He still doesn’t get it, does he? ‘Sophisticated’ Chris Patten, the EU Commissioner about whom I waxed indignant the other day due to his attack on George W. Bush for labelling certain states as evil, has not only defended himself today he claims he is not anti-American, but also repeats the daft idea that U.S. and the EU must deal with terrorism by tackling poverty, human trafficking and autocratic regimes without actually saying exactly how, or indeed reflecting on how such ‘jaw-jaw’ approaches have failed in the past.
Surely the point is that countries such as Iran or North Korea are poor because they are closed societies, and so are not likely to be improved by disbursements of aid from the Western taxpayer (has the EU approach improved things by giving money to Yassir Arafat?). Patten is playing a dangerous game. He gives the impression that he is privy to Bush plans for some kind of crazed military rampage throughout the globe even though so far the US has not shown its hand and certainly not to the likes of him. It is hard to escape the suspicion Patten’s depreciation of US ‘unilateralism’ is as much due to annoyance of being left out of the loop in matters that are none of his business anyway.
The EU political class must stop talking about the US as if it were some kind of immature adolescent incapable of acting intelligently without the input of their wisdom. Apart from being downright rude and bad diplomacy, it reveals a profound ignorance. I don’t know what goes on inside Patten’s head but I can help feeling he has not grasped the degree to which Americans have been shocked and changed by September 11th. Get out of the Brussels bunker, Mr Patten, you are not doing yourself or anyone else a lot of favours right now.
