The Transatlantic Allies and the Changing Middle East

Philip H Gordon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780199223770
• eBook ISBN: 9781136059247
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Since the mid-1990s, US and European attitudes, strategies and policies towards the Middle East have diverged. In the Middle East peace process, Europeans have grown frustrated with the lack of progress and with Washington's near-monopoly on diplomatic action, and have begun to demand a greater role. On Iraq, the US insists on strong military and economic containment of Saddam Hussein, while some Europeans have started to press for a more rapid reintegration of Iraq into the international community and are reluctant to use or threaten force. The issue of how to deal with Iran has been most divisive of all, with the US and Europe deeply divided over whether they should contain, or engage, Tehran. Transatlantic tensions over the Middle East are damaging for three main reasons. They reduce the effectiveness of allied policies; undermine NATO's cohesion when its future is no longer guaranteed by a common threat; and threaten to spill over into the economic domain. This paper examines the reasons for these potentially damaging differences, assesses the prospects for improving transatlantic cooperation in the region and suggests approaches that may help to bring this about. Its main policy conclusions are: On the Arab–Israeli conflict, as long as the peace process is moving forward, or has reasonable prospects of doing so, the US is probably right that Europe's formal involvement in direct peace talks would not be helpful, particularly if such a role aimed to promote policies different from those of the US. If the peace process stalls completely, however, it will be difficult for Washington to justify opposing a more active European role. On Iraq, the US-led policy of containment is correct, and economic sanctions should remain in place until Baghdad complies fully with UN Security Council disarmament resolutions. However, in exchange for Europe's agreement to contribute to Iraq's military containment, the US, like Europe, should abide by the letter and spirit of these resolutions, even if this means agreeing to lift restrictions on oil exports if Iraq complies in full. Failing to do so could undermine global support for the integrity of the UN system, ultimately leaving the US, and perhaps the UK, isolated in maintaining a policy that might not be sustainable in the long term. On Iran, a transatlantic compromise would need to include an agreement by the US not to impose sanctions against European companies doing business with Iran, as long as Europe offered unstinting support in combating terrorism and helping to contain the development of weapons of mass destruction. The US should also seek agreement with the European Union on which Iranian actions would justify sanctions or other punitive measures. The paper concludes by examining institutional changes that might help to promote transatlantic cooperation on the Middle East.

chapter 1

Europe’s Growing Assertiveness in the Peace Process

Since the late 1960s, two main features have characterised US and European roles in the Arab-Israeli dispute. The first is the preeminence of the US in regional diplomacy. Through its global superpower status, military strength, close ties with Israel and huge amounts of economic and military aid to key regional powers, the US has been the privileged interlocutor of all parties in the region. Even most Arab leaders have agreed with the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s famous suggestion that the US held ‘99 percent of the cards’.¹ If the US has had a rival for influence over the Middle East since the 1960s, it was not Europe but the Soviet Union, whose exclusion from the region was a primary US goal throughout the Cold War. When Moscow’s global influence declined in the 1980s, and the Soviet Union itself disintegrated in 1991, the US was left as the unrivalled outside power in Middle Eastern politics, with Europe playing a limited, and in many ways subordinate, role.

The second main feature of US and European involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict has been the US alignment with Israel, while the Europeans took a position closer to that of the Arab states. While often critical of Israeli government policies and, at times, willing to exercise diplomatic or economic leverage over the government, Washington’s backing for Israel in its conflict with its Arab neighbours has been unambiguous. The US has provided Israel with unparalleled amounts of economic and military aid, helped to ensure its military superiority over its neighbours and to protect it with military assistance during wartime, and excused or defended its behaviour when it violated international norms, laws, or UN Security Council resolutions. Most Europeans, while firmly committed to Israel’s existence, have been more sympathetic to Arab and Palestinian positions, more critical of Israel’s occupation of Arab territories captured in 1967 and more willing to maintain normal relations with Israel’s regional adversaries.

