MR. PHIL GORDON: Good morning ladies and gentlemen, let me welcome you all here. I'm Phil Gordon, the Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies here at Brookings. We're really delighted to have the U.K. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw with us this morning in this latest edition of the Brookings Leadership Forum.
As I think you all know we instituted the Leadership Forum earlier this year in order to give statesmen from around the world the opportunity to engage with an expert Washington audience on important questions that are on their minds. As I say, we're therefore quite delighted that the U.K. Foreign Secretary could be with us this morning.
One note before we begin, this session will be WebCast live and also available in retrospect on www.brookings.edu. You can go to the web site even afterwards, click on it, and watch the Foreign Secretary's speech as many times as you like.
I think Jack Straw is familiar to this audience. He's been an MP since 1979, a long career in the Labor Party. He has held a number of shadow posts. He was shadow Education Secretary, shadow Environment Secretary, and shadow Home Secretary from 1995 to 1997 before becoming Home Secretary in the U.K. in 1997, a job that he performed until the summer of 2001. It was in June 2001 that he became Foreign Secretary.
He's been a member of Parliament from Blackburn since 1979. As is appropriate, his CV tells us that he's a supporter of the Blackburn Rovers which I applaud. He will probably therefore be understanding when the entire British Embassy sneaks out this afternoon to watch the Manchester United-Arsenal match. I'll be joining them if the Ambassador will have me at the embassy to watch it on satellite. [Laughter]
In any case, it is indeed a pleasure to have you here. The Foreign Secretary will be prepared to take questions after his remarks. Please, with that, just join me in welcoming him here to Brookings. [Applause]
FOREIGN SECRETARY JACK STRAW: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for that introduction.
I'd ask if you are going to watch the Arsenal-Manchester United game in the company of British diplomats you assure that the names of the Manchester United supporters are taken. It would be a bad career move for those who turn up in that context. [Laughter]
Blackburn and Manchester are only 30 miles apart. I leave the rest to your imagination.
It's a great honor for me to speak to you here today at the Brookings Institution, and as always a tremendous pleasure to visit the capital of my country's closest and most enduring ally.
I'm going to be talking about EU-U.S. relations, the myth and the reality. I sent a near-final draft of the speech to an old friend of mine here in Washington who was pretty senior in the last Administration and he wrote back to comment on it saying at the bottom, with his usual droll humor, "No doubt the speech will be a success." And I'll tell him that he can look it up on the WebCast.
But then he suggested that I might begin the speech by quoting the old British story, which of course it took an American to know about, about a candidate for the British Foreign Office who was asked in his interview, "What are the two most important things in life?" And he replied without hesitation or deviation, "Love and the Anglo-American relationship." He was admitted to the Foreign Service.
But before -- and of course that's true for our excellent Ambassador sitting in the front row.
But for the United Kingdom, the Anglo-American relationship is of profound importance. But for us the relationship with the United States is not just a matter of foreign policy. Over a million jobs in each of our countries depends on the investments in the other. We remain the biggest external investors in each other's economies.
So from fashion to food to finance to film, people in both countries are affected daily by what happens on the other side of the Atlantic. But I know that my Foreign Minister colleagues from France, from Germany, from Italy or from Spain can speak of similarly close ties between their people and this great and dynamic country.
As Europeans we watch, wear, eat, drink or otherwise consume American culture every day. We on the eastern side of the Atlantic have instinctively shared the feelings of pain and of trauma of the violent events of the 11th of September and its aftermath.
Today I want to set out my thinking on the consequences of that evil act on the 11th of September for the relationship between the European Union and the United States, and to explore with you the ways in which I believe we must adapt to a world changed forever by that assault on everything we believe in.
There are five points I want to make about the principles on which I believe trans-Atlantic foreign and security policies have to be based in this changing world.
The first and the most fundamental of them is that the great alliance between the democracies of America and Europe is more vital than ever it has been. We have friends and allies all around the world, but for more than half a century Europe and America have stood together as a rock of stability, of order, and of freedom and we must never forget that together we did defeat fascism, and then defeated communism.
These were, however, rather dangerous but also rather straightforward threats to our freedom. The threat we now face is more insidious because the enemy is not so visible. The enemy now is not so much a commander marshalling tanks and planes and ships but a terrorist getting unnoticed onto a passenger aircraft. Our defense against this enemy requires eternal vigilance over the values which we share.
These values are, I believe, easy to take for granted. We travel where we wish, we trade where we want. We go about our daily lives securely as we please. But these great freedoms did not just happen. They exist because we put in place the physical security and the systems and values which make a free world possible. The trans-Atlantic alliance is an essential relationship on which our freedoms are built.
We may differ from time to time about our priorities, but we do not differ on the values we share and the freedom which we defend together. We may differ on specifics, but we do so as friends. I believe it's important now to recognize this and we shouldn't set ourselves a standard by which we have to agree on everything. As free-thinking democracies we cannot and should not do that. But we do agree on what really matters and we ought to be therefore more relaxed on those issues about which we differ.
Of course some of the things on which we differ are important. Some are obvious and specific and I'll come onto those in a moment. But I suggest that overlaying all of this is a fundamental difference in the mutual perception of each other.
For example, when some in Europe complain about American isolationism or exceptionalism or whatever, they tend to assume that the United States is easily comparable to a single European nation state, but it is not.
