THE SILENT WITNESSES OF NORMANDY BEACH
Wall Street Journal, 13 Feb 03, by  Fatos Nano, Prime Minister of Albania
 
In reaction to your Feb. 10 editorial "The end of NATO?":
 
Perhaps it is time for European leaders to pay a visit to Normandy: There, high above the sea is a cemetery where nearly 10,000 American soldiers are buried, row upon row upon row of young men who gave their lives to rid Europe of Nazi oppression.

It is due to American courage and generosity that countries such as France and Germany and other European states are today free, vibrant democracies. Were it not for the U.S., the U.K. and their allies during World War II, Europe would have remained under Germany's boot for generations. Instead, for 50 years after World War II Europe thrived under the protection of the U.S. while it confronted and defeated communism.

People may forget. Some countries in Europe may also forget. But there are older countries in Europe with longer memories; countries whose most recent memories are of the U.S.-led coalition that ended the tyranny of Slobodan Milosevic. We, the Albanians, do not forget.
This is why we support the U.S. in its effort to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein and liberate its people.

NATO�S CRISIS:
CAN THE ALLIANCE OVERRIDE THE FRANCO-GERMAN VETO?
United Press International, 12 Feb 03, by Ira Straus *
 
* Ira Straus is U.S. Coordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO

http://www.fas.org/man/nato/ceern/background.htm
 
For the umpteenth time, the Alliance is in a crisis. But this crisis is different from all the others. This time, the Alliance is openly admitting that it is having trouble reaching a decision. And not just a decision on any little issue, but a decision on carrying out its central responsibility: providing joint defensive support for one of its members that may soon be under attack.

16 members want to go ahead with preparations for defending Turkey, which would be exposed to Iraqi retaliation if the U.S. and Britain say the Gulf War truce is over and resume full-scale warfare. But 3 members don�t want to go ahead even with contingency planning. They have delayed any action since mid-January, on the argument that a consensus was needed for making a decision. No one knows how much longer the delay will continue. Turkey could be under attack before the matter is resolved.
 
The phantom veto becomes real
 
On Feb. 6, the Secretary General, Lord Robertson, announced that the �silence procedure� would be put into operation, to try to break the deadlock and get a decision by Monday the 10th. This long-standing NATO procedure is a way of feigning consensus without actually having it. The decision is laid on the table, and if no member objects publicly, the decision is adopted. Members are strongly encouraged not to break ranks or object publicly. As Lord Robertson said at the time, �I'm confident that by early next week 19 countries will agree to go ahead with these tasks because they are sensible, they are prudent, they are simply contingency plans, and they are in response to a plea from one country in the Alliance, and all countries are bound by the obligations of the North Atlantic Treaty.�

But they didn�t. Germany, France, and Belgium �broke silence�, as the jargon goes. Lord Robertson was reduced on the 10th to pleading for the members to get serious. �The majority of the NATO countries reiterated the urgency for NATO to take a decision in the spirit of the North Atlantic Treaty. Unfortunately we are not yet at the stage where we can achieve consensus and arrive at a decision. We will therefore continue to work hard to achieve such a consensus within the shortest possible time.�

And Turkey responded with its own bombshell: it requested consultations on its defense under Article 4 of the NATO Treaty. This was apparently the first time in history that that Article has been invoked. Interestingly, September 11 was the first time Article 5 -- mutual defense when under attack -- had been invoked. The actionable provisions of the NATO Treaty have been exercised more in the last two years than in the entirety of the previous fifty. And they have revealed an inadequacy in the procedures NATO used in its first fifty years.
During the Cold War, NATO often worried about whether it would be able to make a decision in a timely enough way to fight back in case of a Soviet invasion of Western Germany. What if Greece, or Denmark, or France, or some other repeat offender were to refuse to come to consensus? What if some other country with a temporary leftist government or with a habit of pacifist rhetoric were to drag out the discussion of how to respond? What if they refused to keep silence even under the �silence procedure�?

Fortunately the danger was never tested. The war never came. The Cold War dragged on as a war of military preparations and political maneuvers, not a fighting war. The only harm done by the consensus procedures in NATO was to delay and obstruct some of the military preparations that otherwise would have made sense. And Alliance managers considered that to be a price well worth paying in return for maintaining the public facade of consensus. The latest detailed military preparations were generally not so important, considering how many Allied military preparations were already in place in the middle of Europe and in the form of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. It was the habit of marching lock-step that they wanted to practice constantly as the most important form of preparation for war. It was the public image of unbreakable unity that they counted on to deter the Soviets: it would show that the Alliance could never be divided, and that we really would fight back all together if attacked.
 
