The French foreign minister has blasted Washington's new world view, saying it reduces everything to the war on terrorism, writes Jon Henley
Thursday February 7, 2002
It wasn't the first time and it will no doubt not be the last. But this week France's foreign minister - never one to dodge an argument, especially where America is concerned - was speaking for most of a continent in describing Washington's new world view as "simplistic".
In a full-frontal assault on the Bush administration's post-September 11 foreign policy, Hubert Védrine told French radio that Europe "is threatened today by a new simplism which consists in reducing everything to the war on terrorism. We cannot accept that idea. You have got to tackle the root causes, the situations, poverty, injustice".
Returning to a thesis he has propounded for most of the past year, the minister said Washington was approaching foreign policy "unilaterally, without consulting anyone, based on their interpretation and on their interests", and added: "It presents a problem because it is not our vision of the world, it is not our vision of international relations."
Mr Védrine's comments may be the harshest yet from the old continent, but they came amid genuine and mounting concern across Europe at the implications of President George Bush's controversial state of the union speech last week, in which he named Iran, Iraq and North Korea as sponsors of terrorism in an "axis of evil".
While the European Union fully backed the US-led campaign in Afghanistan, senior Spanish, German and French officials have all voiced their concern this week at the prospect of the war against terror being unilaterally widened.
While the EU undoubtedly shares US fears about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and about its support for anti-Israel groups, it remains highly dubious about the charge that Iran exports global terror or has links with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
Europe sees trade and cooperation, as well as support for the reform process and for opposition moderates, as the best way forward in Iran, the Spanish foreign minister, Josep Pique, said this week.
There is also concern in Europe that the aggressive US rhetoric could presage an attack on Iraq. Germany's deputy foreign minister, Ludger Volmer, said bluntly that Washington should not try to tar Baghdad with charges of terrorism in order to settle old scores.
It was left to Mr Védrine, however, to deliver the more general condemnation of US foreign policy. He is no stranger to the task: the French foreign minister has in the past attacked Washington's "new high-handed unilateralism" and strongly criticised the Bush administration's decisions to abandon the Kyoto accord on global warming and to pursue a missile defence scheme.
This time last year, he called the joint American and British air strikes on Baghdad "pointless", saying almost every other country in the world had expressed their "disapproval, criticism, doubt and disquiet" and that the world community wanted Washington to provide a "redefinition of the policy on Iraq", not more bombs.
But this time around France - often out on a limb in its frequent criticism of what the French like to call "American economic and cultural hegemony" - finds itself in the unusual position of not being alone.
Summing up Europe's concern at the Bush administration's new world view, the French defence minister, Alain Richard, said the EU's conception of world peace and its approach to resolving crises was simply "not that of the US".
Mr Bush's "axis of evil" certainly poses problems to international security, he said, but it was only one of a number of risks including the Middle East conflict. In a remark many European leaders might now share but only a Frenchman would voice, he described Mr Bush's apparent objective as "the exercise of political domination - purely and simply because he has the biggest boat".
Email jon.henley at guardian.co.uk