Portside

As the United States ramps up the pressure on its European allies to contribute forces to its crusade against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — a bloody offspring of its invasion and occupation of Iraq — it is helpful to review the record of Europe's response to Washington's imperial overtures.

A Record of Compliance

Just looking at the last three decades, European governments have, for the most part, served as compliant tools of the United States.  During the Reagan administration they agreed to the highly provocative move to deploy Tomahawk cruise missiles and Pershing II intermediate range ballistic missiles to Europe to maintain the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) nuclear advantage over the Soviet Union.

                                                                                                    (Photo: Reuters)

During the Kosovo crisis in 1998, with assent from European allies, the U.S. used NATO as cover for a bombing campaign not authorized by the United Nations, with strong participation by British and French air forces.

Again, during the Libyan crisis in 2011, U.S. used British and French forces to turn a U.N. resolution to impose a no-fly zone to a war to depose Moammar Gaddhafi. That the British and the French forces mainly fronted for the U.S. was highlighted by the fact that U.S. had to supply practically all the intelligence and explosives to keep the British and French fair war going, with 75 percent of explosives coming from the U.S.

European partners agreed under pressure to participate in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, with Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands, and some other NATO allies contributing forces. Afghan intervention has been unsuccessful in imposing imperial rule in Afghanistan, but it was successful in establishing the doctrine that NATO would not be limited to its traditional security zones but it could go farther, notably into the Middle East.

Efforts to maintain some distance from Washington

To be fair, there have been efforts to maintain some distance from Washington. None of them have been sustained, except perhaps in Africa, but here it has been Washington’s choice to allow Britain and France to operate relatively independently and in broad consonance with U.S. strategic objectives in this region, as with the British intervention in Sierra Leone in 2000 and the French push into Mali in 2013.

An early effort to maintain some distance from Washington was President Charles de Gaulle's move to remove France's nuclear force from NATO’s operational control in the 1960s. This policy ended with Francois Mitterand's rapprochement with NATO in early 1990s.

The European Union also took advantage of the collapse of both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia to step into the vacuum in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s. However, its efforts to create a settlement for the Balkan crisis collapsed when the French, German, and British elites opposed the creation of an independent Muslim-dominated state in Bosnia-Herzegovina and imposed an arms embargo on it.  The ensuing war threw EU policy into disarray and gave the US the opportunity to intervene militarily and impose the Dayton Peace Accords.  Perhaps, realizing their impotence to adopt an independent strategic policy, during the subsequent Kosovo crisis in 1998, the European members of NATO — notably, Britain, France, Italy, and Germany – did not challenge the U.S.' use of their forces to bomb Serbia into submission.

A third effort to show independence of the U.S. took place when France and Germany refused to participate in the U.S.’ “Coalition of the Willing” to invade Iraq. This move was a response to the massive anti-war sentiment in the continent in 2003. This brought on US Defense Secretary’s Donald Rumsfeld’s distinction between “Old Europe” and “New Europe.”  This momentum towards a foreign and military independent of the US was, however, short-lived.  France joined the effort to overthrow Gaddhafi in Libya in 2011 and President Francois Hollande signified his intention to join in a military strike against Syria in 2013.

Finally, there has been talk over the years to establish a European Defense Force, fueled by unease over NATO’s locking Europe into Washington’s strategic aims globally.  In 2009, the EU parliament voted to establish the Synchronized Armed Forces Europe (SAFE) as a first step towards a unified European military force.  But from the recent historical record, the likelihood is that this would end up, not as a substitute, but an adjunct of NATO.

Europe and the Crisis in the Ukraine

Europe’s role as a surrogate and subordinate of the US would not be complete without a brief reference to the crisis in the Ukraine.  The roots of the crisis clearly lie in Washington’s decision to extend NATO right into Russia’s security zone, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s.  The project involved not only bringing former Soviet satellite states into NATO but former members of the Soviet Union, like Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.  This drive was intended to eventually encompass Ukraine and Georgia, and the intention was clear: use Russia’s weakness to ensure it would never again become a superpower.  The expansion of NATO has roughly paralleled the expansion of the EU, though there is no one to one correspondence.

In 2010, however, the momentum towards membership in NATO and the EU was halted by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich.  Nevertheless, the EU pressed on and offered Yanukovich an offer of closer relations based on financial assistance.  However, this was rejected since a key condition was Ukraine’s implementing austerity measures and Ukraine’s support for the EU’s military and security objectives.  Destabilization of Yanukovich's regime followed shortly thereafter.  Russia expert Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus at Princeton, provides what is probably the most objective analysis of the current conflict “In short, twenty years of US policy have led to this fateful American-Russian confrontation. Putin may have contributed to it along the way, but his role during his fourteen years in power has been almost entirely reactive—indeed, a complaint frequently lodged against him by hawks in Moscow.”

Europe’s Soft Power?

This brief analysis would be incomplete without some discussion of the approach that says the EU must develop “soft power” instead of the “hard power” of the United States.  This means focusing on economic and trade relations instead of military alliances, promoting European values like democracy and human rights, and attaching human rights conditions to its aid programs.  The problem with this approach is trade often accomplishes peacefully what military power does directly, that is the subordination of the weaker country.  There is also the problem that a substantial part of European commerce is the arms trade, so that others fight to the death with arms that Europe supplies, sometimes to both sides.  Also, when it comes to clear violations of human rights, where standing up for the victims would trigger Washington’s disapproval, the European governments become unprincipled.  So in the Gaza conflict, the EU position is that Hamas, not Israel, is the main problem.

But perhaps the most striking thing is that what is regarded as one of the strongest expressions of European soft power--the promotion of human rights--has become twisted to become the central ethical pillar of the program of “humanitarian military intervention,” which, ironically enough, counts as its most eloquent spokesmen former European pacifists such as former German Foreign Minister Joshka Fischer, prominent Green Party of France member Daniel Cohn Bendit, Cynthia Roth, co-chair of Green Party of Germany, and of course President Francois Hollande of France.

As in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya, humanitarian intervention is again the battle cry for European intervention against ISIS, alongside paragons of democracy like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

People’s Resistance

The record is dismal, but the people’s resistance against imperial intervention is not to be underestimated in stopping the European states’ willingness to act as a subordinate or surrogate for the United States.  The most prominent expression of this was, of course, the anti-war movement in Europe during the Iraq War, which was the key factor that halted the commitment of military forces by France and Germany.

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Not to be underestimated as well is the anti-war movement in Britain. This popular pressure is what caused Parliament to reject joining the Obama plan for a strike on Syria in August 2013.  

As Britain, France, and other European states edge closer towards military alliance against ISIS, the anti-war movement is at a crossroads. ISIS is a barbarous creature, but as in so many other cases of humanitarian intervention, military action against it by the western powers is likely to increase its appeal to many resentful of Western domination and, like the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Franco-British campaign in Libya bankrolled and propped up by Washington, this intervention is doomed to create an even worse situation.

The call to arms in the name of civilization is reminiscent of the chauvinistic calls to rally around the flag that accompanied the commencement of hostilities in Europe a hundred years ago.  It is the task of the peace movement in Europe to remind their people of the lessons of that war and pull their governments today from the brink of another disastrous debacle.