Amidst the voluminous analysis and comment about the Middle East, the part it played in the Cold War seems seldom mentioned of late. But, from the 1950’s right through to the end of the 1980’s, the Israeli-Arab conflict was, at least in part, an important Cold War battlefront, fought out between two proxy antagonists.
But, everything old is new again:
The primary goal of the EU is the internationalisation of the conflict in order to underline the need for its own mediating role. Here is the prevailing European view: The longer the conflict continues and the deeper it gets, the more evident is the incapability of the US to moderate a peace process. The EU thus concludes that both sides are in need of – ironically speaking – the good uncle from Europe to resolve this conflict with European democratic and ecological values, its welfare state and civil society. How good for both sides that there is Europe and how bad for the world that one side, and this is Israel, is affording a wild west type of policy in the style of the US.
The need for a solution only exists as long as the war continues. This is why the EU does not want the conflict to end before it gains a major role. And this is why the EU does not wish the PA to give up too early and why the EU is strengthening the PA. The EU is getting up to the cynicism of stirring up a conflict that it supposedly wants to see resolved by financing one side. This is the inherently inhuman purpose of EU humanitarian aid in the region. The Palestinians are playing the ugly role of being the cannon fodder for Europe’s hidden war against the US. It can be noted on the sidethat this is not considered an anti-Arab policy by those who otherwise easily use this word.
This is an excerpt from a longish but thoroughly fascinating article written by German Green MEP, Ilke Schroder. If she is correct (and I must say that the facts on the ground do somewhat bear her out) then it appears as if the European Union has stepped into the role once played by the old Soviet Union.
I knew it!
Nobody in America understands any of this. It’s not even talked about here. I spent years thinking that Europe, after it’s experiences in the 30’s and 40’s was knee-jerk anti-anti-semitic (would that be pro-semitic?). Especially considering the condescention that Europeans scold Americans with about our own racial problems.
It is all slowly making sense. The fact that nobody in America gets is that in the war on terror, Europe is as much of a problem as Saudi Arabia.
I have been speculating to myself (with a few rolled eyes when I have expressed this opinion) that the next Cold War will be with Europe.
The proxy war you refer to is (it seems to me) one battle front in an international war between republics (with free economies) and socialist states (with central planned/socialist economies). Other fronts might include the U.N., Iraq, famines anywhere, whether government caused or natural, AIDS, and any number of issues that could be internationalized.
The soldier of the republic is the honest working man living in a free society that desires to earn his bread and eat off his own plate. His weapon is his understanding of certain God given rights, and he weilds this weapon by exercising these rights.
The soldier of the socialist state is an ilitist that seeks to direct and manage all other lives according to his desires. His weapon is a corrupt and vile media.
sincerely, Jeff
A few years ago I visited an old college friend who is Swiss. We got to talking about the middle east, and he averred that Europeans are the only ones capable of being “fair” where Israel-Palestine is concerned. This (to my regret) made me laugh out loud. I thought perhaps he was making a dark joke.
Don’t you see the irony of such a statement, in light of the holocaust?
No, he said, because Europe has changed. No one values peace and human rights more than Europe. We have a special ability to understand these things given our recent history. We have learned many hard lessons that you have not.
As we continued talking, he settled on a Star Wars analogy that still, years later, makes my stomach churn. America, in his view, is The Empire, and Israel its Death Star. The Palestinians are the Rebels, and Europe their virtuous benefactor, The Republic.
My question is: do all Europeans think this way? or just the ones I know?
“Nobody in America understands any of this. It’s not even talked about here.”
False. These very ideas are common in America and are often discussed, often heatedly, and have been for years. It’s a monority view but it’s a substantial minority.
What amuses me the most about this report (I saw it a while back when it first came out) is that a Green (Ms. Schroder) is showing sympathy for the Israelis and the Palestinians.
The first repots I saw of this was in Israel National News (Arutz Shiva) about talks Ms Schroder was giving in Israel about her findings.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=54963
I note that the report I first saw came out on 24 Dec. 2003. The link I left is to that report.
Being an American, I don’t really understand what a “Green” is. I have always thought they were a radical left-wing environmentalist party, correct? Are we talking Ralph Nader-esque?
