Falklands : What Does Europe Want To Do With Africa
Submitted by Falkland Islands News Network (Juanita Brock) 05.06.2005 (Article Archived on 19.06.2005)
SARTMA is publishing this as parts of Africa border on the South Atlantic Ocean and is in the general area.
Stephen Chan is Professor of International Relations in the University of London, and Dean of Law and Social Sciences at the School of Oriental and African Studies. His latest book is a critique of US and British foreign policy, Out of Evil (London: I.B. Tauris. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).
WHAT DOES EUROPE WANT TO DO WITH AFRICA?
By Stephen Chan
THERE IS UNCERTAINTY about the future foreign policies of key European states towards Africa. On 31 May, the musician and campaigner, Sir Bob Geldof, announced a series of huge concerts and a major protest march to impress upon the G8 leaders that Africa required greater assistance. People like Geldof in Britain, and the Irish rock star, Bono, in the US articulate to world leaders what increasing numbers of young people feel. Whether those leaders want to act to help Africa is another question.
In Europe at least there are signs of change within key leaderships. Tony Blair was re-elected as British Prime Minister but, increasingly, his position seems foreshadowed by Gordon Brown, his acclaimed but fiercely ambitious Chancellor of the Exchequer. Both men seem committed to a better deal for Africa, but neither man has yet delivered agreement from the G8 that the West should act together. Without most of the G8 moving together, the huge problems of Africa cannot be solved.
On 31 May, after decisively losing a referendum on a new constitution for Europe, French President Chirac fired his Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, and promoted Dominique de Villepin to the Premiership. De Villepin was in many ways an unpopular choice. The French voters wanted to rebuke Chirac, but Chirac has used their rebuke to promote his favourite son. But in other ways his choice will make very interesting international relations, for it was de Villepin who famously rebuked the US on the eve of its recent invasion of Iraq. Rarely has anyone ever received a standing ovation in the UN Security Council, but de Villepin did. His was one of the great modern political speeches.
De Villepin believes in Europe, not as an economic project, but as a political project. This is exactly what the voters in the French referendum did not want. However, de Villepin is less interested in a European constitution than in the idea of a united Europe standing up to the US. If he gets his way, Europe will try to move without the US in a whole range of international relations. If the US does not want to help Africa, will de Villepin try to take Europe and the rest of the G8 along a more Africa-sensitive agenda?
Sadly, the signs are not yet clear. He was a brilliant Foreign Minister but, more recently as Interior Minister, he insisted that Muslim girls could not wear their head scarves to school. Even in the field of foreign relations, he was probably guilty of haste and wrong decisions over Rwanda. He is so impatient that the long patience that is required on all Third World issues may be beyond him.
The interesting prospect, however, is what might happen if he teams up with Gordon Brown – should Brown become British Prime Minister. For Brown, Europe is an economic project, but Africa is a political project that happens to cost money. Where the two men coincide is in their moral reasonings. Brown is a Calvinist Scot who seems truly to believe in social justice, including international social justice. De Villepin, a poet and highly-regarded author, was completing a long book on the great French rebel poets of the symbolist movement – even as he rebuked the US at the Security Council. He called these poets ‘the stealers of fire’, rebels who, like Prometheus, would dare to steal fire from the gods in order to warm mankind. De Villepin’s books are about grandeur – he wrote one on Napoleon for instance – but they are also about rebellion. He has very kind words for the great twentieth century French adventurer, Andre Malraux, who fought in doomed rebellions – perhaps we would now call them liberation struggles – around the world. From very different starting points, both Brown and de Villepin want to change the world to help the under-privileged. However imperfect both men might be, it would be the first time in Europe when there was a convergence of both Anglophonic and Francophonic moral vision.
Both men are highly skilled in the darker arts of politics. Both drive hard negotiating bargains. Both are in different ways conceited. Both are, however, intellectuals. Brown reads economics textbooks even on holiday, and de Villepin reads poetry and philosophy. Brown has been shocked by what he has seen while travelling in Africa, and de Villepin was actually born in Africa. Perhaps someone should collect the columns Thabo Mbeki has been regularly writing for the ANC newsletter. Some of these are truly intellectual pieces that would appeal to Brown and de Villepin. If Europe might perhaps dream of standing up to the US, why should it not do so with Third World allies? Why should it not do so with Africa? Right now it is only a dream – but the convergence of Irish rock stars, dashing new French Prime Minister, and possible new British Prime Minister might make the dream seem less implausible three years from now.
Stephen Chan is Professor of International Relations in the University of London, and Dean of Law and Social Sciences at the School of Oriental and African Studies. His latest book is a critique of US and British foreign policy, Out of Evil (London: I.B. Tauris. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).
|
