EU's Solana Chides Washington over Unilateralism

The EU constitution hasn't been ratified and legally they don't have a foreign policy chief, but that wouldn't stop Javier Solana

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Hungary this week said the United States and the European Union needed to work together to make the world safer. But he admitted Washington often preferred to act unilaterally.

He had a lot to say.

“We disagree about the death penalty," he said. "We disagree about the International Tribunal. We disagree about all these things linked to multilateralism in which we believe and (in which) they believe less. And to a certain extent the big military power may probably think that it is not necessary (to have) the rule based societies. But for us we believe that the rule based societies are fundamental.

But Solano's history is anything but based on rules.

His election [in 1995 to head NATO] was a surprise to many, including 52 USA congressmen who telegraphically protested his appointment because of his alleged Marxism and open Castro sympathies. He had once been on the USA's own subversive list.

He isn't above unilateralism and pre-emption either. Here Nor does he object to military force, per se, if you read his 1999 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.

. . . diplomacy can often only succeed when it is backed up with the credible threat of military force.

The force he means is the U.S. military and the resources -- U.S. At HIS disposal.

In 1999 David Horowitz noted

In fact, most of the principal leaders of the present NATO alliance—Clinton, Solana, Blair, Schroeder and D'Alema—have long been members of the political left. During the Cold War, they were either supporters of the Soviet side (D'Alema was a Communist), or active anti-war protesters or backers of the nuclear-freeze movement which opposed the efforts of the NATO leaders at the time and the Reagan Administration to preserve nuclear parity (and thus military parity) with the Warsaw Pact. That they are the architects of a "progressive" war of aggression in the Balkans, and a newly conceived NATO is hardly reassuring. Indeed, if the present war has demonstrated anything at all, it is that the NATO alliance in its newly conceived form has already become a serious liability for the United States. At the 50th Anniversary Summit, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana explained NATO’s re-conception in the following way: "We are moving into a system of international relations in which human rights, rights to minorities every day, are much more important, and more important even than sovereignty."  [bolding mine]

He's talking about our sovereignty. Our ability to make choices independent from the international organizations Solana represents.

When the World Socialists call Solana a radical, should we be worried or amused?