Relics of the Cold War mentality on consensus
 
With the end of the Cold War, the situation changed completely but Alliance habits of thinking persisted. There was no longer a gigantic fixed enemy, to be deterred by a fixed 40-year-old military plan or by a habit of Alliance unity in support of this plan. Instead there were real wars. The wars came and went in real time. They had to be responded to with new plans, and with physical actions before they passed offstage.
The image of 100% Alliance solidarity is still a nice thing but no longer nearly as important as before 1989. What counts is the ability of the Alliance to take action in real time. Putting together a belated public front of diplomatic unity does not impress anyone, if it means the Alliance cannot get its act together seriously and dominate the field of play. People pay attention to the divisions in the Alliance that prevent action, not the diplomatic formulas that are used to paper them over. What passed before as proof that the Alliance had held together, today is treated as evidence that it has fallen apart as a working enterprise.

Today it is the timely and effective cohesion of the alliance that counts, not the fig leaf of consensus. And the reliance on consensus, as we can see just as soon as we come to the test with Turkey, is an obstacle to effective cohesion.

Thus Donald Rumsfeld: �those three countries taking that position prevents NATO from fulfilling its obligation to a NATO ally." Nicholas Burns, U.S. ambassador to NATO, has observed that it brings NATO to the point of a "credibility crisis".

Others are saying that it is bringing NATO to the point of its demise. If the Alliance cannot carry out its central Treaty obligation, it is in trouble. The Wall Street Journal is speculating on �The End of NATO�, suggesting that the Alliance �as currently constructed it has outlived its usefulness� and it�s time for America to consider �leaving this Cold War institution� and starting up a new coalition consisting of countries more concerned with the new threats. The trans-Alliance, the same alliance that saved freedom in two world wars and the cold war, the alliance that seemed organic, is rooted in a profound community of values and a half-millennium of common civilizational development, could end up buried over the sacred cow of consensus.
 
Consensus: A True God or just a Sacred Cow?
 
But is consensus really obligatory? Couldn�t NATO act in the absence of consensus?
In reality, yes it could. But no one would suspect it from the comments being made officially or for that matter journalistically. In fact, it is questionable whether even many of the officials in NATO realize that there are other options.
Thus, if you relied on Lord Robertson�s statements, you�d think consensus was the most sacred and eternal of deities, not just a sacred cow in need of a possible trip to the chopping block. �Unfortunately we are not yet at the stage where we can achieve consensus and arrive at a decision. We will therefore continue to work hard to achieve such a consensus... What matters is to arrive at a consensus.... We have to work to get a consensus.�

Or, if you read the �NATO Handbook� in all of its dozens of editions, you�d think the same thing. You�d read that the Alliance cannot act without consensus. It has no supranational element or personality of its own. It is simply a tool of the governments. Every country has equal rights in the Council and all decisions are taken by consensus.

It is repeated thousands of times. Sometimes it is even said that every member country has a veto. It has become a part of the linguistic culture of discourse in and about NATO. Nearly everyone takes it for granted that it is true.
And yet it is simply not true. There is no legal right of veto in NATO.

The North Atlantic Treaty does not say one word about a veto, nor about consensus. The only right of veto that each nation has is over amendments to the Treaty, and over use of its own national forces to implement a decision. And it has those rights, not because they are granted anywhere in the Treaty, but because it always had them and the Treaty does not do anything to take them away. On normal Alliance decisions, there is no infringement of sovereignty beyond what the member countries have already conceded by participating in the joint structures, and no right of veto.

