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ANALYSIS
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE
TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED
DOCUMENTARY
Presenter: Bruce Clark
Producer: Zareer Masani
Editor: Nicola Meyrick
BBC
White City
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London
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020 8752 6252

Broadcast Date: 01.05.03

Repeat Date:
4.05.03
Tape Number:
TLN317/03VT1017
Duration: 27.26
Taking part in order of appearance:
Ana Palacio, Foreign Minister of Spain
Pierre Lequiller, Head of European Affairs Commission,
French National Assembly
Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary
Nicole Gnesotto, Director of European Unions Institute for
Security Studies, Paris
Timothy Garton-Ash, Director of European Studies Centre,
St. Anthonys College, Oxford
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Leader of German Greens, European
Parliament
Pavel Telicka, Czech Ambassador to the European Union
Sergei Karaganov, Chairman of Council on Foreign and
Defence Policy, Moscow

Javier Solana, EU High Representative

Steven Everts, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for
European Reform, London

CLARK: The European Union has been shaken

to its foundations by the conflict in Iraq. Name-calling between the proand anti-war camps has created one of the worst atmospheres in Europe
since 1945. And both sides insist that fundamental principles are at stake.
PALACIO:
Democracy, the respect for human
rights and the rule of law we have that in common with our American
friends.
CLARK: Ana Palacio, the Foreign Minister of
Spain, which morally if not militarily supported the Anglo-American
action.
PALACIO:
We took a position that was not an
easy one. We have had to face a very difficult situation vis--vis our own
public opinion, but we took this position on grounds of broad general
interest and what we think is the relationship we have to have with United
States as allies.
LEQUILLER:
During this crisis, weve had the
impression that the Americans didnt want Europe to be strong and they
were keen on dividing Europe.
CLARK: Pierre Lequiller, a Gaullist who heads
the European Affairs Commission in the French National Assembly.
LEQUILLER:
From the beginning, the British
position has been to say weve got to be with the Americans anyway,
whereas we thought that we had to be frank with the Americans if we
didnt agree. Its the first time in the history of Europe that a few countries
have decided to say we dont agree on this method; not on the aim, but on
the method.
CLARK: Although the French insist that their
disagreement was merely about methods and not the basic aim of disarming
Iraq, a chasm has opened up between Atlanticists and Gaullists in Europe.
Each side makes its case by appealing to lofty ideals but could it be that
old-fashioned national interests also lurk in the background? And how
serious are the issues at stake? British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw.
STRAW: Its been a very serious crisis for the
Union. I cant recall anything in the last thirty years quite as serious as this
where essentially there have been two parties inside the European Union,
two sides. What is reflected by this crisis is very different perceptions
about the significance or otherwise of what happened on September 11th
and its completely changed the psychology of the US. Some European

countries have factored that in, some have not.

CLARK: Jack Straw argues that the French
response, in particular, has been unrealistic and counter-productive.
STRAW: Part of the French approach to the
European Union at the moment is a view that you can create a bi-polar
world. Now there is something fatally flawed in the French analysis, which
is to assume that it is possible to have two poles where the poles are not of
equal power. Since this is an analogy drawn from the laws of magnetism,
if one magnet is stronger than the other its the stronger magnet which will
attract. And if we try to create a bi-polar world when the two poles of these
two magnets are of very different power then you dont create a balance, an
equilibrium, you create a distortion, and what would happen if we tried this
would be that over time countries in Europe would peel off and form their
own bilateral alliances with the United States.
CLARK: In fact, individual European states are
already peeling off and cosying up to the Americans. But these arguments
about the power of the American magnet dont impress French Gaullists,
who insist that over time, other poles of attraction will appear in the world,
and Europe should be prominent among them. Pierre Lequiller.
LEQUILLER:
In the future there will be anyway a
multilateral world with a China which is going to emerge, with an India
which is going to emerge and probably other big powers in the world, and
the problem is if we want Europe to disappear or Europe to be a political
power. Europe is now the first economic power in the world. Its the first
monetary power in the world. It can be the first political power in the
world or any way it can be a big power who works hand in hand with
America but not obeying necessarily to all the American wishes. In our
friendship with America, weve got to convince them that they need a
strong Europe.
GNESOTTO:
The objective of the United States is
to prevent the EU to be a collective political actor. I mean they say it every
day.
CLARK: Nicole Gnesotto, Director of the
European Unions Institute for Security Studies in Paris.
GNESOTTO:
Since the beginning of this
administration, they have played the bilateral relationship with all European
countries instead of playing the collective institution. And its not even
true for the EU. It was true also regarding NATO at the first year of this
administration. Remember when Rumsfeld himself said the mission does
the coalition and not the other way round.
CLARK: In general terms, does one have to
admit that the Americans have been quite successful in their game of divide
and rule?
GNESOTTO:
Well, sure, they have been successful,
but it would be unfair to say that the Europeans are divided only because of
this US attitude. The Europeans are divided also because they dont agree
between themselves of what they want for the future of Europe. And
maybe if there is one good lesson to draw from this crisis, it is that at least
now that we are so divided publicly we can begin to talk seriously of what
we want for the future of the EU.
CLARK: So something good may come of the
row, after all. What hope do the French have of winning the argument

