DOCSLIB.ORG

Europe Speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Europe Speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament European Parliament President Martin Schulz Europe speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament Speeches Berlin 09-11-2014 Ladies and gentlemen, I should like to start by thanking Hans-Gert Pöttering and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation for making the Europe speech an annual event on the Berlin political calendar. It is a very welcome initiative, in particular because the speech is given on 9 November, a day which evokes such mixed emotions among us Germans, Martin Schulz as the day on which the republic was proclaimed after the First World War had come to an end in 1918, as the day of the attempted putsch by Hitler and Ludendorff in 1923, as the day on which Jewish businesses throughout Germany were attacked in 1938, the so- called Reichspogromnacht, a day of shame for our nation, and more recently, as the day on which the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, a day of joy; it makes perfect sense, therefore, to think about topical EU issues on a day which symbolises the low points and the high points in German history like no other. Like no other day, 9 November illustrates just how closely German history and European history are bound up with one another and just how great the burden of responsibility for Europe that Germany bears is. Ladies and gentlemen, This year, 9 November marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is only right that we should be celebrating: when the Wall came down, a Europe-wide liberation movement, and with it the year which Timothy Garton Ash referred to as ‘the year of wonders’, reached its climax. It was indeed a year of wonders – a year in which the spark of freedom became a fire which spread across Europe. At the start of the decade, workers in the Gdansk shipyards had already begun to unite under the leadership of Lech Wasa. Before long, the Solidarno trade union had 10 million members – 10 million! Then, in February 1989, round table discussions paved the way for the first free elections in Poland, and Solidarno’s landslide victory. The significance of Pope John Paul II’s role in bringing down the Communist regime can also not be overstated. In Hungary, mass demonstrations held on 15 March – Hungary’s national day – forced the regime to hold talks with opposition groups. In June 1989, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Gyula Horn and his Austrian counterpart Alois Mock cut through the barbed wire fence at the border between their two countries. In August, two million people joined hands to form a human chain stretching from Vilnius to Riga and on to Tallinn. The ‘singing revolution’ then brought the peoples of the Baltic States independence. In Prague, meanwhile, Vaclav Havel was released from prison and the protesters responded with cries of ‘Havel to the castle!’ In May, civil rights activists brought to light extensive ballot rigging in East Germany, thus shattering the illusion of democracy in that country. In the autumn, more and more people began joining the Monday demonstrations held in Leipzig every week. According to Erich Honecker, Leipzig had become the ‘centre of the counter-revolution’, where more and more people gathered Europe speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament 1/6 European Parliament President Martin Schulz to chant the words ‘We are the people!’ And then, on 9 November, brave men and women brought the Berlin Wall down – the wall that had summarily torn families apart. It must have been very hard to find even one German family that had not been separated from at least one brother or sister, uncle or aunt when the Wall was erected - a wall which arbitrarily divided a country and a people into east and west, a wall which arbitrarily divided an entire continent. But on 9 November, 25 years ago, freedom finally prevailed. Looking back, ladies and gentlemen, it is difficult to imagine it any other way – it is as if the civil rights activists were always destined to succeed, as if the Berlin Wall was always destined to fall. We tend to forget that, in fact, it could all have turned out quite differently, that there could easily have been a repeat of the massacre at Tiananmen Square. It took tremendous courage on the part of the activists to stand their ground. They were shadowed and had their houses searched, they were fined, interrogated and jailed. We owe a debt of gratitude to the brave people who gathered in Leipzig every Monday to shout ‘We are the people’; to Lech Wasa’s trade unionists; to the people who joined hands across the Baltic States and sang against oppression; to the Hungarians for opening their borders; we owe a debt of gratitude to them, and to so many others, for the peaceful, singing, velvet revolution of 1989 that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November. As we now know, in 1989 it wasn’t the superpowers or the statesmen that made history – the people wrote their own history. Ladies and gentlemen, The fall of the Berlin Wall marks a turning point in the history of Germany and Europe; entire peoples were now no longer isolated and deprived of a say in their own futures; the Cold War and the stand-off between the superpowers came to an end. Eric Hobsbawm defines the year 1989 as the end of ‘the short 20th century’, and Francis Fukuyama even spoke of ‘the end of history’. He believed, along with many others, that liberal democracy and a free market economy had triumphed, and that they would now sweep everything before them. Today this seems incredibly naïve, but at the time, during those years of revolution, there was a real sense of euphoria. Now that the military and ideological conflict between the superpowers was over, hopes for lasting peace and a new, fairer world order seemed entirely justified. 