You all here know what we sometimes forget, that the United States is half a continent. The population is about equal to that of the five largest European Union member states. It's GDP greater still. Americans correctly and rightly consider that it is those Americans who created the world's largest and greatest democracy. But Europeans tend to see the United States through a different prism. They see a United States born out of Europe, born from those with the courage, imagination, the iconoclasm to break away from the straightjackets not just of poverty but of institutional and political constraints in Europe to form what has long represented in an almost idolized form the best of European values and institutions.
So for all these reasons -- of size, of power, of origin, but above all about what might have been and what could be examples to those in Europe, the United States is a source of more absorbing fascination to Europeans than ever an individual European country could be to the United States.
Now I'd like to think that we in the United Kingdom are more relaxed about this lack of symmetry in the perceived relationship than are some elsewhere in Europe. But even for us it seems that we sometimes get more twitchy about specific differences of opinion and policy with the United States than we do with our European allies.
Now there are in fact plenty of differences with our European partners inside the European Union. Over beef, asylum seekers, and energy liberalization to name just three of a pretty long list with France, over properly functioning free market and financial services in Germany and other matters, over the sizing of European agencies with Italy. We could go down each of the other 14 European Union member states and come out with a long list of rubbing points and difficulties and differences.
But so what? The idea that we will always agree on everything with our European allies is simply ludicrous. Yet when differences arise between Europe and the United States, as matters like climate change, steel, and the scope of international control through the Biological Weapons Convention or the International Criminal Court, we seem much more worried about the effects of these on the fundamentals of the mutual relationship. In my judgment, we should not be.
In truth, relations between European countries and the U.S. as within Europe, have long been replete with differences. What should define a successful relationship is not in my view the synthetic insinuation that there are no differences but the way in which these differences come to be resolved.
We are mature enough to cope with dissent and debate. We both recognize the fundamental commonality of our roots and values. America came to Europe's aid twice in 25 years and then stood by Europe for another 45 years as it struggled with the consequences of Soviet totalitarianism. Equally, the immediate reaction to the attacks on your country on September 11th was the same as if our own territories had been attacked.
Nearly eight months later France and Germany as well as the United Kingdom have forces on active service alongside U.S. troops in Afghanistan. There are 7,000 United States troops based in Afghanistan; just under that number, 6,000 European troops. There is also an unprecedented level of cooperation between law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Atlantic helping to track down terrorist suspects and their finances. This is a good example of how the United States and Europe can and should tackle international security issues together.
Recent developments in the Middle East I believe reinforce that point.
Joint efforts by American and British diplomats produced a deal last week which allowed Yasser Arafat to emerge from his headquarters in Ramallah while six Palestinians wanted for terrorism and other offenses are now being detained under the oversight and supervisory wardens from our two countries, the U.K. and the U.S. at a more remote prison, I might say built by the British, in Jericho.
This U.S.-U.K. initiative has helped or did help to resolve one part of what's an extremely dangerous situation.
I wrote here yesterday before the news of the suicide bombing, it's vital that President Arafat uses the space created by this diplomacy to rein in extremists and to recommit the Palestinian Authority unreservedly to a reviewed peace process. Since I wrote those words we've had the desperate and terrible news of another suicide bombing, this time taking out at least 16 innocent lives in a township near Tel Aviv, with the wider consequences for the people of Israel that at a time when they at least had a few days respite from the continuation of terror, they've now had to come full face with its further reality.
And yet again it is incumbent upon all of us in the international community to send out our condolences, our deep sympathy to the relatives and friends of those who have been killed, to those injured, and the people of Israel for what has happened. And to say alongside that that just as appropriate and necessary security measures will have to be taken to deal with this further situation, I hope very much that we can secure some resumption of a process to start a rebuilding of the communities on both sides of the line -- in Israel and the occupied territories -- and restart a peace process along the lines which have now been flagged up by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
We in United Kingdom have never suffered the kind of terror that is being suffered in Israel in recent months and years but we did suffer from terrorist attacks for 30 years and we do have some idea, therefore, of how difficult it is to sustain a peace process while the violence continues.
I understand that. Both from a personal experience, and then having been Home Secretary, your equivalent of something like the Attorney General for five years.
The personal experience simply of having been at the wrong place at the wrong time when a bomb went off. Having survived, but seeing the consequences for one person who didn't survive, for many people who were properly and severely injured. But also recognizing the consequences on me and what I felt about those who in the name of freedom have tried to kill me, who'd had no particular argument with the Irish people before that. Although I certainly felt as though I had an argument after that, out of that intense anger and shock.
And the other experience was the experience at home to cope with the consequences within the United Kingdom of the Omar bombing which took place in the summer of 1998. Only one bomb, indiscriminate, the nearest we ever came, or came in recent years, to the equivalent of the kind of terror that's being suffered in Israel. But recognizing from that one experience the kind of intense pressures that are placed on politicians of democracies to deal with that kind of terror in your midst.
But notwithstanding or perhaps because of those experiences, I know that there are two truths about what has happened between the U.K. and Ireland over terrorism. They are these.
First, there can be no purely military solution to a dispute of this kind. Second, outside mediation has been an essential precondition of the even partial success of the Good Friday Agreement and what has followed.
And in the Middle East such outside mediation and involvement is in our judgment essential if there is ever to be a political resolution to the conflict.
The announcement last Thursday by Secretary Powell of the Administration's commitment to a regional conference in the Middle East followed discussions with the EU, the UN and the Russian Federation, and I might underline, also the patient and professional involvement of European Union High Representative Javier Solana who's done more than anyone to bring coherence to our EU foreign policy.
