NOT THEIR FIGHT:

Europe, U.S. Diverge on How to Fight Terrorism (Glenn Frankel, March 28, 2004, Washington Post)

While President Bush was giving an address earlier this month describing the war on terrorism as "not a figure of speech" but "an inescapable calling of our generation," the official in charge of overseeing Europe's counterterrorism efforts was offering a far different assessment.

"Europe is not at war," Javier Solana, foreign policy chief for the European Union, told a German newspaper. "We have to energetically oppose terrorism, but we mustn't change the way we live."

Between those two declarations lies a gap that reflects the different modern histories, cultures and approaches to terrorism of the United States and Europe, according to politicians and analysts on the continent. [...]

Analysts trace some of the differences between the United States and Europe to the ways they view recent history. For Europeans, the seminal date is November 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and Europe began the process of reunification with the former Soviet bloc. The end of the Cold War and European reunification has been the enduring narrative of the past 15 years, one that has promised peace and prosperity.

But for the United States, that narrative has been supplanted by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon and a new global campaign that some Americans liken to a new world war.

European leaders insist they are prepared to use force to combat terrorism. They point to their enthusiastic support for the U.S.-led military campaign against al Qaeda and the Taliban government in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001. And Bush and European leaders have all identified the lack of democracy, human rights safeguards and economic opportunity as root causes of popular support for Islamic extremists in the Muslim world.

"At the government level I don't see any huge differences in principle," said Gary Samore, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "Everyone accepts you need both hard power in the near term to deal with terrorist operatives and soft power to deal in the long term with root causes."

Europeans have had decades of bitter experience in dealing with domestic terrorism. Britain waged a 25-year campaign against the Irish Republican Army, while Spain has battled the Basque separatist group ETA. Germany defeated the Baader-Meinhof gang and Italy, the Red Brigades. France has engaged in a long struggle with Islamic extremists from Algeria.

"Their experience told them terrorism is a threat but not a war," said Mustafa Alani, a terrorism analyst at the Royal United Services Institute here. "If it's a war, you have to commit yourself fully -- all your resources, everything, and they found this has no appeal in public opinion."

Mr. Solana is right--it's not about changing how we live in the West. However, the Europeans are incapable of stepping up to the challenge of changing the way the people of the Islamic world live, which is what the war is actually about. Their populations would never let them divert resources to such an undertaking and they haven't the armed forces to be much help in deposing the regimes that will have to go and rounding up the concentrations of al Qaeda where we track them down. Moreover, they no longer believe in the principles around which we're restructing the Middle East, if they ever did. It's our war, not theirs.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 29, 2004 10:59 AM