WITH THE possible exception of Middle East peace, for a president supposedly fatally fixated on domestic affairs, George W. Bush has not done badly overseas so far. He faced down the Chinese over the downed US spy plane and ratcheted up his support for Taiwan in the teeth of Beijing’s anger. However, while tough talking may work with the Chinese; it is unlikely to play well with the Europeans, on whose soil Bush landed yesterday.
The Europeans, even the British who so value their “special relationship” with Washington, are united in their distrust of America’s new president. They are furious that almost the first foreign policy action of the new Bush White House was to reject the Koyoto Treaty to cut back on the causes of global warming. They are alarmed that the president seems intent on pressing ahead with his missile defense shield, regardless of the strong likelihood that this will trigger a new and destabilizing arms race. They are angry that the US Defense Department is looking for the earliest opportunity to disengage its military from the Balkans.
Bush started his trip in Spain, one of the few European states to have a center right government sympathetic to his own administration and a country whose own language the president apparently speaks. Unfortunately when Bush landed, it was his mouth that touched the tarmac first, because he had already stuck his foot in it, by referring to Spain’s Premier Jose Maria Aznar as “Mr. Anzar”. Any one reasonably familiar with the sonorities of a language and its names, might not have made this mistake. Alternatively anyone who had read his briefing papers properly would have avoided the error. But President Bush who has already muddled Slovakia with Slovenia and referred to the Greeks as “the Grecians” is becoming adept at these mistakes. No doubt he will make a few more for the Europeans to snicker about as he progresses from Spain to Brussels, Stockholm, Warsaw and then Slovenia, where he will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time.
But what the most powerful man in the world has to talk about to the Europeans is no laughing matter. They would do well to put aside their liberal objections to the death penalty and the anti-abortion lobby — both areas dear to Bush’s heart — and focus on the substantive issues of the environment, the potential arms race and US disengagement from Europe. Of these three, the last is probably the most important for Europe. For over fifty years European states have prospered under a US defense umbrella that was paid for by US taxpayers. Military spending in Britain, France and Germany, the three historic major powers, has been declining steadily. The international interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo would have been impossible.
If America does pull back, this weakness will have to be reversed and the question will be, should countries embark upon individual rearmament or is the moment fast approaching when a single European military should be established ? Much will depend on the most important of President Bush’s encounters during his present tour and that of course will be with President Putin. If the two men hit it off — if Bush believes that he can do business with Putin and if intelligence reports back whatever assurances Putin seeks to give his American counterpart — then the US European withdrawal could come about sooner rather than later. Much less important to Bush are the other European leaders. If they upset the new occupant of the White House, most especially if they demonstrate the contempt and disdain that some clearly feel for the man, they will probably live to regret it. Bush apparently already feels that he really doesn’t need Europe. If the Europeans can give him a good enough excuse, he will act on those sentiments. If he can cut a reasonable enough understanding with President Putin, the whole balance of European Power could start to change.