These two factors are so clear and unquestionable that it is easy to forget how recently each emerged. As colonial states, European nations dominated parts of the Middle East for centuries, and remained influential political, economic and military actors well into the 1960s. Significant US interest in the region did not begin until the Second World War and its aftermath. The Soviet Union’s geopolitical and ideological challenge, the growing importance of oil, and the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948 combined to pull Americans out of their traditional parochialism, and led them to rival the Europeans for influence in the Middle East. The US rise to pre-eminence became apparent with the Anglo-French disaster at Suez in 1956. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration, furious at what seemed a colonial invasion of an Arab state while the US was competing with the Soviet Union for influence in the developing world, forced London and Paris to back down. Their failure at Suez undermined British and French influence in the region, and helped to establish that of the US.

the US alignment with Israel

Even as it supplanted the Europeans as the leading military and diplomatic player in the Middle East, the US was not in the 1950s the close supporter of Israel that it would become. While Americans had considerable sympathy for Israel, born as it was out of the tragedy of the Holocaust, this was balanced with US interests in Arab oil and sensitivity to alienating Arab states, which might prompt them into aligning with the Soviet Union.² As late as the mid-1960s, France (which saw Israel as a useful ally in its struggle against Arab nationalism in Algeria) was Israel’s main ally, while the US sought to maintain good relations with the Arab world to the point of refusing to sell weapons to Israel.

With the June 1967 ‘Six Day War’ with Egypt, launched by Israel in response to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s closure of the Straits of Tiran the month before, the US alignment with Israel was unambiguously added to its regional pre-eminence as one of the factors that would define the Middle East into the 1990s. Israel’s attack on Egypt alienated its main arms supplier, France, which was in any case realigning with the Arab world in the aftermath of its war in Algeria. At the same time, the triumph of tiny, beleaguered Israel over a numerically superior Arab coalition won the country enormous sympathy in the US, where many began to see it as a Cold War asset. Ironically, given French complaints that Israel is today too closely aligned with the US, Paris’ arms embargo after the Six Day War helped to drive Israel, ever conscious of the need for a strong external patron, towards Washington. The US has since become Israel’s major arms supplier, its closest ally and its defender of last resort.

While the US was aligning itself with Israel, Europe was moving closer to the Arab states. Whereas the October 1973 attack on Israel by Egypt and Syria led the US to adopt a greater role as Israel’s protector, Europeans aligned themselves with the Arab side in the conflict, in part for fear of alienating the regimes on whose oil they depended. In November 1973, as part of its early coordination of Middle East policy under the rubric of ‘European Political Cooperation’, the European Community (EC) acknowledged ‘the legitimate rights of the Palestinians’ and called on Israel to end its ‘territorial occupation’ of Arab lands.³ In the wake of the 1973-74 Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) embargo, subsequent economic recession and increased Palestinian terrorism in Europe, the EC developed a ‘Euro-Arab’ dialogue designed to improve relations with the Arab world and to distinguish the Community’s policies from those of the US. These shifts did not, whatever their justification or merit, enhance European influence in the region, particularly with Israel. Americans and Israelis alike would remember Europe’s reluctance during the 1973 war to help the US to airlift equipment and supplies that could have been crucial to Israel’s survival. Both the US and Israel henceforth sought to limit not only Soviet, but also European, influence in the region.

Europe’s most explicit attempt to become involved in the Arab-Israeli peace process during this period, and that which most clearly underlined transatlantic divisions on the issue, was the EC’s ‘Venice Declaration’ of 13 June 1980. While reaffirming Israel’s right to exist and to be secure, the Declaration distanced European policy from that of the US by calling for a negotiating role for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and by expressing support for the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.⁴ The Declaration, which called for an explicit ‘political dimension’ to EC policy, was a watershed in the Community’s attempt to develop as a political and diplomatic actor. It would also, however, contribute to Israeli and US scepticism about Europe’s intentions, and thereby to the EC’s marginalisation from the peace process. Just three weeks after the Venice Declaration had stated that the EC would ‘not accept any unilateral initiative to change the status of Jerusalem’, Israel went ahead with East Jerusalem’s unilateral annexation, as if to demonstrate that it would pay no heed to European interference. While many Europeans believe that their support for the PLO and Palestinian self-determination has been proved right by later developments, many Israelis and Americans argue that the EC’s stance at Venice was premature and showed excessive willingness to meet Arab demands and to take risks with Israeli security. Whether justified or not, this perception led many Israelis and Americans to oppose European involvement in the peace process throughout the 1980s, and it remains a problem in European-Israeli relations.