1989 was the year of freedom. Some of the most powerful images of that year – images that none of us will ever forget – are images of people crossing borders: barriers were raised, border guards were left standing helplessly, people climbed fences, tore down walls. They ushered in a peaceful revolution. No tanks were deployed, no shots were fired, no blood was shed. In 1989, we did away with so many borders in Europe. So today I ask myself: did the hopes and dreams of 1989, the year of wonders, ever really come to fruition? The dream of reunification did come true; German reunification really was an unexpected gift which no one even in 1987 or 1988 had expected to receive so soon. Gorbachev himself did not believe that reunification would be on the cards for another 50 or 100 years. That it came about so quickly, and in such a rational, clear-sighted way, was largely thanks to Helmut Kohl and his ability to combine statesmanship with a deep understanding of history. The European liberation movement likewise reached its climax only with the reunification of Europe. People had longed not only for freedom from Soviet oppression, but also for a ‘return to Europe’. For decades, people in Central and Eastern Europe had been cut off from their European roots, and from developments in the western part of the continent, by the Iron Curtain. They could see that Europe was moving forward without them, and that the European integration process was taking ever clearer shape, in the form of the European Community. The ‘big bang’ of the EU’s eastern enlargement crowned the transition of many central and eastern European states from Communist rule and a planned economy to democracy and a free market economy. The region of stability, peace and prosperity on our continent became larger. Europe speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament 2/6 European Parliament President Martin Schulz Indeed, one aspiration of 1989 was certainly fulfilled when Europe enlarged eastwards: the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe returned to their rightful place in the European family. Europe has grown together once again, and that is a good thing. And yet, ladies and gentlemen, when I look around me today – a quarter of a century after we were enthusiastically tearing down walls and opening borders, 25 years after the stand-off between the superpowers came to an end, when many of us thought that a new era of everlasting world peace had dawned – when I see the way we are now erecting new borders in Europe, I am dismayed. There is currently a lot of loose talk about reintroducing borders in Europe. People die almost every day trying to reach our shores, and European borders are once again being shifted by force of arms. Because of this, many Europeans are once again living in fear of war. Ladies and gentlemen, I grew up in the corner of Europe where Germany, Belgium and Holland meet. Borders were part of my everyday life, borders marked by wooden barriers, borders at which long queues of cars formed at weekends when people wanted to cross to go shopping or to visit relatives. Borders which were sometimes closed, for example because of a football match. For that reason, I regard freedom of movement as perhaps Europe’s greatest achievement. And to my mind, nothing symbolises that freedom more powerfully than open borders. If I am honest, it is very difficult for me to grasp what these open borders must mean to people who for decades were hemmed in by walls and spring-gun installations.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Why Canada Should Join the EU TIMOTHY GARTON ASH
    Developed by Jean Monnet Project Studying EU in Canadian High Schools www.carleton.ca/ces/EULearning Teacher’s Attachment B The following summary has been published by The Globe and Mail and available at the newspaper website https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/why-canada-should-join-the- eu/article1105523/ 1. ____________________________________________________________________________ OPINION Why Canada should join the EU TIMOTHY GARTON ASH PUBLISHED JUNE 29, 2006 UPDATED APRIL 23, 2018 Driving through Toronto earlier this week I saw a shiny black 4x4 with an English flag sticking out of one side window and a German flag out of the other. Presumably a Canadian family of mixed English and German origin, so rooting for both teams in the World Cup. A little later I saw a car with the Portuguese flag on one side and the Italian on the other. It occurred to me that this pretty much sums up what we've been trying to achieve in Europe since the Second World War. Welcome to the European Union -- in Canada. In fact, why doesn't the European Union invite Canada to join at once? In most respects, it would be a much easier fit than Ukraine, let alone Turkey. It effortlessly meets the EU's so-called Copenhagen criteria for membership, including democratic government, the rule of law, a well-regulated market economy and respect for minority rights. (Canada's a world leader on that.) Canada is rich, so would be a much-needed net contributor to the EU budget, at a time when the Union has been taking in lots of poorer states.
