The Hindu : U.S. belligerence towards Iraq annoys Europe

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jan 11, 2003

International

International

U.S. belligerence towards Iraq annoys Europe

By Batuk Gathani

BRUSSELS JAN. 10. Most European Union officials believe that the multi-national organisation is being dragged into the United States' war against Iraq, for lack of an alternative popular opinion. It is argued that the E.U. needs a united foreign policy, to start with. There is also concern that the U.S. President, George W. Bush, and his fellow "White House Christians" have woven elements of the Christian faith into his presidential vocabulary.

Bush critics in Europe feel that the "wall" between the Church and the state is being straddled, to dangerous effects. For many Europeans, Mr. Bush's recent "axis of evil" speech linking Iran, Iraq and North Korea came as a new revelation. This sentiment was highlighted by Javier Solana, the E.U.'s Foreign and Security Policy chief, who, in a recent newspaper interview, lamented the widening chasm of divide between Europe and the "religious" United States.

Mr Solana has been head of the E.U.'s Foreign and Security Policy Department since 1999 and before that he was the Secretary General of NATO — the Western military alliance. Mr Solana came to NATO after serving as Foreign Minister of Spain. Although Mr Solana is aware of the influence and strength of America's religious right, he is surprised at how religion has permeated the current thinking in the White House, especially after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in that country. There is a streak of growing religious rhetoric, often laced with cowboy phrases, in official U.S. statements: "Either with us or against us; rouge states; axis of evil; right and wrong; good and bad and capturing the evil men `dead or alive'". Mr Solana said: "The choice of language is revealing.'' He is not anti-American but a committed pacifist and studied at U.S. universities as a Fulbright scholar.

Mr Solana said: "What for the U.S. is a war on terrorism, for Europe, is a fight against terrorism''. Hence, Europe would go through multilateral institutions like the United Nations to exhaust all avenues of diplomacy before deciding to attack Iraq. Mr Solana said the U.S. would stick to its "black and white'' worldview and argued "the moral certainty of religious America is hard to replicate in secular Europe.''

He theorised: "A religious society perceives evil in terms of moral choice, but the free will of a secular society seeks the causes of evil in political and psychological terms''. The Bush administration's world view has implications for the foreign policies of many countries. Europeans are convinced that a war against Iraq can still be averted.

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