Europe will pay the cost for another time

The latest round of the Palestine-Israel conflict will continue for some time, which will also expectedly produce long-term negative implications. While none of the parties in the world will benefit from the disaster, European countries will particularly pay a higher price for the ongoing conflict. Though well aware of the mistaken nature of U.S. policies, European countries have blindly followed U.S. policies. History was telling and will likely repeat.

There have been numerous cases that European countries have paid prices for the mistakes of the U.S. policy in the last two decades. The first such case should be the Iran nuclear issue. European countries used to be one of the most important economic partners of Iran before 2012, if not the most, and Iran was a very important market for European products. Iranians preferred German electronics and autos to these types of products from other countries.

But due to U.S. illegal sanctions on Iran, European companies gradually withdrew from the Iranian market and finally paid the cost of losing the market. Today, there is a very modest economic presence of European countries in
Iran.

The second such case should be U.S. interference in the domestic affairs of Middle Eastern countries in the last two decades. The Middle East, though not peaceful enough, remained stable in general terms in the 1990s through early 2000s. European countries, therefore, used to be very ambitious in promoting economic integration with their Middle Eastern neighbors as the security situation was acceptable. The Barcelona Process in the 1990s was such a program to integrate Europe and its neighbors on the other side of the Mediterranean.

But the first two decades have seen that the U.S. have frequently interfered in the domestic affairs of a number of Middle Eastern countries including Iraq, Libya and Syria by different military means. As a result of the military actions, Middle Eastern countries have experienced regional turmoil for more than two decades.

Several regional and extra-regional actors have been encountering strategic and ideological differences with the United States in various ways. However, it was European countries that have been most seriously affected by the instabilities as they are the immediate neighbor of the Middle East. The flow of refugees have added economic and social burdens and caused divisions within European countries and between them as well. And they will see even more negative implications in the long future.

The third case could be the latest conflict between Israel and Palestine. The war launched by Israel in the Gaza Strip has already caused a very serious humanitarian disaster as more than 17,700 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them women and children, have so far lost their lives, and more than two million have been displaced.
If the war continues, more serious humanitarian disasters will take place. European countries will likely see more refugees coming, which will add new difficulties to their economies. As some European politicians travel to Israel to show their support for Israel’s hardline policy, Muslims in these countries will become more dissatisfied with the policy of the politicians. New divisions will take place within the EU as some other countries do not share with those supporting Israel’s unreasonable policy.

All in all, it is the U.S. that has been making mistakes in the region while it is European countries that have always been paying the heavy costs. Then there comes the question of whether the elites in Europe understand the scenario and the rationale behind it. The answer is definitely yes. Actually, the various policy concepts initiated by Europe had sufficiently suggested that Europeans well understood their above-mentioned problem.
In the early 2000s, European leaders proposed the concept of normative diplomacy, by which they believed that they could shape the Middle East with another approach different from the power-minded approach of the United States. Therefore, the year 2003 saw that Jacques Chirac, President of France, and Gerhard Schroder, Chancellor of Germany, vociferously opposed the U.S. efforts to invade Iraq. It was proved they had been right though they failed to stop the war.

It was the same year that the three foreign ministers of France, Germany and the UK paid a joint visit to Iran to seek a solution to the Iran nuclear issue with their normative diplomacy, in opposition to U.S. approaches of economic sanctions and military pressure. The European troika’s efforts also proved to be right though they failed to change the course of U.S. policy.
In 2010, the EU proposed another concept of strategic autonomy, and the term itself suggested its intention to distance itself from the U.S. and to reduce its dependence on the U.S. in security issues. But unfortunately, this period did not see sufficient European efforts to demonstrate its autonomic aspect of its policy. Instead, some European countries even sided with the U.S. on the policies that finally led to victimizing their economic and security interests as mentioned above.

It is true that Atlantic relations with Europe were rooted in cultural and historical links, and will not change for long. But on the other hand, European countries do have different interests. The Middle East is an immediate neighbor of Europe but not the U.S., and anything that happens in the Middle East could affect Europe. It is not reasonable that the EU always would support the U.S.

In addition, the current U.S. policy on the Palestine-Israel conflict, seeing millions of Palestinians fleeing homes, is obviously undermining justice, which should be one of the foundational principles of international order. The continuation of such a crisis will undermine not only the image of the U.S. but also even more that of Europe.

Anyway, it is time that Europe will have to make a reasonable approach with a balance between justice and its Atlantic relations. Otherwise, the mistakes could make Europe pay even higher prices.