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European Affairs
European Perspectives
Belgium Bucks Its Atlantic Traditions
By Mia Doornaert
What was plucky little, Atlanticist Belgium doing alone in the company of France and Germany, the two main European opponents of the United States in the run-up to the war in Iraq? The answer is that the American saying that "all politics are local" does not just apply to the United States. Belgium's policy in NATO and the European Union on the war became a casualty of pre-electoral political infighting. The result is that Belgium now finds itself quasi-isolated, and not even in line with the French-German axis with which it sided in the bitter NATO dispute over military aid to Turkey earlier this year.
General elections will be held in Belgium on May 18, and Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt (a Flemish Liberal) wants to reach the finishing line with his coalition intact. The heterogeneity of the six-party governing coalition makes that very difficult. The government consists of the Dutch-speaking and French-speaking branches of the center-right Liberals, the center-left Socialists and the pacifist Greens, who are at odds about almost everything, from the current high level of taxation to foreign policy.
The official doctrine of the Liberals is that European unity and Atlantic solidarity are not mutually exclusive but complementary. The Greens, however, are viscerally anti-NATO and strongly anti-American, and so are some of the Socialists. Last fall, the Greens suffered a severe political defeat when they had to agree to the sale of 4,500 Minimi automatic weapons to Nepal, where the government is fighting a Maoist guerrilla insurrection.
With the elections fast approaching, they felt that they could not afford to budge one inch from their pacifist stand on Iraq. So, they warned the prime minister that they would leave the coalition if Belgium took part in any way in the so-called American "logic of war" during the weeks prior to the outbreak of hostilities.
It was mainly for this reason that Belgium joined France and Germany in January in opposing a NATO decision to support Turkey if that country came under attack in a war in Iraq. Belgium thus suddenly found itself in the international headlines as the only other country to join France and Germany in a clash that severely weakened the credibility of the Atlantic Alliance. This unusual diplomatic threesome, however, did not last long.
Germany started to soften its position as early as February. For France, the NATO dispute became a sideshow once Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin scored a major diplomatic success with a Valentine's Day speech in the UN Security Council opposing war against Iraq. Shortly thereafter, Belgium found itself isolated and gave up its opposition.
That Belgium aligned itself with France and Germany is not in itself too surprising. In the last century, the country suffered heavily under German occupation during two World Wars. This is an important part of the Belgian collective memory. It explains why everything that promotes peace and cooperation between the country's two major neighbors is seen as a vital Belgian interest.
What has changed, however, is that solidarity with France and Germany came at the expense of Belgian relations with Britain, with the United States and with NATO. This is a break in the Belgian diplomatic tradition. Hitherto, the country has not embraced the view commonly held in France that a "European Europe" is by definition a Europe that opposes the United States and has doubts about NATO.French President Jacques Chirac, however, turned the debate on Iraq into a battle for the mastery of Europe, not least because of his anger that numerous European countries had expressed public support for the United States. Choosing a head-on confrontation with the United States and Britain, Mr. Chirac aligned himself with Russia and China in what the French and the French-language Belgian press unanimously called "the peace camp."
As an overwhelming majority of Belgians, like most other Europeans, opposed the war in Iraq, political leaders vied with each other in making anti-American statements to curry favor with the voters. This has been especially true in the French-speaking part of Belgium, which is culturally very much geared toward France.
Bemused television viewers saw Minister of Foreign Affairs Louis Michel (Liberal) and Minister of Defense André Flahaut (Socialist), who are bitter political rivals, try to outbid each other in pro-French and anti-American comments in news shows. In a revealing choice of words, Flahaut said in March that he would pronounce a "nyet'' against all further American military movements through Belgium, to the extent of banning U.S. military aircraft from Belgian skies.
The comments of Mr. Flahaut, not one of the government's biggest stars, were not that surprising given that he is known for being viscerally anti-NATO. Mr. Michel, on the other hand is not anti-Atlantic, nor is his political party anti-NATO. It was shocking to many of his own party faithful – and to his diplomats – that he marched so far ahead even of France, which never raised the question of banning U.S. troop movements or closing French air space.
The prime minister has in the meantime called both men to order. But he suffered a new setback with the European mini-summit on defense of April 29 in Brussels to which he had invited Mr. Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg. It was meant to be an anti-war summit. But, by then, the fighting in Iraq was over.
Mr. Schröder, and even Mr. Chirac, were more interested in mending fences with the United States and Britain than in taking an initiative which could only be perceived as anti-NATO. One suggestion, for instance, was that the four countries should approve a separate headquarters for all European multinational forces even though they already wear three different hats (national, NATO and EU). By that time, Mr. Schröder had even admitted to British Prime Minister Tony Blair that "it's always good for mankind when a dictator is removed.''
The British government was appalled that some of its European partners wanted to discuss defense without Britain, whose soldiers had been fighting for what was now widely perceived as a common good in Iraq. And the Netherlands, the partner of Belgium and Luxembourg in the Benelux grouping, considered the initiative "totally inopportune.''
The new government that emerges from the May 18 elections will have its work cut out to mend fences. But it may find it hard to convince the United States, Britain and other traditional partners that offensive and hostile declarations by leading politicians were uttered in the heat of electoral battle and should be taken with whole handfuls of salt.
Mia Doornaert is Diplomatic Editor of the Belgian daily, De Standaard.