Sarkozy on EU Reform

Although a bit dated, the following summarizes the views of French right's candidate for the presidency in 2007. To read the entire speech, click on the post title above. EU reform: What we need to do

by Nicolas Sarkozy, Europe's World

What can Europe's political leaders do to regain popular support for the EU and get it moving again? Nicolas Sarkozy explains his strategy for unblocking the deadlock with a "mini-treaty" and for streamlining the European institutions

Next year's 50th anniversary of the EU's founding Rome treaty should be celebrated with pride, for it marks an historic achievement: half a century of re-uniting a divided continent thanks to the democratic vision of founding fathers like Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Paul-Henri Spaak, Alcide de Gasperi and Konrad Adenauer. But there is also cause for concern because the European project is in crisis; it may not be a clear cut crisis, but it is a profound one.

The forces driving the Union's political momentum have run out of steam, and Europe's citizens are either doubtful or indifferent to its aims and lack any real collective hope for the future. Some people, notably in France, think this sort of disenchantment is quite natural, but I disagree. In my view, the whole question of European integration is capable of once again inspiring popular enthusiasm; I believe that the "political Europe" I have always had faith in can still be attained....

This article is based on the speech that Nicolas Sarkozy gave on September 8, 2006 at the Brussels think tank Friends of Europe (www.friendsofeurope.org) in association with the Fondation Robert Schuman (www.robert-schuman.org)

Shared Concerns on Energy

Here is an area where the U.S. and Europe have common interests, if slightly different problems. Unfortunately, as this commentary points out, Europe once again cannot coalesce on a policy, making it essentially impossible for the U.S. to enter into the equation. Lugar's proposal, outlined below, should provide a useful starting point for discussion.


The New Threat To Europe

By Jackson Diehl
Monday, December 25, 2006; A29, Washington Post

This year began with a European energy crisis caused by Russia's cutoff of gas supplies to Ukraine, where a democratic government not to the liking of Vladimir Putin had taken power. Because Russian gas passes through Ukraine on its way to Western Europe, the pressure also dropped in Paris and Vienna and Rome -- and Europeans suddenly realized they were dependent for electricity and warmth on an autocracy that was prepared to use energy as a tool of imperialism.

It looks like the year will end the same way. Georgia and Azerbaijan, two other Russian neighbors that have chosen not to kowtow to Putin, are scrambling to find gas supplies by Jan. 1 to make up for Russian cutbacks or to avoid a huge and predatory price increase. So, oddly, is Belarus, which until now has been a Kremlin client -- but which has resisted a Russian demand that it turn over ownership of a key gas transit pipeline. Western energy companies that have invested in Russia are meanwhile reeling from a crude campaign of bullying designed to force them to give up majority stakes in oil and gas fields to Kremlin-controlled companies. Shell has already caved, allowing Gazprom to take a 50 percent stake in a huge offshore gas field.

It would be nice to report that in the intervening months Western governments have taken steps to ensure that Russia, which supplies anywhere between 30 and 100 percent of the gas consumed by European Union countries as well as much of their oil, is not able to use this leverage for political or economic extortion. Sadly, the opposite is true: Though "energy security" has become a favorite topic for discussion at E.U. and transatlantic summits, next to nothing has been done about it.

That's partly because solutions aren't easy. Weakening Russia's hold over European energy supplies requires measures that would be costly and difficult, such as building new terminals for importing liquefied natural gas or new pipelines to carry oil and gas from Central Asia and the Caucasus to Europe.

There's a less excusable problem, however: the failure of European Union governments to agree on either a common energy strategy or a policy for responding to Russia's growing aggressiveness. Some politicians, like German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, propose a new Ostpolitik that would entice Russian cooperation with offers of economic and strategic partnership. Others say the E.U. should refuse to renew an expiring economic pact with Russia unless it stops trying to monopolize European energy supplies.

Though it has a vital stake, the United States has been mostly missing from the discussion. That's one reason a recent speech by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was intriguing. Lugar has been a pioneer of some of the most farsighted U.S. policies toward the countries of the former Soviet Union, including the Nunn-Lugar program for securing and dismantling nuclear weapons and materials.

