February 21, 2005
KEEP IT SIMPLE
Old Europe can still undermine the US (Gerard Baker, The Australian, February 21st, 2005)
It’s Hug-a-European Month for American foreign policy. First Condoleezza Rice inaugurates her tenure at the State Department with a grand tour of Europe's capitals. Then last weekend, hot on Rice's elegant heels, and with no less enthusiasm, Donald Rumsfeld undertakes his own friendship initiative.All this activity is mere prologue, of course, to the main event. This week, President George W. Bush will travel overseas for the first time since his reinauguration, with symbolic stops in Brussels, for diplomatic dinners at the EU and NATO; Germany, where he will praise transatlantic unity in a set-piece speech; and Slovakia, where he will meet Russian president Vladimir Putin. You would have to be insensate to miss the meaning of all these semiotics. Message: We care. After four years in which the Bush administration has reached out to most of Europe with a single, raised middle finger, it has begun its second term with a smothering embrace.
But there is a danger that the Bush administration, in its newfound eagerness to show its kinder, less Martian, more Venusian side, will actually create bigger problems for itself. In its efforts to be diplomatically accommodating, the US may end up supporting and bolstering a vision of Europe that is directly at odds with long-term US goals and interests. Nothing is to be gained by unnecessarily antagonising Europeans, to be sure, and the US is right to pursue ways of co-operating. But if the early signs of the new detente are any guide, the Bush administration may find itself walking into a trap.
During this week's visit, Bush will promise closer co-operation and may even signal some US movement on contentious issues such as Middle East peace and global warming.
Yet hard challenges have made a mockery of friendly gestures and warm rhetoric in the past. And there are plenty of reasons besides to think that these latest good intentions will go the way of previous ones.
The US and EU are squabbling over how to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions, whether to lift the EU's embargo on arms sales to China, and the democratic transformation of Iraq and the broader Middle East. These differences are not just awkward, inconvenient blots on an otherwise pleasant landscape of Atlantic unity. They are great, ugly cleavages in basic perceptions, strategy, and policy. The Bush administration remains committed to revolutionary change throughout the world and, just as the Reagan administration did, believes America's security is inextricably tied up with the advance of liberty well beyond its borders. Europeans, meanwhile, are ever more staunch in their defence of the status quo, however unfree that may leave people. Stability, not liberty, is their aim.
The main danger is not naivite. It is leaving the rest of the world confused as to what the play book says.
Posted by Peter Burnet at February 21, 2005 6:37 AMThis week's trip, and the show-prep that's gone on over the previous two weeks, is pretty much a effort by the administration to give the EU folks a chance to save face after their embarassing actions and comments between the run-up to the Iraq war and the Jan. 30 election. If they want to follow the same path and be Assad or the mullahs' enablers over the next few years, don't expect the administration to be embarassed by their actions. How GWB handles Putin this week is more important than what he does with Schroeder or Chirac.
Posted by: John at February 21, 2005 8:39 AMBaker suffers from severe bi-polar disorder (top marks for the patronizing tone, though):
After four years in which the Bush administration has reached out to most of Europe with a single, raised middle finger...
Well, sure, "most of Europe" would like to think so; but who exactly gave whom the finger?
In its efforts to be diplomatically accommodating, the US may end up supporting and bolstering a vision of Europe that is directly at odds with long-term US goals and interests.
At this stage of the game, Bush is going to do his utmost to hamstring his own administration?
Nothing is to be gained by unnecessarily antagonising Europeans...
So it would seem that that so much of the time and energy of Bush's first administration was spent trying to find new ways to antagonize Europeans.
Baker does seem to get it together mid-way through the piece, though. Until one realizes that according to Baker, it's up to the US to placate, to work with, to understand, the appeasers and that if the US doesn't manage this, it'll be all Washington's fault.
Undoubtedly what passes for sophisticated, balanced analysis these days.
Nothing is to be gained by unnecessarily antagonising Europeans...
Did it ever occur to anyone that it might be necessary to antagonize the Europeans now and then? Or that it might be necessary to do certain things even if the Europeans get all worked up about them?
Posted by: Mike Morley at February 21, 2005 12:29 PMYou would think they would have noticed that America accomplished a major military and policy goal, on the opposite end of the globe, despite their active opposition, without breaking a sweat. And that any reasonable analyst would see that the goal was a good one worthy of a superpower.
The fact that Thailand and South Korea helped us is far more important than the fact that Germany and France opposed us.
Posted by: Bart at February 21, 2005 1:02 PMI guess that the LLL will never realize that the old Europe is less important these days to the US than Asia is. It would be nice to have old Europe on our side, but it is far more important to have Japan and Thailand and South Korea on our side these days. Old Europe, until it gets its economic house in order and decides if it is going to be a pseudo-power or if it is really going to do something about its problems, is merely a thorn in our side so long as we pretend the UN means anything these days.
Posted by: dick at February 21, 2005 1:56 PM