Getting It Wrong

EVERY day furnishes another news report to confirm that a massive realignment of the West is under way. Just the latest—itself likely to be superseded by the time you read this paragraph—is that France’s President Chirac rebuked the new democracies of eastern and central Europe for their support of the U.S. position on Iraq. He spoke in terms so petulant and undiplomatic—“they missed a good opportunity to remain silent”—that he looked like a railing demagogue rather than a serious politician. His threat to deny these countries admission into the European Union unless they start toeing the Paris-Brussels-Berlin line on foreign policy itself looked vain and foolish that same night, when the EU’s joint statement substantially backed the U.S. position. One European parliamentarian pointed out that Chirac had committed a terrible faux pas: He had asked someone to choose between the U.S. and “Europe” (which, in this context, means a federal European state that would be a counterweight to America in world politics).

I say: Thank goodness for his undiplomatic petulance! For, in this gaffe, Chirac has blurted out the choice that underlies and explains all the disputes now raging within Europe. Within Europe, note—not “across the Atlantic.” Despite the incorrigible habit of headline-writers of keeping “U.S.-Europe Split Widens” in permanent type, the story below it almost always describes how Spain, Britain, Italy, and Eastern Europe are united with the U.S. against France, Germany, and Belgium. And almost all the joint statements, communiques, and démarches issued in recent weeks are designed to give an advantage to either the Atlanticists or the Europeanists in the vital struggle for control of the institutions of the post-Cold War West, in particular NATO and the EU.

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

EVERY day furnishes another news report to confirm that a massive realignment of the West is under way. Just the latest—itself likely to be superseded by the time you read this paragraph—is that France’s President Chirac rebuked the new democracies of eastern and central Europe for their support of the U.S. position on Iraq. He spoke in terms so petulant and undiplomatic—“they missed a good opportunity to remain silent”—that he looked like a railing demagogue rather than a serious politician. His threat to deny these countries admission into the European Union unless they start toeing the Paris-Brussels-Berlin line on foreign policy itself looked vain and foolish that same night, when the EU’s joint statement substantially backed the U.S. position. One European parliamentarian pointed out that Chirac had committed a terrible faux pas: He had asked someone to choose between the U.S. and “Europe” (which, in this context, means a federal European state that would be a counterweight to America in world politics).

I say: Thank goodness for his undiplomatic petulance! For, in this gaffe, Chirac has blurted out the choice that underlies and explains all the disputes now raging within Europe. Within Europe, note—not “across the Atlantic.” Despite the incorrigible habit of headline-writers of keeping “U.S.-Europe Split Widens” in permanent type, the story below it almost always describes how Spain, Britain, Italy, and Eastern Europe are united with the U.S. against France, Germany, and Belgium. And almost all the joint statements, communiques, and démarches issued in recent weeks are designed to give an advantage to either the Atlanticists or the Europeanists in the vital struggle for control of the institutions of the post-Cold War West, in particular NATO and the EU.