Now he's proposing that the NATO alliance formally adopt "energy security" as one of its central missions. NATO, he told a German Marshall Fund conference alongside the recent NATO summit in Riga, Latvia, is "used to thinking in terms of conventional warfare between nations. But energy could become the weapon of choice for those who possess it.

"A natural gas shutdown to a European country in the middle of winter," he added, "could cause death and economic loss on the scale of a military attack."

NATO, Lugar said, should resolve to treat "an attack using energy" the same way it would a land attack by conventional military forces -- that is, an attack on one country would compel a response by all. That doesn't mean military action, he said; "rather, it means the alliance must commit itself to preparing for and responding to attempts to use the energy weapon against its fellow members."

Lugar pointed out that NATO used to hold exercises to prepare for the logistical and supply challenge of responding to a Soviet attack. A new exercise, he said, "should focus on how the Alliance would supply a beleaguered member with the energy resources needed to withstand geo-strategic blackmail." This wouldn't be easy, he acknowledged: In fact, "the energy threat is more difficult to prepare for than a ground war in Central Europe." Guarding against an energy cutoff by Russia will mean massive investments in new supply lines and reserve supplies, as well as the means to distribute them in a crisis.

That sounds daunting at a time when NATO has its hands full trying to fight a war in Afghanistan. But the energy threat goes to the alliance's historic purpose: defending democratic Europe from attack by the autocratic and belligerent power on its Eastern frontier. And, as Lugar pointed out: "The use of energy as an overt weapon is not a theoretical threat of the future. It is happening now."

Challenges for Europe

I too am disappointed by Europe's inability to suggest anything positive and its unwillingness to really step up to global responsibilities. Maybe it is just too much to ask. Maybe there are no good new ideas. But, enough with the criticism, however justified, without good alternatives to suggest and a commitment to invest effectively in a better international policy.



'Old Europe' Can Gloat, but Then What?

By Anne Applebaum
Tuesday, December 19, 2006; A29, Washington Post

BERLIN -- On the day James Baker's Iraq report was published, I gritted my teeth and waited for the well-earned, long-awaited, Franco-German "Old Europe" gloat to begin. I didn't wait long. "America Faces Up to the Iraq Disaster" read a headline in Der Spiegel. In the patronizing tones of a senior doctor, Le Monde diagnosed the "political feverishness" gripping Washington in Baker's wake. Suddeutsche Zeitung said the report "stripped Bush of his authority," although Le Figaro opined that nothing Baker proposed could improve the "catastrophic state" of Iraq anyway.

And then, for two weeks . . . silence. If there are politicians, academics or journalists anywhere in Germany and France who have better ideas about how to improve the catastrophic state of Iraq, they aren't speaking very loudly. There is no question that America's credibility has been undermined by the Iraq war, in "Old Europe" as everywhere else. There is no question that America's reputation for competence has been destroyed. But that doesn't mean there are dozens of eager candidates, or even one eager candidate, clamoring to replace us.

There is, it is true, quite a lot of wishful thinking around. "Iraq is a disaster -- now we will have to clean up the mess," one German diplomatic acquaintance told me. "Germany Mulling Bigger Role in Iraq" read another Der Spiegel headline. But Germany is notoriously averse to sending soldiers, or anyone else, anywhere near combat. At the moment German politicians cannot even agree on whether their troops should be allowed to fight in Afghanistan, where they have been stationed for years. France, meanwhile, has announced that it is removing its troops from Afghanistan altogether. So how, exactly, will this Iraq cleanup take place? What will this "bigger role" be? "We can train judges and police," my acquaintance explained -- after the fighting is over, of course. Whenever that happens.

Scattered across Europe there are also a few diplomatic optimists, people who hope Europe can play "Middle East matchmaker," in the words of one writer, and maybe get the Iranians and Syrians to be more helpful and kind in Iraq -- or at least to stop funding the insurgency. Presumably these are the same optimists who also used to believe that a Franco-German-British diplomatic team could persuade Iran to stop conducting nuclear weapons research. Presumably they didn't notice that the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, held a "Holocaust denial" conference in Tehran last week -- not, perhaps, the clearest signal that he wants to make friends with bien-pensant Europeans -- or that the French president, Jacques Chirac, recently declared that his views on Syria exactly matched those of his American counterpart.

With some exceptions, the weird reality is that most European governments, whatever their original views on the war, are either officially or unofficially opposed to an immediate U.S. withdrawal: Chaos might ensue. And the chaos would be a lot closer to Europe than to North America. Most European governments, officially or unofficially, are also now worried that the next American president will retreat from world politics or become "isolationist."

Nor is there anybody here, of any stature, who believes that Europe -- for all its recent economic improvement, for all its trading power and for all its dislike of American foreign policy -- is going to replace the United States anytime soon. Germany is about to take over the rotating presidency of the European Union, and therefore Germany is discussing E.U. integration policy, E.U. immigration policy and E.U. economics. Germany is not discussing how the European Union will take on a leading military and diplomatic role in the Middle East. And not even Germany wants any of the other potential world powers -- Russia, say, or China -- to replace the United States in the role of dominant superpower.

In this weird reality, there is a very narrow sliver of hope: Maybe now the Germans, and even the French, will finally come to realize that there is no alternative to the transatlantic partnership, no better international military organization than NATO, no real "role" for any of us outside the Western alliance -- even if only because all the alternatives are worse. Maybe the Old Europeans will find inspiration to support and contribute further to the alliance, diplomatically and ideologically if not militarily. Maybe the United States will come to the same realization, too.

Ultimately the only way for the West to deal with the new threats posed by a disintegrating Iraq, a resurgent Iran and a shattered Middle East is through a unified policy -- an alliance whose members are not easily played off against one another -- and a joint strategy.

Joyeux Noel and Glückliches Neujahr to you all.

Murder and Russian Politics

What follows is an excerpt from this week's Economist article of Russia. To read the whole article, which in my opinion is one of the best articles on the state of play in Russian politics, click on the post title above.

The Litvinenko affair

Murder most opaque

Dec 13th 2006 | MOSCOW
From The Economist print edition

What a poisoned Russian agent tells us about the way that Russia is governed

THE flamboyant Russian community in London has until recently been regarded by the city's natives with wry amusement. The tycoons and tax refugees at its centre have boosted the price of high-end property, imported expensive soccer players along with their befurred wives and provided useful fodder for gossip columnists. Then Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned.

Never in his life was Litvinenko as important as he has become in death. He was not really a spy, as he has been described, but worked for domestic units of the FSB, one of the KGB's post-Soviet successors. He has been labelled a defector; but few people took the information he brought out of Russia when he fled to Britain seriously. He had always been a pawn in other people's power struggles, and even as a pawn his utility was declining....

... Another theory mooted in Russia is that the sudden spate of mysterious killings—which has claimed others besides Litvinenko and Politkovskaya—is part of the ongoing power struggle inside the Kremlin, in advance of Mr Putin's putative departure from office in 2008. The aim, it is variously said, is to undermine one or other of his possible successors or somehow to force Mr Putin to stay on, which some who have profited during his presidency would sorely like him to do. Whoever is anointed by Mr Putin as his successor will surely “win” the election in 2008; the real competition, it is argued, is occurring now, between Kremlin factions. This idea sees Litvinenko's murder as a symptom of a basic flaw in Mr Putin's quasi-authoritarian system of government: the transfer of power, as mandated by the constitution, is tricky and perilous....

... During a tsar-like televised phone-in with his people in October, Mr Putin made a little-noticed but revealing remark. He was asked, in a periphrastic way, about a tasteless joke he had made in relation to allegations of rape against Moshe Katsav, Israel's president. It was wrong, Mr Putin said, for the issue of women's rights to be used as a weapon in political squabbles. In other words, he assumed that the allegations had an ulterior motive—as they would have had in Russia. This points to the problem at the bottom of Russia's increasingly bitter ties with the West: the Russians' deep conviction that the rest of the world works as Russia does, and that all politics and diplomacy are as cynical and self-interested as Russia's own.

The row over Mr Berezovsky is another example of this way of thinking. Some Russians simply refuse to believe that in Britain extradition cases are decided by the courts, rather than by the government. Likewise, some in the Kremlin were angry that Litvinenko's deathbed accusations managed to penetrate his police guard to be broadcast: they apparently assumed that protection meant arrest.

Try to be nice to the snoopers

The Russians now have a chance to repair their reputation, reassure the world about the security of their nuclear installations (a nagging worry since the Soviet Union's collapse) and prove that law in Russia is more than a political instrument. Russia's qualms at hosting foreign detectives bent on questioning current and former spooks are understandable; any country would feel much the same. But the Russians could, short of compromising state security, offer total co-operation with the British inquiry. Condoleezza Rice, America's secretary of state, urged them this week to do just that.

Both the British and the Russians are trying to appear conciliatory. Yet the co-operation has been tightly circumscribed from the start. As well as being permitted to question their interviewees only via Russian officers, the Scotland Yard detectives seem unlikely to be given access to any serving FSB men. The Russians, meanwhile, have begun their own investigation into Litvinenko's death and what they say is Mr Kovtun's own poisoning, and want to question people in London. That could in theory bolster the British efforts—or it could result in obfuscation, and be used to advance old grievances.

It would not be fair to conclude from any of this that the Kremlin is guilty as charged. But it all amounts to yet another sign that the hopes entertained in the West about Mr Putin when he first took office—that he actually meant what he then said about democracy, and that under his rule Russia could conceivably become a “normal” country—were misplaced. There have been many such signs, from barbarity in the north Caucasus to harassment of foreign oil firms and meddlesome foreign policy. But perhaps none has publicised the murk and cruelty of life in Russia so effectively as the mysterious death of an unimportant man.

European Union Enlargement a Success?

This article provides an excellent look at the issues surrounding recent and possible future enlargement of the European Union. To continue reading the article, click on the title of the post.

Fraught at the frontiers: why Europe is losing faith in its most successful policy

By George Parker and Daniel Dombey

Published: December 13 2006 02:00 | Last updated: December 13 2006 02:00, Financial Times

Jean Monnet, one of the European Union's 1950s founding fathers, foretold that in a globalised era, size would count. "Our countries have become too small for the world . . . measured against America and Russia today and China and India tomorrow," he once said.

Europe's leaders have since sought to expand the EU in line with this vision. But enlargement, often cited as the club's most successful policy, has become a political liability. Tomorrow, at a summit in Brussels, the EU's member governments will clash over how much further - and how quickly - the Union can extend to the east.

The debate will raise questions about what it means to be European and whether the EU can carry on growing without grinding to a halt or further alienating its citizens. The outcome and tone of the talks will have hard-edged consequences: is it going to become even tougher for candidates to join the club?

Senior EU officials say this is a dangerous moment. If the bloc sends out negative signals to future members, what consequences could it have for reformers in Turkey, the politically unstable Balkans or former Soviet republics such as Belarus or Ukraine? The world has a stake in the message that comes out of Brussels.

The end-of-year summit gives European leaders a chance to take stock of the club's "big bang" expansion of May 2004, which saw it expand from 15 to 25 members. By the time Bulgaria and Romania join on New Year's day, the EU will have taken in 10 former communist countries and increased its population to 490m, almost half as big again as the US.

So what went wrong with the latest enlargement? The simple answer is: not very much. While some western European countries, including Britain and Ireland, experienced unexpectedly high levels of immigration from Poland and other new member states, economic studies say the migrants filled skills shortages.

Indeed, the creation of a mobile pool of labour - giving Europe's economy some of the flexibility taken for granted in the US - seems to have played a role in pushing EU economic growth above 2.5 per cent, outstripping America. Unemployment across the bloc has at last started falling....

Russia: Hard or Soft?

The following column, reprinted in the New York Times from the International Herald Tribune, neatly summarizes the state of play of the West vis-a-vis Russia. Still not clear where and how to go from here.

December 12, 2006, New York Times

Politicus

For Russia’s Cooperation, a Harder Line May Be Needed

By JOHN VINOCUR

International Herald Tribune

BRUSSELS

Vladimir Putin does not want to be "reviled and isolated," a close adviser to a European government leader was saying the other day.

Could be. But one problem when it comes to mustering opprobrium and ostracism, even in careful doses, is that President George W. Bush and Europe appear incapable of making Putin believe they have the will or the unity to manage either.

So while newspapers were recounting visions of Russia's return to Cold War tactics - murders in London, harassment of the British ambassador in Moscow, silencing BBC broadcasts in Russian - Putin's people went ahead last week further holding up an already defanged UN Security Council resolution on Iran that, if it passes, would only postpone the question of when the world will sanction the mullahs' nuclear program more seriously.

