For a body that prides itself on its “soft power,” the European Union has a remarkable capacity to stymie its own diplomatic goals through inept diplomacy.
A classic example was the UN-brokered agreement to reunify Cyprus in 2004, when the EU promised to admit Greek Cyprus regardless of whether it accepted the agreement, whereas Turkish Cyprus would be admitted only if both sides accepted the plan. The results were predictable: Greek Cypriots, their reward assured regardless of their behavior, had no reason to make even the minimal concessions the plan entailed, so they rejected it. But Turkish Cypriots, who approved it, were penalized: even the minor economic benefits the EU pledged after the vote never materialized, because Greek Cyprus used its shiny new EU veto to block them. Five years later, the negotiations drag on, and the island remains divided.
The EU is now poised to make the same mistake in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, via a draft document proposed by its rotating president, Sweden, that Israeli diplomats say EU foreign ministers look certain to adopt on December 7. The document reportedly details every concession the EU expects Israel to make to the Palestinians but specifies no reciprocal Palestinian concessions. And it thereby feeds Palestinian illusions that they need not make any concessions; the international community will simply force Israel to accept all their demands.
Specifically, the document says that East Jerusalem must be the capital of the Palestinian state and that the 1967 lines must be its borders, unless the Palestinians choose otherwise. It also implies that the EU would recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state in these borders “at the appropriate time.”
But it doesn’t demand that the Palestinians give up their dream of resettling millions of descendants of refugees in Israel — something everyone recognizes as a sine qua non of any agreement.
It doesn’t demand border adjustments to account for the hundreds of thousands of Jews who live over the Green Line, especially in Jerusalem, though everyone knows this is necessary: no agreement that entailed evicting hundreds of thousands of Israelis from their homes would ever pass the Knesset.
It doesn’t demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state or acknowledge Jewish rights on the Temple Mount. It doesn’t require any security arrangements. It doesn’t even call for recognizing West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Normally, these issues would be resolved during negotiations. But if the EU has already “given” the Palestinians East Jerusalem and the 1967 borders, the Palestinians have no need to make concessions on, say, the “right of return” in exchange. Nor need they make such concessions in exchange for anything else, because once borders and Jerusalem are off the table, Israel has nothing left to give. In short, Israel will have no means of extracting the concessions it needs for a viable deal. Therefore, there will be no deal.
Adopting this document would thus kill any chance of achieving one of the EU’s own stated top priorities: Israeli-Palestinian peace. Evidently, some diplomats never learn.
“There were all those German thinkers like Hegel and Nietzsche who knew our decadence would do us in.”
I’m perplexed by this. What did Nietzsche say about the United States? As for Hegel, he said:
“America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s History shall reveal itself.”
i am not gonna defend europe, let alone the french, but the reality is that america has pursued for quite a long while atrociously ignorant and damaging policies, both internal (see the market collapses every decade or so, energy, spending chinese loans, etc) and external (incompetence in iraq, pakistan, afghanistan and the israeli-palestinian conflict), that despite its huge resources, the consequences are beginning to show.
it’s those huge resources that have caused these consequences to take a very long time to show, but unless america corrects its collapsed education system and its ignorance about the rest of the world, particularly the jihadist danger, the belief that it won’t ever be demised is misplaced and even dangerous.
Ken,
You raise a great question. But the Hegel quote first has to be fleshed out: “America is … the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s History shall reveal itself–perhaps in a contest between North and South America.” America, for Hegel, had promise to the degree it was willing to do something about its inherent speedbump of decadence in the form of racial plurality. At least that’s the way I’ve always understood the full quote. But, you can bet I won’t argue too forcefully with a diverging or even opposite reading.
Abe
This is disappointing to hear from Kouchner. I had higher hopes for him. And flailing about for an excuse to talk to terrorists is pathetic. Why not have the courage of his cowardly convictions and just cop to the fact that the hard road necessary for Gaza to reach maturity is just not one the French can stomach?
As for oao’s comments; “real americans”, “real patriots”, “real conservatives”, and a multitude of others have been doffing their hats and mourning the passing of America’s once great promise for as long as Europeans have been anticipating it’s immenint collapse. America is not the greatest country in the world because we have a magical constitution or the correct traditions or the one true path. We’re great cause anyone able to lead is welcome to try and failure is never the end. I won’t argue the other “points” he makes about failing markets in a 14 trillion dollar economy or the Chinese continued eagerness to buy American bonds or why “failure” in foreign policy is a result of Executive Incompetence and not just a perfectly rotten Muslim world that will take a very long time to fix. Those spasms don’t seem informed enough to really withstand any comprehensible objections.