What I want to say is this, that the commonality of approach between particularly the EU and the U.S. represented by this latest development is essential. Of course there are differences of geography, of history, of economic ties between the European Union, the United States and Russia when it comes to the Middle East, and because of these differences it is all too easy for us to be divided too by the clamor of parties' [unintelligible] who act as cheerleaders for one side or another. But the conflict is too serious for that. And because of its potential impact in the Middle East and elsewhere, the trans-Atlantic alliance between the great democracies of Europe and America must be as I've already indicated, more important than ever.
But we also I believe need to recognize that the lack of symmetry in the perception of the relationship also extends to a lack of symmetry in the security of the relationship.
Jim Hoaglund put it well in a typically cogent article in the Washington Post last month when he said this. "Europeans are accustomed to the insecurity of their geography and their history. A decade after the Cold War ended, Europeans feel more secure from the direct threat of war and annihilation than they have for centuries. At the same moment, Americans have had the security blanket of oceans and of distance yanked away in a particularly brutal fashion."
Leading off from that, the second point that I want to make is this. That engaging with the world to drive back chaos must be a key line of defense for Europeans as well as Americans.
For half a century or more since Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter in 1941, our interests and values have been intimately aligned. Today these values are more powerful than ever. The last decade has seen an historic decline in authoritarianism, and the shift from Brezhnev's Soviet Union to Putin's Russia has, for example, been quite remarkable. But in country after country, in Asia, Africa, Latin America, democracy, human rights and the rule of law have taken the place of tyranny, oppression, and the rule of fear.
Yet the greatest contribution of democracies is still to be found in Europe and America and with the financial resources, the political will and the global reach to uphold these values in the rest of the world.
During the Cold War this meant standing up to countries where the states had too much power over the individuals. That is still necessary today as the example of overwhelmingly undemocratic states like Iraq or North Korea illustrate all too well.
But September 11th also showed that now it is countries where the states have too little power or has collapsed altogether which increasingly must give rise to concern as well.
Promoting human rights, fighting poverty, exclusion and injustice, and preventing and resolving conflicts are not merely right and just but they can act as a first line of defense against future crises. By engaging with the world and driving back the boundaries of chaos we are therefore helping to prevent instability and insecurity in order to stop conflict, tyranny, and terrorism. This is what we have achieved and are achieving in Afghanistan. No one can doubt that what we've achieved there is of direct benefit to our own security and it strengthens European security as well as that of America.
This brings me to my third point, that far from being a weakness the different assets and perspectives which Europe and America bring to the world's problems can and should be a source of strength.
Now to come back to the point made by Jim Hoaglund about security, if we look at some of the raw figures they show up some starting contrasts alongside this equally startling contrast about whether, which continent now feels more vulnerable.
The U.S. outspends the whole of the European Union on defense, although EU's GDP is only just behind that of the U.S. it is a long, long way behind that when it comes to defense spending. But the EU outspends the U.S. on development aid. So we each have our particular strengths. When we put those together in a common cause with a common and coherent strategy the results can be dramatic.
It was only, for example, when Europe and America were finally pulling in the
same direction in the Balkans after Srebrenica that the tide of violence was
turned and the scene was set for the Dayton Agreement. And later it was with
U.S. military engagement through NATO that together we were able to resolve
the Kosovo crisis in 1999.
Today a massive commitment of resources by the European Union is gradually rebuilding shattered societies throughout the region and laying firm foundations for stability and for democracy. But the division of labor between the United States and the EU is not absolute, nor should it be. For the Americans, too, are working on the reconstruction work in the Balkans as well.
While I recognize that some here in Washington are weary of the term nationbuilding, it is worth reminding ourselves that the U.S. experience in this field has been spectacularly successful in the past. Japan as well as Germany -- the second and the third largest economies in the world today -- each owe their prosperity to the vision of U.S. policymakers in the 1940s and the 1950s. It was in no sense accidental that in the aftermath of the 2nd World War Germany and Japan emerged as well functioning Western-style democracies. The history could have been quite other and the key factor there was the determination of the United States to set a clear strategy for what has come to be called nationbuilding for those two states and to follow it through.
And the United States also fostered all those key post-war institutions which still underpin international stability. The United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, and NATO.
Now despite all of this there are some in Europe, I believe, who are reluctant to give the U.S. credit for what it does. But the recent historic decision by President Bush to increase U.S. foreign aid spending by $5 billion is powerful evidence of the U.S. determination to engage.
Equally, there are some here in Washington who suggest that Europe has nothing to offer on the military side. That, I am pleased to say, is not the case. As well as our contribution to Operation Enduring Freedom and the International Security and Assistance Force in Afghanistan, 75 percent of the deployed troops in the Balkans are now European, I might add as well as some of you might add, so they should be.
Defense reviews across Europe are now putting emphasis on more deployable forces for each of the defense forces or member states. We in the United Kingdom already spend more on defense than any other European Union ally in absolute terms and as a percentage of our GDP -- 2.7 percent of our GDP compared to 3 percent here in the States. And I certainly accept that spending just 1.5 percent of GDP on defense as some other European allies do is simply not enough to make a proper contribution. That's why we're engaged in efforts with our EU allies to ensure, first of all, that they use their spending better and more effectively; and secondly, where they can, they increase the totality of that spending.
Defense budgets are not, however, about to double across Europe and structural differences mean that the gap in trans-Atlantic military capabilities is unlikely to diminish. The U.S. has one defense budget, one set of commands. EU allies or European allies in NATO have 17 separate ones. But in Europe we have to make the investment needed for our forces to go on working more effectively to be able to work alongside the U.S. or where the alliance needs to intervene, but where there are good reasons for the U.S. not being involved direct on the ground.
