A US-led imperium in the Middle East is not the basis on which a sustainable peace in the region can be built, writes Pat Cox
I don't know if Osama bin Laden has ever read Huntingdon's hypothesis about the Clash of Civilisations, but even if he didn't, there is a certain sense in which we know he could have written the book. He has managed to create, through a highly strategic and focused act of terrorism, a hyper-vulnerability in the world's only hyper-power. He has shown in terms of evil his capacity for being bad, but he has shown in terms of strategy his capacity for not being mad - bad but not mad. Osama bin Laden and his colleagues in al-Qaeda have managed to build for themselves a network of hatred based on alienation and on miscontent and discontent.
We read various reports of the more extreme and fundamentalist Imams in parts of the Middle East who preach about those who are non-believers as being the "grandsons of monkeys and pigs", but they have their counterparts in the West. Some weeks after September 11th, Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham, the famous US evangelist, said: "We are not attacking Islam but Islam attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God, he is not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It is a different God and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion."
Somewhere between the Imams, who see the unbelievers as the grandsons of monkeys and pigs, and Mr Graham, who seems hardly more sophisticated in the opposite direction, lies the challenge - how to escape from the anchors of fundamentalism and conservatism in both communities.
That is our politicians' challenge. Guided by those who wish to lead dialogue, guided by those who wish to build relations, we must play our part, because we will not find in either of those extremes among the fundamentalists of either community a solution to this question.
Allied to the need to escape from conservatism in either community I add a second comment, as a convinced trans-Atlanticist. I have a very strong belief in the value of, and the necessity for, strong transAtlantic relations, and I am not in any sense anti-American.
But I do believe that Europe itself is challenged to give voice to Europe's modern experience. It is an experience in respect of good governance, empowerment of citizens, and promoting progress with sustainable peace.
Our history has within it the seeds of a methodology that we must carry with conviction into seeking solutions to conflicts and breakdowns in the world and, not least, in the context of Arab society, in the current debate about civilisations.
I believe that the greatest cancer in the West's relationship with the Arab Islam space is the unsettled and unsettling question of the Middle East. There is absolutely no escaping the fact that the recruiting sergeant for al-Qaeda is the alienation caused by the Palestinian question.
As long as we fail to find a way to offer a perspective of peace in the Middle East, we will leave the recruiting sergeant in place.
If there is no perspective of peace, if there are no grounds for settlement, if the politics of the region are dominated only by the politics of the last atrocity, it is a misplaced presumption that security alone can deliver the answer.
The Intifada and suicide bombers are not the answer for the Palestinians. Security alone is not the answer for the Israelis.
Over time we are offering a breeding ground for discontent and as you sow, you reap.
My own conviction is that here again, although we have been trying with the United States, with Russia and the United Nations to offer a perspective for peace, Europe must begin this year renewing and redoubling its focus and its effort in this regard.
The Palestinian plight is central to the beginning of a disengagement of the discontent and from the drift towards a willingness to become a martyr, to offer oneself as a suicide bomber and to connect with radicalism.
I do not believe that a US-led imperium in the region is the basis on which you will find a sustainable peace.
When it comes to the promotion of governance, empowerment and opportunity, I think these issues of so-called "soft security" are the long-duration and harder issues to deal with and we have a special experience in Europe at dealing with the soft security questions.
Bridge-building, co-operation agreements, reconciliation programmes, open dialogue, these are the methodologies that Europe has pioneered. We have got to be able, on the basis of our European experience, to exploit and develop the soft security space as the métier where we have a special experience and a very positive story to tell.
I had the privilege in April 1999 with a number of parliamentary colleagues to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau with persons who survived that holocaust. Europe has drawn lessons from that period which still have a validity today in terms of institution building.
We must not suppose that the ability to win a war, which the West can do, led by the United States, is synonymous with winning the peace. Winning the peace is the métier and experience for which we as Europeans have a particular capacity.
I add to that one other consideration. When King Abdullah of Jordan addressed the European Parliament last year, he added one other ingredient of alienation in what he called the "Arab street" - the fact that 50 per cent of the population is aged under 18, many with no visible prospects or personal opportunity.
If we do not create the circumstances for them to be stakeholders in society, we risk a drift towards nihilism and anarchy. Europe is philosophically, institutionally and politically best placed to give a lead for peace at this time.
Our challenge at the beginning of the year 2003, and as we look towards Iraq in the coming weeks, is to stand up for what we believe in politically, as Europeans.
As we witness this extraordinary build-up of land, sea and air forces, of amphibious forces and command structures, accompanied by statements that war is not inevitable, I draw one inevitable conclusion: if you walk all these people up the hill and march them all down again, you certainly hand the victory to Saddam Hussein.
We risk arriving at a point where the sum of the parts, if they are not inevitable, have the mark of inevitability about them.
We cannot shirk the question, not about the dropping of the first bomb, if such an event happens, but of how you would sustain the peace after the last bomb has been dropped? Answering that question is the overriding challenge for Europe today.
Pat Cox MEP is President of the European Parliament