December 8, 2002
WILLING (AND ABLE) [from pj]:
Prague NATO summit: internal tensions near the breaking point Peter Schwarz, 4 December 2002, World Socialist Web Site)The US had attempted to obtain a pledge of NATO support for military action against Iraq. Its resolution declared that NATO was "ready" for a military assault. Germany and France rejected this resolution and insisted that the UN remain involved in the issue of Iraq.The German-French victory was Pyrrhic. The wheeling and dealing over formulations will do nothing to deter the preparations for war with Iraq. The US government made unmistakably clear that it is not prepared to be restricted by Alliance decisions. During the Prague summit it submitted written requests to 50 governments—members and non-members of NATO—asking whether they were willing to take part in a US-led military action against Iraq.
In so doing, as one newspaper commented, the US government confronted NATO with an alternative alliance—an "alliance of the willing". In fact, the American initiative confirmed the US vision for the future of NATO—not a partnership of equals, but rather a "toolbox" at the disposal of the US, to be utilised according to American military requirements.
Not surprisingly, such a prospect was greeted with little enthusiasm in European capitals. Reactions ranged from attempts to curry favour (London, Rome and Madrid) to throwing sand in the gears (Paris and Berlin). But, in the final analysis, European governments have little with which they can counter Washington.
Since the conclusion of the summit, both the French and German governments have made clear that they will do nothing to impede the US should it go to war with Iraq. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder publicly stated in Prague that, in the event of war, the US would have full access to German airspace, airports, ports and its own bases in Germany. "We do not intend to limit the room for manoeuvrability of our friends," he said. Many commentaries have interpreted this statement as a retreat from the position Schroeder adopted in the recent election campaign, i.e., a categorical "no" to a war with Iraq.
Europe (especially Germany and France) resembles nothing so much as a snake with its head lopped off-- the body can writhe around for a little while, but its fate is sealed.
Posted by Orrin Judd at December 8, 2002 10:13 AM
What struck me most about the article was the deep hostility toward us from the "Franco-Prussians." This paragraph made me sit up: "sooner or later an open conflict between Europe and the US is unavoidable. European governments are preparing for such a contingency with moves to accelerate rearmament." This socialist writer seems to think that Europe's leftist leaders desire to invest in its military, in order to develop a capability for armed conflict with the U.S.
Posted by: pj at December 8, 2002 9:33 AMIt wasn't so long ago that twits were promising
a renewal of military conflict between the
USA and Japan. I don't know how you get to
be an international pundit, but I suspect you
have to take an intelligence test and fail.
However, on the big issue, whether we are
going to fight or talk Islamic terrorism to death,
I have given up on Bush. Like Reagan, he's all
mouth and no bullets.
Too bad. A lot of good people are going to
get killed when with just a little resolution, it
could have been a lot of bad people instead.
Yeah, dammit, if only Reagan had any guts the USSR would be a thing of the past...
Posted by: oj at December 8, 2002 6:19 PMSorry. Rhetoric aside, I fail to see the US and Europe becoming military antagonists. Granted, this could be due to lack of imagination on my part (or lack of paranoia, not that I have anything against paranoia), but Europe knows that it has external threats as well as potentially severe internal threats to contend with, and wants, and even perhaps believes, I believe unrealistically, that these threats can somehow be "weathered." Another war in the Gulf may spark the conflagration they believe is avoidable, which is why it's making them quite nervous. And of course, they (will) blame Israel for creating the problem and Bush for fomenting the war. Problem is, like much of the rest of the West, they don't seem--or refuse to want--to realize that given the nature of Islamic grievances against the West, and its feelings regardings the superiority and manifest destiny of Islam, we will pay now or pay later.
And because of this, "Bush's war" is neither relevant or avoidable in the larger scheme of things.
Barry - I think only a small percentage of the European left is thinking of eventual war with the US - and it will never happen as long as Europe remains democratic. Let us hope European democracy weathers the various storms heading their way.
Posted by: pj at December 9, 2002 10:06 AMWhat Reagan did. The following review is from a book by an author who ADMIRES Reagan:
EL DORADO CANYON: Reagan's Undeclared War with Qaddafi, by Joseph T. Stanik. 319 pages, illustrated. Naval Institute, $34.95.