It was to deal with these gaps that Tony Blair in October of 1998 first proposed a European Security and Defense Policy built on a new relationship between the European Union and NATO as the twin foundations of European security and of European prosperity.
ESDP will take on an international police mission in Bosnia from next January. ESDP could have a military role in Macedonia this year if the circumstances are right. But ESDP is emphatically not NATO's replacement, and however effective Europe becomes as a regional or a global actor, we cannot expect to make a real difference without regular, close and systematic cooperation with the United States.
So my fourth point is that NATO must remain a key part of our alliance and therefore has to evolve to meet the evolving threat.
A decade or more ago in the aftermath of the collapse of the Berlin Wall many commentators thought that NATO would disappear along with the Cold War. Yet our security today still depends upon the Atlantic Alliance. NATO itself, it's true, is not engaged in Afghanistan but it still feels like a NATO operation. Because Europeans are used to planning, exercising and developing concepts together with the Americans in NATO, our deployment in the Afghan theater has worked smoothly. NATO is the principal instrument for sustaining the means for European military collaboration with the U.S.
NATO has also helped and is helping to transform Europe. It's very important when we in Europe take pride understandably with the benefits which have been brought by the European Union itself. NATO's Partnership for Peace with post-communist states has completely transformed their security sectors and helped also to make the transition to democracy and to operational free markets.
Already Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland have joined NATO and at the forthcoming Prague summit in November more European countries will be invited to join.
Now through the NATO-Russian Council we'll be working together with the Russians as equal partners pursuing common projects, a near unthinkable idea just a few years ago.
But my fifth and my last point is that NATO alone should not be expected to carry the entire weight of the trans-Atlantic relationship. We have to attend to the U.S.-EU relationship more widely.
Disputes like steel attract millions of column inches but they tend to conceal a deeper reality which is of a growth of trade and economic interdependence between the U.S. and the European Union. The EU and the U.S. need to work more vigorously to promote international trade which is in both continents' interests and the EU itself has to resolve some of its own blocks on the development of trade with some of the poorest countries in the world, not least through the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. This is a particularly important message for the political class in Europe at a time when its energies are absorbed in an internal debate about the institutional shape of the European Union.
For ultimately what matters is not the process but the outcome. The EU is only a means to an end and that end consists of security and prosperity.
The European Union is on the point of admitting up to ten new members, finally transcending the barriers of the Cold War. Together with NATO the EU is one of the principal agents for achieving what President Bush has described as a Europe whole, free and at peace? And an EU at 25 rather than 15 is bound to alter the dynamics of the trans-Atlantic relationship, but this should never be used as a reason for Europe to distance itself from the United States. We Europeans always need to remember that we can achieve far more for our security and prosperity through our alliance with the United States than ever we could do so outside the alliance.
There is no contradiction between being pro-American and being pro-European. In this context I do not share the view of Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission, that Britain's relationship with the United States somehow gets in the way of playing a full part in Europe. I reject the idea that relations with the United States and the European Union involve some zero sum, that an individual has to prove his pro-European credentials by being anti-American.
The truth is that all European nations have ties of family, friendship and culture with the United States which are often as close as those which we enjoy each with the other European nations. And within Europe we have learned in recent decades the value of working closely with one another, of maximizing our agreements and minimizing our differences. In my judgment we in Europe should conduct our relations with the United States on the same terms for our fundamental interests are the same. We have everything to gain from continuing a robust confident partnership in the future.
Ladies and gentlemen, Europe does need better explaining to Americans, and America needs better explaining to Europe. Sometimes we will do things differently yet to be successful we have to do the really important things together.
The Atlantic alliance has endured because it is founded not just on interests but above all on values. And while the world may change, the fundamental values which have bound us together for half a century have not changed. Our unshakable faith in democracy and the rule of law is a foundation not only of our freedom but also of our security and prosperity. There will be debate and there will be differences of approach, yet neither will undermine an enduring alliance of enduring values.
Thank you very much indeed.
[Applause]
MR. GORDON: Thank you very much indeed.
We can open the floor for questions. We have about half an hour.
Let me be clear what we'd like to do. First of all, I'd like to group a couple of questions, two or three each time. Second of all, may I ask you to please wait for the microphone so that we can record this. Identify yourself and then ask a brief question.
Let me if I may abuse the privilege and begin with the first one.
You mentioned Secretary Powell's announcement of a conference this summer on the Middle East. In this country that conference has been described in different ways, everything from a ministerial meeting along the lines that Powell has been having with others, to a big international conference, and in Europe one hears I think more emphasis on the latter. I think we'd all be interested in the U.K.'s view of what the purpose and mandate of this meeting or conference is.
And related to that is the question of Arafat whom you mentioned in the context of what's going on. One of the differences, and you said you're prepared to address these differences, one of the differences apparently between the U.S. and Europe is towards Yasser Arafat. The President again repeated yesterday his disappointment in Arafat's leadership and I wonder if the U.K. is disappointed in Arafat and if the suicide bombings go on would the European approach to Arafat's leadership change?
Let's put that one on the floor. The floor is open for a couple of others. The gentleman here and the lady in the second row.
QUESTION: Thank you. I'm Irwin Stelzer, Hudson Institute and the Sunday Times, depending on which side of the pond I'm on.
