Word: arabism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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While the sudden air strike strained relations among America's allies, Libya was equally at odds with a few of its friends. "The Kremlin got some real heat last week from its Arab allies for not showing more support for Gaddafi," said a Western diplomat in Moscow. To correct that impression perhaps, Pravda printed an interview with the maverick Libyan last week, in which he gave lavish thanks to Party Chief Mikhail Gorbachev for his support. Nevertheless, the Soviets remain wary about attaching themselves too closely to a Libyan regime that is mercurial at best. Moscow zestfully pounced...
More vexing to the U.S. is the position of its moderate Arab allies, who found themselves compelled by the air raid to rally behind their Libyan brothers. "The Arabs are more upset with the way the U.S. went about punishing Gaddafi than with the fact they did it," says one European diplomat at the U.N. "They would have preferred less obtrusive means." One possible gesture of conciliation that may be discussed at the Tokyo summit would be for Europe to enlist all other North African nations in the fight against terrorism. Explained one top Italian official: "Rather than allowing Gaddafi...
...addition, Europeans have a centuries-old proximity to, and affinity for, the Arab world that the U.S. not only does not share but too often fails to understand. Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, the Arch-bishop of Paris, points out that the French have a "fascination and aversion" toward the Arabs. "It goes back even to Poitiers, which, as every French schoolboy learns, was where Charles Martel stopped the Arab conquest of Europe in 732." Lustiger could have added that Europeans also have a way of becoming mired in their own history to the point of paralysis...
...Western Europe's opposition to the U.S. retaliation is the military one. European officers, indeed even some senior NATO figures, argue that the U.S. strike was not strong enough to attain its military objectives. It neither destroyed nor destabilized the Gaddafi regime. It may, instead, have compelled moderate Arab governments to rally behind Gaddafi. Mitterrand and Chirac complained to U.S. Envoy Vernon Walters that a limited bombing raid could stir up a new wave of Islamic extremism. "With a victory like that, who needs a defeat?" said Dominique Moïsi, a French strategic expert...
...Zealanders, this latest bout of terrorism is ironic. Was it not the French government that committed its own terrorist bombing against the Greenpeace ship in New Zealand last year? France strongly lobbied for the release of two of its terrorists, Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur, just as the Arab extremists are now campaigning for the release of their comrades. Chris Aimer Dunedin, New Zealand Aquino's Road Show...