The resolution's delay, now running toward a fourth month, says something. For an Iran expert talking at a symposium, it signifies Iran's strengthening belief that it can get away with anything in moving toward nuclear weapons - with what for some appears to be tacit Russian complicity.

And that without any apparent downside for the Russians, Iran's major supplier of arms and heavy equipment.

In fact, if Russia were somehow producing a Baker Commission report this week on Putin's fulfillment of major strategic goals since 2003, from the point of view of Moscow's nationalist power politics, he would get straight A's.

Putin has pushed and bullied Ukraine and Georgia away from NATO, established and deepened Europe's dependence on Russian energy sources, and elbowed the European Union into near silence in the face of threatened boycotts and Russia's refusal to sign a charter of good conduct between energy suppliers' and their clients.

Through the Security Council, and Bush's current reliance on it, Putin holds a Russian veto and a gatekeeper's prerogatives in relation to the West's hopes to stop Iran. The war in Chechnya, normally a minus-column entry, escapes serious censure because the allies keep quiet about it. A democracy that's flickered out, a fleeting rule of law? To Putin, they're nonproblems, as disposable as paper hats and tinsel.

Alongside Vice President Dick Cheney's supposedly hard-line speech on Russia in Lithuania last May (it reads like softly-softly stuff now), contrast Putin's current behavior and the Americans' faint reaction to it:

Bush meets twice with Putin in the last 30 days and offers him American approval for membership in the World Trade Organization. This, after years of withholding it out of minimal belief in Russia's reform course.

Amazing. For Europe, here was Bush, whose bark is regarded in the European subconscious as ultimate back-up insurance against Russia, giving away something for nothing without a hint of a quid pro quo.

Less than nothing, actually, in terms of Russian contempt. Pocketing the WTO offer, Putin then thumbed his nose at Bush and NATO through an attempt to set up a private dinner with Jacques Chirac in the margins of the Alliance summit meeting in Latvia two weeks ago.

Some Europeans see Bush as cowed. For the most part, they want him to talk directly to Iran. They don't laugh off one American analysis that argues that in refusing the Baker Commission's call to engage Iran directly, Bush seemed to abandon his best route to bypass Putin's barrier at the Security Council and move ahead with or without European allies who will not talk of an eventual military response to Iranian nukes.

In the view of experts at the symposium, the juxtaposition of American and Russian behavior leaves Iran believing it does not have to fear attack. Beyond that, they say, Iran thinks it holds levers over Russia on a number of strategic regional issues, and may be able to buy Russian support as the Iranian nuclear program evolves.

So what to do? The least dismal part in working toward an answer is that the Russians continue to publicly insist that they don't want Iran to have a military nuclear program, and seek the same goal as the Allies.

One response is for the allies to tell the Russians they must stop being a problem on every front. This involves what may seem more like a wish-list than reality.

The official who believes that Putin does not want contempt or a pariah status - without insisting he thinks the West could make this into Putin's fate - enumerated a series of points that could meld into a common European/American admonition.

It would say to Russia that it must be helpful and consistent on Iran, stop attempting to destabilize Ukraine and Georgia, approve a UN resolution giving Kosovo its independence, and accept the idea that the West wants a constructive relationship.

Investment and technical assistance is the carrot. Intensive development by Europe of alternative energy sources to Russia is the precaution.

But getting Putin to move? The answer there, the official said, would be a more united, more coherent front that does not start qualifying the message "when there's a deal in the wind."

He did not mention Bush.

If the Baker Commission argues that Bush is failing in his prosecution of the war in Iraq, the truth is also that Russia's current view of America as its "primary adversary" (the phrase is that of a senior U.S. official two months ago) serves as an accusation Bush has failed as well in his favorable, accommodating judgment of Putin.

Acknowledging this now and acting to reverse it (or just disregarding it) would become an indelible part of Bush's legacy. In any event, Putin's aggressive Russia commands a decision because it's a big part of an existential problem dogging the president's final 14 months: how not to leave office with Iran on track to become a nuclear threat.

