View from Europe - If

View from Europe - If international understanding has a problem in this country, it's that it tends to be seen as a binary, black or white thing.

And yet, just as with our own stances on issues, the truth is like an iceberg - much less visible than you think.

France and Germany are both squabbling with the US over the course of action to take in Iraq.

And yet - says Doug Bandow in the Frankfurter Allgemeine, all is not visible on the surface:

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder says Germany “will not take part in a military intervention in Iraq,“ although it is less clear whether his government will oppose war when the UN Security Council votes. France also offers resolute ambiguity, threatening, but not promising, a veto.
Yet Washington remains skeptical that its critics are serious, and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has indicated that he expects Paris to give in - as it always does. It is noted that Schröder won reelection by running against the Bush administration's plan for war in Iraq but later promised to send German troops to Turkey to crew AWACS planes sent by NATO. Even the refusal of NATO to approve America's request for assistance is seen as only temporary.
Over the years, Washington has learned that it can browbeat most any nation into submission on most any issue, but the coming showdown over Iraq offers Europe another chance.

Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and would seem to oppose the "rush to war". But there are some interesting insights in the piece, as there are indeed throughout the Allgemeine, a relatively conservative paper.

Posted by Mitch at February 3, 2003 02:51 PM