The main author of the Treaty, the late Amb. Theodore Achilles, used to shoot down talk about a right of veto with the comment that �The Treaty left the Council free to make decisions by whatever procedures it found it needed. There are no restrictions in the Treaty on the procedures, and that wasn�t by oversight. We didn�t want NATO to be hamstrung, like most international organizations, by a right of veto.�

Achilles was director of the Western European division of the State Department in the late 1940s, and is credited by historians with having done more than anyone else on the drafting and negotiating of the Treaty. He went on to run the Atlantic Council of the U.S. from the day of his retirement in 1962 until his death in 1986. If anyone wasn�t overwhelmed by that level of authority and went on protesting that what he was saying wasn�t what they were told at NATO, he would just answer, �Go back and read the Treaty again. It isn�t very long.�

If one reads the Treaty, one quickly discovers that Achilles was correct. There is no right of veto in the Treaty, nor any obligation of waiting until there is a consensus. The relevant paragraph, Article 9, creates a North Atlantic Council. Consisting of ambassadors from each member country, it the supreme decision-making authority in NATO. But Article 9 says nothing about its procedures; nor does any other part of the Treaty. It is left to the Council to establish its own procedures, and to change them when needed. Which it has proceeded to do. Such as the �silence procedure�, one of its long-standing methods for fudging the absence of consensus.

And the Council is free to establish new procedures when it needs them.

It needs them now. When it comes to the point of a trans-Atlantic crisis over such an obvious matter as contingency planning for defending Turkey, it is clear that the old procedures are not good enough.
 
First hints of reform
 
Last winter, Lord Robertson began a call for reforming NATO procedures in order to make its operations efficient enough that it wouldn�t be slowed down when it proceeded to invite more countries to join the Alliance -- and thus add themselves to the number seated around the Council. �We are beginning the modernisation of Nato's decision-making processes,� declared Robertson on the 1st of February 2002. �Nato has a unique ability to take and implement quick decisions... Allies have to ensure that it can still be done after any enlargement of Nato in November.�
The NATO Summit in November punted on this reform. It invited in seven new members but left decision-making essentially unimproved. Very quickly, the problem has come home to roost. And it turns out that it is not only a matter of having too many members, any one of whom could obstruct decision under the old procedures; it is also a matter of the very nature of the new era, whose issues require procedures for getting to timely action rather than procedures for putting on a public front of unanimity.
 
What new procedures would work?
 
Here are some of the procedures that have been proposed, for example by David Abshire, a former U.S. Ambassador to NATO:

Richard Perle has proposed two more options.

The minimum sufficient new procedure
 
Yet another option is a weighted vote, as outlined in (3) or (5) above, but held in reserve rather than used in ordinary circumstances. NATO would go on making most decisions by consensus, as at present. If a few member countries proved too obstinate, the Secretary General would have -- as one among his repertoire of methods, along with the �silence procedure� and others -- an option of calling a vote.

The argument for the last approach is the conservative one to keep change gradual. It would preserve the existing NATO organizational culture, with its habits of consensus and such virtues as those habits embody, rather than require NATO to adjust overnight to a full-fledged democratic voting culture. But it would upgrade the culture of consensus, by rewarding countries that move rapidly toward consensus rather than those that obstruct. The idea is that the mere existence of this option would be enough to let countries know that they cannot get away with trying to veto decisions, so they had better hurry up and cash in their disagreements for the sake of a compromise, or else they will simply get outvoted and lose their influence. It would be enough for the Secretary General to look around the table and say, �there are enough votes to get this passed,� to put the others on notice that time was running out on them.

Secondary legal issues would arise for decisions made without consensus, such as the precise authority for disposition of common resources. However, with a bit of determination, it would be easy to manage these matters. If France objected to use of NATO assets for which it paid its share, it could be offered a buy-out for its share. It would probably shut up and reject the offer, since accepting it would spell the end of its influence on future use of common resources, or of its claim to a fair share of the benefits.
 
The issue will remain, no matter how we muddle through this time
 
NATO may muddle through the present crisis without making any of these changes. The most probable outcome is that the diplomats will splice together some language that can be agreed unanimously, such that the French and Germans will be able to claim to have gained some concessions to their view, and most of what America and Turkey wanted will be granted by with some inconvenient detractions and loss of time. The Alliance will then lurch along until the next crisis, i.e. the next time a serious decision has to be taken.

