Charlemagne

Living with bad neighbours

Europe tries to forget decades of embarrassing realpolitik in the Middle East

IMAGINE your awkward neighbours across the street. You befriended them, drew them into the neighbourhood-watch scheme and even made some nice trades. All of a sudden they are exposed as criminals, or maybe brutes with women enslaved in their basements. Would you feel guilt about your friendship? Remorse about having ignored the telltale signs? Or would you feign outrage, like Captain Renault’s in “Casablanca”: “I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”

Such are the emotions that Europe’s leaders feel as their friends across the Mediterranean are toppled by long-suffering subjects. True Europe has had little choice in its neighbours. Good relations were a necessity of life, particularly for countries with oil and gas, or those that guarded against terrorists and illegal migrants. Yet some European actions now seem craven indeed. Remember Gordon Brown’s dissimulation about the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan jailed for life in Scotland for his role in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing? Or the sight of Silvio Berlusconi kissing the hand of Muammar Qaddafi? In the grab for a share of Libya’s oil wealth, many others have been stained. Libyan petrodollars, moreover, have found their way into companies and institutions across Europe, from the Juventus football team to the London School of Economics.

Europe’s leaders are now trying to disown their years of realpolitik, and instead make the cry of the Arab street their own. The contortions are more theatrical the closer they live to north Africa. Finland was the first to demand sanctions against Libya; Cyprus and Malta the last to agree. “The farther you are away from immigrants landing on your beaches, the more morally pure you can allow yourself to be,” says one European diplomat.

Of the big European countries, Angela Merkel’s Germany has been the firmest advocate of ostracising dictators. France suffered humiliation in Tunisia, but seized on the Libyan revolt to set matters straight. Nicolas Sarkozy sacked his hapless foreign minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, put France at the forefront of the push for sanctions and even sent aircraft laden with aid directly into liberated Benghazi (see article). France, he said, should not fear change in the Arab world; for the first time in history, democratic ideals “could triumph on all shores of the Mediterranean”.

Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has perhaps struggled the most. He unwisely called Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak the “wisest of men”, only to see him toppled. Early in the Libyan crisis he carelessly said he would “not dare disturb” his friend, Colonel Qaddafi, about the violence in his country. A week later he had to cast off the Libyan leader, saying it was time to “end the bloodbath and support the Libyan people”.

David Cameron might have been an exception. Britain has long enjoyed close relations with the Arab world but Mr Cameron was in opposition when Tony Blair helped rehabilitate Colonel Qaddafi as a reward for giving up his weapons of mass destruction, forsaking terrorism and helping out in the fight against al-Qaeda. Mr Cameron was also the first foreign leader to go walkabout in Tahrir Square last month. But taking defence contractors with him to the Gulf invited mockery: a cover in Private Eye has him offering a two-for-one deal on tear gas and armoured cars and being invited to throw in his wife as well.

The conversions from realism to idealism are not wholly convincing. The UN Security Council, including veto-wielding champions of national sovereignty like China and Russia, moved more quickly to impose sanctions on Libya than did the EU. About $30 billion-worth of assets have been frozen in America, but the EU is unlikely to act on such a scale; its lawyers are despairingly trying to distinguish assets owned by the 26 individuals on the EU list from those belonging to the Libyan state. At a special summit next week, the EU has much to rethink.

Stefan Fule, the commissioner for “neighbourhood” policy, admits, “Europe was not vocal enough in defending human rights and local democratic forces in the region.” Some Eurocrats bravely argue that the EU’s soft power softened up Arab regimes: EU-driven telecoms reforms, they say, helped the Twitter and Facebook revolutions. A more persuasive conclusion is that promoting democracy with inducements and cash has failed. That does not stop southern EU members from seeking more aid for north Africa. The Germans want benefits tied more closely to reforms. A deal might involve “more for more”: more aid and trade in exchange for more reform. But will southerners let Arab producers compete with their farmers and textile industries?

The danger of a big disruption of oil and gas supplies makes it more necessary to develop an EU-wide energy market and grids. And without autocrats to deter illegal migrants, countries will have to rethink their immigration policies. The Club Med countries want EU help to cope with a possible influx, but they have been shamefully slow to help Tunisia and Egypt, which are bearing the brunt of the refugee crisis.

Oil-for-freedom

For now, the most pressing question is how to speed up the departure of Colonel Qaddafi. Whether or not a no-fly zone is imposed over Libya, European leaders need to think about helping the Libyans to help themselves. So how to strengthen the liberated parts of Libya in the east and weaken the Qaddafi camp?

The French had one good idea when sending aid direct to Benghazi. Europeans could work to build up a temporary free government. Why not resume oil exports from the east, paying into an international escrow account to buy humanitarian supplies? This notion got a bad name with the embargo of Iraq. In Libya, though, it is not a form of sanction, but a means of economic assistance; not oil-for-food, but oil-for-freedom.



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