As in any revolution, people were called upon to make a serious choice one way or another: revolt or support Qaddafi? If your side did not emerge victorious, you were sure to be in serious trouble. That was most gravely true for Libyan residents, but other parties had a similar dilemma, especially once the tide started to turn against the rebels starting around March and the prospect of civilian massacres started to arise. Much of NATO – including, crucially, the Obama administration, although the lead was taken by France and the UK – then chose to intervene, and managed to get passed UN Security Council Resolution 1973 to justify (somewhat) that intervention. Others held back – and the most prominent of these was Germany, which made no contribution to that NATO military effort and in fact abstained in the Security Council vote on Resolution 1973.

Well, now Qaddafi is dead and gone, and the winners and losers are clear. Germany is a loser (although not as badly as the regime supporters). In that light, @swissbusiness has come up with a fascinating interview in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung:

«Die Nato ist keine Weltpolizei» http://t.co/Vz5Qoswd

November 15, 2011 11:42 am via dlvr.itReplyRetweetFavorite

@swissbusiness

swissbusiness

The interviewee is Elke Hoff, Defense Spokeswomen for the FDP, junior party in Angela Merkel’s current governing coalition and the ideological home of German Foreign Minister Guide Westerwelle, while the interviewer is one Andreas Jahn, presumably a journalist or editor at that paper – but in any event, probably Swiss and so with no particularly need to mince words . . .

His very first “question”: “You guys were wrong!” Frau Hoff is gracious enough to admit that that was indeed the case, but quickly gets rather defensive when Jahn follows-up with “So was this Germany’s biggest foreign policy mistake since the founding of the Federal Republic?” Wait a second, she says, there you’re quoting Joschka Fischer (German Foreign Minister 1998-2005)! Not only are out-of-office Foreign Ministers not supposed to criticize the policies of their successors, but Fischer has enough mistakes on his own plate to apologize for – like admitting Greece to the euro! (Oooh, touché!)

It doesn’t take long, though, before this sort of apportioning of blame loses its usefulness and appeal. Luckily, the interview goes on to look forward, namely to possible future humanitarian interventions that Germany might well be interested in supporting – especially now that the possibility for something like that in Syria seems to be growing. So what is Germany’s position? From what one can make out from Frau Hoff, it’s one that may not be entirely coherent:

• Yes, participating in a NATO intervention in Syria would be justified, she makes clear . . .
  
• Except that the sine qua non for that would be an authorizing UN Security Council resolution. Hoff doesn’t think that is likely – Russia and China will never go for it – precisely because of displeasure of what happened with Resolution 1973, which those governments feel was distorted way beyond the “protect the civilians” purpose it initially allowed (and they may well be correct). What if a regional organization asks for intervention instead? – the Arab League is obviously headed towards something like that. No dice, says Frau Hoff: the German Constitution accepts only a UN Security Council resolution. (And let us recall here how strange the very idea of Germany sending any military forces outside of its own country was until a very short time ago.)
  
• So what about the emerging international doctrine of “Responsibility to Protect,” which potentially authorizes the violation of a nation’s sovereignty if it starts mistreating its own citizens too severely? Frau Hoff cannot endorse this. There can be no general rule as to interventions; “NATO cannot be the world’s policeman.” Plus, NATO should not intervene – no matter how shocking a government’s abuses – if it can’t be sure that it has the military staying-power to see the intervention through to victory. Frau Hoff strongly insinuates here that that has only been shown to be possible when the Americans are on-board; so no NATO intervention, no matter what, without the USA.

                          

The current “Somali government” is called the Transitional Federal Government (“TFG” for short). It was established in 2004, with backing from the UN, the US, and Ethiopia, but basically had to stay in Kenya for a while until the 2006 invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian forces drove back various Islamist insurgent groups and so enabled the TFG to set up shop in Mogadishu, the Somali capital. You can even see a picture of the current TFG prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein, accompanying that Reformatorisch Dagblad article – so are you satisfied, doubting Thomases? He’s of course the guy on the right.