It is reaching the point that every serious security issue is becoming a crisis for NATO�s decision-making system. In the post-Cold War era, there was only one real decision -- to prepare for defense against a Soviet invasion -- and it was an obvious one. That is no longer the case. Getting involved in Bosnia was a crisis; it took years to reach a consensus on that, with tens of thousands dying meanwhile, and lots of journalists saying that it showed NATO�s irrelevance now that the Cold War was over. Kosovo also took long, and once NATO had finally reached its decision, it felt so committed to the decision -- so afraid that its consensus would unravel if any amendments to the decision were considered, or if any delay were accepted leading to a requirement for a new decision later -- that the Alliance became rigid and acted at Rambouillet as if it were positively determined to have its war, rather than applying coercive diplomacy with any degree of diplomatic flexibility or skill. The question of defending Turkey is now a crisis, perhaps even more profound than the earlier ones. There will be many more.

The only recent decision that was not a crisis was the obvious one: the decision to invoke Article 5 on September 12, 2001 and join (declaratively) in America�s defense in the war started by the terrorists. Very few future decisions are going to be that obvious. And the impending increase in numbers of members will make consensus harder to reach even for simple decisions. NATO can be expected to lurch from crisis to crisis in its functioning until it makes substantial reforms in its decision-making.

GROWING SOFT:
HOW THE ARMIES OF EUROPE LET THEIR GUARD DOWN
GUARANTEED JOBS FOR SOLDIERS LEAVE LITTLE ROOM
TO BUY EQUIPMENT OR EVEN TRAIN -
BATTLE OF THE BELGIAN BANDS
Wall Street Journal, 13 Feb 03, By Philip Shishkin
 

NEDER-OVER-HEMBEEK, Belgium -- Chief Cpl. Rudy Christians, an impeccably coiffed military hairdresser, has been cutting soldiers' hair for 24 years, and he loves his work.
 
It's a full-time job, guaranteed until retirement, and until then, the 47-year-old has enough free time to pursue an amateur singing career featuring Elvis and Tom Jones numbers. When the military does send him on an occasional field exercise, he is amazed by the fellow soldiers lumbering around him. "All the people are so old," he says.

Recruits like this help explain why Europe's military muscle has grown soft, and why the U.S. can't count on substantial military help from many of its European allies.

Even if every member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization were to back a U.S. strike against Iraq, the military impact might not be huge. The 17 European countries in NATO have about 2.3 million active-duty troops, about a million more than the U.S. does. But many of NATO's forces are poorly equipped, in part because so much money is spent on pay and benefits that there is less left for the technology, weapons and other gear that modern forces need.

Washington has asked NATO for limited contributions to an Iraqi campaign, for both political and military reasons. Its requests to NATO have focused mainly on the defense of Turkey and a reconstruction of Iraq if war occurs. France, Germany and Belgium say it's too early to plan for war, and hope the Iraq crisis can be resolved peacefully.

While the U.S. spends 36% of its defense budget on pay and benefits, most NATO members in Europe earmark an average of nearly 65%. The U.S. military employs support staff, of course, and also faces rising costs per soldier, especially because of health care. Still, overall, the share of personnel spending in the U.S. defense budget has decreased by six percentage points since the early 1980s. NATO statistics show that such spending has grown by as much or more in Europe during the same period.

NATO officials acknowledge Europe needs to upgrade its military capabilities. "We could do with fewer troops, but better troops; better trained, better equipped, more mobile," NATO Secretary General George Robertson said last month at the World Economic Forum. "The problem in Europe is that there are far too many people in uniform, and too few of them able to go into action at the speeds that conflicts presently demand."
Belgium, for example, employs hundreds of military barbers, musicians and other personnel who aren't likely to be called into battle. Yet Belgium doesn't have the money to replace aging helicopters or conduct regular combat-training exercises. Germany drafts 120,000 people every year but can't afford to buy all the vital transport planes it wants; last year, budget crunches forced it to slash an order of planes to 60 from 73. German soldiers who went to Afghanistan as peacekeepers crowded into an aging, leased Ukrainian carrier that had to stop to refuel.
 
In France, one of the few NATO countries to increase its defense budget this year, military-procurement funding fell 14% between 1997 and 2002, leaving its forces wanting in such key areas as refueling aircraft and missiles. The French defense ministry says it will address procurement shortfalls in the new budget. Europe has 11 troop-transport planes, compared with 250 in the U.S., and most European members of NATO don't have any modern precision-guided munitions at all.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. has stepped up calls for Europe to put more emphasis on smart bombs, secure communications, special-forces units and long-haul planes to take them to battle. U.S. officials from President George W. Bush on down have pressed for more investment to offset what U.S. Gen. Joseph Ralston, the former NATO supreme allied commander for Europe, calls European militaries' "outdated and redundant fat." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told European defense ministers meeting in Warsaw last summer that unless they start spending more on key defense capabilities, the U.S. won't call on them for backing when it goes to war. "The phone just won't ring," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

European leaders say they want to streamline and modernize their armed forces, and some have started. Outfitting their militaries to be nimble and high-tech is vital if Europeans want to influence the U.S. policies with which Europe so frequently disagrees. The U.S. wants Europe to modernize so it can depend on other countries to share the job -- and cost -- of playing global cop.

