Europe has to come to grips with the fact that not even the USA is strong enough to create a new order anywhere in the world, neither in Afghanistan nor in the Middle East. Instead, anything that will increase the conflict without an achievable goal will play into the hands of the IS.
The "Economist" recently called German Chancellor Angela Merkel "The Indispensable European" because of her principled, humanistic approach in the refugee crisis. She might be even more "indispensable" since the horrific terror attack in Paris last weekend.
While the scale of the massacre has been rightly compared to 9/11 in the United States and French President Francois Hollande declared that "France is at war", the European answer to it will be necessarily different. Not just because France and Europe lack the military muscle that the USA under President George W.Bush believed to have. There are a number of important differences, and one of them might be the German Chancellor or what she stands for.
While the shared sovereignty of the European Union between the EU and its member states has often been seen as a weakness, it can turn out as a strength in this case. While the French President with a fire-breathing far-right oin his neck could probably not avoid a bellicose posture, Angela Merkel, rational and cautious as ever, has so far refused to join the chorus of hawks.
At the G-20 meeting in Belek in Turkey last weekend, she suggested anything but a total turn-around of her existing approach and rightly did not mention the word "war". She assured France "any support", which is a rather interpretable formulation, and said: "Good is stronger than evil. We will do everything that is necessary to combat extremism, terrorism and hatred".
Combating extremism, terrorism and hatred is indeed the need of the hour and that includes those who have been agitating against Islam in Europe and burnt-down refugee shelters as well. It would be a mistake to assume, as some of Merkel's critics do, that the daughter of a Lutheran pastor has turned moralistic or even romantic after all.
Quite the contrary, a realistic assessment of the situation shows that all war rhetoric is not only misplaced but also dangerous because it tends to manifest itself in short-sighted, ill-planned decisions with far-reaching consequences such as the invasion in Iraq.
Those who talk about a "total war" or even a "Third World War" are either not aware that a similar kind of rhetoric helped to pave the way for the First World War, or they consciously work towards a catastrophic scenario. That much historical awareness is, and must be, left in Europe that we never again sleep-walk into the kind of self-destructive wars of the 20th century.
For what does war in the context of Paris actually mean? While the Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility for the attacks, most of the alleged culprits are actually Europeans. So far, seven names have come up in the police reports.
Omar Ismail Mostefai was a French citizen who grew up in a middle-class neighbourhood in Chartres, 80 kilometres outside Paris. Bilal Hadfi, who blew himself up in front of the "Stade de France", too was a French citizen living in Belgium. The brothers Ibrahim and Salah Abdeslam were also Frenchmen and one of them even owned a bar in Brussels. Samy Amimour, one of the suicide bombers at the "Bataclan" Club, was a Frenchman from Drancy, near Paris.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who supposedly planned the attacks from Syria, is a Belgian citizen who grew up in Brussels and the spokesperson in the video, with which the IS claims responsibility for the attacks, has been identified as Fabien Clain, a French Islamist who was in prison in France before he fled to Syria.
Could war therefore mean to bomb the neighbourhood of Molenbeek in Brussels, where some of the suspects lived and that has been known as a hub for Islamist agitation for a while? The question leads the rhetoric ad absurdum. No outside enemy will compensate for the measures that have to be taken to cure the cancer within Europe.
The old continent has to come to grips with the fact that four or even more generations of Muslim immigrants with French, Dutch, Belgian or German passports must have exactly the same right as every other citizen to participate in the political, economic and social life of their countries. And this will necessarily change Europe.
The eastern European countries that are currently trying to keep Muslim refugees out from their territory still have a steep learning curve ahead. Unknowingly, they bought not only into a common free market economy but into a political union that needs to transform itself if it wants to stay what it is: open, tolerant and democratic.
Europe also has to come to grips with the fact that not even the USA is strong enough to create a new order anywhere in the world, neither in Afghanistan nor in the Middle East. France has officially asked the European Union for help and European diplomats have indicated already that the support that was unanimously granted by the 28 member-states will be probably a more intense intelligence cooperation or other non-military activities.
"We will listen very carefully what France has to tell us and also analyse mindfully for what they ask", said German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen, a close confidant of Angela Merkel, after a meeting in Brussels. This is neither an expression of weakness nor a lack of solidarity. Every possible military action needs to be based on a realistic assessment of what is possible and, more important what is not.
It is clear that the IS, similar to Al-Qaida, follows a strategy that aims at intensifying conflicts and occupying the spaces that are left by those who allow the terrorists to divide them; in this case between the humanistic values and traditions of Europe versus an increasingly intolerant fascist ideology. France, with its colonial history in North Africa and a large Muslim population, is the weakest link in the European chain in this regard.
Anything that will increase the conflict without an achievable goal will play into the hands of the IS. While it might be legitimate to bomb IS training camps in Syria, there is very little to militarily turn around the situation in the Middle East in the near future.
We must therefore resist the temptation to demand a grand solution. There is none. We will have to develop better intelligence, smarter policing and an increased cooperation worldwide to combat terrorism. And we will have to let go of a number of ideas that worked for some time or not.
"Regime change" is one of them, "burqa or headscarf ban" is another. Europe has been all but trigger-happy in the past but it needs to base its foreign policy on this already realistic approach to the world. And it needs to renegotiate the social contract with its Muslim citizens and transform into a society that is based on an enlarged concept of enlightenment. We will only succeed if we are able to change.
(The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi)
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
PREV
