Patrick Costello argues the Iran war signals need for European autonomy
On 9 April, Pakistan had seemingly succeeded in brokering a temporary ceasefire to Trump and Netanyahu’s war of choice with Iran. As Europe’s leaders publicly welcomed the deal, Spain’s PM, Pedro Sanchez, issued a tweet aimed at both Trump and his fellow European leaders. “The government of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket”.
Sanchez has been telling it like it is since the war started, when he was first out of the blocks to condemn the war as illegal. Trump’s threats to retaliate with tariffs on Spain did nothing to silence him. Safe within the EU’s customs union, he knew that the threat was a hollow one. Spain was also in a stronger position to weather the energy consequences of the war, less reliant on US gas imports because of its strategic investments in renewable energies during the previous decade.
So far, so unsurprising. What has made many here in Brussels sit up is that, as it became clear that the US/Israeli bombing campaign was ill-conceived, ill-planned and was looking likely to end with Iranian control over the Hormuz Strait, Sanchez became less of an outlier and more in the mainstream of European opinion. What Sanchez says one day has tended to be followed by a delayed echo from others: by late March, even German president Steinmeyer was publicly calling the war illegal and a politically disastrous mistake.
There is no upside to this war for Europe. The economy has been hit, energy security is under threat and weapons destined for Ukraine have been diverted to the Middle East. Meanwhile, the Russians have been handed an unexpected windfall of higher fossil fuel profits to strengthen their own war efforts, If Israel were to achieve its war aims of collapsing the Iranian state, the consequences for Europe would be a new refugee crisis. Unsurprisingly, the war is unpopular, and even the far-right parties and governments closest to Trump have been unhappy about a conflict which is already damaging their popularity through association. Elections in Italy (referendum), France (local), and Slovenia (parliament) have all shown the far right falling back and J D Vance’s attempt to save Viktor Orban in Hungary also clearly backfired.
This could, and should, be a turning point for Europe. Trump’s equivocation over supporting Ukraine forced Europe to rethink its military dependence on the US in the east. Now, this gratuitous and unnecessary conflict should force a similar rethink of its policies towards its southern neighbourhood, where Europe has been content for far too long to take its lead from the US. To date, the Europeans, and even the UK, have been robust in rejecting Trump’s efforts to blackmail them into joining them in this debacle. Paradoxically, his threats to withdraw from NATO and to withdraw US troops from Europe have only served to strengthen this resolve. If he were to follow through, he would remove the beating heart of his own leverage over the Europeans, leaving Europe free to develop its foreign policy according to its own very different set of strategic interests.
Europe could be making common cause with the Gulf States, who, like the Europeans, are discovering that the US is a dangerous and unreliable partner. Beyond working together on a viable solution for commercial shipping in the Gulf and the Red Sea, they could be supporting a successful reconstruction and transition in Syria, strengthening the Lebanese state in the face of Israeli aggression and working to strengthen Palestinian agency in the building of a viable future for Palestine post-Gaza. Europe could even play a role in developing the kind of cooperative regional security framework needed in the region to replace the failed Pax Americana, drawing on the experience of the Helsinki declaration. All of this would be possible if Europe was prepared to take some steps to restore trust in the region, notably by taking robust action to sanction the repeated and sustained war crimes of Netanyahu’s Israel.
Politically, this could also be a turning point in the fight against the far right in Europe. Sanchez has shown the way by taking popular anti-war stances (as well as clear positions on the Israeli genocide in Gaza) that are difficult for the far right to follow without publicly repudiating their US sponsors. What applies to Farage in the UK applies to the others. If Socialists and social democrats are willing to grasp this nettle decisively, it could be an important element of a much-needed new strategy. One that moves them on from the historic mistake so many of them have made in the last decade to mimic far right policies in an effort to triangulate them. We all know where that has led.