But Hussein and his government aren’t doing too well these days. Yes, we already knew that they were essentially powerless to hinder in any way the many pirates operating from their shores, but it’s even worse than that. Not that anyone from that government itself would bother to let us know, mind you: the alarming tidings come instead from Dumisani Kumalo, the South African head of the MGS, or “Monitoring Group on Somalia” which reports to the UN Security Council. Probably the most alarming bit of Kumalo’s report is that the TFG has lost more than 80% of its soldiers and policemen and of course their weapons as well, most of which it would seem have been sold on to various armed bands. Anyone thinking about simply contributing more funds to buy new weapons for the TFG should also be aware, Dumisani’s report adds, that most of that government’s defense budget (which of course takes up the lion’s share of its over-all spending) seems to be regularly lost to corruption.

More bad news: Ethiopia has had troop contingents remaining within Somalia ever since it invaded in 2006, but has announced that it will withdraw them with the new year. That leaves only 3,000 outside peace-keeping troops there, under the flag of the African Union (AU) but originating mainly from Uganda and Burundi. Unfortunately, according to current AU head Jean (“Ping me!”) Ping, those countries are also currently reconsidering their participation. Both are themselves uncomfortably close to the current armed hostilities raging in Eastern Congo.

                          

“Everybody loves the skull-and-crossbones,” he begins – hey, think of Errol Flynn, think of Johnny Depp! But we need to realize, he continues, that these pirates operating off of the Somali coast are not “desperate fisherman” (verzweifelte Fischer) but rather “a professionally-run business, run by gangsters and financed by serious businessmen.”

(Actually, that BBC article on these pirates that I cited in the previous blogpost does list “ex-fishermen” as an important component of these pirate gangs. There’s no mention there about how “desperate” they might be, but they are termed “the brains of the operation because they know the sea.” Oh, and from everything I’ve read the Somali pirates also do not display the “skull-and-crossbones” flag, or any flag for that matter. That’s either because they rely on sneaking up on ships and taking them by surprise to capture them, or because they have yet to hire a proper media advisor – or perhaps both.)

(UPDATE: And then again, if they are so objectionable, why is it that venture capitalists [are investing] in Somali pirates? H/t LOLFed.com.)

But Die Tageszeitung is a distinctly left-wing newspaper, in a left-wing country (by American standards), and even operating out of headquarters located in a distinctly left-wing quarter (Kreuzberg) of that country’s capital (I mean Berlin, of course), so Semler’s rhetorical fire does not stay on the pirates for long. The “Great Powers” get a swipe for their supposed responsibility for letting Somalia deteriorate into the sort of mess that allows such pirates to operate with impunity, for sure, but the ship-owners themselves hardly come away from his scrutiny unscathed. “They often sail under flags-of-convenience [Billigflaggen], pay starvation-wages when they pay at all, have contempt for environtmental rules and/or transport war-materiel into crisis-areas.” Wait: aren’t they among the victims here? Or, if they are really so evil as Semler seems to believe, can we at least start to sympathize with the Somali pirates’ own claims that they are merely a “coast guard” operating to repel these rapacious capitalists from their country’s waters?

Pirate Jurisprudence

Finally, Semler devotes some considerable attention to the issue of the basis upon which these pirates can be prosecuted by the German warships that have been sent – authorized by a UN Security Council resolution – to deal with them. And there he also sees a problem, since formally-speaking these pirates are not enemy soldiers but rather simply criminals – and it is the German police and justice systems that are authorized to deal with criminals, not the German armed forces. “Under no circumstances may police powers be granted to the [German] Federal Navy,” he writes. If you think about it a bit, you can easily understand his concern: that vital dividing line between the armed forces and police has not only been of considerable concern in Germany’s own notorious past, but is also a contemporary issue for many critics of the Bush administration, alarmed at the recent establishment of a “Northern Command” administrative structure enabling operations for the US armed forces within the US itself.

As Semler himself reports, the German Defense Ministry has taken steps to address this concern, namely including on those ships it is sending towards Somalia actual police officers to take custody of any pirate-prisoners, who then would be tried by the Hamburg criminal court (and presumably jailed in Germany if convicted). But this strikes him as an absurd set-up. Why not just start a convoy-system for merchant ships instead? he suggests.

Well, that did (ultimately) succeed against the German U-boat threat in both World Wars I and II. Tell you what, though, Herr Semler: what if we also change the Kreuzberg traffic rules so that you are only allowed to drive to and from work every day in convoy?

