The difficulties of maintaining a common transatlantic front against Iran were on display last week when European officials suddenly voiced concern about Barack Obama’s public pledge to open talks with Tehran. A U.S. initiative of this sort, the officials said, could undercut the work they have done to make the Iranians suspend nuclear enrichment as a precondition for a full dialogue.

In the past, the so-called “EU-3″ - Britain, France and Germany - had chafed at the Bush administration’s refusal to envision direct talks with Tehran, complaining that Washington needed to be more directly involved in supporting the EU trio in trying to negotiate with Tehran. Last year, a common front emerged behind a Western demand that Tehran suspend nuclear enrichment as a precondition for the EU to move forward with its “carrots” and for Washington to lay down its “stick” to the degree of exploring direct high-level contacts with Tehran.

Now European governments worry that the position taken by Obama in the presidential primary campaign - in which he advocated sitting down with adversaries without preconditions - goes far past the negotiating position that Europe has been taking in tandem with Washington.

The transatlantic split came to light in an article by Glenn Kessler that appeared in the Washington Post on June 22 reporting the unease felt by Europeans in regard to Obama’s promise to open diplomatic talks with Iran without any preconditions. François Heisbourg, a Paris-based strategic analyst, was quoted saying: “Dropping a unanimous Security Council condition would simply be interpreted by Iran and America’s allies as unconditional surrender, and America’s friends would view this as confirmation of America’s basic unreliability.”

The EU has adopted a dual approach - a carrot-and-stick policy, if you will - for dealing with Iran. On the “carrot” side, they recently joined Russia, China, and the US in offering Iran an incentive package that included the promise of diplomatic talks, trade agreements and aid in developing a civilian nuclear program in exchange for the suspension of its uranium enrichment. However, after Tehran failed to give an answer on the incentive offer, the European states came together and issued a set of new sanctions on Monday, June 23.

Based on measures previously agreed upon by the U.N. Security Council, the sanctions target businesses and individuals believed to be connected to Iran’s nuclear programs. Iranian senior experts and officials such as Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar and Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, will be denied visas to the EU and the assets of Iran’s largest bank - Bank Melli, which has branches in Paris, Hamburg and London - will be frozen. The US imposed similar sanctions on Bank Melli’s activity in America last year.

Despite the EU’s hard line, officials maintain that the incentive package is still on the table if Iran agrees to halt its enrichment.

Iran has repeatedly refused to suspend its uranium enrichment, arguing that it is intended for civilian uses such as electricity generation. Western capitals suspect that Iran’s nuclear-energy program is merely a cover for making nuclear weapons.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini condemned the new EU sanctions as “illegal” and warned that they could hurt future diplomatic efforts. It remains to be seen whether these latest sanctions will affect Iran enough to push them to halt the enrichment. Past sanctions by the U.N. Security Council and the United States have failed to do so thus far, and skyrocketing oil prices may cushion the economic impact of the latest sanctions in Iran, the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter. Some also predict that the sanctions will merely continue to push Iran’s focus away from the West and closer to China and other areas of Asia. After the EU announced the new economic sanctions, Iran’s new parliamentary speaker - Ali Larijani, the former Iranian nuclear negotiator, who seems to be a political moderate — warned that the sanctions could push Iran away from diplomacy.

Updates:

“US considers sending envoys to Iran,” Financial Times, 25 June 2008

“The Europeans Step Up,” New York Times, 28 June 2008

“New US Nuclear Sanctions on Iran,” BBC News, 8 July 2008

The Irish “no” to the European Union’s modernization blueprint has fueled a new round of skeptical American commentary about Europeans’ real ambitions. “In Europe, a Slide Toward Irrelevance” was the title of an opinion piece in the Washington Post by Robert Kagan, a foreign-policy adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain. “The danger of this latest blow to European confidence is that our allies, including Britain, could gradually sink into global irrelevance,” Kagan wrote.

This view dwells on an alleged pattern in which European voters seem to shun opportunities to gain unity for EU action. Further, it appears as if Europe’s governments have been unable to put together the political clout necessary to match the EU’s economic weight. This new negative view among some analysts about the EU’s lack of ambition is the opposite of the prevailing concern in recent years in Washington about the risks of seeing the EU seek to become a counter-balancing power to the United States in international affairs.

Nowadays, according to Kagan, Europeans seem hesitant to gird themselves to face a growing array of challenges. The outcome of the Irish ballot has left the EU less equipped to deal with Western economic slowdown, the increasingly competitive Asian sector, mounting European dependence on imports of monopolized Russian energy, and immigration and assimilation issues. The Treaty of Lisbon – now in limbo – was intended to address a number of these problems, notably by restructuring the EU’s leadership institutions to provide a stronger voice on the international level.

Now the proposed treaty is threatened with unraveling. Ireland was the only country where it was put to a popular vote, and European leaders say privately that it would have been rejected in some other EU nations that chose to avoid putting it to vote by sticking to the formula of parliamentary ratification.

Such questions about Europeans’ deepest – and perhaps unconscious – attitudes are not confined to Washington. Gideon Rachman, a leading commentator of the Financial Times in London, seems to concur in Kagan’s skepticism about Europeans’ political will, writing recently that Europeans may actually prefer a kind of “nirvana” based on weakness rather than having to shoulder the burdensome responsibilities of a global political and economic power. Europeans, Rachman said, may ultimately want nothing more than to become a kind of super-safe Switzerland, with no real voice in world power politics.

Hubert Vedrine, the former French foreign minister, expressed similar questions about Europeans’ collective political will in an interview with European Affairs to be published next week.

“Of all the foreseeable poles in the multi-polar world, it is the European pole whose future is the most uncertain; I question whether Europe truly has the will and motivation to become a full player. Maybe Europeans will prefer becoming a huge Switzerland – a well-protected zone with a very high standard of living and great liberty, but without the responsibility of power. European public opinion seems to suggest a desire for this condition of being detached from responsibility.”

Kagan famously created the figurative comparison that “Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus” in his book Of Paradise and Power, which argued that Americans are more inclined than Europeans nowadays to see force as a solution to international crises. His subsequent book, Dangerous Nation, described America’s historical readiness since independence in the 18the century to undertake international intervention. (It was reviewed in European Affairs by James Steinberg, who has been named to Obama’s panel of foreign-policy advisers. Kagan has spent the last four years in Europe, and his return to Washington was marked by the publication of his new treatise, The Return of History and the End of Dreams. This book warns about possible new threats to global stability from autocratic powers, notably Russia and China: it will be noted in the forthcoming issue of European Affairs.

Michael Mosettig reviews the new book Life of a European Mandarin by Derk-Jan Eppink, who was a civil servant at the European Commission for more than a decade. 

Life of a European Mandarin.
By Derk-Jan Eppink. Ianoo. 386 pages.

Reviewed by Michael D. Mosettig

Two decades ago television viewers in Britain and the United States were alternately amused and appalled as they laughed through episodes of “Yes, Minister,” a British situation comedy about the way government bureaucracies really work at the top among insiders. In the series, a clever, glib high-ranking civil servant named Sir Humphrey would run circles around his Cabinet minister, aware that his power came from institutional memory and career longevity while the minister, an elected Member of Parliament, would soon be off on other pursuits.

Now, a former civil servant of the European Commission has turned out on paper the Brussels equivalent of “Yes, Minister,” an amusing memoir of how things work and don’t work at the Berlaymont headquarters of the commission. Perhaps the Life of a European Mandarin can be worked up into a European-wide sitcom – “Yes, Commissioner” – though to be true to Brussels protocol it would have to be dubbed and aired in 23 languages.

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