Diplomatic Unilateralism: Europe Compounding Historic Mistakes!
When in 1993, the then American President Bill Clinton sought to actively mediate ‘means’ for an end to the Israel, Palestine Conflict, he organised a meeting of both leaders in Washington, and after series of diplomatic efforts and discussions, reached an open agreement that was publicly assented to by both parties; the ‘Oslo Accord’, although a breakdown in diplomacy by both parties later led to renewed violence. However, all American President’s since Clinton have continuously tried to keep negotiations ongoing between both sides, before making a singular consequential decision. Donald Trump even extended such further, by giving strong support to the Qatari and Egyptian led Mediation effort, only recently refusing the attendance of PA representatives to the UN General Assembly in New York on the basis of their push for a Unilateral Political statement rather than a negotiated diplomatic solution.
But what about Europe?
The recent years have seen European Diplomatic pattern reenacting certain forms of Unilateral decisions, and then creating an idealistic presupposition that such decisions are enforceable by Unilateral sanctions, first in the Russia-Ukraine war and now in the Israel-Hamas war.
To the new heralds of European diplomacy, every country must listen to whatever they say, and any decision reached in the European diplomatic halls should be the ‘case,’ whether or not it actually holds weight as being ‘the case’ in reality.
Probably this diplomatic pattern only reenacts one thing, historically familiar; ‘The Scramble for Africa’ of the late 19th Century, a renewed dejavu, like; we’ve actually been here before.
Clearly during the period of scramble for Africa, European Political Leaders, sat at the comfort of their palaces and diplomatic halls, read news letters and report of adventurers and then sought to partition all of Africa according to the reports which they read. There was no form of diplomatic meetings between African tribal leaders and European Political Leaders, unless such meeting was to convey the decisions reached in Europe on the state of a specific African territory, or a meeting to reenact and consolidate that decision; it never was a meeting to discuss and arrive at ‘a decision’.
In other words to the Political Leaders of Europe; the European legislative halls were halls of legislation for the entire globe and decisions reached becomes enforceable whether or not it was realistic. The Colonial and Post-Colonial Afro-Europe relations and scholarship are the ruins left from whence anyone can judge the success of such diplomatic pattern.However, this is form of diplomacy based on Unilateralism, seems to be the renewed diplomatic style for 21st century Europe. It is either European Political Leaders have learnt little from their compounded historic mistakes, or they simply enjoy reenacting historic diplomatic failures, but to call it ‘Supremacist’ will be a term too harsh and most likely unamenable to present realities.
To European Political Leaders, of which the UK and France have suddenly become more vocal proponents of the renewed Unilateral diplomatic style; the Israel Palestine Conflict was a problem created by European Unilateral diplomatic process of the 1920’s, therefore the only solution can come from a European Unilateral diplomatic process of the 2020’s, as though; by writing history backwards, time would cease and all circumstances would return to the way it previously was.
A basic question to be asked each European Political Leader is pretty simple; What happened to conveying a multilateral Conference between Israel, Palestine Authority and European Government representatives, like Clinton did in 1999?
What happened to trying to reach a joint or collective negotiated agreement between all parties involved, just like Trump’s Abraham Accords was reached?
What happened to directly joining diplomatic efforts in pressuring Hamas to free the Hostages and then Israel to withdraw her forces?
How exactly does a Unilateral recognition of a Palestine state suddenly translate into ending a war which was not kickstarted by the struggle for the actualisation of a Palestine state, but by the invasion and massacre of over 1200 Israelis in cold blood?
The only classification for which the present Unilateral diplomatic style of Europe leaders fits into is the ‘Diplomacy of statements’, rather than ‘Diplomacy of agreements’. The root cause of the present conflict is not even a topic for discussion, rather, European Political Leaders have created an antirealist presupposition that by making a Political statement, an agreement will suddenly surface in reality. Even the poineers of Idealism in International relations will be shocked by present-day European diplomatic Unilateralism.