Europe’s exclusion from Middle East peacemaking

The Madrid peace talks in October 1991, organised in the wake of the US-led coalition’s victory in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, underlined most clearly Europe’s exclusion from Middle East peacemaking. For the first time, Israeli representatives met nearly all the country’s Arab adversaries in multilateral negotiations. Europe’s role, however, was limited to providing the venue for the opening round of talks (the remainder were held in Washington). The official co-sponsors were the US and, despite its rapidly declining influence and impending collapse, the Soviet Union. The Madrid talks were a US-designed plan to take advantage of the Gulf War’s aftermath to try to achieve Arab-Israeli peace. The intense pressure the US brought to bear to ensure Israeli participation testified to Washington’s unique role in the region. The new peace process also underlined the EC’s difficulties in adopting a common approach. The European Commission and the Council squabbled over who should represent the Community at the talks, and Paris objected to allowing the EC presidency to represent France.

While the US dominated Middle East peacemaking in the wake of the Gulf War, Europe suddenly appeared at the centre of events when it emerged in 1993 that Israelis and Palestinians had been conducting secret negotiations under Norwegian auspices in Oslo. These talks led to the ‘Declaration of Principles on Palestinian Self-rule’ in September 1993. Europeans saw this as a vindication of their approach to the conflict and as underlining the limits of American leadership. While Norway deserved great credit for its mediating role, however, the Oslo approach, which allowed the parties to the conflict to reach agreement with no substantive involvement from the mediating country, was of a different character from the more interventionist style long advocated in the EU. Indeed, for many Israelis, Norway was an acceptable outside mediator only because it was not a member of the Union. It was also telling that the parties to the conflict felt it important that the agreement be signed in Washington and concluded with a handshake on the White House lawn. Subsequent diplomatic negotiations also took place in the US under American auspices. Although Norway offered its good offices and played a crucial honest-broker role, when it came to seeing the peace process through the parties felt that the US was indispensable.⁵

From Convergence to Divergence: Europe Reasserts Itself

The two years following Oslo were marked by an unprecedented convergence of US and European policies towards the peace process. Americans accepted positions long held by Europeans, and Europeans agreed to let the Americans lead. Even if it sometimes grated in European capitals that Washington was taking credit for successes that it had done little to bring about, Europeans did not object to playing a supportive role as long as the Oslo process moved forward. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres were doing what Europe had long advised – recognising the PLO, trading land for peace and moving towards Palestinian self-determination – and the US was facilitating the process. There was thus no need for Europe to interfere. As the Oslo process advanced from the September 1993 Declaration to the March 1994 Cairo Agreements and the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of September 1994, transatlantic relations over the Middle East were probably as harmonious as they had ever been. The Israelis were making repeated agreements with their neighbours, the US was acting as the main outside facilitator and honest broker and Europeans were playing an important, if secondary, role.

The cooperation and agreement that characterised Oslo’s honeymoon period was not, however, to last. As Arab-Israeli relations began to break down in 1995, so did Europe’s tacit agreement to defer to the US, raising old questions about its appropriate role in the peace process, and about whether Europe and the US could agree. By early 1996, European leaders and EU officials were making statements that sometimes differed significantly in tone and content from those of the US. In April 1996, European leaders strongly criticised Israel’s Grapes of Wrath operation in Lebanon.⁶ In October, the EU made its ‘Luxembourg Declaration’, its most important statement on the Middle East peace process since Venice – and its most critical of Israel.⁷ Also in late 1996, several European leaders – French President Jacques Chirac, British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind, Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro and an EU ‘Troika’ led by Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring – visited the region with proposals to move the peace process forward. At the end of October, the EU appointed its own special envoy, Spanish diplomat Miguel Angel Moratinos, to coordinate the European approach to the peace process. Divisions among the Europeans and resistance to the idea in the region meant that the EU was not yet claiming an equal role with the Americans in negotiations. It was nonetheless moving in that direction.⁸ As former US Ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis put it at the time, after having ‘“passed” on getting involved in the Middle East peace process for about a decade’, the Europeans were ‘back’.⁹