For Putin, his favorable legacy at home already looks assured when his time is up (in theory) in 2008. He's the man who retrieved Russia from humiliation and turned it into a nation that counts again.

His reaction to purely verbal contempt coming from abroad? Hah. The only seemingly certain route to shame in Putin's mind would be for him to retreat or show weakness at those points where he's marked out Russia's hard new lines.

European Isolationism?

I had never thought of Europe as isolationist, but the following article provides an interesting argument that this is the case. It also gives some good reasons for Europe to break with this world view (or not). You may recall an earlier post (http://opahervey.blogspot.com/2006/10/american-way-of-strategy.html) where I express concern that unless Europe takes a more unified view of its role in the rest of the world, a new "Concert of Power" (in Michael Lind's words) will be difficult, if not impossible, to evolve. This would likely lead to continued American hegemony, not a great idea in my opinion. Again, food for thought.

Europe must not lose sight of why it still matters

By Mark Mazower

Published: November 29 2006 02:00 | Last updated: November 29 2006 02:00 FT.com

Donald Rumsfeld's infamous distinction between "old" and "new" Europe seems unlikely to live on. But there is a fault line running through Europe right now - one of outlook rather than age - which the recent political earthquake in the US will probably widen unless European policymakers begin paying more attention to it. It is the division between those focused on domestic agendas and internal issues, and those who want Europe to pull its weight in the world.

Europe's introspection goes back a long way - long before last year's voters administered such a drubbing to the misnamed constitution. As historians of 19th-century empire tell us, most Europeans were far less bothered by the world than the world was by them, even in the heyday of imperialism. In the early 1940s, Hitler's "Fortress Europe" was nothing if not a formula for Continental self-sufficiency and so, less crudely, was its more durable successor. The European Economic Community showed its members that they could survive, indeed do better than before, by giving up their overseas colonies and dealing with one another instead. The pell-mell expansion of the past decade, by presenting the European Community/Union with an unprecedented institutional challenge, has intensified this inward-looking mentality and vastly complicated foreign policymaking. The Cyprus question now blights Turkey's accession talks, while the proposed EU partnership with Russia is held hostage by the troubled Polish government. To judge from the Dutch polls and the pre-election struggle under way in France, many Europeans now see globalisation as a threat, despair of ever being able to influence Washington in a more positive direction and want simply to pull up the drawbridge.

This kind of outlook, however, is full of risks. Most of the global challenges confronting Europe remain unaltered by the results of the past weeks and, if anything, US President George W. Bush's electoral humiliation will in-crease pressure on the EU to stand up and be counted. As the Germans and the Finns have already emphasised, the crucial issue is the Middle East. No one can afford to allow the vacuum of policy there to continue. Europe should insist - as it has done, quietly, for some time - on the necessity for a settlement of the Israel/Palestine dispute as a precondition for any successful approach to the region as a whole. A Democrat-controlled Congress may not differ substantially from its predecessor on Israel's unique importance as an ally of the US but, because it will be keener on multilateralism, it will be more open to European input.

There is, in other words, an opportunity for Europe - with its substantial commercial, financial and now military commitment to the region - to do much more to bridge the yawning gulf between Washington and the Arab states. Of course, there are other issues. Dependence on overseas energy and labour is higher in Europe than in the US, yet the Union has not been able to forge a coherent policy either towards Russia or towards Africa and the Maghreb. Inside Europe, voter fatigue is jeopardising the prospect of further accession - the carrot for democratisation throughout eastern Europe in the past 15 years - threatening to destabilise the western Balkans. Bosnia remains a black hole for foreign aid. And should there be trouble this time in Kosovo, the rest of Europe cannot expect the US to bail it out again.

Yet Europe cannot make its views count in the world without institutional reform. At present there is far too little linkage between foreign, trade and energy policymaking within the Commission and, as a result, much of the EU's real power in the world is wasted. Concentrating foreign-policy powers in Javier Solana's hands will be a start; improving co-ordination of all external affairs should be next.