I wonder if you could spend a minute on a specific question of whether Britain will continue to contribute to the $10 million a month that the EU provides to Arafat. And whether you would comment, you keep referring to our EU foreign policy. Do you find any strains between the U.K. and the EU other than the ones with Mr. Prodi that you mentioned that make life difficult for you?
QUESTION: Elaine Moynihan of Reuters.
You mentioned one of the differences over the ICC and the context of the differences between the agreement we have trans-Atlantically and within Europe. It seems to me that that is a value focus difference. Can you explain from the perspective of a close ally why you think the decision in the ICC does not reflect some shift in values? Do you think the human rights community which has reacted strongly to this decision is just being hysterical?
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: Thank you very much. Good questions.
Phil asked me first of all about the conference on the Middle East and what architecture do we have in mind for it. The work in the architect's office is still continuing, Phil, and will be the subject of an iterative process, I fancy, not least here in Washington.
You ask what the purpose and mandate should be. I think that's easy to describe in general terms. The purpose and mandate should be better to secure a process and pathway to peace and security between Israel and the occupied territories particularly. How you're going to get there is much more complicated. You'll forgive me for not laying down in a didactic way this morning my ideas about the structure of that conflict except to say I think there has to be one precondition which is we have to know in advance that it is going to be a relative success. The one thing which would be a disaster, a catastrophe for the region is if all the hopes and expectations of innocent people on all sides of that conflict were concentrated on the outcome of a conference and it wasn't properly prepared, there were misunderstandings in terms of its agenda and expectations for it and it then fell apart. That's why I think we have to do an awful lot of very careful work. Probably starting in a modest way to begin with before we get to a full-blown conference of foreign ministers and obviously still more of heads of government.
You asked about differences between ourselves, the EU and the U.S. over President Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. Have we been disappointed in the actions taken or lack of actions taken by Arafat.
I can only speak for myself because it runs into the question from Mr. Stelzer about are there strains and differences inside EU foreign policy, the answer which of course is yes.
Speaking for myself, yes, of course I'm disappointed because I have been witness to conversations, had conversations myself about the action that was taken by the Palestinian Authority. It's better to control the violence. The events of the last few months are obvious evidence of my own disappointment.
Should we still deal with Arafat? Yes, because he is the leader of the Palestinian Authority and I don't see way of bypassing him. Indeed to the extent that one tried overtly to bypass him I think we'd end up with a more difficult situation. But as I said in other contexts, we don't choose the leaders we deal with. We have to, so one is not making a moral judgment about the moral rectitude or turpitude. They are the leaders for the time being that we have to deal with.
Mr. Stelzer asked about whether we'd continue with our contributions to the Palestinian Authority which principally is through the EU although there is some direct humanitarian aid allocated to people in the occupied territories through UN agencies principally. Yes is the answer to that question.
I'm aware fully of the concerns about how the money is spent and we will examine very carefully the latest reports from the Israeli government to see whether that casts any fresh light on concerns that have been there.
The IMF were brought in better to ensure the transparency of the arrangements with the Palestinian Authority in respect of their use of aid money from the European Union I think about two years ago. I'm not certain about the time scale, but certainly were brought in. That said we believe that it's been necessary and appropriate to provide this money. Are we fully satisfied about the way it's been spent and about the transparency arrangements? No. If there is to be a more effective peace process and then a process by which the donors provide more resources, that has to be on the basis first of all of guarantees that the money can be used in a permanent say, but secondly, on far better arrangements for transparency.
You also asked whether there are strains inside the EU foreign policy. Yes. There are strains and tensions as one would expect among 15 member states, again of different sizes, because there are strains between the three largest nations -- Germany, France and the U.K.. As my Prime Minister remembers when he invited their leaders for dinner and ten others turned up, sort of invited. But that illustrates, rather graphically illustrated part of the difficulty of the relationship, differences of history, all sorts of differences. Differences in terms of defense budget because our defense budget is, as I say, it's the biggest of European member states in terms of GDP and far bigger in terms of what it can deliver than many member states. And if you're asking about the rubbing points, some of the greatest difficulties have been over the issue of the Middle East. This is a matter of public record. Time and again, with [Yatke Fischer] and the Dutch and the Danish Foreign Minister. I've been in the lead in arguing, almost every occasion, with relative success for the EU to take a balanced approach to what is going on in the Middle East, and above all to ensure that we recognize the imperative of working closely with the U.S..
Now I know there are some people, somebody I was talking to last night, who may say there's no imperative on the U.S. to work closely with the EU on the Middle East. You can part that. But I'm just saying that from my perspective and our perspective it is imperative in our judgment if we are to have a peace process that we do work closely with the U.S..
I'm sorry, the woman colleague from Reuters whose name I didn't catch asked me about the International Criminal Court and whether this [highlights] differences of values between ourselves in Europe and the U.S.. I don't think so. It's for people who support the decision of the Administration, not for me, to explain in detail why it came to that view. But what I recognize is first that the U.S. has a profound commitment to the international rule of law. Secondly, it has no problem at all with international criminal tribunals in particular circumstances because it's been extremely active in getting the two tribunals going in Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. And third, that what I have read of the conservative Administration is about whether there is going to be one rule of law or one rule for other countries and a different rule for the United States, with the feeling that this vehicle could be used against the U.S..
So my approach is to do what we have done in respect to the protocol of the Biological Weapons Convention, is to recognize that for a country like the U.S. to come to that conclusion it might have serious, rather than quixotic reasons for doing so. You can disagree with those reasons, but then sit down, analyze them. In the case of the ICC I think we have to answer point by point the worries of the Administration and hope and work for a situation where by the fluxion of time we are able to prove to the U.S. that its anxieties are not as well founded as obviously they think at the moment.
