The ever-widening divide
The cover image of the current Economist features a construct called "The West" fracturing to expose a raging river of fire or maybe blood — like the chasm, it's open to interpretation. This disturbing graphic appears under the questioning headline "How deep is the rift?" Famous for not mincing its words, The paper says: "The Atlantic alliance, NATO, the United Nations and the European Union have been gravely weakened by the events of recent days. Good-faith differences over Iraq are part of the story, but only part. Also blame shifting attitudes and awful leadership-above all, by France's Jacques Chirac ..."
How did it all go wrong, asks the leader writer?
"Generalisations are odious. But there exists a widening gulf of comprehension between the people of America and the peoples of Europe. Since the felling of the twin towers, Americans have by and large come to think that the world is a dangerous place from which unexpected threats are liable to emerge unless the western powers take forceful and timely action to nip them in the bud. Iraq, say most Americans, poses just such a threat. Most Europeans think the opposite."
The forces acting upon bodies such as the UN, NATO and the EU are addressed in tectonic terms, and then The Economist comes down hard on the person it sees as being responsible for the current wobbling of all three institutions, Jacques Chirac. Referring to the fact that war might be necessary at some point, the leader writer says of Mr Chirac:
"He seems chiefly interested in making sure that the point will be of France's choosing, not America's . This is not only a folie de grandeur, given that it will be American soldiers who will end up doing the fighting. It is also an unforgivable pose to have struck just when the threat of imminent military action might have extracted a last-minute change of heart from Mr Hussein. By proposing the "alternative" of more inspections, Mr Chirac has succeeded brilliantly in telling the dictator that his last minute is not nigh."
If Mr Chirac wants the EU to be a counterweight to the US, history may judge that he did the opposite, and by trying to stop NATO from responding to a Turkish request for help, he has added that organisation to his victims, argues the paper, which then reserves its most vehement barb for the closing paragraph:
"When Mr Bush took the Iraq issue to the [Security] council in September, the unilateralists in his own administration were aghast. They shut up when it passed a unanimous resolution warning Iraq of serious consequences if it failed to comply. Now the perverse Mr Chirac looks set to prove their original point. A body which thinks that 'serious consequences' spells 'more inspectors' does not deserve to be taken seriously."
In a special report (subscription required), the paper looks at the rift with stories titled "Dealing with Iraq", "NATO hits a crisis" and "The view from elsewhere". If economics is referred to as the dismal science, The Economist, this week, should be called the dismal journal.