During the 1980s, the United States government made two strategic mistakes for which its citizens paid, and are still paying, a desperate price.
One was supporting the termination of the Iran-Iraq war, which was usefully keeping two of our worst enemies preoccupied. The other was what Joseph Stanik calls Ronald Reagan's undeclared war with Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan murderer.
It was a sitzkrieg, a phony war. As soon as he entered office,
Reagan started talking tough about fighting terror and particularly about Libya, which at the time was supporting indiscriminate violence in more than 50 countries.
But Reagan never interrupted his serial napping long enough to instruct the government to do anything. And until George Shultz was appointed secretary of state, the Cabinet was divided between the timid and the temporizers.
Stanik traces a history not of vigorous and forthright action against terrorism but of vacillation, inattention and confusion.
The CIA floated its usual cockamamie plots, several of which were terminated by leaks from within the administration; but no serious action was proposed. At the highest policy levels, study after inconclusive study was done while Libya escalated its murders of Americans continuously.
Meanwhile, in the Mediterranean Sea, the Navy was winning some skirmishes with Libya's military over freedom of navigation claims.
Stanik confuses these freedom of the seas operations with antiterrorism, but despite this "El Dorado Canyon" is still a useful template for evaluating current events.
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CONTIUED
After years of pushing, Shultz finally persuaded Reagan to authorize a small military strike -- code-named El Dorado Canyon -- to punish Libya for one of its many terrorist attacks.
It was a punchless gesture. Although Reagan had made his reputation by scorning the gloves-on incrementalism of Democratic administrations in Vietnam, his answer to Qaddafi limited the United States to a single, small air strike that did no material damage to Libya.
The Air Force component was a disaster, only one of 18 planes hitting its target. Nearly half the planes had technical failures. The Navy strike was more successful but the weight of ordnance was too light to be effective.
Stanik unaccountably describes this demonstration as an operational success that showed the capability of weaponry and the skill of American warriors. Skill they had, but their weapons didn't work.
Nearly half the F-111F planes never managed to drop their bombs, the targeting systems failed to work in combat conditions and the Aegis radars were unable to
discriminate targets -- the last a portent of a much more consequential failure the next year when Aegis shot down an airliner in the Persian Gulf.
The strike did persuade Qaddafi, apparently, that he was doomed if he provoked the United States into a determined attack, but it did not dissuade him from terrorism. He went on blasting airliners out of the sky, but he did pull back from his extravagant support of "liberationist" movements around the world.
Stanik credits the American attack for this, which would have been the only gain it could have shown for a decade of effort; but it is just as likely that Qaddafi pulled in his horns because he lost the support of his arms supplier, the decaying Soviet Union.
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CONTINUED
Reagan administration leaders, and Stanik, were well satisfied by their little slap at terrorism, but they had misjudged who the enemy was. It was not just Libya.
While Qaddafi, unable to compete at all militarily with the U.S. Navy, may have learned circumspection, a very different lesson was being learned in the rest of the Koran Belt.
What Islamic revolutionaries saw was that you could attack the United States repeatedly and suffer only pinprick responses at intervals of several years -- the United States used military force against Islamic terrorists in 1986, 1991, 1993, 1998 and 2001, but its enemies launched successful attacks in every year since 1979.
No wonder the Islamists concluded that the United States lacked resolution and courage.
They also noticed that the Third World was too weak and Europe too cowardly to take part in even the spastic American efforts. They noticed that collective security is a myth and that the United Nations is a joke -- Stanik is able to write about international terrorism spanning two decades without mentioning the U.N., which shows how useful it has been.
"El Dorado Canyon" is an odd book. On the first page, Stanik states the obvious: "He (Reagan) did not act." The rest of the book seems devoted to obfuscating that simple truth.
Harry:
Even for you that's dubious. Muammar Qaddafi? We bombed him and he stopped. State terrorism is easily dealt with because you can just target the leader of the state. Even he figured that out after we killed one of his kids.
Only he didn't stop. Didn't you hear about
Pan Am 103? ATA?