    [Show full text]
  • Europe and the Vanishing Two-State Solution
    EUROPE AND THE VANISHING TWO-STATE SOLUTION Nick Witney ABOUT ECFR The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) is the first pan-European think-tank. Launched in October 2007, its objective is to conduct research and promote informed debate across Europe on the development of coherent, effective and values-based European foreign policy. ECFR has developed a strategy with three distinctive elements that define its activities: •A pan-European Council. ECFR has brought together a distinguished Council of over two hundred Members – politicians, decision makers, thinkers and business people from the EU’s member states and candidate countries – which meets once a year as a full body. Through geographical and thematic task forces, members provide ECFR staff with advice and feedback on policy ideas and help with ECFR’s activities within their own countries. The Council is chaired by Martti Ahtisaari, Joschka Fischer and Mabel van Oranje. • A physical presence in the main EU member states. ECFR, uniquely among European think-tanks, has offices in Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Sofia and Warsaw. In the future ECFR plans to open an office in Brussels. Our offices are platforms for research, debate, advocacy and communications. • A distinctive research and policy development process. ECFR has brought together a team of distinguished researchers and practitioners from all over Europe to advance its objectives through innovative projects with a pan-European focus. ECFR’s activities include primary research, publication of policy reports, private meetings and public debates, ‘friends of ECFR’ gatherings in EU capitals and outreach to strategic media outlets. ECFR is a registered charity funded by the Open Society Foundations and other generous foundations, individuals and corporate entities.
    [Show full text]
  • EU-US Future Forum 2021: a Path Forward for Transatlantic Relations
    Atlantic Council EUROPE CENTER ISSUE BRIEF EU-US Future Forum 2021: A path forward for transatlantic relations AUGUST 2021 BENJAMIN HADDAD, JÖRN FLECK, LIVIA GODAERT, MICHAELA NAKAYAMA SHAPIRO INTRODUCTION This report is written a few days after US President Joe Biden’s first interna- tional trip, to Europe, where he notably attended the first EU-US Summit in seven years. The summit led to concrete realizations, including the creation of a Trade and Tech Council and a suspension of the Airbus-Boeing dispute. But just as importantly, it spurred new momentum to shape an ambitious transat- lantic agenda to face common challenges: an assertive China, the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for subsequent economic recovery, climate change, technological change, and growing authoritarianism. Beyond the positive de- velopments coming out of the summit, the real test lies ahead: can we forge the policies, norms, and standards that will once again make the transatlantic relationship a force for the defense of liberal democracy across the world? Engaging in constant dialogue between policy makers, experts, and the pri- vate sector will be critical to the success of this endeavor. The Europe Center conducts From May 5 to 7, the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and the EU Delegation research and uses real-time to the United States partnered to organize the first EU-US Future Forum commentary and analysis to (EUFF), a three-day open conference bringing together policy makers, ex- guide the actions and strategy of perts, and the private sector to address the key challenges facing the transat- key transatlantic decisionmakers lantic relationship in the coming decades.
    [Show full text]
  • The Year of TRUTH
    26 FEATURES The Year of TRUTH 1989 was the most dramatic year in Europe for four decades. Here, in a provocative extract from his new book We the People, Timothy Garton Ash argues that, like 1848 in the West, 1989 was the year of the citizen in Eastern Europe. 989 was the year communism in Eastern To be sure, even without a political-military reversal inside the Soviet Union there will be many further con­ Europe died. 1949-1989 R.I.P. And the flicts, injustices and miseries in these lands. But they will epitaph might be: Nothing in his life, be different conflicts, injustices and miseries: new and old, Became him like the leaving it. The post-communist but also pre-communist In the worst case, there might yet be dictators; but they would be dif­ thing that was comprehensively installed in the ferent dictators. We shall not see again that particular newly defined territories of Poland, Czechos­ system, characterised by the concentration of political and lovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, and in economic power and tne instruments of coercion in the the newly created German Democratic Republic hands of one leninist party, manifested sociologically as a privileged new class, in states with arbitrarily limited after 1949, the thing called, according to view­ sovereignty. point, 'socialism', 'totalitarianism', 'stalinism', 'politbureaucratic dictatorship', 'real existing Of course, if we walk the streets of Prague, Warsaw or socialism', 'state capitalism', 'dictatorship over Leipzig we can still find the grey, familiar traces: the flattened neo-classical stalinist facades on all the Victory needs', or, most neutrally, 'the Soviet-type Squares, the Lenin boulevardes, steelworks, shipyards, the system' - that thing will never walk again.
