This weekend, Bernard Kouchner reaffirmed his status as Europe's most fearless foreign minister by flying into Nasiriya, Iraq, soon after the airbase had come under attack.
He was there to promise new aid. France has offered little to Iraq since 2003. But two days earlier, one of Kouchner's top aides had been in Stockholm for a UN-sponsored conference on Iraqi reconstruction, along with Condoleeza Rice and Ban Ki-moon.
It's not easy to get excited about one more conference on the topic. The Swedish hosts had played down what it could achieve. But Secretary of State Rice was right to be there.
For the first time since 2003, a consensus is emerging in the EU on the need to do more for Iraq. There is a risk that the United States will not take advantage of this opportunity.
Previous European efforts to help Iraq have been fragmented and flawed. The 27 EU members combined have offered less aid than Japan alone.
While the Administration initially trumpeted European troop commitments to Iraq, these have faded away or become of marginal utility, like the British troops in Basra.
NATO, once tipped to play a significant role, has confined itself to a 160-strong training mission in Baghdad. The European Commission - the EU's secretariat - has pledged $1 billion in aid, but its actual presence is limited to a handful of officials, borrowing space in the British embassy. Many European nations have no diplomats in the country at all.
US officials nod to the need for better co-operation with the Europeans. But in contrast to the Administration's strenuous efforts to get more support from its NATO allies in Afghanistan, there has been little sustained effort to chart a common course on Iraq.
For many EU leaders, discounting Iraq as a domestic liability, that has been just fine. But there is growing awareness that it may not be sustainable. As Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister and war critic, has written, Iraq "has helped give rise to a new Middle East, one which threatens to be more volatile than its predecessor."
European diplomats have privately admitted for some time that they could not ignore Iraq forever. But in recent weeks, private talk has given way to public statements. A visit by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to Brussels in April proved a catalyst: the European Commission trumpeted its desire for "an energy security partnership" with Baghdad.
Even in those countries that most virulently opposed the war, the mood is changing. Bernard Kouchner has long stated his desire to do more in Iraq, while German foreign policy intellectuals have become particularly vocal in calling for a new direction.
Getting from private to public statements is a step forward. Shifting from rhetoric to real engagement in Iraq will be an even bigger one.
What such engagement will look like is uncertain but parts of it are clear. More, better-targeted aid? Yes. Assisting UN mediation? Yes. Support for what Barack Obama calls a "diplomatic surge" across the Middle East? Absolutely. New troops? Not a chance.
The challenge for the Europeans is how to align with US policy. They will not follow Washington blindly, but their strategy for Iraq has to fit in with US commitments.
But who on earth can say what these will be a year from now?
Not the current Administration, of course. And with the McCain and Obama camps so far apart on Iraq policy, European leaders don't know what to base their assumptions on. The momentum for new policies could therefore dissipate before next January as a result.
To avoid wasting the current opportunity, the presidential candidates should agree to set up an entirely independent team to canvass European views and share ideas for what to do next in Iraq. It should be charged to report this winter, once the elections are done.
Their findings - a sort of transatlantic Iraq Study Group Report - could prove important part not only to Iraq's future, but to revitalizing the battered US-European relationship.
Daniel Korski is a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a Special Adviser to the U.S Project on National Security Reform.
Richard Gowan is Associate Director of Policy at the NYU Center on International Cooperation and UN Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Related materials from the Atlantic Community:
- Natalia Ruban: US in Iraq: Is the International Community Needed?
- Daniel Rackowski: Think Tank Analysis: Rethinking European Defense Policy
- Daniel Korski: How Britain Now Runs European Security
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June 5, 2008
Michael Schuster, University of Vienna, Silver Contributor (69)
The US and Britain acted against popular opinion in all European countries, when they started the war in 2003. Only a few governments like Italy and Spain supported the war, but those governments are out. (Well, Berlusconi is back. Crazy.)
My point is: Europeans don't feel responsible for Iraq. Thus the European leaders cannot do more in Iraq. That's how the cookie crumbles.
We are not even doing our fair share in Afghanistan. We have to do more over there first.
The US and Britain have to finish alone what they started in Iraq.