                          

German Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder is apparently serious in wanting to follow up his contention that Germany’s standing in the world (third-largest economy; biggest nation of the European Union; etc.) justifies that status, and so has been trying to gather support for that permanent seat for months. But the American government stands in the way. The Volkskrant article quotes from an unnamed American diplomat that this just isn’t the right time to put through this change. Why? “Since Germany became a [non-permanent] member of the Security Council [for the last year-and-a-half] we’ve had more problems than ever,” that diplomat explains. According to this account, Germany was the country responsible for derailing the American attempt to get immunity for its soldiers from the International Criminal Court. And of course we all remember Germany teaming with France at the Security Council to counter American attempts to get the sort of resolutions passed that they wanted in the run-up to the War in Iraq. What’s more, reports the Volkskrant, the American powers-that-be don’t really like Germany’s current UN ambassador, Gunter Pleuger; he’s regarded as a sort of hair-splitter.

Be that as it may, it’s pretty clear that the particular personality of one ambassador or another should not be a factor in weighty questions of this sort. In any event, when contacted about this a German government spokesman denied any such American blocking of Germany’s UN desires.

                          

If nothing else, this bringing-together in one out-of-the-way spot of two of the world’s most prominent and powerful figures is succeeding in attracting press attention to a conflict most of the world has up to now preferred to ignore. Strangely, that also includes countries in what you could call the immediate neighborhood; and in its coverage today (Ethnic Cleansing/Africa Ignores Sudan) the Dutch newspaper Trouw brings to light and examines this attitude.

That Africa would seem not to care so much about the disaster – indeed, as the title says, the ethnic cleansing – being inflicted on the black citizens of the Darfur reason is all the harder to understand in light of the clear racial element involved: those “Janjaweed” militias are composed of Arabs, put into action by the Sudanese government to viciously put down a (black) rebel uprising against it last year. On the other hand, the international community as a whole has also been slow to react to what has been happening. Granted, that was initially because the scene is an area of the world (like Rwanda) with no great reserves of vital natural resources (e.g. oil) and far away from any concentration of developed countries that could be bothered by a huge wage of refugees lapping against their border controls (unlike, say, the Balkans). But even when it became obvious what was happening, everyone remained stand-offish – i.e. refused to act in any way or give the Sudanese government the blame it deserves – so as not to jeopardize ongoing peace talks between the two sides.

GOTTA REMAIN IMPARTIAL, AFTER ALL

It is supposedly this latter motivation that is still staying the hand of other African political leaders. The African Union (formerly Organization of African Unity, or OAU) has sent 120 observers to try to enforce some sort of cease-fire, and Kenya is directly involved in the peace talks between the Sudanese government and the rebel group, the SPLA. So far there’ s been no hint of criticism for that government from these organizations, nor of any concern from the people in other African countries who can read every day in their local media about what is happening to the black Sudanese. “People are tired of the many conflicts,” explains Kisemei Mutisya, a political scientist at the University of Nairobi. “In addition to that, most people have great trouble holding their own heads above water.” It’s true that the African Union has finally taken action of a sort just this week, but that has been limited so far to calling on the Sudanese government to call off their militias and allow the displaced to return home. Oh, and there is also soon to be a conference of AU heads-of-state in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa – to discuss not only Sudan, but other African trouble-spots like Somalia, the Congo, and the Ivory Coast.

If the joint visit by Annan and Powell and the proposed Security Council resolution can be taken as any indication, for the rest of the world outside of Africa the gloves are finally starting to come off – at least as much as they can come off, given that (as mentioned above) Sudan has no noteworthy natural resources and its refugees cannot wander anywhere to disturb anyone else’s Western suburban lifestyles. And it’s hardly true that any continent’s garbage necessarily always gets taken care of by the residents of that same continent – it was American airpower, remember, that finally stopped the murderous nationalist rampages of Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia. Still, it should be interesting to follow how much other Africans can be bothered in the near future over these horrible events in Africa.

                          

What has made all the difference has been that United Nations Security Council resolution on the transfer of sovereignty back to Iraq that was passed unanimously last week, as an analysis in the NRC Handelsblad by René Moerland and Floris van Straaten makes clear (From Dilemma to Necessity – free registration required).

Before, any extension of the troops’ presence, in the Al-Muthanna province where the security situation was distinctly worsening, was looking like an iffy proposition – or at least one that the Dutch Cabinet still had the power to make, but would do so in the rather uncomfortable position of having limited political support. Indeed, the D66 party, one of the three in the governing coalition, was leaning against any extension.