That Europeans should still shy away from a more decisive role abroad is not merely understandable; in a certain sense, it may be praiseworthy. After all, it suggests a consciousness of their own past excesses of power and a mistrust of the missionary use of force. Yet the current introspection so visible across much of the Continent indicates a kind of malaise, an ostrich-like desire to bury one's head and forget the wider world as global forces slip beyond the west's control. After the second world war Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian prime minister, criticised the Europeans for thinking the world's problems were chiefly their concern. He was right, of course, and their new modesty is no bad thing. Yet the world's problems are often Europe's problems, too.

The writer teaches history at Columbia University

Is Turkey European?

I found the following article particularly interesting, considering the debate whether Turkey should be allowed to enter the EU. There are many modern day issues to be resolved, but, assuming that this article is reasonably correct, at least the historical arguments can be put aside. Any thoughts?

The West's Eastern Front

By HUGH POPE
November 28, 2006; Page A14, Wall Street Journal

ISTANBUL -- The Istanbul professor who is a leading character in "Bliss," a lyrical novel by Zülfü Livaneli, imagines the Turkish intellectual as an acrobat swinging through the air. He lets go of his trapeze, sure in the belief that his European partner and inspiration waits on the other side, ready to catch him. Too late, he discovers his mistake.

If the much-bruised Turks agonize long and loud about when they'll ever be accepted as Europeans, the Europeans seem willfully blind to the Turks. Another crisis looms in the long-running negotiations over Turkey's possible membership of the European Union, this time over the conveniently distracting issue of access to Turkish ports for Cypriot ships. Meanwhile the reigning pope, who wants to reclaim Europe for Christianity to the exclusion of the Turks, today touches down in this Muslim land. So it's worth thinking again about who the Turks are, what they want, and how helpful to Europe their practice of Islam really is.

* * *

No clear answer exists, of course, to the question of whether the Turks are Europeans. There are just too many subjective variables. There is plenty of official hypocrisy, too. Europe has never negotiated with Ankara in wholly good faith, and Turkey has never been wholly sincere in its stated goal of joining the EU as it is today. But before muskets and scimitars are brought down from the attics of history, one must note that the Turks are already much more European than most Europeans realize.

The land of modern Turkey has always been part in, part out of Europe. The Roman Empire included most of today's Turkey, which has also gone by other names like Anatolia or Asia Minor. The most easterly Roman forts are inside Georgia on the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. To the southeast, the main Roman customs houses were along the Euphrates -- roughly where the Kurdish-majority areas of Turkey begin today.

The subsequent Turkish conquest of Anatolia, and two sieges of Vienna, has not always meant a historic exclusion from Europe. The Ottomans had strategic alliances with France and Britain, among others. They were briefly part of the "Concert of Europe" in the late 19th century, were thought of in decline as the "Sick Man of Europe" (not Asia) and were the allies of Germany and Austria in World War I. In the Cold War, Turkey joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and guarded a whole third of Europe's front line with the Warsaw Pact.

Institutionally and commercially, Turkey is already deep in modern Europe. Formal Turkish-EU ties have deepened through nearly half a century of intense negotiation, including a customs union since 1996. Turkey is a member of the Council of Europe; its well-trained soldiers are projecting European political resolve in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Lebanon and Congo; its sports teams play in European leagues; and it takes part in and once won the Eurovision song contest.

Arguments that Turks are somehow ethnically Asiatic and non-European also hold little water. Yes, the original Turkish tribes and dynasties like the Seljuks and Ottomans came from Central Asia. Turkey is the most powerful state in what can be seen as an emerging Turkic-speaking world, which counts 140 million people from Kashgar to Cologne. But the six main Turkic states do not form a political bloc and, although not EU applicants, most share Turkey's ambition to be seen as part of a European or Western culture.

Furthermore, the 70 million people in modern Turkey may be Turkic in name and language, but are not so genetically pure. The main influx of Central Asian Turks to Turkey ended in the 13th century. Overall it seems to have added only about 10% of the population to the existing muddle of ancient Anatolian populations. Western Turkey, at least, is not much different from other Eastern European members of the European Union, where Bulgars, Finns and Hungarians also have origins in the eastern steppe. Turkey's Kurds, meanwhile, speak an Indo-European language.