    [Show full text]
  • Shades of Gray: Conscience and the Cold War Makyra Williamson Harding University, [email protected]
    Tenor of Our Times Volume 7 Article 17 5-1-2018 Shades of Gray: Conscience and the Cold War Makyra Williamson Harding University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.harding.edu/tenor Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Williamson, Makyra ( 2018) "Shades of Gray: Conscience and the Cold War," Tenor of Our Times: Vol. 7, Article 17. Available at: https://scholarworks.harding.edu/tenor/vol7/iss1/17 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts & Humanities at Scholar Works at Harding. It has been accepted for inclusion in Tenor of Our Times by an authorized editor of Scholar Works at Harding. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Lingering Echoes in the eastern bloc Articles Shades of Gray: Conscience and the Cold War by Makyra Williamson A Historian’s Perspective on a Summer in Saxony by Sam Aly Shostakovich’s Fourth and Fifth Symphonies: A Comparative Analysis by Payden Taylor Photo Courtesy of: Flickr user Sergejf, Mariinksy Theatre, July 6, 2014 https://www.flickr.com/photos/7942389@N04/18271919528 Author Bio: Hailing from Salem, Oregon, Makyra Williamson is a junior at Harding University, where she is majoring in English and minoring in History and Bible. She is a member of Sigma Tau Delta, Phi Alpha Theta, and Chi Omega Pi, a women’s social club. After graduation, Makyra plans to pursue a career in substantive editing. Map Courtesy of: Flickr user Internet Archive Book Images SHADES OF GRAY: PERSONAL MORALITY AND TIMOTHY GARTON ASH’S THE FILE: A PERSONAL HISTORY By Makyra Williamson In the opening chapter of The File, Timothy Garton Ash acknowledges that he is not simply investigating a file, but a life.1 Garton Ash’s narrative is a well-written personal history in which he retraces the origins of a file containing the information that the secret police, or Stasi, had collected about him.
    [Show full text]
  • Spring/Summer 2016
    SPRING/SUMMER 2016 James Modiano Gellman Davidson Latest Readings Pedigree The President and A Little History of 978-0-300-21319-5 978-0-300-21533-5 the Apprentice the United States $25.00 $25.00 978-0-300-18105-0 978-0-300-18141-8 $40.00 $25.00 Damrosch Marcus Tattersall/DeSalle Prose Eternity’s Sunrise Real Life Rock A Natural History Peggy Guggenheim 978-0-300-20067-6 978-0-300-19664-1 of Wine 978-0-300-20348-6 $30.00 $35.00 978-0-300-21102-3 $25.00 $35.00 Volf Rahe Bennett Batchelor Flourishing The Grand Strategy Six Poets After Buddhism 978-0-300-18653-6 of Classical Sparta 978-0-300-21505-2 978-0-300-20518-3 $28.00 978-0-300-11642-7 $24.00 $28.50 $38.00 RECENT GENERAL INTEREST HIGHLIGHTS 1 General Interest COVER: A museum artist’s original drawing of a Triceratops skull, discovered by John Bell Hatcher and named by O. C. Marsh in 1889. Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. General Interest 1 Recently published Big World, Small Planet Abundance within Planetary Boundaries Johan Rockström and Mattias Klum With Peter Miller A profoundly original vision of an attainable future that ensures human prosperity by safeguarding our threatened planet Big World, Small Planet probes the urgent predicament of our times: how is it possible to create a positive future for both humanity and Earth? We have entered the Anthropocene—the era of massive human impacts on the planet—and the actions of over seven billion resi- dents threaten to destabilize Earth’s natural systems, with cascading consequences for human societies.
