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Europe Gives Cold Shoulder to US NMD Delegation
European countries expressed welcome for consultations with the United States on its national missile defense system (NMD) but none of them gave definite support to the system after a week-long lobbying effort by a US delegation.
The delegation held talks in various European capitals, but it did not get a chance to see the president or prime minister of any country.
At the NATO headquarters in Brussels, the delegation tried to prove the necessity of the defense system by emphasizing the threat from a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But NATO Secretary General George Robertson just wanted to learn more about the system.
In Britain, a country which has "special relations" with the United States, Prime Minister Tony Blair, on the eve of the country's general election, said his country would make its decision only after the United States offers specific suggestions.
Paris stated its opposition to the missile defense system once again. A spokesman of the French Foreign Ministry noted that his country's "stands and concerns" were known to all.
Berlin raised a lot of questions and asked for efforts to jointly find a way to solve them. In an informal summit meeting later, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder coordinated their stands on the matter and urged Washington to listen to its allies' views on the defense policy, especially on the deployment of the missile shield.
Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark also expressed reservations about the U.S. missile defense plan.
Reasons vary for the European countries' indifference toward the U.S. missile defense system.
Widespread in European countries is the concern that the United States would act willfully on the matter and thus break the existing global strategic balance, leading to a new round of arms race and bringing new uncertainties to European security.
This concern is not baseless and the Europeans are especially concerned about Russia's attitude toward the U.S. missile defense plan.
The U.S. lobbying delegation also visited Moscow. Russian leaders made it clear that their country's opposition to revising the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems remained unchanged.
Russian military sources pointed out that many key technical problems remained to be solved in the U.S. missile defense system and if the United States insisted on implementing the system, Russia had sufficient countermeasures. This, no doubt, represented a warning to West European countries.
The Bush administration has changed the name of the system from the National Missile Defense to the Missile Defense (MD) and committed itself to "protecting" the security of its allies. But this failed to remove the concerns on the part of these countries.
So long as the technical problems of the MD are not completely solved and its prospects remain unclear, any support from European countries for the U.S. system would amount to blindly participating in a dangerous game directed by the United States.
The position of the European countries also reflects the status quo of the European-U.S. relations: The European Union is distancing itself from the United States over foreign policy. During the four months since it came to office, the Bush administration has stirred up trouble everywhere in the world.
It went ahead with its MD plan in defiance of international opposition, it refused to implement the Kyoto Protocol on global climate changes and it frowned upon the EU plan to create an independent defense. All this has caused widespread revulsion and discontent among European countries.
The Europeans believe that what the United States is practicing is a kind of arrogant and selfish unilateralism.
On its part, the European Union has recently made a series of diplomatic moves that are in sharp contrast with those of the United States. It has made efforts to strengthen and develop relations with Russia, China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and increased its participation in the Middle East affairs, with the aim of playing a bigger role in and exerting greater influence on the international affairs.
On the U.S. intention to build the missile defense system, the Europeans know very well that the system not only directs against Russia and China, it also aims to strengthen U.S. control of Europe and check its centrifugal force. And this clearly runs counter to the EU's long-term strategic objective of becoming a pillar of the world and playing a major role on the international arena.
However, in view of its aggregate strength at present, the European Union is not able to overcome its dependence on the United States in military affairs for the time being.
Regarding the MD, it is difficult for the EU to form a united front against the United States due to the many restricting factors both inside and outside the area.
The difference between Europe and the United States over this issue is also not easy to be ironed out quickly and is expected to become an issue affecting the transatlantic relationship.
U.S. President Bush will pay his first visit to Europe in mid- June. He is scheduled to meet EU leaders when they gather for a summit in Stockholm, Sweden, and attend a special NATO summit in Brussels. Bush will take advantage of the opportunities to continue hawking the MD system to his European allies in an effort to persuade them to accept it. Hence, a new debate is expected to erupt again at that time.
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