Bush
date of destiny with
a resurgent Europe
By JONATHAN
POWER
June 10, 2001
LONDON - This visit to Europe of this apparently most
ignorant of contemporary American presidents will decide
whether George Bush has inherited sufficient common sense
to dig himself out of the hole he dug for himself in his
first 100 days or whether he will ignore the first law of
holes: when you are in one stop digging.
Bush is discovering that, in William Pfaff's telling
phrase Europe, "is not a used-up civilization". "For four
hundred years European civilization has dominated the
world-for better or worse. It is convenient and
flattering for Americans to assume that this is all over;
but it is very rash to do so".
There have been all number of good reasons for the
U.S. to regard Europe as washed up, not just the two
world-shattering wars of the last century, not just,
going back, the political corruption that led to the
founding of the U.S.A in the first place, nor the ending
of the great empires of Britain, France and Holland, nor
the economic sclerosis and Euro-pessimism of the 1970s
and early 1980s, but the inability of the contemporary
Europeans to pull together when up against the
single-mindedness and determination of Washington. At
last that has come to end, some would add, not a moment
too late.
This Europe is a Europe that has not been so confident
since the rout of Napoleon and the Concert of Europe.
Moreover, it now has, through the European Union, the
institutional strength to weather the kind of economic
and political upheavals that so unexpectedly destroyed
its tranquillity in 1914 and which took the best part of
forty years to put right. With the development of the
Euro-currency and, hard on its heels, the European
defence initiative (and with Tony Blair re-elected in
Britain both will now get a powerful shot in the arm)
Europe has discovered a new confidence and sense of
independence, one that was already well under way once
Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear the Cold War was over and
that Russia saw its future home in Europe too.
Clearly the new Bush Administration has been taken
back by the strength of European resistance to its first
efforts at policy making. Having thrown down the gauntlet
on a range of issues from global warming to missile
defence it now has shown indications that it has stopped
digging down. Friday's statement by George Bush was a
remarkable volte-face: "Russia is no longer our enemy and
therefore we shouldn't be locked into a Cold War
mentality that says we keep the peace by blowing each
other up. In my attitude, that's old, that's tired,
that's stale."
While, as a candidate, Bush had given hints that he
believed that sharp reductions in nuclear armaments
(which Clinton never seriously addressed) was a corollary
of missile defence he never spelt it out. Neither did he
when he made his big pitch for missile defence last
month. Indeed, one could say he still hasn't.
Nevertheless this statement of last Friday's, if it has
any meaning at all, is saying in effect that the U.S. no
longer needs to maintain nuclear deterrence with Russia.
In which case, yes indeed, the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty is redundant and missile defences, if still
regarded as necessary, can be done as a collective
enterprise with Europe and Russia.
Similarly, the Administration's announcement that it
is going to renew negotiations with North Korea is
another somersault of great significance. The Clinton
Administration's patient footslogging negotiations with
the Stalinist regime paid off. Not only did it win a
freeze on nuclear weapons development, it made some
progress on persuading Pyongyang to slow down its sales
of rockets abroad and, most important of all, it helped
break down the ice wall that divided it from South
Korea.
Now it is possible once again to think of seeing
President Kim Dae Jung's sunshine policy taking another
step forward, with Kim Il Sung making a state visit to
the South and even some further steps forward on
developing more transparency in its rocket program and
nuclear research. One can now conceive again, as the
Clinton Administration began to, of a more normal
relationship, in which anti-missile defences aimed
against North Korea would be unnecessary. This, of
course, would beg the difficult question: are they being
developed just to contain China, which is something the
Indians would like and some people, a minority, in Taiwan
and Japan, but which makes no sense to the rest of the
world.
The Europeans, undoubtedly, are going to keep pushing
hard on these issues all week. At the moment the new
policies of the Bush Administration are at best skeletal,
at worst contradictory. Secretary of State Colin Powell
appears to be conducting a sophisticated, nuanced foreign
policy that allows bridges to be built with Europe.
Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld appears still
intent on constructing a sledgehammer, as if the Berlin
Wall had never come down and if China had never parted
company from Mao tse-Tung and his concept of "permanent
revolution".
Bush will find all along the road he travels this week
a different Europe from the one his father dealt with,
even a different one from the early Clinton years. Its
opposition is not going to melt away; if anything it is
going to become more severe and more independently minded
as time goes on. The question that Mr Bush is coming face
to face with this week is how much of an antagonist does
he want to make of Europe?
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 By
JONATHAN POWER
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