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President Jacques Chirac's warning to the new Europeans of EU and NATO enlargement that they cannot side too much with America and fit his definition of membership in the family of Europe has exposed, with an outburst of pure rage, a profound, long-term contradiction that could tear the EU apart from within.

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The violence of the remarks acknowledged openly for the first time one of the basic reasons that Iraq has become such an existential issue for France, and in its manner, Germany.
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Confronting the United States, and marking out a line where European-Atlantic coalescence must stop, involves an attempt to re-establish their leadership in a Europe whose institutional future points toward the French and Germans being submerged by a new wave of entrants refusing to define Europe's raison d'�tre in a foreign and security policy automatically opposed to the United States.

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With a paucity of finesse that would have rivaled Donald Rumsfeld, Chirac told the new Europeans their positions were "dangerous" and "reckless." Indeed, he said, they "would have done better to shut up" than sign on to letters, one involving eight countries organized by Britain, and the other taking in the Vilnius Group of 10 EU and NATO candidate countries, that supported the position on Iraq of the United States.
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And Chirac threatened. He said it would take the vote of only one current EU member in a national referendum to block the entire enlargement process. As for Romania and Bulgaria - perhaps singled out as ingrates because they are grant-supported members of the French-funded organization of nations nurturing the French language - Chirac said, "If they had tried to decrease their chances for getting in Europe, they couldn't have done a better job."

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Rather than applause, Reuters reported from Brussels, there were "seething" reactions, particularly within the European Parliament, to Chirac's tirade.
The intensity of the confrontation and the willingness of the East Europeans to make references to appeasement while continuing to state their affinity for the American position on Iraq, especially after France and Germany had brought Russia along to join their challenge to the United States, has clearly gone beyond what France had calculated.

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Commenting on the different attitudes in Europe after the massive anti-war marches over the weekend, she said of Latvia's post-World War II occupation by the Soviet Union, "We certainly have seen the results of appeasement. It's much easier to tolerate a dictator when he's dictating over somebody else's life and not your own."

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Another Pole, Radek Sikorski, a political scientist working in Washington, was quoted by Reuters as taking the issues directly to the French and Germans. "France and Germany can no longer control the continent," he said. "America has too many friends in Europe who realize that America and Europe are one civilization."

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If it is only venting frustration at the cold prospect of France's diminished influence in Europe, not incompatible with the French president's personality, it is all the same a gesture that has brought Europe's future new pain and dizzying uncertainty.

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Originally posted by E. Cartman:
Bush already owns (HA! HA! HA!) one European lapdog, we don't need another.

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He probably starts drooling whenever anyone mentions crackers and cheese in the same sentence.

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And shaking in fear whenever anyone mentions pretzels.

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"I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw