February 19, 2005
HOWDY, WEASELS
His father went to Germany to topple a wall - now George Bush arrives to mend fences (Julian Borger and Nicholas Watt, The Guardian, February 19th, 2005)
Transatlantic relations are at their worst for a generation, and Washington now recognises that the problem threatens to hobble its ambitious global agenda. The president has therefore dedicated the first foreign trip of his second term to addressing the troubled relationship.To do so, Mr Bush will be spending quality time with his two bitterest European critics. He will dine with Jacques Chirac on Monday night, although it will be under the Stars and Stripes at the US ambassador's residence in Brussels, rather than under the Tricolore in Paris as the French president would have preferred (France has not yet been entirely forgiven). The US president then spends much of Wednesday with Gerhard Schröder in Mainz. On Thursday, in Bratislava, he meets Vladimir Putin, the one European leader to openly support his re-election, although relations have worsened dramatically in recent weeks.
In a tour heavily loaded with symbolism, Mr Bush will begin his odyssey tomorrow in Brussels - the institutional heart of Europe and home to the EU and Nato.
In his first term, the Bush administration avoided and mistrusted these two giant bureaucracies, preferring to cherry-pick willing coalition partners from what it liked to think of as "New Europe".
Not so this time. This trip will be a homage to "Old Europe" and the baroque architecture of European institutions. The highlights will include an address to the continent made from the Concert Noble, an ornate banqueting hall in Brussels on Monday, and meetings with Nato leaders and the full 25-member European Council the next day. "This is a gesture of reaching out to Europe," declared the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana.
We up here have tried to warn them, but will they listen?
Posted by Peter Burnet at February 19, 2005 10:21 AMThe French President comes to the American Embassy in Belgium, not even France, hat in hand, and we're the ones engaged in homage? I guess it would take making Chirac walk barefoot in the snow to Canossa, and sit wearing only rags for three days of freezing cold and blizzard waiting for a chance to kiss Bush's foot before the Guardian realizes what is going on here. In Iraq, we demonstrated that we do not need French and German approval and we can in fact sustain active French and German opposition including a de facto currency war and still do what we need to do and that by any objective standard the results demonstrate the rightness of our cause.
It is a New World and the French and Germans are reduced to spectators. If NATO were a football team, France and Germany would right now be in the doghouse behind the Lhasa Apso.
Even if the Guardian doesn't get it, it's nice to know that Chirac and Schroeder do.
Posted by: Bart at February 19, 2005 12:08 PMThe French President comes to the American Embassy in Belgium, not even France, hat in hand, and we're the ones engaged in homage? I guess it would take making Chirac walk barefoot in the snow to Canossa, and sit wearing only rags for three days of freezing cold and blizzard waiting for a chance to kiss Bush's foot before the Guardian realizes what is going on here. In Iraq, we demonstrated that we do not need French and German approval and we can in fact sustain active French and German opposition including a de facto currency war and still do what we need to do and that by any objective standard the results demonstrate the rightness of our cause.
It is a New World and the French and Germans are reduced to spectators. If NATO were a football team, France and Germany would right now be in the doghouse behind the Lhasa Apso.
Even if the Guardian doesn't get it, it's nice to know that Chirac and Schroeder do.
Posted by: Bart at February 19, 2005 12:12 PM