But swift reform isn't possible in Europe because of labor laws, influential unions and a widespread conviction that defense spending shouldn't be a priority. Beyond that, Europe's economy is weak, and the 12 countries that use the euro are supposed to keep their deficits under 3% of gross domestic product. "It makes it difficult to create a real defense capability, even with all the troops," says Florentino Portero, military specialist for the think tank Grupo de Estudios Estrategicos in Madrid.

One reason Europe has so many soldiers is its strong military labor unions. Unheard of in the U.S. and Britain, these unions trace their history to the end of the 19th century, when disgruntled Dutch soldiers, unhappy about living conditions, banded together into a group called Ons Belang (Our Interests). Similar groups soon sprang up around Western Europe. In the 1970s, European military unions gained sweeping collective-bargaining rights, though they stay out of war-planning and deployment issues.

In Belgium, military unions are as powerful as anywhere on the Continent. On King Albert's birthday last June, a holiday for the Belgian military, unions deployed thousands of soldiers to Brussels to demand a raise in vacation pay. Soldiers chanted, drank beer and banged their aluminum mess bowls. "Show me the money," one officer shouted to a passing police van. The protest grew so rowdy that police cooled demonstrators off with a water cannon. But it was a success: An emergency session of the Belgian cabinet agreed to give soldiers -- already eligible for six weeks' annual vacation -- a raise in holiday benefits valued at about $500 each.

For Emmanuel Jacob, an artillery officer and a union leader who was on the front lines of the protest, it was a bittersweet victory. "We must be honest with ourselves," says Warrant Officer Jacob, secretary-general of Centrale Generale du Personnel Militaire, which represents 6,000 active-duty and 2,500 retired personnel. "Either we have a smaller number of people who are well-trained and equipped or we continue to defend a bigger army and it won't work in the future."

The average age of a Belgian soldier is 40 -- compared with 28 in the U.S. and 29 in the U.K. Most Belgian military personnel can retire at 56 with full pension benefits. The Defense Ministry acknowledges too many of its soldiers are too old, and says it is trying to recruit younger people. But Gerard Harveng, a spokesman for Defense Minister Andre Flahaut, says, "I'm not sure that the mission of the Belgian military is to fight." Instead, Belgium sees its military role mostly focused on peacekeeping operations.

During the Cold War, Washington's message to Europe was different than it is today. The U.S. encouraged heavy investments in troops to prepare for a Soviet land invasion. People who were drafted or signed up in the 1970s and 1980s were guaranteed full employment until retirement. Though it varies from country to country, some European governments, including Belgium, still have that policy today.

"Once you enter the military, you are in for life," says Maj. Renaud Theunens, 39, an intelligence officer who took a leave from the Belgian armed forces to work at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in the Hague. "It was quite unusual to ask to leave," he says. In the U.S., by contrast, it is more unusual for a soldier to make the military a career. Under its "up or out" policy, the Pentagon can force officers to leave if they fail to move up the ranks within a certain period of time. The U.S. government also has devised programs encouraging people to take early retirement and get jobs outside the military.

Belgium has cut its military payroll by half since the height of the Cold War, to 44,000. But it still spends some 67% of its annual defense budget of about $2.5 billion on pay and benefits and only about 5.4% on equipment. The U.S., with an annual defense budget of $366 billion, spends 22% on equipment, according to NATO.

The Belgian Defense Ministry's goal is to trim its military work force by 10% or so over the next decade, but the reductions can come only through attrition. Early efforts to cut the payroll have already run into opposition from military employees and labor unions. They rebelled in the early '90s, for example, against a proposal to merge Belgium's six military bands into one. "Each band has its own character and repertoire," says Alain Crepin, director of the Air Force orchestra, as his musicians pack up their instruments after daily practice on a deserted base. The Air Force band's repertoire includes jazz and other modern music, he notes, while the Army is heavy on the classics. Lumping them together to save money would be "stupid," he says. The government compromised, downsizing to three bands, with 260 members.

