END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT (AND I FEEL FINE):

Europe and U.S. face growing split far beyond Iraq (BARRY RENFREW, 3/10/03, Associated Press)

Despite efforts on both sides of the Atlantic to limit the damage, the bitter dispute over Iraq has split Europe between countries that support America and those who see it as a global menace.
 
The division shows Europe's inability to create a united, credible voice in world affairs and threatens the unity of the West and decades of close trans-Atlantic relations, politicians and experts say.

"If the Americans and the Europeans don't exercise great care in the next few weeks and months we're going to be left with an absolute shambles," said Francois Heilsbourg, an independent defense analyst based in London.

European governments also are worried about the damage the rift is causing to the institutions that have been the foundation of Western unity for decades — NATO, the European alliance with the United States, the United Nations and the European Union. So far, analysts say, nobody is saying how it can be fixed. [...]

If the United States chooses increasingly to go its own way internationally rather than seek Western consensus, trans-Atlantic cooperation, vital to political and economic stability, could be badly damaged, analysts say.

NATO, torn by wrangling over its possible role in a war with Iraq, might never fully recover, analysts say. To have real credibility, members and opponents of a defense alliance must believe it will act if faced with a threat — something that is now in doubt, they say.

Many fear the United Nations also is looking weak with the United States, Britain and other allies determined to act without its approval if necessary.

Disagreement on how to disarm Iraq has torn the EU down the middle, exposing deep divisions over whether it should be primarily a trade bloc or a global power with effective political and military muscle.

"The time has come where we need a confrontation on what are our strategic needs" in Europe, said Ulrike Guerot, an analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin.

The idea that Europeans would countenance the diversion of social welfare money to the kind of military buildup that would be required to make them a significant counterweight to the U.S. is just absurd on its face. Meanwhile, if the EU were to become a unified, bureaucratic, sclerotic political entity, along the lines of France and Germany, it would drag down several states, chiefly England, that it is not yet clear are doomed to this kind of decline. The sole worthwhile role that the EU could play is as a trade bloc, like NAFTA, and which would presumably one day be integrated with NAFTA. What Mr. Heilsbourg refers to as "an absolute shambles" might be better be termed the "best case scenario".

MORE:
France and Germany will soon fall out (George Trefgarne, 10/03/2003, Daily Telegraph)

Here is a surprising fact: 100 Germans are losing their jobs every hour. Imagine being Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Like a starlet in a Hollywood disaster movie, he is trapped in a car heading over the cliff.

The speedometer just keeps whizzing round as he tries the door and screams for help. He pumps the brake and turns the steering wheel, but to no avail. Last week, the counter hit 4.4 million.

Apart from his own bad driving, who or what can Mr Schroeder blame? His predecessors, the world downturn and the Americans have all come in for criticism. But he may soon find the perfect culprit: the French. For although France and Germany are having a wonderful flirtation over the Iraqi question, they are actually star-crossed lovers.

Their interests are diverging over the economy. Mr Schroeder hardly needs reminding of this. Last month, he was humiliatingly defeated in the lower Saxony and Hesse elections, just three months after winning the federal election. His pronouncements about stopping the Americans invading Iraq were simply embarrassing in the face of the question that was more immediate to many - mass unemployment.

The world economy is on a precipice, but Germany has already fallen over the edge. Germany's crisis is a once-in-a-generation event, such as Britain suffered in the 1970s, and its consequences are far-reaching.

Germans warned of threat to democracy (Hannah Cleaver, 10/03/2003, Daily Telegraph)

Germany's President, Johannes Rau, gave a warning yesterday that high unemployment could prove a "danger to democracy" if political and business leaders failed to get a grip on the problem crippling the country.
 
His comments came days after Chancellor Gerhard Schršder allowed an initiative between politicians, unions and business leaders to collapse and vowed to implement reform alone to find work for 4.7 million jobless.

Mr Rau appealed for all parties to work together for the changes needed to create more employment.

Although he has previously rejected comparisons between the present situation and that of 1930s Germany, where high unemployment was credited with helping Adolf Hitler come to power, Mr Rau's comment will be interpreted as such a warning.

UPDATE:
So, EU or US, Tony? You are going to have to choose: No more trips to Camp David unless Blair turns his back on "Old Europe" (Irwin Stelzer, March 10, 2003, The Times)

Some time ago I upset the Prime Minister by suggesting in several articles that his notion of becoming a bridge between the US and the EU is a fantasy, and that Britain would some day, and soon, have to choose between America and a Europe dominated by a Franco-German axis. [...]

That was before Iraq, in the balmy days when the Prime Minister and the French agreed to the Nice Treaty, which the French knew was the beginning of the end for Nato, and Blair honestly believed marked the creation of a new European supplement to that pact, one that had kept the peace in Europe for more than 50 years. A united and militarily potent Europe would march hand in hand with America into the future, Europe carrying its own weight, and Great Britain positioned as the balancing force between France and Germany, and as a bridge between a united Europe and the United States. Better still, more and more decisions would be moved to the United Nations, where Britain’s veto on the Security Council confers on it a role more commensurate with its one-time rank as a world power than with its current more humble standing in the international ranking of nations.

In short, in this joined-up view of the world, Britain did not have to choose between its special relationship with America and placing itself at the heart of Europe: it could have both its ice-cream and apple pie, and its brie and chablis.

Now we have Iraq, and Jacques Chirac’s alliance with a Germany wallowing in anti-Americanism. Chirac’s stirring up of “the European street” to derail Anglo-American efforts to strip weapons of mass destruction from one of the cruelest regimes the world has seen since Hitler and then Stalin came crashing down surprised no one.

Well, hardly anyone. The Secretary of State, Colin Powell, took France at its word when Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin promised that, if America would sign up to Resolution 1441, no further resolutions would be required to underwrite the use of force to disarm Saddam. If you want to know why doveish General Powell has grown talons, imagine the session in the White House at which he had to explain to President Bush, who had reluctantly agreed to allow his Secretary of State to enmesh America in the UN process, that the French had reneged, and that the US was now hopelessly sinking into the muck of Security Council processes.

Bush’s reported promise that he would never forget nor forgive France’s perfidy, following on his frosty reaction to Gerhard Schroeder’s anti-American blatherings, brings us back to Tony Blair. What will happen to Britain’s position vis-a-vis Europe and the United States in a post-Saddam world? It seems clear that the bridge that the Prime Minister was so painfully constructing between Europe and America has collapsed. To add to the Prime Minister’s post-Saddam woes, US Administration officials have begun to re-examine America’s historic support for European integration. The thinkers who influence the Bush Administration’s foreign policy no longer see the need to support unification of Europe so that it can be a more formidable ally against the now-gone Soviet Union.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 9, 2003 11:32 PM