within Europe and transforming the Union into a global actor? They have
had one important asset - the revival of their special relationship with
Germany, which in its sharpest break with America since 1945, eagerly
joined in opposing the use of force against Iraq. As war loomed, a third
party was added to the older Franco-German axis: Russia. But there are
limits to how far this unwieldy troika can travel. Timothy Garton-Ash is
Director of the European Studies Centre at Saint Anthony's College,
Oxford.
GARTON-ASH:
The big argument in Europe is
between an Atlanticist and a Gaullist vision of Europe. And the Poles and
the Czechs and the other East Europeans have been reaffirming their view
that Europe belongs with the United States in one community and not with
Russia. And the Gaullist view has always been, if you like, Eurasian; thats
to say De Gaulle always said Russia belongs in Europe, America does not.
And so it is no accident that the Franco-German axis in trying to create
Europe as a sort of rival super power to the United States should look to
Russia. So I dont think that is incidental. I think its a reflection of two
profoundly contrasting visions of what the role of Europe should be in the
world.
CLARK: Youve invented a rather interesting
term: Chiraco-Putinesque. Does that actually describe something real I
mean some at least fairly serious convergence of interests at the present
time between those two leaders?
GARTON-ASH:
I wouldnt attach too much
significance to that phrase. It was slightly tongue in cheek because I dont
think one can seriously argue that theres a major convergence of interest
between Vladimir Putin and Jacques Chirac. Can we seriously imagine any
operation anywhere in the world where you would have a Franco-Russian
military operation as we have an Anglo-American campaign in Iraq? It
seems to me unthinkable. In other words, this Eurasian axis is an axis of
refusal. It can only work in saying no. And that is why, in my view, the
Gaullist conception is ultimately a hiding to nowhere.
CLARK: As Tony Blair found in Moscow
earlier this week, Russias President Vladimir Putin is still saying nyet to
Anglo-American policy in Iraq. But far from rallying continental European
against America, the axis of refusal between Russia, France and Germany
has so far had almost the opposite effect. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a veteran of
the 1968 student uprising in Paris, now leads the German Greens at the
European Parliament. Though close to Germanys foreign minister, Joshka
Fischer, hes surprisingly candid about the over-exclusive partnership
between his two homelands.
COHN-BENDIT:
I think they made a mistake, the
French and the Germans, not to understand that this deep common interest
should be in the framework of a more European position, you know. And I
think the danger is that against the Anglo-Spanish position, the French and
the Germans want to lead Europe. I think its wrong. The German-French
response was a response first to England, because before there was a
discussion in Europe, Blair said Im with Bush. He didnt discuss it in
Europe. Then the French and the Germans say: We have another
position. But then they said this is a European position, and there were a
lot of states who said: We are not comfortable with it, not because we
dont share even this position, but we want to decide for us what is our
position, and not let the French and the Germans decide it for us. This is a
critique that I can understand.
CLARK: Irritation over grandstanding by Paris