Too bad about Kouchner, though. I wonder if he’ll try to run this back at all in the next few days.
Yes, it’s like much of what Hegel said. Nobody knows what it means.
Ken Silber,
More perplexing is the note on which some of Hegel’s later books end: “And so Germany became Top Nation, and History came to an End.”
Kierkegaard once said if Hegel had mentioned “This is all just a thought-experiment,” he would have been the greatest thinker who ever lived.
apologist,
had you read carefully what I said you would have realized that I think america is in trouble not because the europeans or the french sais so — they have no credibility whatsoever — but because america IS objectively in decline, economically and politically.
to see that all you gotta do is compare bush’s policies at the beginning of his term with the current ones. there isn’t one that he has not reversed. about the only thing he can do now is bully israel to commit suicide and pay the price for his own atrocious mistakes (e.g. hamas elections, iraq rather than afghanistan/pakistan/iran, etc.).
you cannot possibly ignore the reality that america is spending trillions on a war which it is borrowing from china and the arabs, and from selling sections of itself to the arabs. all this while its entire educational system has collapsed, the economy is self-destructing via institutionalized robbing, there is no energy policy or even a train system and the infrastructure crumbles.
this has nothing to do with kouchner and he probably wouldn’t have said it had america still been at the top.
Regarding America’s decline, well we’ve heard it all before.
Things change, indeed; but a nation that engages in the kind of self-critique as does America, that can continue to reinvent itself with great resourcefulness, that continues to attract immigrants of all kinds because of the opportunity that it provides (whether real or imagined, but mostly real), a nation that is strong in so many ways and yet does not necessarily extol strength, a nation that attracts the animosity of totalitarian bullies (and their supporters) worldwide; seems to me a nation with such resilience should not be counted out.
As for Kouchner, his latest ramblings are indeed a grave disappointment for such a great man. But then, we all have our moments….
Idiots Sans frontieres?
oao – you write “this has nothing to do with kouchner and he probably wouldn’t have said it had america still been at the top.” I have lived in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s and some people – not least the the elites – were always talking about America´s downfall. It would be caused by their bad education (Americans can´t fine Europe on a map!), for preferring the quick dollar over honest work (they´re not making quality stuff – except missiles!), for imperial overstretch (nuff said). I would not be surprised to learn that Kouchner has been among those voices decades ago.
This alone does not disprove your other points. However, I´m also not sure that America has been that incompetent in her ventures abroad. There is simply no benchmark. Perfection is not attainable. Who would have done better? No other nation has ever attempted anything like the US in Iraq. Most would be satisfied with putting another strongman in place or massacring everybody. And many fail even at that.
So let me understand this.
It was not only right, but required, that the America liberate France from the Nazi’s in the 1940′s, but it is wrong & evil for the U.S. to liberate the Iraqis from their murderous dictator in 2002.
I got it.
1 euro = $1.55
dead-ender,
i very much doubt that america went into iraq to liberate the iraqis. there are people much more deserving to be liberated, yet the US does not liberate them.
america went into iraq for the same reason that it went into europe during ww2: to protect its own national interest where it is capable of achieving its goals. liberation, if it occurs, is a side-effect of the action. anybody who thinks otherwise is only deluding himself.
it was in america’s interest to defeat hitler and protect europe from the ussr after the war. whether it was in america’s interest to invade AND STAY in iraq is debatable. but if it went, it should have known much more about it than it did. the information was available, but was arrogantly ignored, as it is now about the arab-israeli conflict.
el gordo,
i am well aware of the history of european envy and ingratitude. my point was only about kouchner, not about europe or france in general. HE would not have said this had he not observed decline.
nobody’s talking about perfection. the ww2 intervention was competent. the iraqi one was atrocious. that’s because the US understood europe pretty well. but it understands very little abour the ME. projecting from itself to europe was reasonable. doing the same to the ME spells disaster.
forget europe — it’s being lost to islamization. we should be very concerned about america’s current circumstances and what it does to itself, not about what the europeans say about it.
Being as the EU doesn’t seem particularly fond of reproducing, I don’t know how long they can keep up any sort of opposition.
at least they have a half decent currency, unlike the bush bernanke greenback
Mo Lester,
even the wealthy countries in Europe suffer from inflation. The poorer countries are even worse off.
One euro couldn’t buy a sugar packet for a cup of coffee.
techie,
they can’t even oppose being taken over by islamization.
ziggy- one euro can buy one dollar and 55 cents. so a dollar would buy even less than a sugar packet for a cup of coffee
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For a body that prides itself on its “soft power,” the European Union has a remarkable capacity to stymie its own diplomatic goals……