But now D66 is for the extension, as party spokesmen made clear the day after the UN resolution passed. But wide political support is still something desired in this matter of continuing to place Dutch soldiers in harm’s way, meaning also the support of the main opposition party, the Party of Labor (PvdA). PvdA leader Wouter Bos was clearly leaning against any such extension prior to the UN Resolution, and this even before the Dutch military fatality last month: four days after the terrorist bomb attacks on Spanish trains of last March 11, he remarked “Well, it’s been nice having that Dutch presence in Iraq” (Het is mooi geweest met de Nederlandse aanwezigheid in Irak), which was widely interpreted to mean “but we’ve got to put a stop to that the next chance we get.” Unfortunately, even after the passage of the UN resolution Bos has insisted on remaining coy as to whether the PvdA would also support extension.

EVERYTHING’S COMING TOGETHER AT ONCE

It’s all a matter of timing, you see: there has been a remarkable confluence of events here in the first month of June. The deadline that has always been here – of last Friday, 11 June, but give or take a few days – has been that of deciding whether or not to extend the Dutch troops’ stay in Iraq, since if that decision went negative the intervening month’s time would be necessary to prepare for their withdrawal. Lo and behold, on the Tuesday before that Friday the UN Security Council managed to pass a unanimous resolution (aided by US concessions) that provided the Dutch government with the political cover to go ahead and approve extension. But there was yet another impinging event, and that was of course the European Parliament elections, which happened in the Netherlands last Thursday. Keeping troops in Iraq might be the right thing to do, now that a military presence there carries a UN seal-of-approval, but it is still hardly very popular. It seems clear that Bos was holding out on expressing the PvdA’s support or non-support for extension (and, even as I write this, he still has not come down one way or another) with a view to those Euro-elections and not alienating those from the PvdA constituency who are against any more Dutch involvement there no matter what. Far better simply to keep a studied air of ambiguity even when, as the Volkskrant (free registration required) reported in its coverage, all other parties were appealing to the PvdA to also weigh in before those elections. (And it seemed to work: those election results – free registration required – had the PvdA as the only major party gaining seats in the European Parliament – one, to be exact. As always, cynicism is a useful political tool.)

In any case, as of Friday the Cabinet made the decision to stay for another eight months. But what then? For Dutch foreign minister B.R. Bot the situation is clear, as he expressed in an NRC Handelsblad interview (“After the Iraqi Elections, We Can Go”). But is that really true? Counterpoint has come from the liberal VVD party, one of the main parties in the governing coalition, as the Volkskrant reports (VVD Wants Troops to Stay in Iraq Also After March 2005 – free registration required). Specifically, Tweede Kamer member of the VVD Geert Wilders raises the very reasonable prospect that things will not be all peaceful in Iraq even after those elections in January, and asks “Why not four more months? Or why not stay to the end of 2005, when the UN mandate for the presence of foreign troops expires?” In any event, even Wilders expects that a firm date be set for the Dutch troops’ withdrawal, i.e. no open-ended commitment; that is at least something that all Dutch political parties can agree on.

By the way, as also reported in the NRC (Military Another Eight Months in Iraq), the LPF party was also willing to support extension of the Dutch mandate in Iraq, but only by four months. Anything more than four months, it would be no dice. But that’s the Lijst Pim Fortuyn, the right-wing party that carried on after the assassination in May, 2002, of the charismatic Dutch politician of that name. Premier Balkenende’s cabinet may want to reach across the political aisle to get wide support for keeping Dutch troops in Iraq longer, but apparently that policy does not extend to the LPF, which is largely viewed as an extremist party (also, occasionally, a party of clowns), and whose electoral and political influence in any case is steadily waning.

                          

Coverage of the President’s speech in the German press generally found it less than fully convincing.

DECISIVE TWO MONTHS

Strangely, the on-line Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung by this point (Wednesday morning) still has not posted any direct coverage of the speech, although there is a good lead-up article to it from Washington correspondent Mattias Rüb. The President would certainly prefer to be making such a prime-time speech on the subject of the economy, Rüb noted, since it looks like American economic prospects have started to chug along nicely in 2004. Unfortunately, it looks like the President’s re-election is going to stand or fall on Iraq, and the important transition period over the next two months is likely to be decisive. That’s why the White House has chosen to go on the attack with this five-speech initiative, rather than continuing to react passively to events unfolding in the country, like Muqtada-al-Sadr’s Shiite revolt or the continuing prisoner-abuse revelations.

