The Lincoln Plawg

Monday, February 10, 2003 03:13 p.m.

Old Europe peace army fails to impress

[The main site is up: it's just not taking any new material. Hence.......]

A Roman testudo it most assuredly is not! The mighty host sent forth from Paris and Berlin to smite the warmongers rather resembles a bunch of revellers ejected from a British public-house at closing-time: uncertain of step, incoherent of speech, and wandering off in all directions....

Not how Rummy, Colin and Co call it, of course. The devious, perfidious Europeans deploying their diplomatic arcana to thwart the clean-limbed, right-thinking Yankee in bringing Truth, Justice and the American Way to all and sundry. And not just for spite, but as that nice John McCain put it, through

calculated self-interest.

(Does he mean oil by some chance? [1])

In reality, the Franco-German initiative is a shambles. As has been the case for weeks, the French are semi-detached: as soon as the plan had emerged, the French were rowing backwards, according to Libération:

Sitôt cette confirmation tombée à Berlin, le ministère français des Affaires étrangères démentait pourtant l'existence de tout «plan». L'Allemagne veut simplement «faire des propositions qui peuvent venir s'ajouter aux propositions françaises», relativisait aussi la ministre française de la Défense, Michèle Alliot-Marie.

The French strategy all along has been to oppose the dash for war, without ruling out war if absolutely necessary. The German's going big, and calling the plan Franco-German without French approval did not, it seems, go down well at the Quai:

L'essentiel des idées agitées à Berlin était déjà dans l'intervention de Dominique de Villepin au Conseil de sécurité le 5 février, souligne-t-on à Paris, où l'on est furieux que les Allemands aient lâché ce mot de «plan franco-allemand», qui ne peut que braquer les Américains.

Meanwhile, across the Rhine, the plan has caused an incipient civil war between the SPD and their Green partners in general, and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Chancellor Schröder in particular. According to Der Spiegel [2] Fischer, just like the USG, had not been consulted before his Chancellor put out news of the plan, and felt himself to have been made to look an utter prat in front of his colleagues at the Munich defence pow-wow.

No doubt that there's common Franco-German irritation about the conduct of US-UK diplomacy over Iraq (the letter from the eight European nations sent without they're having been informed, for instance).

And it's far easier to sustain opposition to the war if you've got a plan of your own to put forward [3]. Moreover, the idea of coercive inspections has been knocking around for some months at least (in the form of the Carnegie Endowment paper).

But the facts as they now appear simply don't support any suggestion of an effective Franco-German contre-pouvoir against the US-UK war machine. Which is a pity, but there it is.

The NATO vetoes puzzle me a little. There, I get the impression that it was Germany who was hanging back; and that Belgium was the first to flag that it might veto help for Turkey.

This article by a BBC man suggests that, for all its grandstanding, Germany is providing practical help to the war effort

for example stepping up security at US bases and allowing the use of its airfields and airspace for moving material to the Gulf.

Not that I'm suggesting some conspiracy vaster than any posited by any of the War Party under the influence of stimulants, whereby the Franks keep their viscerally anti-war publics sweet with rhetoric while doing nothing substantial to get in the way of the war.

No, that would require competence of a degree of which none of those involved seems capable.

I merely counsel against the idea that, of two apparently contradictory stories, one must necessarily be the truth.

According to William Safire in today's NY Times, retaliation is on the way, in the form of redeploying US troops away from Europe.
To my shame, I don't read German. The Google machine translations aren't bad, though, if one's prepared to persevere....
I suggested a couple of weeks ago that the French would move a dilatory resolution in the Security Council, to give the inspectors more time.