MR. GORDON: [inaudible]
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: And I'll be quicker.
QUESTION: Good morning.
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: The question from the chair deserved a long answer.
QUESTION: Good morning Minister, [Sanji Che] at the Institute for Defense Analysis.
My impressions, I have noticed a different tone of this debate in recent months. Europeans carry two concerns. A, they worry openly that policy and priorities does exist between U.S. and Europe is growing. B, they worry that America doesn't seem to care it is widening. Mr. Minister, could you offer your view, how can we avoid having a military gap that turns into [unintelligible] political division? Thank you.
QUESTION: Michael Calingart with the Council for the United States and Italy and also Guest Scholar at Brookings.
Foreign Secretary, all indications are that the Administration here intends to take military action against Iraq at some point in some way. If that comes to pass what consequence will that have do you think for the trans-Atlantic relationship? Can it be dealt with as you suggest in a mature manner? Can it be managed?
QUESTION: John Barry, Newsweek.
Foreign Secretary, on NATO, you mentioned the Prague Summit and the prospect of expansion of NATO. I wonder if you could share with us your thoughts about how large that expansion should be and whether, as I've heard your German counterpart say, an expansion probably carries with it the necessity to reform NATO's organizational structure and management system.
And thirdly, whether since you say the gap between the military capabilities of the U.S. and the EU is unlikely to narrow, whether in fact it's actually going to lead to a de facto division of responsibilities between the two halves of the alliance.
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: The lady from the Institute for Defense Alliances in the center row. I think you were asking about whether this military gap would exacerbate the policy differences.
QUESTION: [inaudible]
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: It's true. There are a lot of differences over defense policy as much as other things. I have to say that, and I might not be forgiven for saying this in Europe, that one of the comforts that I think some people who's countries follow very low spending defense budget has is the idea that in the background the United States will always come to their aid. It's not a position I applaud but I think it's there.
Those, really you got to the heart of what I was seeking to say in my talk earlier. There are all sorts of differences of perception. But it seems to me the perceptions vary around Europe as well, which is a point I was making to Mr. Stelzer just two rows behind you, as well. But within Europe we don't freak out every time there's a disagreement. We try and sit down and sort it out. And I think that we ought to be as relaxed about differences with the United States, recognizing of course the United States has the status and the capability as the only super power left in the world since the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
Now the gentleman from Brookings asked, one row up, about Iraq and military action and the reaction of the rest of the European Union and Europe to any military action that is taken. As you all know, not least from the press conference which President Bush and Prime Minister Blair gave after Mr. Blair's visit to Crawford, no decisions have been taken yet on military action. Yes, it remains a possibility.
My own view is that if we judge an Administration by its record of action then it is highly probable that if President Bush reaches a decision on military action that Europe will acknowledge and accept that, and probably give its support. I say that because all the decisions which have been made so far by President Bush with respect to the use of military action have been careful, considered, have involved a high degree of consultation with allies, and have been proportionate. The result of that is shown in the strength of the international alliance with a small A behind the military action being taken in Afghanistan. So that's my sense about it. And every indication I get from the Administration is that that is the path they're following.
Mr. Barry from Newsweek asked me whether an expansion of NATO would necessitate a reform of NATO. Yes, and it's something that George Robertson, the Secretary General, is himself already looking at.
You also asked with this non-narrowing of the military gap between Europe and the United States not lead to a division of labor between us? Yes, I think that it will lead to that. And in a sense that was part of my point about the Balkans where initially, and really in every theater one can conceive of, any military action, even if it's within the ground capabilities of European forces, is going to require the assistance of the United States. But within the Balkans you have to have got quite a sensible and shifting balance of responsibility.
I ought also to say that people should not believe that Europe doesn't have any defense capability, which I think sometimes is assumed. As I've indicated with those figures in Afghanistan, 7,000 U.S. troops, albeit with the potential huge backing of the U.S. which no other country or alliance can replicate, but 7,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, 6,000 European troops. That's not a bad balance.
QUESTION: Tom Barony from ABC Radio Washington, WMAL.
You were talking earlier about the International Crimes Court and also how that relationship with the U.S. and Britain and how the U.S.' stance on that has affected its relations with other countries.
My question is the U.S. pulled out of the Kyoto Treaty and then they said well, we're not going to support the International Court. At what point do other European countries say we've had enough. We're just tired of the U.S. not helping us on certain things we want to get done and then when the U.S. asks for cooperation in the hunt for terrorists, do they just say enough is enough?
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: Do you think we should? Sir, do you think we should say enough is enough?
QUESTION: Do I think so? I'm a journalist. My job is to ask you. [Laughter]
QUESTION: James Dornan from the Times.
I'd like to ask some questions about the reaction to yesterday's events in Tel Aviv. This morning Prime Minister Sharon has said they are considering immediate retaliation which potentially which call for the expulsion of Chairman Arafat. What's Britain's view of this reaction? What have you learned from Prime Minister Sharon's meeting with President Bush yesterday? And you mentioned, we talked earlier on about Chairman Arafat, but has Britain's relationship with Arafat changed overnight?
QUESTION: Patrick Jarreau, Le Monde, Washington.
As a reader of the Washington Post since you mentioned Jim Hoagland, I wonder if you noticed Chris Patteon's piece in the Washington Post yesterday stating that basically Mr. Sharon and the Likud party and their followers here were hijacking the war on terror. Do you agree with this comment? And if not, what does it tell you about misunderstandings between Europe and the U.S. or even prejudice? And I would say how do you feel as a European and a member of the British government? Do you feel comfortable with this kind of comment being issued by a European Commissioner and a British one?