"We should have a major reform of personnel," says Stef Goris, a member of the Belgian parliament's defense committee and a former tank-battalion officer. The country has more than enough troops, he says, but "it's very hard to send them to a place like the Balkans because they aren't fit enough."

In the meantime, many soldiers are happy with military life. Chief Cpl. Jerome Loos, for instance, is part of an eight-member crew that makes lunch for about 100 people at an army base in Siysele. A typical meal: chicken, french fries and vegetable stew. He says his brother, a private-sector cook, works much harder. "I have lots of free time and good job security," says Cpl. Loos, who was drafted in 1986. An avid runner, he can go jogging between duties and be home by late afternoon to spend time with his kids. He gets 30 days paid vacation and earns about $20,000 a year after taxes. Once or twice a year, Cpl. Loos has to go on shooting exercises, but says he feels more comfortable with a knife in the kitchen.

There are cooks in the U.S. armed forces, though few are allowed to make careers of the job. Most food service on U.S. military bases is handled by private catering contractors. The Belgian military says it tried outsourcing cooking on a limited basis in the early 1990s, but it proved expensive.
For many, Belgium's lopsided spending ratio is frustrating. Belgians in combat positions don't train as regularly as the top brass would like. A lack of funds forced a cutback on training exercises. When they do practice, troops often use outdated or inadequate equipment. On an army base outside Brussels, Lt. Theo Blomme flies two transport choppers, a 10-year-old Augusta and a 30-year-old Allouette-2, both so small that only two or three people in combat gear can squeeze in at once.

For a safe battlefield rescue, Lt. Blomme says he would need a much bigger helicopter that could land, take in 20 soldiers and leave. With his small helicopters, he would have to evacuate in groups of twos and threes. "The enemy would hear you on the first approach and shoot you down on the second," says Lt. Blomme, 38. He says he feels silly training in an aircraft that will likely never see combat. "It's embarrassing."

The Belgian military says it wants to update its transport-chopper fleet, but the $500 million price tag is prohibitive right now. The Defense Ministry also has its sights set on a troop-transport ship and a fleet of infantry-transport vehicles. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be freed up for such purchases when its work-force-reduction plan is complete in 2013.

Over the next decade, Belgium will eliminate thousands of military jobs, close bases and consolidate operations. Units will be shuttered at the sprawling military hospital in Neder-Over-Hembeek, where many doctors now work four-hour days for full-time pay, allowing some of them to set up private practices. The hair salon where Cpl. Christians works will probably survive, but full-time military hairdressers, jobs that don't exist in the U.S., won't be replaced when they retire.

As a red-haired female officer sat down for a government-subsidized trim, Cpl. Christians took a break to reflect on his career. He was drafted at 19 following a brief stint as a civilian hairdresser. After a few years doing office work for the military, he landed a job as a barber. His military specialty is defending bases against aerial bombardment, but he has never seen combat. He takes home about $18,000 a year after taxes, and on Saturdays, he is free to work on his pop-singing act, something he didn't have time for in the private sector.

"Personally, I think it's important to have people like us in the military," he said. Hairdressers provide part of what Cpl. Christians sees as the three essentials of soldiers' happiness: "Good dress, good food and feeling good."

HOW GERMANY'S FALL FROM GRACE HARMS EUROPE
BusinessWeek, 17 Feb 03, by John Rossant

The East is Red, and the East starts in Bonn.

The international scene is tense. An ambitious French leader, eager to build a united Europe as a counterweight to an overweening and too-powerful U.S., cuts a broad political and economic deal with his German counterpart. Yet most European nations--led by Britain--recoil from this vision. It would, they say, sink the Atlantic alliance on which the security of Europe has previously depended. The Franco-German challenge fails.
 
Sounds like today's headlines, right? A new Berlin-Paris entente is angering both the U.S. and other European states for its outright opposition to America's saber-rattling against Iraq. In fact, the diplomatic crisis described above occurred in 1963, when an imperious Charles de Gaulle tried to meld French political prestige with Germany's economic might to counterbalance U.S. power.