I have been laboring under the assumption that the “left” in Europe is very similar to the left in America (although more extreme left), but the “right” in Europe are also basically socialists, with no major party representing the Libertarian or what would be called the Reagan-wing of the Republican party in America. Am I correct? Where does Margret Thatcher fit in?
Is being pro-Israel, or at least anti-anti-Israel a natural position for such a political party in Europe or is this an oddity? I know that everybody in Europe officially condemns anti-semitism, but I have always gotten the impression that the left and the right share this affliction equally un-officially. In the American media, the right in Europe is always blamed for any anti-semitism, but since the general policies are usually anti-Israel and the governments are generally dominated by the parties of the left, this always seemed to me an odd or at least incomplete explanation.
Enlighten me.
DSpears,
The political spectra are very different. You have to remember that most “conservative” parties in Europe would find Al Gore uncomfortably “right-wing” on some topics.
The New Left may be in power through old socialist parties in many places, but Greens are in many ways the heirs of the New Left in open-ended radicalism. They even have many of the same personnel. Danny Cohn-Bendit is the leader of the Greens in the European Parliament.
It is a very wide movement and ideologically confused and confusing. Environmentalism is only a bit of it, and for some Greens just an occaision for the transformation of society, an opportunity to attack capitalism. For others “Green” is an umbrella for their personal single-issue obsession. (A characteristic it shares with “libertarian”.) Name any fashionable, “caring”, slightly unhinged, cause–from restorative justice to alternative medicine, and it is likely to be part of the constellation of Green issues. Now that all the main parties pay obeisance to environmental issues, you’ll find Green politicians in the vanguard of anti-globalism, and domestically bleating about (undefined) “social justice”.
But one thing that is refreshing about many Green politicians is a certain habit of candour, arising from an absence of party discipline. They will often tell you what they actually think.
Ms Schroeder is right here I think, Europa’s Middle Eastern policy is driven by the desire to set itself up as the alternative superpower. That’s why the long-term support for the Palestinian cause. It has nothing to do with the merits of the case. It is because Israel is a US ally. That being anti-American is also a traditional New Left stance is a happy accident for the European nationalists.
I suspect she reaches the analysis by a strange route, though. Green criticism of the European project has long been based on the claim that it is becoming another America, in the sense of a capitalist-dominated, free-trading, militaristic, free-market-promoting bloc with no overarching social conscience. It is a mis-reading of both Europa and the US, but works perfectly well in a realist study of foreign policy, for which those angles are irrelevant.
Goodbye Iron Curtain, hello Weasel Curtain.
Ms Schroeder’s piece in The Sprout is a significantly shortened and slightly edited version of her speech to Ben Gurion University in December do to constraints on space. The reason that the Sprout has put it the whole speech on the web in full with no editing is that we felt that the reports by Haaretz and others at the time flagged up something important, but nobody who wasn’t there was able to read the breadth of her analysis. We should have flagged up the scource – Mea Culpa.
As far as I understand, she is left wing green, but still holds the old German left wing fear of German militarism and its inherited guilt over the Holocaust.
It’s no secret to many in America that the EU and the countries of “old” Europe see themselves as a counter-balance to US economic and militry power. But this is certainly NOT something that anywhere near the majority of Americans believe, mostly because the mainstream (left-wing) media basically looks to Europe as America’s more cultured, more socially conscious, more intellectually evolved older brother, who is our best ally. Even most on the right in America find Europe more of an annoiance than a danger.
I understand that the EU sees itself as a superpower that can counterbalance the US, but setting aside Europe’s longterm economic problems that would preclude it from being an economic superpower based on anything other than sheer size, how does the EU think it’s going to achieve this counter-balancing act, through the UN? Unless I missed something, the EU doesn’t have it’s own army or much of one anyway, although Britain and France have significant miltary forces. How do they think they are going to counter-balance the overwhelming and probably growing American military? A bunch of stark raving mad pasifists armed with signs and effigies of George W Bush isn’t exactly the recipe for threatening a miltary standoff, ala the old Soviet Union.
What am I missing? Are they really that dilusional that the UN alone is enough to force the US to modify any foreign policy decision? Maybe 8 years of jerking Clinton around on a chain gave them a false sense of security.