    [Show full text]
  • The Need for Memory
    Guardian | The need for memory http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4494700­103677,00.html Comment The need for memory The debate on attitudes to communism is important, even in Britain Timothy Garton Ash Thursday September 5, 2002 Guardian Like a village cricket team that suddenly gathers in a circle of Maoist self­criticism, literary­journalistic England has launched itself into a curiously continental argument. What, our cricketers cry, was silly­mid­off's position on the gulag? Did the wicketkeeper see the Soviet Union as state capitalism or a deformed workers' state? It is so deeply characteristic of Britain that a great debate about history, which in France and Italy was launched five years ago by a massive, documentary Black Book of Communism, should be sparked here by the autobiographical reflections of a well­known metropolitan novelist on the communist past of his novelist father and the Trotskyist past of his journalist best friend. Still and all, whether we get there by train or motor bike, it's an important place to be. So let's move on and have this argument. But first, let's agree what it's about. First, it's about our collective memory of the 20th century. Between western attitudes to nazism and communism there has long been what Ferdinand Mount has called an "asymmetry of indulgence". A few years back I had dinner in Copenhagen in a restaurant called KGB. When I asked the waitress in dark green mock­KGB uniform what rank she held, she answered: "But I am Stalin".
    [Show full text]
  • The Direction of European History
    The Direction of European History TIMOTHY GARTON ASH THE TANNER LECTURES ON HUMAN VALUES Delivered at Charles University (Prague) November 27, 1997 TIMOTHY GARTON ASH is Senior Research Fellow in Con- temporary European History at St. Antony’s College, Ox- ford. After reading modern history at Oxford, his research into the German resistance to Hitler took him to both the eastern and western halves of the divided city of Berlin, where he lived for several years. In 1986-87 he was a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is a governor of the Westminster Founda- tion for Democracy and a fellow of the Berlin-Brandenburg (formerly Prussian) Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of Arts. He has been honored with both the Polish and the German Order of Merit. He was the foreign editor of the Spectator, and for several years wrote a column in the Independent. He remains a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, the TLS, and the London Times. He is the author of The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe (1989) ; The Magic Lantern (1993; British title: We the People); and The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (1983) , which won the Somerset Maugham Award. It is a great pleasure to deliver the first Tanner Lecture to be held behind the line of what used to be called the Iron Curtain, here in Prague, in this historic building of the Charles University. Since what I have to say may be regarded by some guardians of European political correctness as mildly heretical, I take comfort in the thought that since the days of Jan Hus and John Wyclif, the Charles University and my own University of Oxford are old partners in heresy.
    [Show full text]
  • New Roles for NATO and the Changing Nature of Transatlantic Relations
    Occasional Paper Series Sword or Ploughshare? New Roles for NATO and the Changing Nature of Transatlantic Relations By Dr. Olaf Theiler GEORGE C. MARSHALL EUROPEAN CENTER FOR SECURITY STUDIES No. 17 February 2008 ISSN 1863-6039 The George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies The George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies is a leading transatlantic defense educational and security studies institution. It is bilaterally supported by the U.S. and German governments and dedicated to the creation of a more stable security environment by advancing democratic defense institutions and relationships; promoting active, peaceful engagement; and enhancing enduring partnerships among the nations of North America, Europe, and Eurasia. The Marshall Center Occasional Paper Series The Marshall Center Occasional Paper Series seeks to further the legacy of the Center’s namesake, General George C. Marshall, by disseminating scholarly essays that contribute to his ideal of ensuring that Europe and Eurasia are democratic, free, undivided, and at peace. Papers selected for this series are meant to identify, discuss, and influence current defense related security issues. The Marshall Center Occasional Paper Series focus is on comparative and interdisciplinary topics, including international security and democratic defense management, civil-military relations, strategy formulation, terrorism studies, defense planning, arms control, peacekeeping, crisis management, regional and cooperative security. The Marshall Center Occasional Papers are written by Marshall Center faculty and staff, Marshall Center alumni, or by individual, invited contributors, and are disseminated online and in a paper version. The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the George C.