and Berlin was one of the factors which prompted the centre-right
governments of Spain and Italy to line up on the other side. It is remarkable
how far Spain in particular went, given that public opinion at home was
overwhelmingly hostile to the war. Foreign Minister Ana Palacio believes
her government did the right thing.
PALACIO:
Unfortunately some demonstrations
and some attitudes in the media could give the impression that there is an
anti-American attitude in Europe. I think we have to work on that because
you can have at a certain moment, as we have had in Spain, a difficulty
with explaining to our public opinion why we were taking the decision we
took. In Europe, I would say that there is a very old and very profound
attitude against any war. We have had too many wars in our territory not to
be aware of what the tragedy of war is. This attitude was very clear in 9091, it was very clear with respect to Kosovo. But these same citizens, after
the military interventions are over, they have understood the reasons, and
they have backed very clearly the results of these interventions. And I hope
that this time we will have exactly the same experience.
CLARK: By no means all Europeans feel even
now that war over Kosovo was unavoidable, but Ana Palacio has a point
when she says Europeans will adapt to the new state of affairs in Iraq. As a
rule of thumb, Europeans tend to live with the status quo, while the
Americans challenge it. Thats how it was during the cold war, when
American politicians often seemed keener to roll back Soviet domination
than their European allies were. The ex-communist states of Central and
Eastern Europe still remember that. Hence the provocative claim by Donald
Rumsfeld, Americas Defence Secretary, that the former Soviet satellites
are part of a new, Atlanticist Europe. Timothy Garton-Ash knows those excommunist countries well.
GARTON-ASH:
Some Gaullists see them as Americas
fifth column. Quite a lot of Americans see them as sort of Americas
special forces in Europe. Both are mistaken. Most of my friends from the
anti-communist opposition are very pro-American because they know that
the United States did more to support their struggle for freedom than
almost anyone in Western Europe. They are somewhat frightened of
Russia still and they believe in a transatlantic community of values. But
these countries are coming into Europe, not into the United States, and over
a number of years they will, I am convinced, become more European in
their identification. So it would be a great mistake for the United States to
believe that in ten or fifteen years time, theyd still have these little
American allies in Central and Eastern Europe.
TELICKA:
For us Czechs, the US is a different
story than Russia. We consider ourselves to be a firm ally to the US. For
me, this is really a crucial alliance that we want to keep and the relations
with Russia are of a different nature. So I dont want to make choices, but
if you really were to push me hard then I think that my reply tells you quite
transparently how we see the relations with the United States of America.
CLARK: Pavel Telicka, the Czech Ambassador
to Brussels, has been chief negotiator for his countrys bid to join the
European club.
TELICKA:
I think that if we want to have a policy
which will be operational, which will be efficient, then we need to
subscribe to the same values. Im sure that we have in this respect a lot
more in common with the US than with some of the countries to the east of
the Czech border.

CLARK: Ambassador Telicka speaks for a

nation with a historic fear of Russian ambitions in Europe. But these days,
Russia itself has little desire to be tied down with commitments in Europe.
Sergei Karaganov is a presidential adviser and Chairman of the Council on
Foreign and Defence Policy, a leading Moscow think-tank.
KARAGANOV:
Russia would like to belong to the
European security structure, of course. The only problem is that the
European security structure is fading away. There is also a bright side to
this problem and that is that European security problems most of them,
thank god, hopefully have been settled and we dont need a strong
European security organization. New security alliance should not be
devoted mostly to Europe but to global problems. I believe that we need to
develop a new concert of nations of major powers of the new age including
Asian, including United States. Its not the old concert of European
nations. Now we will be working when it is possible with Western Europe,
but on many issues we are closer in our philosophy, for example, to the
United States.
CLARK: Could you just elaborate a little bit on
which kind of issues Russia feels closer to the American position than to
the European one?
KARAGANOV:
On the need of use of force against
states which support terrorism, on issues of war and peace sometimes.
Now Europe I mean the old Europe has developed a philosophy of the
belle poque because it was defended for fifty years from a threat which
was diminishing and then evaporated. So far the aims of European defence
policy has been a bit too modest to the new world which is becoming more
and more dangerous. I mean when European defence policy is aimed only
at keeping peace in Macedonia, it is sad. At least it should be Middle East.
CLARK: The Russians, as President Putin made
clear this week, are still not willing to accept an American-led
reconstruction of Iraq. But given their own, very troubled southern borders,
they are much closer to Washington on the principle of using military force
than they are to European pacifists. When Donald Rumsfeld pours scorn on
a soft-minded, old Europe, grown complaisant after half a century under
NATOs umbrella, the Russians dont altogether disagree. And in Paris,
too, the Russian troika is seen as a brief liaison, not a stable relationship.
Nicole Gnesotto.
GNESOTTO:
To believe that this will be a counter
alliance against the US is just stupid. The only thing we can say is
paradoxically Mr Rumsfeld was right and now the mission does the
coalition. That is to say the Iraqi mission has created a coalition where the
French are with the Germans, the Russians and some others. But this is
true for this crisis. On another crisis, you may have a totally different
coalition. And Im sure, for example, on North Korea the French will be
with the US and not that much with the Russians. A coalition depending
on one mission is not at all the same thing as a permanent alliance and the
French make very much a distinction between this ad hoc coalition on the
Iraqi mission and the permanent alliance that they still believe they have
with the U.S.
CLARK: So Russia seems unlikely, in the long
term, to be part of any European concert of nations standing up to the
Americans. But without Russia, how far can the French and Germans get?
After 40 years of close partnership, they still differ hugely over defence.
France is a global military power with nuclear weapons, while Germany is
cautious about any use of force. As the French well know, the only other
European country with a high-tech military capability is the United
Kingdom. It was Jacques Chirac himself who called Britains forces the

