Europe in the Middle East: Shaping a Political Role

EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE EAST: SHAPING A POLITICAL ROLE John P. Richardson At is hard for Americans to assess accurately the political role that Western Europe has been developing toward a resolution of the Middle East issue. One reason is that the United States' firm domination of the Middle East peace process —which began with former secretary of state Henry Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy—has continued into the present. Another reason is that the United States and Western Europe have different geographic and historic relations with the Middle East. Because of their geographic proximity, Europe and the Middle East have long been closely linked, ever since A.D. 732, when Charles Martel's army blocked the northernmost thrust of the armies of Islam at Tours. The United States, on the other hand, is some 4,000 miles from the Straits of Gibraltar, and had had no contact at all with the Middle East until it sent missionaries to Turkey in 1820. U.S. political involvement in this area began only in the middle of the twentieth century. It is ironic that Western Europe, the originator of Western imperialism in the Middle East, is today considered by many Middle Eastern nations to be a relatively benign third force, independent from the two superpowers, while the United States, which has never occupied nor colonized a Middle Eastern country , is regarded with suspicion. Yet, this paper shall propose that the Middle East peace process espoused by Western Europe through the European Economic Community (EEC) is more fair to all parties in the Middle East, and more all-encompassing, than the proposals elaborated by the United States, despite the fact that Europe was once the primary imperialist power in the Middle East. Mr. Richardson is president of the Center for U.S.-European Middle East Cooperation, located in Washington, D.C. He has been professionally involved with the Middle East since the early 1960s. Portions of this article previously appeared in The Link, vol. 14, no. 1 (New York: Americans for Middle East Understanding, Inc., 1981) and are reprinted with permission. 107 108 SAIS REVIEW The Middle East is the first major foreign policy arena to which the principle of European Political Cooperation (EPC) has been applied. European attempts to mediate peace have been fraught with problems, owing in large part to substantive differences between the EEC and the United States, the former's dominant partner in the Atlantic Alliance. These differences have generated mutual recriminations from time to time and are rooted in fundamental differences of opinion over the complex Palestinian problem. Western Europe differs in two regards from the United States vis-à-vis the Middle East: Europe is far more dependent on Middle Eastern oil and it has a much weaker domestic lobby on behalf of Israel than does the United States. Because of this, the American government is more susceptible to domestic political pressures concerning the Middle East than are the EEC governments. This difference has generated much of the misunderstanding, and most of the distrust, between the United States and Europe in the search for a peace beneficial to all parties. A graphic representation of American and European involvement in the Middle East since World War II would show a steadily ascending American curve, and a descending European curve until 1973, at which point the European curve would begin to shift upward, paralleling the continuously rising American curve, though at a lower level. The key factor for the Europeans during those interim years was a steady, if awkward, process of decolonization, in which Great Britain relinquished its major role in Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, and the Gulf; and France gave up its long-held power in North Africa, Syria, and Lebanon. The United States, alone among the allies to emerge strong from World War II and committed to the principle of self-determination, began to assert a more vigorous presence in the Middle East in response to the perceived Soviet threat, as well as to support the newly formed state of Israel. Throughout this period, oil had not acquired the importance it has today because American and European firms controlled its drilling, shipping, and marketing, and also because American domestic...