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Lebanon Peacekeeping Troops

Exposing Europe's Weakness

By SPIEGEL Staff

European governments are celebrating the agreement over a peacekeeping mission for Lebanon as a success for the EU's common security policy. But the difficulty assembling the force troops shows just how far Europe still has to go before it can claim to have a common foreign policy.

In the end, it wasn't just a success -- it was a big success. Almost a breakthrough. Appearing at a press conference on Friday, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan mused: "Europe has lived up to its responsibility and provided the backbone of the force."

Next up was German Foreign Minster Frank-Walter Steinmeier. "This was a success for Europe," he told the gathered reporters. If things go well in Lebanon, enthusiastic Italian Foreign Minister Massimo d'Alema said, perhaps the international peacekeeping force could later be deployed to restore order in the Gaza Strip.

But ultimately, the foreign minister's meeting in Brussels on Friday was a big piece of political theater. It provided a happy ending to a something that European leaders had threatened to turn into a farce. The 11th-hour agreement to send a 7,000-strong European contingent as part of the UN peacekeeping force for southern Lebanon created the illusion of a common foreign policy among European Union member states that doesn't truly exist. Indeed, the actual state of the EU's joint foreign policy was perhaps best expressed by Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioka.

An angry Tuomioka told a Finnish newspaper in early August that his 24 colleagues in the EU play a "game of intrigue" and that they prepare for joint meetings as if they are preparing for "negotiations with countries of potentially hostile intent." Every single document relating to the Middle East conflict "is known within an hour in Tel Aviv and apparently Washington and Moscow, too." That, the Finn argued, is no way to forging ahead with a working common foreign policy in Europe.

Not that anyone flinched. At best, the only thing that may have surprised Tuomioka's colleagues was the clarity of his words. The 25 minister are perfectly aware of the state of making foreign policy in the EU.

For the past seven years, Europeans have been attempting to expand a union that until now has largely been limited to economic policy to also include foreign and security matters. The aim was to prevent the kind of paralysis seen during the bloodshed in the Balkans in the 1990s. Back then, Europe was unable to stop the wars and ethnic cleansing as Yugoslavia disintegrated.

As a consequence, European leaders agreed in 1999 to create a 60,000 strong European rapid reaction force. Even though there are already European forces present in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Democratic Republic of Congo under the EU flag, the rapid reaction force's readiness for deployment is limited.

Indeed, the idea remains fiction today that the EU could secure a position at the forefront of world order with a collective foreign policy and a self-contained defense. Even the idea of being a second-tier player -- behind the US but close or alongside Russia and rising powers like China and India -- seems remote today. And as far as French President Jacques Chirac's dream of a Europe that could "balance out" the United States goes? It has been long forgotten.

For unlike its rivals on the global political stage, Europe does not act as a single unit. There is no single government that can issue orders to a unified army. There isn't even an EU foreign minister who could help bring together the diverging interests of the Portuguese, the Poles, Germans, Irish, Brits and French into a single policy. In the end, each country is looking out for its own interests -- despite any vows to the contrary.

There has hardly been another time when that was as clear as it was last week. Europe continued to haggle long after developing countries like Nepal, Bangladesh and Malaysia had given clear troop commitments to the United Nations. Above all, it was the French who did the most to confuse the situation.

Waffling in Paris, reservations in Berlin

At the beginning of August, Paris signalled that it would be ready to make 5,000 soldiers available for the peacekeeping force. Less than three weeks later, however, Chirac drew back. Initially, Chirac announced his country would only send 200 men to strengthen the existing blue helmet peacekeeping force in Lebanon. The news shocked Paris's European partners.

Diplomats across Europe tried to figure out why Chirac had changed his mind. Were there tensions between the office of the president and the Foreign Ministry? Was there a quarrel between Chirac and the military? Or was it just an adept maneuver on the part of the French -- as was witnessed during the negotiation of UN Resolution 1701 -- to use its troop offer in order to extract more concessions from the Americans?

Or perhaps Chirac just briefly dropped the ball. Throughout the negotiations over the resolution in New York, Chirac engaged in the process from his vacation and, when an agreement was finally reached in the cease-fire, he was able to claim to be its "father."

"Chirac was so happy, and rightfully so, about convincing Bush to stop the combat operation," a Chirac advisor said, describing the French president's behavior, "that he neglected the consequences."

Under pressure from military leaders, Chirac quickly pulled back. The French army's leadership is still deeply traumatized by a brutal car-bomb attack in Beirut that killed 58 French soldiers in 1983. Instead of the hoped for larger contingent of troops, a smaller number of French soldiers landed in southern Lebanon last week. The image of two rubber dinghies carrying the French flag landing at on the beach at Naqura in Lebanon was the subject of much mockery and derision.

Nevertheless, in the end the French got the conditions they needed to provide a clearer mandate for the troops they would send to the Mideast. On Thursday night, Chirac came around: France announced it would send up to 2,000 men and that it would also be willing to lead the force. The decision came as a relief to Germany. If the French had ducked out, the call for German troops would have become much louder. And that's exactly what the government in Berlin was seeking to avoid.

For weeks, the German government has kept a low profile. After all, in Europe the formation of troops is a strategic maneuver whereby whichever country blinks first loses. When German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung suggested that Germany would "not be able to refuse" a military contribution, he was promptly ordered back in line. German history, Chancellor Angela Merkel said, portentously, demanded serious reserve about deploy troops there.

Berlin only made an offer at the point where it could no longer delay doing so -- eventually agreeing to send war ships to the Mediterranean. Germany -- the continental European power -- would limit its contribution to a handful of ships from the German fleet. In total, Germany will send 1,200 troops who would use speed boats, reconnaissance jets and frigates to patrol the Lebanese coast. However, Berlin is still awaiting a formal request from the Lebanese government before it can help patrol the 225-kilometer long stretch of coastline. Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, must also approve the mandate.

Rome's gambit

The weakness showed by Paris, London and Berlin, provided the Italians with a chance to position themselves as an important European player. With its offer to send 3,000 troops to Lebanon, the new left-wing government of Romano Prodi was able to elegantly differentiate its foreign policy from that of predecessor Silvio Berlusconi. The former prime minister sent Italian troops to Iraq to be alongside the Americans. But Prodi's move will enable him to sell himself as an arbiter of peace to voters. It also enables him to cautiously distance himself from Washington without irritating the US.

The motives for the individual EU member states were so tangled and complex that, for a time, they made it look as though there wouldn't be a powerful peacekeeping force for Lebanon. Elmar Brok, a German member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union Party and chairman of the Foreign Policy Committee of the European Parliament, described the "back and forth" as "embarrassing." Meanwhile, a confidant of the German defense minister said the negotiations were reminiscent of an oriental bazaar -- and comparable to the months-long tug-o-war in Europe over the military mission to provide security during Congolese elections.

Indeed, that could be the next endurance test for Europe foreign policy. If the Congo deployment, which is scheduled to end in November, takes longer than expected (and many believe it will), it will bring with it the next agonizing over what member states send troops. France has already signalled that it will need the troops it currently has stationed in Congo for the long-term deployment in Lebanon.