best small army in the world. Earlier this week, he met the leaders of
Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg to talk about accelerating Europes
drive to self-sufficiency in defence. And although the British were notably
absent, moderate Gaullists like Pierre Lequiller insist they cant be
excluded.
LEQUILLER:
Our idea is not to make a FrancoGerman-Russian construction. Our idea is to make a European
construction a real common defence and foreign policy of Europe,
including Great Britain, because were absolutely convinced it cant be
done without Great Britain. Great Britain has with the French the first
army in Europe. I mean we cant build a European defence without Great
Britain. I think that if theres not strong co-operation between Great
Britain and France, there wont be any Europe.
CLARK: And in various ways, from Balkan
peacekeeping to designing helicopters, British and French soldiers do still
co-operate. But given their deep estrangement over Iraq, is it really worth
knocking heads together in pursuit of a common foreign and defence
policy? Don't recent events suggest that the higher the stakes in a crisis, the
less likely Europe is to respond cohesively? Javier Solana is supposed to
personify the EU's foreign policy as high representative of its council of
ministers.
SOLANA:
Whenever the European Union has a
crisis, the crisis is overcome by flying higher, not by flying lower. Out of
this crisis that we are going through now, Im sure that it will be a
European Union more coherent, more united, with a more clear perception
of what is the role of the European Union in the world.
CLARK: Can you ever imagine the day when
the European Union will make war or peace by majority vote?
SOLANA:
I dont think that this is something
that can be conceived in the foreseeable future. War and peace is
something that is so linked to the nation state that it seems to me that by a
qualified majority countries will not accept to send their people to war. I
think that like it is in NATO, that has to be achieved by consensus. Its
normal, its understandable, that the nation state concept still is very
much alive.
CLARK: When the EU is so divided by national
rivalries, it's not clear how it can mend its broken wings and soar
heavenwards. Perhaps one way forward would be to fall back on proven
strengths, which tend to be civilian, not military. European politicians are
sometimes good at nipping conflict in the bud, and even better at repairing
war-torn societies; the EU is supplanting NATO as the main peacekeeper in
the Balkans. Timothy Garton-Ash says it should go further.
GARTON-ASH:
The most urgent task in front of
Europe at the moment is to work out what we think should be done in the
Middle East. At the moment what happens is that Washington proposes
and Europe complains. The Middle East is an even more vital interest of
Europe than it is of the United States its just next door. We are getting
millions of immigrants from these countries, the instability and the
terrorism is more likely to come to Europe than it is to the United States.
Its our vital interest and it is absurd that we have no European strategy for
the Middle East. You remember Talleyrand once said: You can do
anything with bayonets except sit on them. This is a lesson that Donald
Rumsfeld does not seem yet to have learnt. You cannot bring democracy to
the Middle East from the barrel of a gun. When it comes to aid or
reconstruction or development, Europe is a larger player than the United

