Why Bush Has Given Up on Europe
From the May 21, 2002 London Times: To the Bush administrations, Europe looks like Canada.
by Fred Barnes
05/24/2002 12:00:00 AM
Fred Barnes, executive editor
WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH wakes up in the morning, his first thoughts are not about Europe. He is likely to think about Iraq, the Middle East, Afghanistan, China, Colombia, Venezuela, Pakistan and India before turning his attention to Europe. Even then, it will be to contemplate a country on Europe's fringe: Russia.
America in the George W. Bush era sees Europe a bit like Canada. It is mostly friendly, occasionally annoying and seldom worth worrying about. When important decisions are made or large initiatives carried out, Europe is to be politely consulted but rarely given a big role and never a veto. In fact, "the Canadization of Europe" is a phrase that pops up sporadically these days.
America's alliance with Europe, paramount in the 1970s and 1980s, is now just one of many relationships for the United States. As Bush begins his seven-day trip to Europe, the focus of his administration and the American press is not on his stops in Berlin, Paris, and Rome but on his summit in Moscow with President Putin. Russia is seen by Washington as the key player in America's two main priorities: winning the war on terror and ousting President Saddam Hussein.
The Bush administration's view of Europe is new and not necessarily permanent. It is rooted partly in recent events, partly in basic differences.
For one thing, Bush and his advisers believe that President Clinton's reliance on multilateralism was detrimental to America's interests. In addition, the American military, which strongly influences administration thinking, regards its coalition with European forces in the Balkans in the late 1990s as dysfunctional and never to be repeated.
The more basic divisions between the United States and Europe have grown in recent years. As the commentator William Kristol has noted, America is nationalist, religious, and martial, while Europe is post-nationalist, post-Christian, and pacifist.
America, and especially President Bush, believes that the nation-state is the main actor in world affairs. Europe, however, has been moving away from the nation-state for years and embracing multilateral organizations as the chief agent in the international arena, particularly on security.
More often than not, the president sees the world through the narrow prism of leaders whom he likes and those he does not. This boosts Britain's influence because he has a close relationship with Tony Blair. The terrorist attacks on September 11 brought them closer still, and Bush was pleased to have Blair attend his speech to Congress on September 20 outlining American plans to fight Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network.
He is also grateful to Gerhard Schroder, the German Chancellor, for having used his political capital at home to send troops to Afghanistan. He likes Schrder's dashing style. However, he finds President Chirac of France imperious and unlikable. France's advice is taken lightly at the White House.
So is that of Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General. In Bush's view, the U.N. is the epitome of everything that is wrong with international organizations: weak but meddlesome and essentially anti-American. He faults Annan personally for letting the United States be thrown off the U.N. Human Rights Commission, perhaps the only international body that Bush finds useful.
It is a widely-held belief in the Bush administration that Europe does not understand America's intentions and too easily dismisses U.S. actions as unilateral and self-serving. The Bush view is that America intervenes in areas where Europeans are too apprehensive or weak-willed to tread. The corollary is that the actions taken by the United States greatly benefit Europe and that European misgivings usually turn out to be baseless.
One example is Bush's rejection of the Kyoto global warming treaty. A better example is missile defense. Europeans are concerned that the deployment of a defensive system would further separate America from Europe, protecting U.S. cities from attack but not European cities.
On the contrary, Bush and his military advisers insist that the system will ultimately protect Europe as well as the United States. So they did not hesitate to spurn European advice, drop the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia and move ahead on developing a defense system. Administration officials are quick to point out that European fears of a hostile reaction by Russia proved to be wrong. Putin responded with the mildest of criticism, calling the termination of the ABM pact a mistake. Afterwards, Russia accelerated its drive to join the West economically, militarily, and diplomatically. Bush, who enjoys Putin's company, takes credit for facilitating this trend.
The Middle East is a special sore point. Unlike his father, the first President Bush, George W. Bush is a strong supporter of Israel and considers Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, unreliable in peace talks and a willing sponsor of terrorism. He wonders why European nations blame Ariel Sharon, the elected leader of a fellow democracy, far more than Arafat for Middle East turmoil. At the very least, the president expects Europeans to recognize that America's strong ties with Israel require a pro-Israeli stand. Others in the administration have a darker view, suspecting that Europe is compromised by commercial ties with Arab countries or affected by latent anti-Semitism.
Looming over Bush's trip is the specter of an attack on Iraq. He is committed to it. After their success in Afghanistan, U.S. military leaders think that victory over Iraqi forces can be achieved quickly and with little help from Europe. They are disdainful of European governments for spending so little on defense. This year, total German spending on the military will amount to less than the increase in the American defense budget.
The Iraq issue is yet another on which the Bush administration is ready to act alone, all the while assuming that Europe will be a beneficiary of Saddam's removal. Saddam's missiles can, after all, reach Europe but not America and his development of weapons of mass destruction is, in the president's view, well advanced. All Bush wants is European acquiescence and maybe a bit of military assistance from Britain. He expects Putin to go along, too.
It is in Iraq that the president's penchant for unilateralism may be shortsighted. Though the United States does not need European help in winning the military phase, it surely will in the occupation of Iraq that follows. The best guess is that 75,000 to 100,000 troops may be necessary for a prolonged occupation as Iraq is transformed into a democracy. America cannot afford to send that many. As in Afghanistan, many would have to come from Europe. So it behooves Bush to treat European allies with respect now because he will likely need them later. There is a final reason for the Bush administration not being fixated on Europe: it is not a hot spot, a critical problem or an economic basket case. It does not cry out for attention, except in one area--trade.
Bush's adoption of steel tariffs and enhanced agricultural subsidies has understandably upset European governments, who are threatening to retaliate. This has activated Robert Zoellick, the President's senior trade official. Alone in the upper reaches of the administration, he does wake up each morning thinking about Europe.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
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