(Anyway, it turns out that it was not such a “prime-time” speech after all, as the four major American television networks choose not to air it. This we get not from any German newspaper, but from the Washington Post, specifically from that paper’s renowned television columnist Tom Shales, who goes on to mention that American viewers who didn’t fancy watching the President still had the choice open of watching “women in bikinis eat worms” on NBC’s “Fear Factor” program. Yes, I know I’m supposed to be bringing you the latest from the European non-English-language press, but sometimes there’s a telling detail available from elsewhere to add to the discussion that I can’t let pass by.)

Die Welt saw little new in the President’s speech other than his announcement that the notorious prison at Abu Ghraib – made notorious originally by Saddam Hussein and now also by American forces – would be torn down as soon as a more-humane replacement was built for it. (But from the Washington Post again: the President made this pledge without first consulting his paymasters in the Congress, and the necessary money ultimately might not be there. Indeed, Congress specifically rejected building an expensive new prison and tearing down the old in the recent past.) Little that is new, then, just mostly a reiteration of where we’re supposed to go from here. And that is: hand-over to the Iraqi administration on June 30, elections to an Iraqi parliament in January, 2005, approval of a new constitution later on in the Fall of that year, and finally a fully-constituted government by that year’s end – with no less than 138,000 US troops accompanying that process all the way, and indeed more than that if American generals think it necessary.

A MATTER OF PACKAGING

It’s Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung that is quickest off the ball to offer some real commentary on the President’s speech, despite its meagre new content. In one column, that newspaper’s Wolfgang Koydl calls the US President a Packaging-Artist. Drawing a lesson from the business world: “If a particular product isn’t selling, then the manufacturer has a choice, either to take it off the market or to take the same goods and at least offer them to customers in another, more-appealing package.” George W. Bush’s faulty product is of course his Iraq policy; another, presumably better one seems nowhere to be found, at least at short notice, so with his Monday-night speech he embarked upon the latter course.

“What most of his fellow countrymen would have really liked to hear from the President,” Koydl declares, “was a fixed date for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.” But he then goes on to note that, among all the flagging poll results for the American effort in Iraq, at least 60% of respondents still think that the US should not just withdraw on the run but should stay until the job is successfully done. So I guess Koydl means that the American people were really waiting to hear the date at which that job would be done; little wonder the President couldn’t provide that.

An accompanying editorial from one Dr. Andreas Oldag (America Seeks Counsel) takes satisfaction in the fact that the Bush administration is now heavily dependent upon UN action to help save the situation in Iraq – and so, for example, has submitted the latest draft resolution – where not so long ago the UN was dismissed as an unnecessary distraction. Still, that resolution has just been proposed, not adopted; and, remarkably enough, Dr. Oldag notes, the Security Council is once again dividing in reaction to it along lines familiar from the run-up to the War in Iraq itself. The US and UK stand together in proposing the resolution and trying to see it through to approval, awhile France, Russia, and China are already offering resistance. And what about Germany? Dr. Oldag merely states that the German government will not do anything about that proposed resolution until UN special representative to Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi delivers his report on the situation there.

WORD FROM THE IRAQI STREET

Berlin’s Der Tagesspiegel culls reaction to the President’s speech from on-the-ground in Iraq itself (Bush’s Plans Present Iraqis with Further Riddles). Says one Kurdish member of the Governing Council, Mahmut Othman: “If it [Bush's plan] can be realized, it would be to the advantage of Iraqis after the power hand-over on 30 June.” But Othman seems here to be under the impression that Bush’s plan actually provides for Iraqi input – including the option of saying “no more!” – on the question of how long American troops can stay on after that point. Meanwhile, down on the true Iraqi street, we have opinions such as that of a merchant quoted in the Tagesspiegel article: “Everything that is happening serves the purpose of keeping us dependent on the Americans. They have two goals: Oil, and the protection of Israel.” Only slightly less troubling is the assertion from Abdul Aziz al Jaseri, general coordinator of the Iraqi Democratic Movement (a coalition of various political parties), that what is needed is a “strongman,” with a military background, presumably to take the country by the scruff of the neck and knock some sense and order into it. But no American-appointed strongman, mind you: “If the new government is named by the Americans, the security situation will just deteriorate further,” al Jaseri complains, presumably because that government will lack all legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Iraqis.