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: The gentleman, middle right, it's a bad excuse to say you're a journalist and therefore to imply you're devoid of views, but -- [Laughter]
QUESTION: Okay. I just think that at some point you read a point where you say we need help, we need to work together in a situation and if the U.S. pulls out of treaties, I mean there's got to be a level of frustration with other heads of state, wouldn't you say?
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: The fact that there is a difference on climate change, on the ICC, on the Biological Weapons Convention is simply a matter of fact.
Now do we say enough's enough? No. Because we're dealing here with two sets -- one great democracy here and a series of pretty well functioning democracies in Europe. We also have to recognize that democracy in America functions so well it's much more difficult for heads of government to gain ratification of treaties than it is say for the U.K. government. That's a practical matter which doesn't [half] affect, and is bound to affect the behavior of anybody negotiating a treaty on behalf of the U.S. Administration.
So it seems to me if you take the Biological Weapons Convention, the protocol, something on which I've done a lot of work myself, if you'd simply read the headlines you would have thought there were two blocs -- the U.S. and the EU -- which were on completely different planets of the Biological Weapons Convention and biological weapons control. That is not the case. If you sit down and analyze the positions, first of all it's worth repeating the U.S. is concerned to ensure proper compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention. It is also true we've had our differences of opinion about how you do that. In my judgment once you peel away some of the labels on the headlines there's a greater degree of understanding about what needs to be done.
What we have done in the U.K., we just recently published a document on this, is say look, let's see what we can do now to gain international agreement, not the least with the U.S., on better enforcement. Get that established and then build up from there. That seems to me to be the appropriate way of pursuing things.
On climate change, can we and the rest of the world simply go our own way on climate change? Well, it ain't possible because we're one world when it comes to climate more than any other. It has to be a continuing process of dialogue and debate and discussion. But I think that it comes back to a point I was making in the lecture. That just as -- We may feel sometimes misunderstood in America as Europeans, we have to recognize our own responsibilities, in trying better to explain what it is that we are about which I think is some of the resentment which I sometimes read about in the American press about Europe, are not altogether misplaced,.
I'm asked by the gentleman from the Times about what our reaction will be in respect of any decisions which may be taken today by the Israeli Cabinet. You'll excuse me if I'm not going to give a running commentary on decisions which have not yet been taken by the Israeli Cabinet.
The situation is desperate and it will grow more desperate by the day. What's crucial, it seems to me particularly for countries like the U.K., is that we do the sort of things that I talked about in my speech, use our best endeavors above all alongside the United States to try and, out of this desperation, to secure some better security and then a pathway to peace, rather than going in for in fact continuing a running commentary while it happens.
In terms of our relations with Chairman Arafat, yes, our relations change with a lot of people in the light of experience and they've changed with Chairman Arafat, but I've not altered the view which I expressed 20 minutes ago about the fact that we don't choose the people we deal with in terms of other leaders elsewhere in the world, and he is the leader of the Palestinians. We need to deal with him.
The gentleman from Le Monde asked me about Chris Patteon's views. I did see the piece he wrote in the Washington Post. I precede what I'm about to say by saying that it normally sounds like a plea in litigation, that Chris Patteon is genuinely a good and close friend of mine, but if you like, it makes my point about relations with the U.S.. I don't always agree with Chris, and I make my speeches, he writes his articles. [Laughter] We come to different views. We can still be very good and close friends and we still share very deep common values, if you like, a metaphor for the relationship between the EU and the U.S..
MR. GORDON: I believe the exact quote from Chris Patteon's article was a reference to "obscenely offensive rubbish" and Patrick, I don't think you are going to get the Foreign Secretary to subscribe to that here. [Laughter]
I'll open it for another round but if I may I'd like to just follow up on the gentleman from ABC News' question, it was clear that you liked that question. Because it's a classic special relationship question as well. I think one part of the question is what is the price that the U.S. might pay for unilateralism? Some people have the view that this Administration has the view that it can do what it wants. If you want to pull out of this treaty or that treaty or pursue missile defense. From a European point of view, why shouldn't they take that view of the world? Why should the U.S. not just go about its business and say here's what we're going to do and you know what, the Europeans are always going to be with us? I think it's an important point.
We'll take a couple of others.
QUESTION: My name is Said Arakat, I'm from Kutz Newspaper in Jerusalem.
Don't you think, sir, that England has to bear a special responsibility and leadership role towards rectifying the tragedy of the Palestinians concerning that England was the responsible party when that tragedy began?
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: I'm sorry, I can't hear you very well.
QUESTION: Don't you think that England has to bear a special responsibility and leadership role towards rectifying the tragedy of the Palestinians concerning that England was the responsible party when that tragedy began?
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: Got it, thank you.
QUESTION: Even independent of the U.S. or the Europeans.
QUESTION: Sir, Michael Trough, student and Anglophile. [Laughter]
I have a quick question for you. Can you give me your impressions on the apparent rise of the right in Europe? You've got Le Pen in France and the recent assassination of the Dutch politician, and whether or not you think this is going to have ramifications in England.
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: Let me deal with those three questions.