States.
CLARK: Its interesting that youve singled out
the Middle East as the testing ground for European foreign policy and not
the Balkans.
GARTON-ASH:
Well you know the famous quip:
America does the cooking, Europe does the washing up. I think, as indeed
in a marriage, that that is a rather unhealthy division of labour. And the
problem is precisely that in the Balkans European policy failed dramatically
for ten years to resolve problems in our own back yard and in Bosnia and
Kosovo the United States had to come in to do the cooking. Were fine at
doing a little washing up afterwards in a country like Macedonia, but I
would argue that Europe needs to be doing some cooking. And the place
where the cooking is really needed is the Middle East.
CLARK: But wont America always retort that
too many cooks spoil the broth? Some Europeans insist that during the
1990s, they did a respectable job of promoting peace in the Balkans, and it
was the Americans who kept spitting in the soup. And in the Middle East,
where the Americans have huge strategic interests, will they really let the
Europeans in? Anyway, whenever they want to neutralize Europe's
influence, all the Americans need do is dangle a few carrots. Steven Everts
is Dutch and a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, a
London think-tank.
EVERTS: The Europeans didnt have the
political discipline to resist that temptation for America to you know play
off one against the other or to deal with that bit of Europe that supported it
and ignoring or isolating the other bits that didnt to disaggregate Europe,
and thats a new element of US strategy that the Europeans have to think
about how they want to deal with.
CLARK: So one could say there are many
different fault lines in Europe, but the biggest single fault line and the
biggest single source of division is differing reactions to the new America?
EVERTS:
I think that is the organizing principle
of Europe at the moment: how do you view America as a force for good
that you need to coach in the right direction, or as something that has
embarked on a revolutionary strategy that you think is dangerous? That is
the rough divide in Europe, and I think at the moment that is the organizing
principle.
CLARK: The recent summit in Athens, where
European leaders exchanged olive branches, was a brave attempt to
overcome this basic divide. In this climate of kiss-and-make-up, even some
of those whom Donald Rumsfeld had welcomed as part of the New Europe
are reluctant to accept such a divisive compliment. Ana Palacio.
PALACIO:
Prague or Toledo or Madrid is as old
as Paris and London and Rome. I think that there is no such division as
Old Europe and New Europe. We Europeans, we are very used not to
coincide in issues. This one has been a difficult one, but we will overcome
it. After we overcome this Iraq crisis, we will see that it has acted as a
catalyst of many issues that were in the air, and we will go further into the
construction of a foreign common policy of the European Union. And Im
sure that after the Convention and after the reform of the treaties, we will
have made a big step into having a common foreign and security policy.
CLARK: If new institutions were the only thing

Europe needed, then some progress is being made. Under a constitution

drafted at the Convention on the Future of Europe in Brussels, the Union
may soon have a powerful President, and a full-blown foreign minister. But
to count in world affairs, it would also need to make careful strategic
judgements about how much leverage it really has and where best to apply
it. Steven Everts reckons that Britain's loyal but critical support for
America may yet be vindicated against the odds.
EVERTS:
Blair has sold his strategy to the rest
of Europe of being loyal in public to Bush because he thinks hes got a
promise, for instance, from Bush to get really engaged now on the Middle
East peace protest, the road map and all that. Now if there is no movement
on Israel-Palestine in say twelve months, then I can guarantee you that the
divisions in Europe are going to re-emerge. Some people are going to say:
Oh, the time has come for a European peace plan. See you know the
Americans, they take you for a ride, they take your support, but they give
nothing in return. So the nature of US policies towards the Middle East
have the potential to split Europe again, as it has in the past. At the
moment its looking fine - at the moment the Europeans are together on
Israel-Palestine, they are together on Iran, they are together on Syria, and on
all of these issues they are more together than Britain is with the United
States. But what happens if the United States starts to apply pressure?
Thats the key question.
CLARK: So in a word, how can we have at the
same time a widening transatlantic gap and an avoidance of any deepening
of the internal divisions in Europe?
EVERTS:
You need Blairism with a bite. If the
United States does not deliver on its promises on, for instance, on IsraelPalestine, then it would be right and proper for Tony Blair to say: Listen,
we thought we had a bargain, we thought we had a deal. You have to live
up to your side of the bargain.
CLARK: As an objective calculation of how
Europe could gain influence, Blairism with bite sounds plausible. But there
are problems. First of all, most European governments are reluctant to
pander, even tactically, to what they see as the Bush administration's
jingoism. Second, America, especially after its victory in Iraq, is in no
mood to accept a friendly nudge from Europe, let alone a bearing of fangs.
And thirdly, Britain is in no hurry to sink its teeth into the hand of
American friendship. Jack Straw insists that this has nothing to do with
canine devotion.
STRAW: What we want is critical friendships
with all our allies. I dont understand this argument which asserts that we
should always be very diplomatic in our dealings with our European allies
and we should minimize the differences with them, and yet with our
American allies we should maximize the differences. I dont see
diplomacy as beating our breasts against our allies. Im extremely
comfortable, however, about the fact that we make our own decisions. One
of those decisions is that we work within the European Union very closely
and we have a very strong and powerful alliance with the United States.
CLARK: So while the Gaullists say that
friendships in Europe must come first, Britain demurs. Meanwhile, both
America and its foes are bent on changing the global equilibrium. And the
Gaullists are right to fear that the European Union will allow itself to be
sidelined. It will continue to be a huge and perhaps growing player in
global monetary affairs. But in matters of war and peace, it seems likely
that the field will be left to Europes ancient nations and their perpetually

shifting alliances, both within the continent and beyond it.