Der Tagesspiegel also consults an authentic Iraqi newspaper editor, namely Ajad al Baldaui of “Al Mutamar” (the paper affiliated with Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, by the way). At the least, if al Baldaui’s words are any indication the Iraqi media will pay a bit more respect to President Bush’s speech than did the American television networks. “It will be the main story,” al Baldaui promises – “if no bomb explodes again somewhere.”

                          

Une réunion pour rien? (“A meeting for nothing?”) asks the Nouvel Observateur in its excellently-titled article Europeans Mark Time with Their Constitution, by Emmanuel Georges-Picot. Yep, it seems that the twenty-five heads-of-state/government (present EU members plus those joining in seven months, natch) convened once again, in Brussels, less than two weeks after they had already had the pleasure of each other’s company (that was 4 October, in Rome) – only to hear basically the same statements that they had delivered there in Italy. (Let me skip ahead briefly to the Le Monde article that I’ll discuss in detail later: it’s claimed there that Spanish premier José Maria Aznar actually repeated the same speech he had made in Rome, word-for-word!) Naturally, the same impasses remain in the matter of the draft Constitution, which is to say 1) The make-up of the Commission: Most small countries (not to include the Benelux) insist on one-country, one Commissioner; and 2) Voting: Spain and Poland continue to insist that the Nice arrangement, which gave them an advantageous voting deal, be preserved.

What to do? The pressure is on Italy here (specifically, on Berlusconi), not only because it holds the rotating EU presidency, but also because Berlusconi fondly hopes to be able to wrap up things by December so that a final-version Constitution can still be signed during that Italian EU presidency. (Don’t hold your breath.) Naturally, Silvio does have plan, namely to issue at the end of November an omnibus compromise proposal – perhaps in connection with a planned meeting of EU foreign ministers on the 28th and 29th. So don’t worry that nothing was decided about the Constitution here in Brussles, see; it was all about listening. (Actually, European Parliament President Pat Cox said that. But Mr. Cox, didn’t all that “listening” already happen on October 4?) The Nouvel Observateur also raises vague talk about scheduling yet another European summit, in Rome, before the end-of-presidency summit on 12/13 December, also in Rome.

Georges-Picot puts it well: “Hardly very excited by the Intergovernmental Conference business” (“Guère passionés . . . “), the assembled leaders spent a bunch of time on other things. Thursday afternoon was mainly occupied with a new proposal for a big economic initiative (basically, funding public works projects, twenty-nine of ‘em; I’ve got additional material on that, that I hope to present to you in another entry). As mentioned before, Chirac and Schröder did manage to get away on Thursday (it seems that it was during lunch – maybe a big sacrifice for the Frenchman Chirac) to talk on the telephone with Vladimir Putin about the US’ Security Council resolution on Iraq. And everybody gave final approval to the Frenchman Jean-Claude Trichet taking over from Wim Duisenberg as head of the European Central Bank. Yay.

To the Nouvel Observateur’s account Libération adds only a little. The “divergences are deep,” although, as Libération writer Yves Clarisse puts it, “the moment of truth – or of crisis – isn’t expected until the summit of 12-13 December.” (Well, crisis for Italy, maybe, since its dream of bringing the proceedings to a close during its presidency will be in grave danger unless there is significantly more progress on the Constitution by that point. On the one hand, there is a certain amount of time still available in the new year (under an Irish presidency); on the other hand, if there’s no or very little progress by December 12/13, that will be a very worrying sign as to whether a final-form Constitution is attainable at all.)

Clarrisse adds more detail to Silvio Berlusconi’s plans to fix things. It all sounds a bit trite: he intended at this Brussels summit to go around the table, to each of the twenty-five current/future members, to have them each give two or three “key points” where they wanted to see changes in the draft Constitution’s text. It also sounds a little bit strange, given that there’s an important bloc that basically wants the draft Constitution to be adopted in the form with which it came out of the Constitutional Convention last June – namely the original six founding members (that’s Germany, France, Berlusconi’s own Italy – yet he’s asking everyone for suggested changes! – and the Benelux. To this the Le Monde article also adds the UK – and that sounds strange to me, too.)