The French have been saying openly for some time that the EU has to play a bipolar role vis a vis the US in the post-Soviet world. The only reason it isn’t cold war at the moment is that they don’t have much in the way of firepower. No secrets there anyway.
No-one is surprised by this. To parties in war matters are serious. To the EUtopians, to is about playing games. Power games when they abbrogated any way to have any authority to begin with.
Isn’t there some other way to keep these bored children amused and distracted so that they don’t risk getting us all killed? – again.
Perhaps not the majority, but there’s been a noticable shift. It used to be only the Right bashed Europe, but now the Left does too. Add to this the blogosphere and the France-hating public and you have the makings of a trend.
zzzzzzzz….
I can’t even be bothered to respond to most of the lazy yankee view of europe stereotyping that’s going on here, so i’ll just remind you guys of one salient point:
-criticising Israel != antisemitism.
thanks.
Also, on further reading of her article…. some of her logic & terminology are highly questionable…. I can’t be bothered to dissect it all, but…
“The role of UNRWA, which is the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees, and that is sponsored mainly by the EU”
A quick check of the figures for 2003 shows a large amount of funding from Europe for sure, but much of it not through any centralised institutions. Does she mean all our individual governments (including the generous UK govt.) are in on this cold war conspiracy? If so, how come the single biggest contribution (about 1/3 of the budget) comes from the US? Were the Americans known for helping to fund Soviet “cultural missions” to E. European countries & other implements of cold war influence-mongering back in the day? Is this some kind of twisted “hey! McDonald’s actually own Wendy’s too!” crazy global-competition-will-make-everyone-healthier freakshow?
I love her suggestion that anti-semitism can be found in “a complaint about Anglo-Saxon predatory capitalism” like, suure…wow! it’s not just that these people are somewhat misguided, nono; they’re actually part of a global conspiracy against the Jews! That’s as whacked out & paranoid as some of the rubbish that comes out of the anti-semitic side of things.
But hey, if what she’s saying is what you want to hear, you’ll probably find some way to ignore me. Can’t do much about that.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) was developed by the United States, put in place at a cost to American taxpayers of more than $12 billion, and is provided free to users worldwide. It is a series of satellites in orbit that serves as a global navigation system and allows a user to pinpoint his location anywhere on Earth within 10 meters (32.8 feet). The EU, however, is in the process of developing its own GPS system, called Galileo. In general, U.S. officials have no objection to the European project, and indeed have agreed to provide substantial advice and technical assistance – provided that the EU accepts a proffered compromise on what is called the Binary Offset Carrier (BOC), or signal structure, of the systems.
The signal structure is at the heart of the disagreement, since the signal selected by the EU for Galileo is so close to the classified signal structure that the United States is about to deploy for military purposes – called the “M Code” – that U.S. security is threatened…
The trouble results from the fact that the two Galileo signal structures have been scheduled for the same area as the M Code of the U.S. system, posing a strong potential for interfering with sensitive military communications…
The Europeans are sending signals through official channels that they have no intention of moving their interfering signal…
Another troubling aspect of the Galileo project for the United States is who is buying into the deal. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) reportedly has invested $200 million in Galileo…
Read the whole thing at
http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/02/17/Features/Europe.Attacks.U.Space.System-593477.shtml(Link)
If the EU wants to step into the role once played by the Soviet Union I say the sooner the better – as they’ll likely end up in the same dustbin of history…and the world will be a better place for it! The French in charge? Perish the thought – Marlborough and Wellington did!
It is a laughable notion that the EU will be anything more than a nuisance to US global power. In order for the EU to seriously challenge the US they have to have a unified military, strong federal structure and common foreign policy. That won’t happen. The EU will spend the few years that it exists dealing with internal power struggles and economic problems.
The EU will evolve into a miniature UN of European republics. It will be as effective as the UN at projecting it’s power around the world and countering US power.
It’s going to be fun watching the EU evolve in the coming years. All those grand plans for dominance ending with infighting and finger pointing at who caused the failures.
I believe that if the E.U was and…….is allied with China, Russia, and…….Middle eastern countries (jihad)!
I think her rise to power would be sooner….rather than later! Greater….rather than lesser!
Wake up! “Giant”!
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