Europe’s renewed efforts to play a role in the region were the result of three main factors. The most important was widespread dissatisfaction with the policies of the Netanyahu government, which took office in May 1996. Even before the election that brought Netanyahu to power, Europeans were critical of the continued growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and outraged by the Grapes of Wrath operation, which involved widespread bombing of southern Lebanon. They were nonetheless prepared to give Peres, the driving force behind the Oslo agreement and proponent of a ‘New Middle East’, the benefit of the doubt. Under Netanyahu, however, the peace process broke down, and Europeans laid much of the blame at the Prime Minister’s door.¹⁰ The government’s decision in September 1996 to open a tunnel near Arab holy places in Jerusalem, the restoration of financial incentives for Israeli settlements in December and the decision in February 1997 to build a new settlement in an East Jerusalem location (called Har Homa by Israelis and Jebel Abu Ghneim by Arabs) were all seen as provocative by Europeans, who were growing frustrated by Washington’s inability or reluctance to influence Israel. Many Europeans felt that they could no longer stand aside as they had when Israel had seemed ready to work towards peace, and the US was willing to assist the process. As a French diplomat put it, ‘we were quite prepared to defer to the United States so long as it was playing a constructive role and making progress towards peace; but when the US showed itself unwilling to play such a role, Europe decided to get involved’.¹¹

A second factor stimulating European involvement in the peace process was Chirac’s election to the French presidency in May 1995. Under his predecessor, François Mitterrand, France had been reluctant to play a secondary role to the US, and had been most supportive of an independent EU role in the region. But Chirac’s election galvanised French diplomacy. Unable quickly to resolve the social problems that formed a central part of his election campaign, Chirac saw advantages in stressing his country’s foreign-policy role, particularly in the Middle East, which had long been of special interest to France and to Chirac personally.¹² As the President declared during a visit to Qatar in July 1996, ‘People have to get used to a return to the presence of France, in particular in this part of the world. We have interests and ideas and are determined to be seen and heard.’¹³ Under Chirac, France would repeatedly assert French interests in the Middle East that often contradicted those of the US.

Europe’s renewed efforts to play a role

Third, efforts to coordinate foreign policies more generally appear to have prompted some Europeans to play a more active Middle East role. The 1991 Maastricht Treaty called for a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). By 1996, the CFSP was seen to have enjoyed little success, particularly given Europe’s inability to end the war in the former Yugoslavia. When the CFSP came up for review at the EU Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) that began in March 1996, the Middle East peace process seemed a promising area in which to pursue cooperation for three reasons: it was one of the oldest areas of European foreign-policy coordination (dating back to the ‘European Political Cooperation’ rubric of the early 1970s); it was one of the five priorities identified after Maastricht as a possible area for CFSP ‘common positions’; and, relatively at least, it was an area in which Europeans felt that they had similar interests. As one EU official put it, the Union was ‘a new player in international relations, so we need visibility and prestige and the Middle East affords us that opportunity’.¹⁴

These renewed European efforts to play a greater role in the peace process have rekindled an old debate about the appropriate level of European involvement and raised important questions about Europe-US relations in this area. Are the views and interests of the US and Europe sufficiently similar to allow each to play a constructive and cooperative role, or will they inevitably clash? Does Europe have the unity and power to provide an alternative to US leadership, or are Europeans still too weak and divided? Should Europe’s role be subordinate to that of the US, or can the CFSP endow the EU with the means to act independently of, or at least be an equal partner with, the US? These questions are taken up in the following chapter.

chapter 2

How and Why the Allies Differ on the Peace Process

Most analysts point out that transatlantic differences over the Middle East should not be inevitable since the ba...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Glossary
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Europe’s Growing Assertiveness in the Peace Process
• Chapter 2 How and Why the Allies Differ on the Peace Process
• Chapter 3 The Evolution of Transatlantic Divergence in the Gulf
• Chapter 4 How and Why the Allies Differ over the Gulf
• Conclusion Coordinating Western Policy
• Notes