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Date: 15/02/03

Europe's leaders are all gambling for high stakes over Iraq

IF YOU feel in need of light relief at this time of world tension, try reading the European Union's Maastricht treaty on the subject of foreign policy: “Member states shall support the Union's external and security policy actively and unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity.” Perhaps there was some transcription error, and the real text reads: “Member states shall actively undermine the Union's external and security policy in a spirit of loathing and mutual mistrust.” That certainly comes closer to capturing reality.

While the EU issues anodyne and instantly forgettable common statements on Iraq, its members busily plot diplomatic ambushes for each other. First came the Franco-German effort to seize the European initiative by building up an anti-war front. Then came the “letter of eight”, a pro-American statement issued by five current and three soon-to-be members of the EU, which was sprung on the unsuspecting French and Germans. Then NATO split open, when France, Germany and Belgium lined up against the alliance's other 16 countries, including eight that are also in the EU. Then, outnumbered in the Union, France and Germany sought a counterbalancing force outside it - and welcomed Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, into the stop-the-war group at summits in Paris and Berlin. So the EU's ideal as a fraternal club presenting a united face to the rest of the world has given way to something that looks more like a 19th-century tangle of alliances. If you glance at maps of Europe these days, it is hard to repress strange thoughts about frontiers, land mass and the control of raw materials.

Europe's divisions have dramatically raised the stakes for all the leaders involved. Some will come out of this crisis looking vindicated; others will be in deep political trouble. Tony Blair, faced with a hostile public in Britain, has acknowledged that his future is on the line. Public opinion in Spain and Italy is if anything even more hostile to the pro-American stand taken by those countries' leaders, José María Aznar and Silvio Berlusconi.

Their wager will pay off if the war is short and victorious, Iraq liberated and their countries spared any awful terrorist retribution. Mr Blair, especially, would be lauded as the man who held his nerve and preserved the transatlantic alliance. France's calculations are based on a different set of outcomes. The one with the most emotional appeal for it is France rallying opposition to the war in Europe and in the United Nations, and forcing the American “hyper-power” to back off. But if war breaks out anyway, France faces the potentially humiliating prospect of clambering on board at the last moment. The only other “happy” scenario for the French is that they stand aside and the war goes badly - raising anti-American sentiment across Europe so high that even the governments of Spain and Britain are forced to change tack. That would let France and Germany emerge as the natural leaders of a new European foreign policy on a continent finally disillusioned with American leadership.

For France, the stakes are very high indeed. A really damaging rift with the Americans could split the EU and marginalise the UN's Security Council, where France's veto is crucial to its claim to remain a world power. Still, at least France has some sort of strategy. It is less clear what end-games Germany and Russia prefer. German opposition to the war in Iraq, unlike France's, is based far more on gut pacifism than on a desire to confront America. The German press has lambasted its government's decision to go along with France in splitting NATO. By refusing to support a war against Iraq in any circumstances, the German government has backed itself into a uniquely isolated spot in Europe. Germany's diplomats are complaining that, while Mr Schröder's position is still popular at home, he is improvising with no real strategy. As for the Russians, the idea of splitting NATO and encouraging a largely pacifist Germany at the heart of Europe would have been a dream had the cold war still been on. Unfortunately for Russian nationalists, these goals are becoming realisable about 20 years too late. Hitherto Mr Putin has been aiming for strategic co-operation with America. Throwing in his lot with France and Germany risks recreating antagonisms that the Russians have spent years carefully trying to end.

America's friends in the new Europe

The sight of a Russian president being embraced in Paris and Berlin has caused a few shivers in the capitals of ex-communist Europe. Indeed, it is the attitude of countries once under Russia's sway that is the biggest obstacle to the French dream of an autonomous Europe that would stare Uncle Sam insolently in the eye. Everything about their recent history tells people in these countries that the United States and NATO are still their only real guarantors of security. As an otherwise impeccably “pro-European” Czech diplomat puts it, “One thing we learned from the 1930s - no more security guarantees from France.” A truly common EU approach could only be settled by majority voting within the Union. But count the votes in the EU of 25 countries that will take shape in 2004, and the French and Germans are in a minority in their attitude to the United States. To the epistolary gang of eight must be added five soon-to-be EU members of the “Vilnius ten”, another clutch of pro-American letter-writers from eastern Europe, as well as probably the Irish and the Dutch.

Amid all this disarray, the European Union has chosen to call an emergency summit meeting in Brussels for February 17th. The Greek government, which currently holds the EU's six-month presidency, says that only two items will be on the agenda: Iraq and making peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It is a well-judged choice. By discussing Iraq, the EU can demonstrate its division; by discussing Israel and Palestine it can demonstrate its impotence. Then everybody can go home, blissful in the knowledge that all are living up to their commitments under the Maastricht treaty.

Commentary feature on the wider issues facing the EU over the Iraq crisis, including showing how ineffective the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy is.