundreds of citizens.
The Basque terrorists are still active in Spain. But in other European countries, years of patient police work, plus dogged diplomacy in places like Northern Ireland, have largely ended the threats, without the need to put any of the countries on a war footing.
Repeatedly, European officials argue that it is not anti-American to suggest that the Bush administration is fighting terrorism the wrong way.
“I had two of my friends blown up by [IRA] terrorists and spent part of my life, when I had a young family, wondering whenever I turned the ignition on, if it would blow all of us to smithereens,” said Chris Patten, the European Union’s commissioner for external affairs and a former British Cabinet minister. “So I know the difference between right and wrong.
“Terrorism is never under any circumstances justified,” Patten said. “But I also know there’s a political context in which terrorist acts take place, and unless you address that context seriously and adroitly, terrorism is likely to continue.
“You don’t have to curb your moral principles to make that point.”
In addition, Patten said, “I don’t believe that the world is a more dangerous place this summer than last, nor that nation-states have suddenly become more vulnerable. I do think that there’s a dark side to globalization that we’ve ignored at our peril.”
Feeling removed from threat
The irony is that, at this moment when Americans feel more vulnerable than ever, many Europeans feel safer.
“You sense that the United States is at war,” said Klaus Scharioth, political director of the German foreign minister. “Nobody here feels at war.
“Why? Germany spent all those years on the front line of the Cold War. We lived with this threat. We knew Germany would be the battlefield. Before Sept. 11, we never had this feeling of security, so it couldn’t be taken away from us.
“But since the [Berlin] Wall came down,” Scharioth said, “we don’t live under the threat of missiles. Our situation has improved. Even with the terrorist threat, our situation has improved.”
Across Europe, this feeling of being removed from the Soviet threat exists.
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“Brezhnev had thousands of warheads facing us,” Patrice de Beer, a commentator for Le Monde, said of the late Soviet leader. “That’s a lot different from some guy in a cave.”
Many Europeans see a post-Sept. 11 America lashing out “like a wounded bear,” in the words of David Held, a professor at the London School of Economics, “which risks making itself more vulnerable. This reaction is a weakness, not a strength.”
The test of these conflicting trans-Atlantic attitudes will come if the Bush administration decides to attack Iraq and tries to unseat Saddam Hussein.
Conversations across Europe reveal two conflicting attitudes. Almost no European leader thinks Hussein has ties to Al Qaeda or any direct relationship to the war on terrorism. All believe that any attack on Iraq is likely to destabilize the Middle East and cause more harm than good. But all are alarmed by Hussein’s development of weapons of mass destruction. And most believe that if any U.S. attack has a chance to succeed, it is going to need the military and diplomatic support of a broad coalition.
“Iraq will be hard to do without international support,” a NATO official in Brussels said. “It’s a state and an Arab state, not a black hole of anarchy.
“When the U.S. has done this unilaterally–Vietnam springs to mind–it hasn’t been so successful,” the official said. “The United States could single-handedly get rid of Saddam Hussein, but in the long term, you’re going to want to have your allies there.”
Looking to avoid precedent
In addition, there is a feeling in Europe that a unilateral U.S. attack would give Washington the right to intervene militarily anywhere in the world, a precedent that Europeans desperately want to avoid.
And the Europeans know that, if they actively oppose U.S. action toward Iraq, it could destroy what’s left of the alliance.
For these reasons, most European analysts believe that European governments will give either active or passive support to a U.S. attack on Iraq, if Washington makes a case that the Europeans can sell to their voters and parliaments.
“The attitude in France and in Europe toward intervention in Iraq is changing,” said Jacques Beltran, an analyst with the French Institute on International Relations in Paris. “Before, there was opposition, a fear that it would destabilize the whole region. Now [President Jacques] Chirac says that all options are on the table.
“There’s a feeling that if the Americans are going to go anyway, it’s better to be with them than not,” Beltran said.
“But the United States has to make an effort to build the alliance,” said Germany’s Kaiser. “It’s very much a matter of style. To do this unilaterally–that’s wrong.”
The key to support on Iraq
There must be an all-out effort through the United Nations to persuade or force the Iraqi leader to readmit UN weapons inspectors, all analysts say. If he does this, any European support for an attack will evaporate. If he refuses, the European governments can argue that he is a threat and should be eliminated.
“If Bush tackles Iraq the Rumsfeld way, if it just does it, Europeans will be very angry,” said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London. “Blair might send troops, but the others won’t.
“But if Bush goes the UN inspectors route, a multilateral solution, then the other Europeans will support it,” Grant said.
“The United States is the leader in this,” Kaiser said. “You have to persuade the allies to go along and contribute according to their means.
“We’re just not in the same mood as the U.S.,” he said. “We’ve had no attack here. Bush has to help democratically elected politicians here to go along.” American saber-rattling by leaders like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld makes “life difficult for politicians here like [German Chancellor Gerhard] Schroeder.”
Even so, Europeans hope that any attack will be a unique event, not the basis for a “doctrine of pre-emption” that gives the U.S. the right to attack any nation it suspects of harboring evil intent.
“This doctrine of pre-emption is dangerous because it’s a symbol of the different ways we look at the world,” said Philip Stephens, columnist for the Financial Times of London. “Attacking Iraq–that’s one thing. But a doctrine of pre-emption, with you deciding who to attack–that’s setting off alarm bells here.”