A rosy relationship turns sour
The Europeans' goodwill toward America that was so evident following Sept. 11 has evaporated in the wake of seemingly unilateral decisions from the Bush administration.
By Tom Hundley
The Chicago Tribune
Published January 26, 2003
LONDON. -- Think of the English and you think of a race famous for its chilly reserve and keeping its feelings well in check. Stiff upper lip and all.
That's why the roses bowled us over.
After five years in Rome, we had been in our new house in the London suburbs for less than a month when, on Sept. 11, 2002, the doorbell rang.
It was Penny Glover, a next-door neighbor with whom I had chatted over the fence on one or two occasions. She was holding a dozen red roses.
"We just wanted you to know that our hearts are with you," she said.
Never in our 12 years of living abroad have we experienced such an expression of genuine, heartfelt goodwill simply for being American.
That said, 2002 was a rocky year for the trans-Atlantic relationship.
Postwar Germany once took great pride in its warm relations with the U.S. But last year Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder rescued a losing re-election campaign by promising that his country would have no part in America's war against Iraq.
One of Schroeder's aides went over the top in drawing comparison between President Bush and Adolf Hitler. The aide was fired, but the gaffe didn't appear to cost the chancellor too many votes.
Gunter Grass, the German Nobel laureate, said he considered Bush "a threat to world peace" and likened him to "one of those characters in Shakespeare's historical plays whose only ambition perhaps is to stand before his father, the old and departed king, and say, `Look, I have completed your task.'"
Other respected voices also raised questions about U.S. behavior. In Spain, Baltasar Garzon, the anti-terrorism judge who drew acclaim by going after former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, said Bush had put himself on the side of the evildoers by deliberately undermining the newly created International Court of Justice.
Garzon, in the Spanish daily El Pais, also criticized the U.S. for trampling the rights of suspects in its war on terror.
France long has had an almost reflexive distaste for things American, especially items such as "Le Big Mac." This is a country where Jose Bove, a sheep farmer whose claim to fame is trashing a McDonald's construction site, is regarded as a kind of Gallic Nelson Mandela.
So the overnight success of Mecca-Cola, a new soft drink with a taste and label similar to Coca-Cola, comes as no great surprise.
The makers of Mecca-Cola admonish consumers not to drink "like an idiot" but with an "engaged" political consciousness. They promise to donate 10 percent of their profits to a Palestinian charity.
Sales are brisk. Originally targeted to French Muslims who want to boycott American products and protest U.S. policies in the Middle East, the new soft drink seems to have caught on with a much broader market.
The good news is that some in France are seeking a more profound understanding of their hostility toward us. Two serious books that were sharply critical of French anti-Americanism found their way onto best-seller lists in 2002. So did another book that suggests the 9/11 terror attacks were a Pentagon plot.
Anecdotal evidence of growing European anti-Americanism is supported by numbers.
A survey of 38,000 people in 44 countries conducted by the Pew Research Center found that in 19 of the 27 countries where a baseline was available, U.S. favorability ratings had slipped.
Germany led the way in Western Europe with a 17 percent decline, but even in Britain--the Bush administration's only real ally in the war on terrorism--our popularity slipped by 8 percent last year.
The problem did not develop overnight, but it has accelerated under the Bush administration.
Initially, Europeans were impressed by the untested son of a former president who, in his foreign policy debate with Vice President Al Gore, promised a more "humble" approach to U.S. relations with the rest of the world.
But instead of humility, a certain smug arrogance has permeated the conduct of American diplomacy. The Kyoto treaty on global warming may have been flawed, but Washington almost appeared to relish the international uproar it provoked by dumping it.
Similarly, the Bush administration's efforts to undermine the new International Criminal Court seemed to send a strong message that America believed it could play by its own rules.
Rising European animus toward America began to coalesce around the anti-global movement. The street riots that marred the G-7 Summit in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001 had a distinct anti-American flavor.
Two months later, the events of Sept. 11 staggered the world, and America became the beneficiary of a vast outpouring of global goodwill.
Much of it evaporated in 2002.
A major point of friction continues to be the Bush administration's scarcely concealed contempt for the UN as an instrument of international consensus and legitimacy. Europeans rather like doing business the UN way, slow-moving and unwieldy as it may be.
A potentially more serious issue, but one whose consequences have not yet been fully realized on either side of the Atlantic, is the new Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war.
This fundamental rewriting of U.S. defense strategy was done with little or no consultation with the European allies. It represents a world view that Europeans do not embrace.
Last summer, sitting in a smoky Belgrade cafe with a former Serb dissident, I tried to make the case for pre-emptive war, suggesting that the U.S.-led air strikes against Yugoslavia had helped hasten the departure of the despised Slobodan Milosevic.
My dissident friend shook his head. "Strange the way you guys think. You bomb the hell out of us for 11 weeks and then you ask us to be grateful," he said.
The big story in Europe for 2002 should have been the expansion of NATO and the European Union, but even these milestone events were overshadowed by hostility toward the United States.
At the NATO summit in Prague, Silvio Berlusconi, the effusive Italian prime minister, said Europe owed the U.S. its gratitude for carrying the heavy burden of the continent's defense for the last 50 years, allowing nations such as Italy to prosper.
"Thank you, President Bush," he gushed. In the cavernous press center, where about 2,000 journalists (mostly European) watched on closed-circuit TV, Berlusconi's comments drew guffaws and derisive laughter.
This year, it appears the Bush administration is determined to go to war against Iraq. The U.S. undoubtedly would win, but it may come at the cost of heightened anti-U.S. sentiment in Europe and elsewhere.
Should we be worried? The Pentagon is. According to recent reports, defense planners have hatched a plan to pay journalists in other countries to say nice things about us and to hire contractors to organize pro-U.S. rallies.
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune
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