The US-Iraqi war after the one in Afghanistan is a new chapter of an announced series of wars against terrorism of uncertain success and duration. It is not sufficient to recognize that the American government was entitled to aggress Afghanistan because it offered hospitality and support to Al Qaeda. It is also important to understand the target of that attack.
The American government failed to explain it. And it is far less convincing when it tries to explain the relation between the attack on Iraq, described as a pressing threat to US security, and the struggle against terrorism.
It is difficult to imagine that Iraq can employ mass destruction weapons while it is under the UN pressure to disarm. On the contrary, it could resort to them if its survival is threatened by an invasion.
Is war the most efficacious way to combat terrorism? The results of the attack on Afghanistan seem to contradict this thesis. A stable government has not been established.
Those who are supposed to have inspired the terrorist attack on the US have not been captured or eliminated. Moreover, a new war against an Islamic country is likely to foster new acts of terrorism and to sharpen tensions in the Middle Eastern region.
Terrorism is an enemy hidden within our societies. It threatens us in the streets of our cities and in our houses. It can inflict enormous damages, even without mobilizing armies or mass destruction weapons, and can endanger peace and democracy. Its strength lies in the consent it enjoys in a considerable part of world public opinion. A plan to defeat terrorism, beside the necessary repressive aspects, should address with absolute priority the dramatic gap between North and South. The main goal to pursue is therefore global justice.
The Security Council resolution 1441 aims at Iraqi disarmament. But the US government pursues an additional goal, overthrowing Saddam Hussein and establishing a democratic regime conceived as a step towards the democratisation of the Middle East. This is not an objective that can be achieved through violence and puppet governments imposed by the Americans.
The choice of war is not the expression of the capability of the US to assure world order.
Quite the contrary. It is the expression of the decline of the hegemonic power of the US. However important the control on the Middle-East oil resources or the need to find a diversion to its economic weakening and to the alarming amount of its foreign debt, the US action is brought about above all by the need to enhance its own security after 9/11.
War reflects the attempt to perpetuate the US supremacy through another form of terror: that of the overwhelming destructive potential of its armed forces.
What the US has not been able to achieve is the large international coalition of forces that supported it at the time of the Gulf War in 1990-91, that was waged under the aegis of the UN. With the only abstention of China, it included all the permanent members of the Security Council. The doctrine of preventive war reflects the position of a superpower that believes it has the monopoly of force and justice and places itself above the international community and international law.
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The concomitance of the military mobilization in the Middle-East with the European Convention that is drawing up the European Constitution stresses the need for a EU foreign and security policy. Europe could have an impact on the events on which world peace depends.
But it is weakened by the division in two groups of its nation-states, one supporting the US position, the other opposing it. This is not because America divides Europe, but because national governments are reluctant to question their faded sovereignty. With a single foreign and security policy, Europe could speak with one voice.
With a European Constitution and a European government, the unanimous vote could be abolished and decisions could be taken according to the majority principle.
The consequence of this decision-making process could be immediately perceived, since, within the EU, a majority of states and an overwhelming majority of citizens are against the American unilateralism.
In the world there is only one place where a new actor can arise which has the international influence necessary to steer the destiny of humankind in a new direction.
This place is Europe. Only Europe can condition the unilateral initiatives of the US government, channel the negotiations to solve international disputes within the framework of the UN and start a process leading to a new world order.
Only Europe can open an increasing space to the establishment of other regional groupings of states, that can lead to the transformation of the Security Council into the Council of the great regions of the world.
Moreover, it is only through regional unifications that the most backward countries of the South can achieve the economic dimension necessary to promote development and greater political influence on world affairs. Lastly, as regards terrorism, it can be defeated only if the industrialized countries can offer the peoples of the South a trust in the future through a plan of peace, development and democratization.
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The Campaign for a European federal Constitution is involving an increasing number of civil society organizations which find in the European Convention a historic opportunity for the promotion at international level of values such as peace, solidarity, democracy and justice.
The abolition of war in Europe through a federal Constitution can point the way leading to peace in the world. The introduction of a single European actor in the world state system can have a real impact on the US position and strengthen the authority of the UN and international law.
Twenty years ago the peace movement won the battle for the removal of the "euro-missiles" when the prospect of a European Federation was still distant.
Now the welding of the peace movement and the federalist movement can produce a grand project that, through the European unification, aims at transforming the UN into the tool and the engine for the construction of world peace.
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