At the moment, America and its president seem to be getting some harsh words from friends - from Europe as well as the rest of the world. It would be wrong to dismiss them as the “anti-Americanism” of “chattering” intellectual classes. Nor would it be right to say that the center-left political establishment, which currently runs so much of Europe, is behind it. True, the center-left has been constantly caricaturing President George W. Bush as none too bright and isolationist. But in fairness, it must be admitted that it was not Europe that labeled the president as someone “not quite there”. It was the picture of candidate Bush that America itself drew for us, after his campaign debates and gaffes.
Of course, the criticism was not always fair to Bush. The way he was ridiculed because he had not traveled much outside the US or for his statement that his foreign policy would look largely to the American hemisphere belong to this category. After all, it is not unreasonable that a US president should put America’s interests first. That is the prime duty of an incumbent of the White House, and, in case the critics forget, for which every people elect their presidents or prime ministers.
But the criticism directed against Bush’s proposed anti-missile shield and his decision to pull his country out of the Kyoto Protocol is something else. So is the present worldwide outrage at his refusal to back plans to enforce the 1972 ban on germ warfare. Newspapers in the UK, Spain, France, Germany and other parts of the world used harsh language when they accused him of stupidity and hypocrisy, of treating the world with contempt, and of displaying superpower arrogance in defying international opinion. It is quite natural for Americans to condemn the language of the papers as one that oozes moral indignation and smugness. But that does not prove the criticism wrong.
It is not very ingenious to argue that Washington’s reasons to refuse to ratify, first, the Kyoto agreement and, now, the treaty to enforce the 1972 germ warfare ban, which would force states to open for inspection sites suspected of being used in the development of biological weapons, “make sense”. The argument is that the latter will do little to stop cheats from developing biological weapons and does not protect commercially sensitive information. If such reasons would make sense for America, it would make sense for other nations also - Iraq or North Korea for instance. From their viewpoint, it makes full sense for them to produce biological weapons. America objects, quite correctly, as the entire world does, to any such suggestion.
It may be true that the Kyoto Protocol puts perhaps too much responsibility for action on developed economies, notably the US and the EU, and not on economies that are in many ways just as developed, such as China and India — respectively the world’s third and sixth largest polluters. China will outstrip the Europeans in emissions of carbon dioxide in a very short period of time, and the US probably within ten years. But the answer to that is not to say, “we will continue to pollute because reducing pollution will affect our economy”. It affects all economies. When the rest of the world is willing to pay the price for preserving the environment, the superpower should not play the role of a rogue state. If it does, the least it should expect are some harsh words.
