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Times - Europe or America: it's time for Britain to choose

Times Online - Comment

William Rees-Mogg

At the cost of consuming fish, chips and mushy peas in a Durham pub, President Bush has returned to the United States with a diplomatic success and, inevitably, a better understanding of the balance of British opinion. The President demonstrated that he was a serious and thoughtful man, and not the Texan cowboy of tabloid cartoons.

The President and the Prime Minister showed that theirs is a genuine partnership, with real elements of friendship and trust on both sides. Yet the unforeseen circumstance had the greatest effect. That was the bombing by al-Qaeda of British targets in Turkey. At the start of the President’s visit there were many people who had forgotten the underlying cause of the new Anglo-American alliance — not the alliance that dates back 62 years to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but the one that dates back two years from the bombing of the World Trade Centre.

In London, the weekend before the visit had been one of grumblings about the inconvenience, about the traffic, about the heavy security. The suicide bombs in Turkey, killing British people as well as Turkish, made their point. After the United States, Britain is regarded by al-Qaeda terrorists as their chief enemy. Britain is in this alliance with America and our political leaders work in partnership, because both our countries are under attack. The President’s state visit gave a physical expression to a joint determination to fight terrorism.

Of course, some people have argued that, if Britain had done nothing to provoke al-Qaeda, it might have been spared. I am old enough to remember the same arguments being used by the advocates of appeasement in the late 1930s. If Britain lets Hitler seize Czechoslovakia, they said, he will be satisfied with that. He will not turn on us: Hitler is a German patriot with limited aims.

We now hear the argument that it is the allied invasion of Iraq that has led to the bombs in Turkey and caused these tragic deaths. Yet Turkey is conspicuous as the country which changed its mind about supporting the American action. That did not save Turkey, and it certainly would not have saved us.

It was an additional credit to Mr Bush, which may have contributed to his rising support in British opinion, that it took courage for him to come here. There are at least 100 people in London who sympathise with al-Qaeda and would have been more than willing to murder the President if they had seen an opportunity. It took courage to stay in Buckingham Palace, a rambling old house with Victorian standards of security, as the Daily Mirror proved. It even took courage to go to a pub in Co Durham that had been named in all the newspapers the day before. The President’s secret servicemen must have had an anxious week.

This constant threat is a price that has to be paid by modern political leaders. Tony Blair faces the same danger. No one can have shaken hands with the President without for a second half-wondering whether that might not be the moment a terrorist bomb would explode.

There were, of course, protests, but they came to less than had been expected. The protests were concerned with Middle East policy, primarily with the campaign in Iraq and secondly with US support for Israel. Interestingly, there was little protest from the advocates of European integration, although the balance between Britain’s relationship with the United States and that with “old Europe” is becoming a central question for our foreign policy.

The Americans, as Irwin Steltzer was explaining here last week, are becoming increasingly worried at the risk of losing Britain to Europe which, under Franco-German leadership, they see as increasingly hostile to the United States.

They are concerned about the new European constitution. British politicians are divided. Some are Europhiles who want Britain to make a clear and total commitment to the European Union and its new draft constitution, even at the expense of integration into a European federation. They would accept a common European defence force at the expense of Nato, and a common European foreign policy potentially antagonistic to the United States.

Some hope for a friendly, free trade relationship with Europe, but reject the new constitution and oppose integration into a single European state. If forced into a choice between Europe and the United States, they would probably choose the United States. Others want to leave the European Union and resume full British independence.

At present the Government belongs to none of these groups, but hopes it will be possible to continue to ride both horses, and simultaneously be Europeanist and Atlanticist. Perhaps Mr Blair shares the philosophy of Harold Wilson: “If you cannot ride three horses at once, you should not be in the bloody circus.”

In each of the major parties at Westminster one can find some Members of Parliament who support each of these views. Each party is divided, although the Liberal Democrats are predominantly Europhile, the Conservatives predominantly Eurosceptic, and most Labour members believe, as the Tories used to, in a judicious straddle. It is a very governmental posture.

While the President and the Prime Minister were discussing the Anglo-American alliance in London, President Chirac of France and Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, were discussing the Franco-German alliance. One cannot consider these two relationships separately. As a senior French official put it last week, “the British must choose. Either they are with us, united in Europe, where they should be, or they are destined to become united with America, something like an American state.”

This is an exaggeration. I know many Americans who value Britain’s close alliance with the United States highly but hardly any who believe that a federal merger of British and American sovereignty is either desirable or practical. If our objection to the European constitution is that we do not want to be submerged in a federal structure, we are unlikely to seek a federal marriage with the United States. After all, Canada has never felt it necessary to seek admission to the Union. Nevertheless, there probably will be a choice to be made.

The development of the European constitution, and the ever-closer links of the Franco-German alliance, could present us with the choice British statesmen have been trying to avoid since 1945: Europe or America? Are we a Continental or an Atlantic nation? The combination of the centralisation of the new constitution with the close Franco-German alliance creates the difficulty.

If France and Germany act together, as a federation inside a federation, they can dominate Europe under the new constitution. Even in qualified majority voting terms, they will effectively have the power to block any European laws they do not like. We shall lose our veto, but France and Germany will, in practice, keep theirs. Britain might conceivably be persuaded to join a democratic European federation of the 25. Britain is likely to recoil from a bureaucratic European superstate dominated by France and Germany.

So will other European powers. When I was last in Denmark I was astonished by the depth of Danish fears of Franco-German dominance; they are particularly suspicious of the French. Similar fears are felt in Poland, Italy and Spain. These fears of a Europe which would really become a Franco-German empire, as Germany became the Prussian Empire after 1871, could lead to the rejection of the draft constitution, itself a French document.

Last week’s visit by President Bush confirmed the importance of the Anglo-American alliance to Britain and to the United States. In today’s talks, President Chirac will be discussing the European constitution with Mr Blair. The Prime Minister believes in the American alliance; he also believes in Britain’s European future. The draft constitution would make it impossible for him to remain loyal to both alliances.

If he agrees to President Chirac’s proposal that the constitution should go through almost unchanged at next month’s Brussels summit, the Prime Minister will be opting for integration in a Franco-German Europe, as against alliance with the United States. If that is what he prefers, he must at least be open about it. Such an historic decision is not for him alone: it must have the full, informed consent of the British people, which can be expressed only in a referendum.

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November 23, 2003 at 08:09 PM in Special Relationship | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home