BUSH’S TRIP TO EUROPE WAS A TOTAL FLOP
By Jack A. Smith
President George Bush went to Europe in mid-June to convince Washington’s closest allies in the industrialized world that his policies do not constitute unilateral expressions of big-power hubris and a penchant for global economic, military and political domination. No wonder his five-day, five-nation journey was a veritable fiasco.
A number of difficulties have beset relations between the world’s only superpower and several of its major European cohorts, Russia and Japan over the last several years. The actions of the Bush administration since it took office in January, however, have generated the greatest tensions of the post-Cold War period among these allies, emanating from such decisions as the thrust toward constructing a national missile defense network (NMD) at the expense of the sacrosanct ABM Treaty and rejection of the Kyoto Protocol limiting greenhouse gases. One measure of Europe’s discomfort was the May 3 rejection of U.S. membership in the UN Human Rights Commission, a calculated blow to White House prestige.
Bush’s journey was intended to mitigate European distrust and fear of Washington’s world leadership--a malaise that goes beyond the usual intra-capitalist rivalries. It failed for lack of substance. Demonstrations against a plethora of U.S. policies took place throughout Bush’s visit. Key European leaders staged their own protests, using diplomatic language, virtually every time Bush finished speaking. Indeed, just before the president arrived to address a European Union conference in Sweden, Prime Minister Goran Persson sought to mollify protesters by telling them the E.U. deserves their support because “It’s one of the few institutions we can develop as a balance to U.S. world domination.”
(According to a Pew Research Center poll released June 22, the majority of the American people took little notice of the presidential journey. Only 35% followed the event fairly or very closely, which is lower then average for foreign trips. The European jaunt did nothing to enhance President Bush’s popularity rating, which the poll reported had declined to 50%, a drop of six points since April.)
The stage was set for rejection of Bush’s overtures a few days before his trip when NATO defense ministers expressed deep skepticism about the NMD. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had been sent to Brussels to convince them that the 1972 anti-ballistic-missile treaty “stands in the way of a 21st century approach to deterrence”--a notion which appalls most of Europe.
Bush himself was directly confronted with Europe’s doubts about the necessity or effectiveness of NMD--and the grave consequences of scrapping the ABM Treaty--at a meeting of the Atlantic Alliance leaders June 13. Opposition to the missile shield concept followed him through the rest of his trip, culminating in his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin June 16.
Perhaps the most intense conflict took place over global warming when the U.S. president attended a meeting with the leaders of the European Union in Goteborg, Sweden, June 14. The allies strongly rejected Bush’s argument that the treaty “goals were not realistic” and were not “well balanced” because they “didn’t include developing nations.” The Kyoto accord stipulated that developed countries, by far the worst offenders, take the lead in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
Thoroughly undercutting the president’s perspective was the news the same day that China--a developing nation not obliged to reach the goals set by Kyoto--had reduced carbon dioxide emissions in the last several years by 17% while expanding its gross domestic product by 36%. U.S. emissions increased during that period.
The European Union leaders, who were about to discuss among themselves the controversial matter of expanding beyond 15 member states, also evidenced displeasure when Bush took the occasion to publicly instruct them that “Europe ought to include nations beyond the current scope of E.U. and NATO.” This provoked E.U. foreign affairs commissioner Chris Patten to deadpan, “The United States is not a member of the European Union.”
In Poland, where Bush appears to have found his only support of the trip, the president stressed that “my government believes NATO should expand” all the way to the Russian border. When Bush met with Putin the next day, the Russian leader told the press, “Look, this [NATO] is a military organization. It’s moving towards our border. Why?” Putin said later that Moscow would break the 1993 agreement with Washington to refrain from adding multiple warheads to its missile force if the U.S. unilaterally decided to abrogate the ABM Treaty.
Despite these serious differences, all parties to the presidential meetings offered contrived expressions of good feeling and none mentioned aloud what the New York Times described as several of Bush’s “erroneous, unclear or unwelcome characterizations.” The U.S., as the most powerful national security state in world history, is not to be trifled with, of course, and allied discontent may dissipate in time. But at this point, away from the conference tables and TV cameras, it is obvious that Europe seeks to transform itself over time into a credible counterbalance to Washington’s increasingly unilateral assertion of power and projection of military prowess, while Russia and China are closing ranks to buffer themselves from any further U.S. adventures in imperial manipulation.