September 11, one year on

The hundreds of millions of viewers who watched the collapse of the Twin Towers on live television had the feeling that they were experiencing the first act in a new type of war.

One year on, the most extraordinary thing is that, while this immediate intuitive assessment has proved accurate, we know very little more. Who is at war with whom? The United States is at war. It reacted to its terrorist Pearl Harbor with dignity, composure and determination. But now that Afghanistan’s Islamic regime has been eliminated, is there still an enemy? Whose enemy is it, and who are its targets? Has al-Qaeda lost the war or only the Battle of Kabul? Is Europe still in the war? Is it a fight against fanatical Islamism, against ‘rogue states’ or against every terrorist organisation on the planet – are we all in it together against bin Laden, Arafat and ETA? Who can tell?

In the face of this unprecedented situation, it is time for the main players on the international stage to emerge from the stupor that followed the bolt from the blue of September 11 and to overcome the temptations to which they are liable to succumb.

For the United States, the temptation is clearly to go it alone. Everyone understands that it feels devastated and humiliated by the blow it sustained – just imagine the reaction of French public opinion if the Air France Airbus hijacked in Algiers in December 1994 had crashed on the Champs-Elysées. Bolstered by overwhelming military superiority, exasperated by constantly being put in the dock at the United Nations, experiencing every day the political disunity and military impotence of its European allies who are so ready with their lectures, the United States is driven to assume full and sole responsibility for maintaining order in the world. While waiting for the Wild Wests of this planet to be subjected to the rule of law, a brave sheriff has set himself the task of putting the outlaws where they can do no harm, targeting first al-Qaeda, then the Taliban, then Iraq, then other ‘rogue states’, without bothering to ask the opinion of the ‘honest folks’ whose lives and property he claims to be defending.

For the Europeans, the temptation is to be irresponsible, their eternal little foible. At heart, all of them go along with Washington’s leading role. The Americans do the dirty work, pay the price in human lives, foot the bill and take the flak from the media for the inevitable ‘collateral damage’. The Europeans allow themselves the luxury of making a virtue out of their impotence, presenting themselves as the inspiration behind successful adventures, distancing themselves from those that go wrong and criticising their Big Brother’s unilateralism with a vehemence that is only strengthened by the fact that they themselves would undoubtedly struggle to muster sufficient unity for properly concerted action.

For the countries of the South, it is convenient to make the United States the universal scapegoat, the Great Satan denounced by the Iranian ayatollahs and by all those whose Marxist nostalgia has been rekindled by anti-globalisation campaigns. It is an open-and-shut case: water shortages and excessive rainfall, deforestation in Brazil, child labour in South-East Asia, Third World debt, the financial crisis in Argentina, the spread of AIDS in Africa, etc., are all the fault of Washington or Wall Street, which essentially implies that, while the means used by al-Qaeda were odious, its targets were not so badly chosen. It also allows dictatorial regimes to gloss over their own mistakes and justify their rejection of democracy by likening it to the despised ultraliberalism.

It is all too easy to imagine the disaster scenario that would ensue if we continued to yield to these temptations. The Americans would engage in that ‘one war too many’, which would remove the moral respectability – and hence the operational legitimacy – of the only power that is currently capable of guaranteeing the least undesirable of all possible world orders. It would also trigger uncontrollable chain reactions.

In actual fact, Europe can do a lot in this respect, however unwilling it might be to act. It can do this by facing up to its historical legacy of responsibility for the new century. To this end, the Member States of the European Union must agree to make their actions match their innumerable declarations at long last by organising themselves to speak with one voice and to act as one. They must agree to equip themselves with the quantity and quality of military resources that are regrettably necessary if they are to avert the new dangers in the world of today. Moreover, strengthened by what they have been able to achieve by their own joint efforts, they must act imaginatively and constructively to make this planet a more peaceful place and a better home for all its people. If we consider the influence of the only true common European position, the one it presents at the world trade negotiations in Doha, we can measure the potential impact of the expression of a European vision for the environment, for the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, for the reform of the IMF and, most significantly, for the reform of the United Nations itself, where the EU can set an example by accepting, for instance, that Europe should no longer have more than one permanent seat on the Security Council in order to make room for representation of the large countries of the South, such as India, Nigeria and Brazil, or – better still – for existing or future continental or regional unions, such as an African Community, Mercosur and ASEAN.

By convening the Convention on the Future of Europe only a few weeks after September 11, the leaders of the old continent have at least equipped themselves with the means to prepare for the political choices that lie ahead of them. In June of next year, the Convention, chaired by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, should deliver to them a draft political constitution for a greater Europe. The debate can then begin across the entire continent. Let us hope that the verdict will not be delivered by governments alone but by the people, through a referendum. Let us therefore select 11 September 2003 as the date on which we learn whether Europe is prepared, in its turn, to defend its identity and to play its full part in the organisation of the more peaceful and fairer world this new century needs.

Alain Lamassoure, 4 September 2002