Wait, check that: Now “certain Benelux countries” (Libération won’t reveal which of the three) have put forth a compromise proposal on the question of the Commission size: Let there be 18 voting Commissioners, so that during any given Commission, two-thirds of EU members will have a voting Commissioner (assuming twenty-seven member-states), with one-third of the states gaining and losing their voting Commissioner with each new Commission. Well . . . for one thing, this disregards the desire by the Union’s big countries to retain their two Commissioners, if the consensus is to expand the Commission’s numbers anyway. More fundamentally, it also disregards my own point (discussed here) that the nationalities of European Commissioners shouldn’t matter – the Commission is best viewed as the EU’s Cabinet§, and Commissioners should be the best-qualified for the area of policy they are assigned, no matter where they happen to come from. I haven’t found this point anywhere else out there in the “real [on-line] world,” though – is it me who is insane?

Finally, there is the Le Monde article, which is different and interesting in its own right. First of all, the article takes up the “founding members” position, i.e. “just leave the draft Constitution alone and approve it.” You can tell, because in its introduction it emphasizes how the draft was “anyway the fruit of six months’ difficult [but] fruitful negotiations between representatives of governments, of national assemblies, and the European Parliament and Commission.”

Beyond this, Le Monde adds some important points – like the unease some are already starting to feel about the whole Constitution process. It quotes Luxembourgois premier Jean-Claude Juncker: “Today’s meeting didn’t bring any new element,” he is said to have “sighed.” “I’m a bit worried about how this affair is unfolding. Meeting after meeting, [and] the positions become more and more fixed.” What is more, together with Belgian premier Guy Verhofstadt (and further supported by President Chirac, Le Monde says), Juncker has already started to attack Italy’s ideas about how to proceed to get out of this mess and attain agreement on a final-form text. “We’re not going to find a solution this way,” Verhofstadt is quoted as saying. (For that matter, Polish premier Leszek Miller is quoted as saying “I didn’t have the impression of any rapprochement of positions,” and “The name of the compromise is Nice” – in other words, you all had your “compromise” at Nice, and I don’t want to hear any talk of any more “compromise.”)

So it’s “no progress” at Brussels, folks, not on the main agenda item of the Constitution. And the natives are worried, and getting restless.

* But there will be no “Wasted (Brussels) Sprouts”! Clean your plate!

§ A “cabinet” with rather more authority than the the US Cabinet taken alone – and rather less authority than the US Cabinet taken together with the US President.

                          

The headline of Die Welt’s article lays out that newspaper’s position: Washington gewinnt den Irak-Krieg auch in der UNO – “Washington wins the Iraq War also in the United Nations.” It quotes the New York Times’ evaluation that the authority that the resolution grants to the occupying powers over the further political and economic development of Iraq is unprecedented. True, the resolution provides for the presence of a special UN representative, but hardly on terms equal to those granted to American and Britain. And, while the resolution also prescribes its own review by the Security Council in twelve months’ time, that is not a provision to cause the occupying powers much worry: they both possess veto rights as permanent members, so that they could veto any new resolution at that time which would change these terms of their presence in Iraq.

Daniel Brössler, writing in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, also concedes that America and Britain pretty much gained what they wanted. In his estimation, the prime function of that UN special representative will be to coordinate the work of various UN agencies in providing Iraq with humanitarian assistance, which was precisely the sort of limited role the occupying powers desired for the UN, although it is also true that other public institutions such as the World Bank and IMF will participate in a council supervising the use of revenues Iraq gains from oil and gas export.

This gives rise, in the same newspaper, to Stefan Kornelius’ rather bitter commentary, Die verneinten Nationen – a pun on Vereinten Nationen, or “United Nations”: the additional “n” here (verneinten) transforms the phrase into “The Denied Nations.” “The UN is back,” Kornelius quotes French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin as saying after the near-unanimous Security Council vote to lift Iraqi sanctions, but that is just a superficial reading of events. In reality, France, Russia, and Germany have kow-towed to American demands in order to try to regain some semblance of influence over American policy. He calls the price for doing so – in effect sanctioning the conducting of war without UN approval – as too high, as a “diplomatic genuflection” (diplomatischer Kniefall). But at least there is the chance that the chaos in Iraq will continue and, as US elections approach, the Americans will need additional assistance and diplomatic cover in Iraq from their partners on the Security Council; perhaps then these partners will be able to extract a higher price for that.