Phil was saying why shouldn't the U.S. adopt a unilateralist approach. In the end it's a matter for the U.S., but, and you mentioned NMD. I think, my perception, quite a difference between the commentary about the U.S.' foreign policy and its reality. And if you take nuclear missile defense, what has actually happened has been a process of principally bilateral discussion, but bilateral because there are only two principal signatories to the ABM Treaty, and by all accounts so far that process not of unilateral assertion but of bilateral discussion is producing a beneficial result.
Now yes, of course, we in the U.K. very much subscribe to a multilateralist approach, but the question as to what kind of approach, what kind of headlines will be attached to our approach were we in the position we were in the middle of the 19th Century where were the big super power, would be another issue I think.
Again, it's a point I tried to make in my speech. We in Europe shouldn't always see U.S. foreign policy through the prism of an individual European state. It seems, however, to me, a self evident truth, but one it seems is self evident to the Administration in my experience, the better we work together internationally, particularly with the U.S. and the U.S. with its other international partners, the better will be the prospects for peace and security.
I'm asked by the gentleman there about whether the United Kingdom recognized that we had a special responsibility towards the Palestinians given our own role in, you were very polite, sir, but I think you, in not setting a very clear agenda for what became Israel or the occupied territories either in the Balfour Declaration or in what followed the 2nd World War.
Well yes, I mean we, there have been finer examples of British foreign policy over a century than what has been achieved in the Middle East. Does it give us a special responsibility? Yes. But I'm also conscious of the fact that we are, although we're one of the largest members of the European Union, we are but one member of the EU, and that if we are to meet our responsibilities we have to work closely above all with the United States.
But it's an indication of our history, the prison that the six Palestinian prisoners have been transferred to was a good British jail. [Laughter] We built jails very well. I can tell you as somebody who ran the jail system in the U.K. for four years, and you failed to mention this because on one ever remembers, but my greatest achievement throughout my four years as Home Secretary, not a single high risk prisoner escaped, and it wasn't accidental.
Now I'm asked by an Anglophile, and we'll ensure you're given a scholarship, sir, -- [Laughter] Give your name to the Ambassador. About the rise of the right in Europe and the effects on the United Kingdom.
I think it's important not to generalize too much about what has happened in Europe, at the same time to be very concerned about it. The right or the -- We're not talking about the right in classical terms, within the normal boundaries of political debate and democracy. We're talking here about the extreme right, distinguished by, above all, the hatred of particular minority groups. In the case of Le Pen I might say, as I pointed out to the only forum at which Arab and Israeli Ministers these days meet which is called the EuroMid Forum of the European Union, that they need to recognize at least they had a common interest in Le Pen because he hates Jews and Arabs in equal measure. But it says something about the extremely unpleasant nature of politics that he does.
Now why have you got it? The gentleman from Le Monde gave you a better idea. I don't think it's an accident that Le Pen achieved 25 percent plus in those departments in France where there was a high proportion of immigration from [the Magreb] particularly and from elsewhere in the Islamic world, and in the old industrial areas where there's a greater degree of despair.
I have a personal view which I'll just mention, that if you're looking to the rise of the right in, of the extreme right in France, it's hard not to recognize that President Mitterrand made, albeit a completely inadvertent contribution to that rise in 1985 when he decided to introduce a system of proportional representation, and I say that as someone who actually wrote an article in 1985 saying that the introduction of PR, whatever the tactical advantages might be, the left in France would provide a base for the extremists as it has done I'm afraid in other countries as well.
So far as benevolence is concerned, [unintelligible] was a very different character from Le Pen. Much more sophisticated in his approach. Not a classic extreme right winger who is opposed to any kind of liberalism or tolerance. And discriminating, although in my view wrongly, discriminating in his approach. He focused particularly on the Muslim immigrants in the community and was saying that his objection to them was that they weren't properly integrated nor were they willing to become integrated into that community.
As for United Kingdom, as some of you may have read just recently in the municipal elections which took place last Thursday, there was an organization called the British National Party which is a neo-fascist party. That put candidates up in a number of towns including one near my district, ten miles down the road in Burmley, and picked up two seats.
What conclusion shall we draw from this? Not too many, I'd say. I think the really important point about the local elections was the country's expectation of turnout, the number of voters that turned out where we'd been seeing a decline in turnout for local elections. Secondly, in most cases the British National Party was seen off.
We've done some things better than other countries. I've got a large Muslim community in my constituency. They come from elsewhere in the commonwealth so they understand, have an intrinsic understanding better of the culture into which they're coming than for example I think some of those on the continent do. Mine are mainly from India or from Pakistan. Someone said last night at a dinner I was having, they understand cricket. Well you can't understand British politics without understanding cricket because cricketing metaphors are used so much in British politics so even that is actually quite helpful.
But all that said, there remains tensions and quite an agenda, particularly with the Muslim community in the U.K. to get a mutual recognition that we, as we have done, and as I did as Home Secretary, really do respect their difference in culture and religion and are taking steps not just to protect it but to celebrate it so that alongside state funded Catholic and Anglican and Jewish and Methodist schools, we now have state-funded Muslim schools. But that citizenship of the U.K. involves obligations to the United Kingdom and to our democracy and sense of values as well. And what I hope we're going to start to see is the opening up of an argument inside the Muslim community, as I believe we are, as well as between the Muslim community and the rest of the British community.
MR. GORDON: Ladies and gentlemen, I think we've used up all of our time, but I'd like to thank you very much for coming and I'd also like to ask you to join me in thanking the Foreign Secretary for spending so much time with us and engaging so frankly on all these issues.
[Applause]
MR. GORDON: So thanks, hope to see you next time. And thank you very much. It was terrific.
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: Thank you very much. Thank you.