Nobody doubts, however, that Europe's cold shoulder to Turkey is mainly due to its Muslim identity. As a cardinal in 2004, Pope Benedict XVI put this argument in terms of Turkey as being "in permanent contrast to Europe." But Europe cannot just wish Islam away. Some 15 million to 20 million Muslims already make up nearly 5% of the EU's population; that number includes 3.5 million Turks. Europe is deluding itself if it thinks it can isolate itself from engagement with not just Turkey but its whole Islamic backyard around the Mediterranean Sea.

In contrast to the narrow defensiveness of some European opinion leaders who treat a "clash of civilizations" as inevitable, Turkey's current leaders have been reaching out to create an "alliance of civilizations." When Europe meets them half-way, as in the last phase of Euro-Turkish rapprochement, in 1999-2005, which culminated with the opening of talks on membership in the union, pro-Western Turks feel strengthened. When Europe turns its back, as this year, the local nationalist backlash forces them onto the defensive.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was indeed once a hard-line Islamist. Yet, reflecting a broader change in the country, he had to split with the fundamentalists in order to win power in 2002 with a new, more center-right party that was acceptable to 35% of the Turkish population. He has presided over an economic and commercial convergence with Europe that has put more European names than ever on Turkish products and high street stores and banks.

Turkey started its acrobatic effort to assimilate European culture in the early, 19th-century Ottoman Empire. In the 1920s, the present Turkish Republic took Europe as its model for almost everything, since back then Europe equaled modern progress. The new state dumped almost all the hallowed pillars of Islamic culture: Islamic law, dervish lodges, even the Muslim caliphate.

Europe has long been slow to appreciate these changes. In 1949, the Times of London's opinion page thought Turkey had no place in Europe because it used the Arabic script: in fact, that, too, had been discarded two decades previously. More recently, one of Germany's ambassadors to Turkey surprised a visiting Bundestag politician by giving him the news that Turkey had repudiated Islamic punishments like cutting the hands off thieves nearly a century ago.

A recent socio-economic survey by TESEV, one of Turkey's new think tanks, shows piety on the rise in Turkey -- just as in Europe. It also found that, contrary to perceptions, the number of women covering their hair had decreased in the past seven years. Only 1% of women surveyed wear the full black face-and-body covering, and that 1% is almost entirely older, rural women. Support for the use of Islamic law has fallen to 9% from 21%, and 81% condemn suicide bombing as un-Islamic, whether in Palestine or Iraq. Opinion has been liberalized, the study found, by rising wealth, stability, education and urbanization -- the same factors that have slowly improved Turkey's human-rights and democratic records in recent years.

Until recently, the pollster's question "Do you want to join the European Union?" put to a Turk was enthusiastically approved as meaning "Do you want to be rich?" Support has however plummeted as Turks have learned of European hostility, often whipped on by European politicians trying to blame external causes for internal ailments. Yet polls don't show everything. Turkey still does a booming half of its trade with the EU and more than half of its 21 million tourists come from Europe. Similarly, the negative image of Turkey elicited in Europe by the question "Do you want Turkey in the EU?" is not the whole truth. Change the question to "What do you think of Istanbul?" and many Europeans describe the city as cool, or full of desirable commercial energy.

Rudyard Kipling's old saying that "East is East and West is West" -- or its modern incarnation, "the clash of civilizations" -- is not the right paradigm for Turkey, which feels increasingly confident as part of both. The West is now all over the East and the East is firmly camped in the West. Indeed, Turkey's republican founder Kemal Atatürk believed that the "East is East" idea was fostered by Western powers to justify clinging to power over their former colonial subjects.

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An impasse next month between Turkey and Europe, which threatens to freeze accession talks unless Ankara kowtows to its demands in the dispute over Cypriot ships, would be unfortunate and, on past diplomatic form, unlikely. Both sides would suffer too much commercial and political damage. The wider Islamic world, having reacted with delight to the EU's apparent decision to accept Turkey as an equal, would revert even more stubbornly to its default position that it is impossible to expect fair treatment from the West.

A pause for reflection seems in order for both sides. An acrimonious standoff with the EU in the late 1990s cleared the way for Turkey's great leap forward of 1999-2005. A Dutch ambassador at the core of those EU-Turkish negotiations once described the relationship as a wrestling match, with no time clock but no alternative. Neither Europe nor Turkey can "win." But neither side can afford to let go.

Mr. Pope is author, most recently, of "Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World" (Overlook Duckworth, 2005).