Posted by Dan Ewert : 3/27/2003 01:37:00 AM (Archive Link)
This is a frightening article. You may recall the episode from several weeks ago in which Jacques Chirac showed his true colors and said that the eastern European countries supporting the U.S. on Iraq would do well to shut up. That and other comments were a not so veiled threat that everybody needs to fall into line with France and Germany when it comes to foreign policy. Now the EU’s secretary/minister for such issues (his official title is a quintessential EU bureaucrat moniker: Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy), Javier Solana, is saying that the split in recent European opinion (UK and Spain vs. France and Germany) could have been avoided had the EU been represented by just one seat in the UN Security Council. He’s basically saying that under such a scenario, the UK and Spain wouldn’t have been allowed to go their own way and cause problems for the rest of them. They would have been forced to toe the line. “According to the Treaty of European Union, all EU member states have an obligation to refrain from doing anything that goes against a common position in foreign policy. ‘It is regrettable that precisely this was not followed by some member states.’” This is yet another example of how France and Germany feel that they are Europe. Tony Blair and the UK would do well to steer away from that organization as much as possible. It’s clear that it will lose its autonomy if it does. After keeping Germany out in WWII and keeping the French at bay ever since that pesky Norman invasion in 1066, it would be a shame if those two countries ultimately succeeded in conquering proud England through weasel diplomacy.