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MICHAEL PROBST/AP
'NO WAR FOR PROFIT'
Most Europeans think Bush wants Iraq's oil, a charge most Americans dismiss
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Posted Sunday, Jan. 12, 2003; 2.09 p.m. GMT
And the bad feelings are mutual. A former cabinet minister in the British Conservative Party, which is officially even more pro-American than Bush's First Friend Tony Blair, recently leaned over at lunch and described Bush as "terrifying," "ignorant," "a prisoner of the religious right who believes God tells him what to do," and "like a child running around with a grenade with the pin pulled out."
As American and British forces deployed to the Middle East last week, European Union foreign-policy chief Javier Solana warned that "without proof" that Saddam harbors banned weapons, "it would be very difficult" for Europe to support the war. And Europe's three most powerful leaders are showing the strain of being pulled in opposite directions by powerful forces: their own antiwar publics, and the hyperpower in Washington preparing for regime change in Baghdad.
With opposition to an Iraq war consistently running between 70% and 80% in Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is sticking to the pledge that got him re-elected and made Bush despise him: to keep German forces out of it. But Berlin watchers consider it unthinkable that Germany, which wants a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, will cast a lonely vote against authorizing force if the weapons inspectors find a violation.
French President Jacques Chirac must straddle a similar razor. According to a poll published in Le Parisien last week, only 15% of French voters support the use of their military against Iraq — even if the Security Council endorses war. So far Chirac's rhetoric has played to the majority, but that may not last. "He and those around him are convinced that if we want a role in the Middle East afterward, we have to be on board with the Americans," says Philippe Moreau Defarges, an analyst at the French Institute of International Relations. If Chirac does fall into line behind Bush for reasons of state, his constituency will feel betrayed — and blame the American "bully" as much as they blame their own leader.
Even Blair is taking so much heat in his own Labour Party for backing Bush on Iraq that last week he warned that U.N. inspectors should be given all the time they need to finish their job, and devoted big chunks of a major speech to the perils of anti-Americanism, calling it "a foolish indulgence." He even included some blunt advice for Washington. "People listen to the U.S. on issues and may well agree with them," he said. "But they want the U.S. to listen back."
Those with long memories might be tempted to say: Stop bellyaching, we've been here before. Europe and Washington have stared at each other in fury and incomprehension many times in the past, from the French-British- Israeli campaign to reclaim the Suez Canal that Dwight Eisenhower gutted in 1956 to the deployment of Pershing nuclear missiles in Europe under Ronald Reagan, who once prompted the same sort of "ignorant cowboy" epithets now heard about Bush. Each time commentators anguished about wounds that would never heal. They were wrong. (Reagan's reputation improved after the fall of the Berlin Wall. If Bush manages to win the war against terrorism, his will too.) In some ways, Europe and America are more alike than ever. The level of commercial interpenetration, the number of young people choosing to study and work across the Atlantic, and the spread of a common mass culture from Disney and The Sopranos to reality TV and Penélope Cruz (two European exports to the U.S.) has never been greater. This cultural exchange is tricky: though it moves in both directions, it is often viewed as an American phenomenon — Hollywood imperialism that's resented even as it is enjoyed. (No matter how good U.S. pop culture can be, its ubiquity can make it an affront.) But overall, in many places in Europe, America is admired as much as it is reviled, technicolor warts and all.
For Europeans, the relationship starts to break down when the U.S. goes into "You're either with us or against us" mode. "Despite disagreements about certain strategic and diplomatic details, the bottom line is, we still very much share the same interests and objectives," says Jacques Bille, 58, managing director of France's Association of Advertising Agencies. By and large, Europeans accept America as the undisputed leader of the world. What's at issue, Bille thinks, aren't the fundamentals, but concerns over style and sensitivities. "There seems to be a real inability for the U.S. to accept that other approaches are both legitimate and acceptable," he says. "What's difficult to accept is the utter lack of reciprocity. We often start off as being 'wrong' in American eyes by not being like Americans in the first place."
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