Then, as now, other European states declined to sign up. Had Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder bothered to do a little back-of-the-envelope calculations before they announced their grand plans for Europe in mid-January, they would have realized that many European states would resist them. And resist they have.

This, then, is the cost of Germany's fall from grace: a deeply split Europe, more paralyzed than ever about its continued economic and political integration--and facing a damaging confrontation with the U.S. The German defiance is raising eyebrows even in France. ``Germany has neither economic power nor political vision anymore, so it's a waste of time [to make an alliance with it],'' says Pierre Lellouche, a member of Chirac's center-right political party.

The damage, though, has been done. Europeans everywhere are starting to worry about other fallout from a dysfunctional Germany. It represents, after all, one-third of the euro zone's economic output. That's why its failings can blunt what little dynamism remains in the Old World. Germany may still be an export powerhouse: There are always customers around the world for its cars, machine tools, and chemicals. But its $10 billion-a-month trade surplus demonstrates just how weak demand is back home. Depressed, dismayed, and angry Germans simply aren't spending anymore--and aren't doing their bit to help out the rest of Europe. A Teutonic pall is spreading across the Continent.

The story might have had a happier ending. Imagine what today's Europe would look like if Schroder had continued on the path of reforms he started in 1999 when he slashed capital-gains taxes and started to whittle away at state subsidies. The mere fact that Germany at last seemed to be making dramatic changes proved a powerful spur to others: Schroder's actions were invoked by reformers in Paris' center-left government as an example of what could be done. If Schroder had continued on that bold path, it could have set off a virtuous circle of pro-growth policies in the core of Europe. But he did an about-face and pandered to unions and the pacifist left.

Instead of Germany telling Europe what to do, it's time for the opposite to happen. Europeans should tell Berlin that serious reform is absolutely essential: Europe's stability depends on it.

Consider the alternative. If the tensions between Europe's slow-growth German-dominated core and its more dynamic periphery increase, then the dire warnings of former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Martin Feldstein will come true in spades. Writing long before the introduction of the euro, Feldstein worried about the consequences of a single currency in a multi-speed Europe. ``Instead of increasing intra-European harmony and global peace,'' Feldstein wrote in the U.S. magazine Foreign Affairs, a single currency ``would be more likely to lead to increased conflicts within Europe and between Europe and the U.S.''

Feldstein couldn't have predicted the flap over Iraq. But it's easy to imagine that the split between Germany and much of Europe over foreign policy may lead to even sharper differences over the whole European experiment. Finland, Ireland, Spain, and other small countries are already alarmed at Germany's inability to curb its budget deficits.

Pressuring Germany to curb spending, boost growth, and act like a responsible leader would be the best way of honoring Germany's pact with the rest of Europe. After all, Germany's fateful decision to abandon the then-mighty German mark for the euro was meant to ensure ``a European Germany rather than a German Europe,'' as former Chancellor Helmut Kohl ceaselessly reminded everybody. Kohl wanted to banish Europe's fears of German dominance. But contemplating Germany's weakness is just as scary.

GERMAN DAILY -
SCHROEDER AS "PIONEER OF GLOBAL PEACE MOVEMENT"
Der Spiegel / BBC Monitoring, 11 Feb 03

 
The German newspaper Der Spiegel says Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder sees himself as "the pioneer of a global peace movement" and appreciates that he is now in an "all-or-nothing" situation given the rising chorus of calls for his resignation. His admirers think that if his policy pays off, he could even be the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The following is the text of Markus Deggerich report by German Spiegel Online web site on 11 February entitled "Schroeder's biggest solo", subheadings as published:
 
Berlin: The chancellor is playing all or nothing. He is preparing the SPD [Social Democratic Party of Germany] for some hot days that will also decide his political future. He does not consider himself isolated but rather to be the pioneer of a global peace movement. Some of his fans are already talking of a Nobel Peace Prize for Schroeder.
Whenever the crisis seems worst, Gerhard Schroeder takes the bull by the horns. In unspoken competition with [Foreign Minister] Joschka Fischer, he rushed ahead with the German-French peace initiative and, in the eyes of many Greens, snubbed his vice-chancellor. In the SPD, he is making himself out to be a popular pioneer of a worldwide peace movement and thereby covering up the discussion within the party about the course of domestic political reform.