Meanwhile, Germans should not try to imagine that their cooperation in voting to remove the Iraqi sanctions means that personal relations between George W. Bush and Gerhard Schröder can be revived. These are beyond repair, according to Gunter Hoffmann’s article in Die Zeit, but something like this was destined to happen sooner or later. That is because one of Schröder’s key innovations in German foreign policy has been to make it clear that Germany was no longer obliged to simply follow the lead of others, particularly the US, in a foreign policy low-profile that it adopted for decades in reaction to the all-too-active German foreign policy from before 1945. Now it should feel itself free to follow a deutschen Weg – a “German way.” This was a new attitude just waiting for a serious policy disagreement to arise to show that it just wasn’t a bunch of words, and that it could result in diplomatic unpleasantness; and Iraq provided that policy disagreement. Since then, Hoffmann observes, Germany has attempted to conciliate itself with the US, but always subject to certain limits. For example, and despite Colin Powell’s recent visit to Berlin, the stationing of German military forces in Iraq is still no foregone conclusion; the Germans demand further discussion and clarification of “who in the future is to do what precisely where.”

                          

But now sanctions are lifted, and by a unanimous Security Council vote minus the abstention of Syria – that is, completely lifted, and not just “suspended,” as had been a mooted halfway-house solution during the recent diplomatic stand-off over the issue. True, to get here there were certain concessions made from the allied side – e.g. enhanced powers for the UN special representative – but it’s unclear just how much of a sacrifice they represented in the allied position. Were there winners and losers here, or was a solution reached that was truly satisfactory for all? You can get the “allied” viewpoint yourself from your favorite American/British press outlet(s), but it’s EuroSavant that can let you know what they’re saying on the “other side.” As is my habit, I start with France.

In an article entitled Une résolution de compromis – “A resolution of compromise” – Libération adopts the “victory for all” line. Yes, this new Security Council resolution #1483 does grant the occupying powers a large measure of control over Iraq and what will be happening there in the near future. But that could mean no more than the next twelve months; the resolution provides for its revision by the Council at that time. And Libération counts as an important concession the agreed six-month prolongation of the UN’s “oil-for-food” program. (The probable reason, although not explicitly stated by Libération, is that French – and Russian – companies have contracts with Iraq under that program that they would like to fulfill and be paid for.) French UN ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sablière’s verdict: “the resolution that we have just adopted is not perfect . . . but it offers a credible framework” for the process of reconstruction in Iraq.

Le Monde is willing to be frank in its article Retour aux réalités – “Return to realities.” France has decided at the Security Council to vote in favor of a resolution which denies those very principles of the centrality of the United Nations in international affairs which only a short time ago had her brandishing her veto to prevent any resolution giving UN authorization to the War in Iraq. Indeed, this Resolution 1483 must be seen as offering the sort of ex post facto approval to Iraq’s conquest that the Americans desire. Consistency would require France to veto it; but now is not the time for such principled consistency, when it would also mean implied disapproval for the fall of Saddam Hussein, and when France herself is isolated within Europe on this matter, isolated even from her former German and Russian colleagues in the bloc des refusés.

Then, in an article published a day later entitled Le Crise entre Paris et Washington n’est pas encore surmontée – “The crisis between Paris and Washington is not yet overcome” – Le Monde sets the sanctions vote in its larger context. That vote preceded by a little over a week President Bush’s trip to Evian (France) to attend the G8 summit; it preceded by only one day a visit to Paris by US Secretary of State Colin Powell to prepare for that summit and to offer his own official view on the state of US-French relations, and also the first telephone conversation between Bush and French President Jacques Chirac (who initiated it) since 15 April. That telephone call would not have happened had France cast its Security Council veto to block the lifting of Iraqi sanctions, or probably even if it had just abstained; and the atmosphere around Powell’s visit to Paris and Bush’s to Evian would have been truly glacial. Still, Chirac denied any link: “we didn’t approve anything unacceptable at the UN, but the American offer had been considerably improved,” Le Monde quotes him as saying.