    [Show full text]
  • The New German Question by Timothy Garton Ash | T
    The New German Question by Timothy Garton Ash | T... http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/aug/15... Font Size: A A A The New German Question AUGUST 15, 2013 Timothy Garton Ash There is a new German question. It is this: Can Europe’s most powerful country lead the way in building both a sustainable, internationally competitive eurozone and a strong, internationally credible European Union? Germany’s difficulties in responding convincingly to this challenge are partly the result of earlier German questions and the solutions found to them. Yesterday’s answers have sown the seeds of today’s question. Before I explore those historical connections, however, let us reflect on everything that this new German question is not. Twenty-three years after unification, the enlarged Federal Republic of Germany is about as solid a bourgeois liberal democracy as you can find on earth. It has not only absorbed the huge costs of unification but also, since 2003, made impressive economic reforms, Angela Merkel; drawing by James Ferguson lowering labor costs by consensus and hence restoring its global competitiveness. This land is civilized, free, prosperous, law-abiding, moderate, and cautious. Its many virtues might be summarized as “the banality of the good.” Asked by the tabloid BILD-Zeitung what feelings Germany awakes in her, Angela Merkel once famously replied, “I think of well-sealed windows! No other country can make such well-sealed and nice windows [dichte und schöne Fenster].” 1 Yet the place is not altogether so banal. Opening the well-sealed windows of my hotel room in Berlin, I look across Unter den Linden to the illuminated, translucent dome of the Reichstag building, at the heart of what is now, after London, Europe’s most exciting city.
    [Show full text]
  • Transitional Justice in the 21St Century: History, Effectiveness, And
    CHAPTER 27 Transitional Justice in the 21st Century: History, Effectiveness, and Challenges David Tolbert and Marcela Prieto Rudolphy Abstract This chapter examines the development, effectiveness, and history of transitional justice in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Then, it reviews some of the key issues facing transitional justice in the 21st Century. These include the emergence of a normative framework for the field of transitional justice, arising in the 20th Century in the shadows of World War II and the Holocaust. It then addresses a number of the key issues that have emerged in the 21st Century, including transitional justice and its relationship with criminal justice, gender justice, the role of victims, transformational justice, the template or ‘check the box’ approach and the role donors play in transitional justice efforts . This chapter thus suggests that practitioners and scholars alike are challenging the limits of transitional justice and moving past the approaches, dogmas, and conventional boundaries of the field as it arose in the mid-1990s. Keywords Transitional Justice; Victims; Gender; Criminal Justice; Transformative Justice; Socioeconomic Rights; Donor’s Justice. David Tolbert is Ford Foundation Fellow and Visiting Scholar, Duke University, Sanford School of Public Policy. From 2010 to 2018 he served as President of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ). He previously held the following positions: Registrar, Special Tribunal for Lebanon; Assistant Secretary-General and Special Expert to the UN Secretary- General on the Khmer Rouge Trials; Deputy Prosecutor, Deputy Registrar, Chef de Cabinet to the President, ICTY; Executive Director, ABA-CEELI; Chief, General Legal Division, UNRWA. 1 Marcela Prieto Rudolphy is Fellow in Transnational Law at University of Southern California, Gould School of Law and a J.S.D.
    [Show full text]
  • Iraq War: Background and Issues Overview
    Order Code RL31715 Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web Iraq War: Background and Issues Overview Updated March 24, 2003 Raymond W. Copson (Coordinator) Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress Iraq War: Background and Issues Overview Summary On March 17, 2003, President Bush, in a televised address, gave President Saddam Hussein of Iraq a 48-hour ultimatum to flee the country or face military conflict. The war was launched on March 19, with a strike against a location where Saddam and top lieutenants were believed to be meeting. In November 2002, the United Nations Security Council had adopted Resolution 1441, giving Iraq a final opportunity to “comply with its the disarmament obligations” or “face serious consequences.” During January and February 2003, a U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf intensified and President Bush, other top U.S. officials, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair repeatedly indicated that Iraq had little time left to offer full cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors. However, leaders of France, Germany, Russia, and China urged that the inspections process be allowed more time. The Administration and its supporters assert that Iraq is in defiance of 17 Security Council resolutions requiring that it fully declare and eliminate its weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Further delay in taking action against Iraq, they argue, would have endangered national security and undermined U.S. credibility. Skeptics, including many foreign critics, maintain that the Administration is exaggerating the Iraqi threat and argue that the U.N. inspections process should have been extended.
    [Show full text]