Bundestag [lower house of parliament] members from the SPD report that he was in brilliant form Monday evening [10 February] before the Bundestag group. In a special meeting of the group, Schroeder delivered a passionate speech. He dedicated 80 per cent of his statements to the Iraq crisis. Deputy group chairman Ludwig Stiegler raved that the Bundestag members were at the chancellor's "beck and call".

The chancellor is above things. He was almost defiant in defending his Iraq course and the frequently contradictory German position. Schroeder wanted to dispel the gloom after the election disasters in Hesse and Lower Saxony and close the ranks of the SPD for the expected difficult conflicts to come. For him it is all or nothing in the coming days and weeks: the opposition already thinks that he is ready to resign.

While Schroeder himself climbed into the ring before the Bundestag group, on Tuesday [11 February] the government sent its officials to background groups in Berlin to soft-pedal the veritable crisis in NATO. The federal government does not expect any serious consequences for NATO from the vote on Turkey, in which France and Belgium used their veto with German approval. On Tuesday, Schroeder let it be known that from the German point of view approval of the advance military planning for Turkey would have been the "wrong signal" because that would have increased the dynamic for war. Very much in passing, people are also saying that the German position on this question could possibly change in one or two months if Iraq continues to aggravate the situation through its lack of cooperation.
 
Chancellor spreads harmony
 
Government circles also said that one cannot totally rule out a situation in which Germany could accept coercive measures after the failure of all peace efforts because of resistance by Baghdad or other reasons. The indispensable precondition for that, however, is approval by the UN Security Council.

It is said that the government's decision to grant the United States overflight rights in any case in the event of war signalled that coercive measures cannot be ruled out. For example, an Iraqi attack against a neighbouring state, like the attack against Kuwait that triggered the Gulf War in 1991, could cause a change in the existing German position.
 
Chancellor as Prince of Peace
 
In the SPD, only Hans-Ulrich Klose made a critical comment in the Bundestag group on Schroeder's Iraq policy. The SPD politician concerned with foreign affairs stood alone, however.

Prince of Peace Schroeder is preparing his people: the chancellor spoke of a momentous "setting of the course" for the next 10 to 15 years, of no less than an "historic decision". Essentially the question of war and peace is a matter of whether just one power on earth has a say or whether the world will remain multipolar, that is, dependent not just on the mercy of the sole superpower, the United States. Schroeder, emphasizing that he is the people's chancellor, said that with his rejection of war he feels obligated only to his own people and not to other countries or heads of state. Accordingly, the people gave the red-green coalition a mandate to seek peace. And that is that.
Schroeder proudly read out to members of parliament the joint Iraq declaration from Germany, Russia and France and then formulated the bold conclusion: Berlin is not isolated, as people in Washington and elsewhere keep asserting. On the contrary, more and more countries are getting behind the German position to give peace a chance. This will become apparent in the coming days, according to the chancellor's office on Tuesday. Schroeder's friend Vladimir

Putin, president of Russia, will now go to China to push for a no in the Security Council.

The chancellor's office is analysing the situation at the outset with increasing self-confidence: Washington is far from a majority in the UN Security Council. The United States could count only on the votes of Great Britain, Spain, and Bulgaria if there were an immediate vote on war. "The rest support the German position," it was thought before the chancellor left for Lanzarote at noon. He will talk with Spain's head of state Jose Maria Aznar over two days there. The chancellor himself probably does not expect that he can still bring Aznar, the closest ally of George W. Bush in the EU after British Prime Minister Tony Blair, over to his side. Aznar is one of the initiators of the letter from European states that want to follow the course of the United States.

Schroeder is playing all out: there is hardly any going back for him after his clear statements to the Bundestag group. The members of parliament can still be swept along. Some of them even see their chief following the footsteps of Willy Brandt: if the peaceful disarmament of Iraq succeeds, then in their eyes Schroeder would be like "Willy of blessed memory" - a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. If he fails, he will fall very far.

Editor: You need to understand that Adolph Hitler intentionally told lies, and told them loud and endlessly, until the German people believed every word he screamed at them. Men who studied Hitler have concluded that he eventually believed his own lies. No one else in the world believed them, but when the German people get on a roll, they don't care who they offend. That is history. So, plan on it-- Schroeder will slap NATO, the USA, and the UK from now on, and the German people will scream for more and more. Putin will just stand back in the shadows and grin.

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