Brussels diary

Blair's bad advice
May 19, 2003

Tony's Rolls-Royce minds?

If there is a diplomatic inquest once some of the Iraqi sand has settled, there may be gentle questioning of the advice given by those "Rolls-Royce minds" at the foreign office. The British embassy in Paris told Tony Blair for months that the French would not ultimately veto a second resolution-which may account for the shock and anger in Downing Street when Jacques Chirac made it clear that he intended to do just that. This is not the only important recent misreading of the French. The British also failed to foresee the crucial Franco-German deal to delay reform of the common agricultural policy, struck just before the Brussels summit last October. They even seemed shocked when Chirac tried to link eventual reform of the CAP to a withdrawal of Britain's famous budget rebate-despite the fact that such ideas were floated in the French press for a couple of weeks before they were raised officially by the French government.

The ministry of defence in London appears not to have done much better. Officials there were also absolutely convinced that the UN resolution would be winnable. Then in the few days before the fighting actually began, they were recycling Pentagon overconfidence about the war lasting just a few days.

Awkward spot for the Yankee-haters

Events in Iraq have placed the anti-war crowd in Brussels in an awkward spot. Only diehard Yankee-haters actually wanted to see the coalition immersed in the proverbial "quagmire." But there was a certain grim satisfaction at the initial setbacks. Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian prime minister, has accused the US of being a "deeply wounded" power that aims to take over the whole middle east. Joschka Fischer has also worried aloud about the Iraq war being the first in a series of US-initiated conflicts. Rather sanctimoniously, some Brussels-based Eurocrats have taken to arguing that Europe needs to become stronger to save America from its own folly. G?nter Verheugen, the commissioner for enlargement (and one of the few real stars in the European commission) says that developing a united European foreign policy is more essential than ever to provide the US with a "strong partner who can tell them what mistakes they may be about to make." But there is a snag for those like Fischer, Verhofstadt and Verheugen who are using the Iraqi crisis to make the argument for a dramatic leap towards the creation of a single European foreign policy that would create a "counterweight" to the US. Such a policy would have to involve adopting EU positions by majority vote. But in an enlarged Europe it is quite likely that the Atlanticists would generally be in the majority. It is not yet clear how the "counterweight" crowd plan to solve this riddle. But they seem to be hovering between two ideas. The first is to toy once again with the hoary old idea of a "hardcore Europe," in which the Germans, French and Belgians (and maybe a couple of others) commit to a bold new political union in which their worldview would predominate. The second is to hope that that the very creation of a united European foreign policy will give the central Europeans the confidence to resist US pressure. The Eurocrats reckon that many of the "new Europeans" who lined up alongside America did so under duress. The creation of a united foreign and security policy would create safety in numbers, persuading the Czechs, Hungarians and others to follow Brussels (or should that be Paris?) rather than Washington. (The Poles are regarded as hopelessly pro-American, at least for the next few years.)

Central Europe's top opportunists

If you visit central Europe, however, you discover that the political poses being struck over Iraq are often largely to do with domestic games of one-upmanship. In recent years, the two central European leaders most commonly lionised by the right in Washington and London were V?clav Klaus in the Czech Republic and Viktor Orban in Hungary. But in the event, both men opposed the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq for largely domestic reasons. Klaus, it seems, needed to get votes from former communists in his recent successful bid to succeed V?clav Havel as president. Orban-bruised by his narrow electoral defeat last year-seizes any opportunity to bash the current Hungarian government. Its backing for America was too tempting a target to ignore. Meanwhile, the powers that be in Brussels are nervous of a man they have always regarded as a clever but opportunistic nationalist. Orban gave a speech a few years ago in which he implied that one day Hungary would get back all the territory it lost after the first world war. More recently the commission has been pissed off by the way Orban sniped at the deal that Hungary got over enlargement. The Eurocrats even worry that the former prime minister might encourage a "No" vote in the Hungarian referendum on whether to join the EU, scheduled for 12th April. A meeting with Orban was the one potentially difficult moment scheduled for G?nter Verheugen on a recent trip to Budapest. In the end, the breakfast went well. It was extremely short because Orban had been delayed by a car crash on the way. But this brush with danger appeared to have put the former prime minister in an excellent mood. He enthused about the opportunity it had given him to interact with the ordinary Hungarians who had gathered to survey the accident-and was affable and accommodating.