REVIEW & OUTLOOK
The Envy of Europe
The Continent's pols attack President Bush. Coming from them, it's a compliment.
Twenty years ago an affable rancher named Ronald Reagan showed up in Washington to hoots of derision from American and European intelligentsia: "He's stupid, he's arrogant, he's going to bring on Armageddon." Two decades and a Cold War victory later, another affable rancher showed up in Washington to much the same cries.
Mr. Reagan showed himself a bad global citizen by dumping the Law of the Sea Treaty; with George W. Bush, it's the Kyoto accord on limiting carbon dioxide emissions. Mr. Reagan was accused of fomenting nuclear war for wanting to protect America from it; with Mr. Bush it's the same issue, though the charge now is the vague one of "unilateralism." Mr. Reagan was even accused of failing to decree a cure for AIDS in San Francisco; Mr. Bush has presumably decided not to offer one to Africa. The list goes on.
Just 100-odd days into a new Presidency, America has become such a mean-spirited and menacing country that we are asked to forgive the rest of the world as it recoils in horror--or so some pundits and Democratic Congressmen tell us. As New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who is funny these days only in unintended ways, sums up: "Doesn't W. realize that EVERYBODY in the world HATES us?" So when the U.S. gets booted off the U.N. Human Rights Commission, and Sudan, where chattel slavery is practiced, gets accepted, it's supposed to be an unsurprising humiliation for us and not the U.N.
Yes, as attested to by the thousands of illegals who recently lined up outside U.S. immigration offices to take advantage of an amnesty. Indeed, if any of these let's-do-lunch pundits spent as much time talking to normal Europeans as they spend talking to European politicians, they would likely find that, at least among those under 35, it is a minority who would not emigrate to the U.S. to escape their own state-heavy economies were emigration easier. If the U.S. really wants to hurt the European Union with "unilateralism," all it has do is unilaterally grant Europeans more visas.
Europe's political classes know this. Which is why a chance to thumb their noses at the U.S. makes keeping company with the likes of China, Cuba, Libya and Syria palatable on relatively meaningless U.N. votes. They don't hate us; they envy us.
But then too, some European suspicion may be understandable after eight years of the Clinton Administration. The volume and vehemence of anti-American rhetoric from European politicians and press grew throughout the '90s, not the past 100 days. Partly it was a result of jealousy of our booming economy and a reaction to the increasing flood of American cultural and consumer products; but partly too it was a reaction to a fickle foreign policy that saw us get serious about destabilizing the Middle East and unserious about protecting Europe from the emerging missile threat there.
Of course, there are other tensions. For one thing, many European leaders believe that to be relevant in the age of the American "hyperpower" they have to be different--that is, opposed. And that natural tendency of post-War European diplomacy may be aggravated by a number of so-called "68ers"--Europe's Clinton generation--now in powerful positions.
In Britain, both Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Robin Cook cut their political teeth in the 1980s Campaign for (unilateral) Nuclear Disarmament. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Defense Minister Rudolph Scharping all have a history of anti-American activism stretching from Vietnam protests in the '60s to opposition to American deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles in the '80s. (Mr. Fischer was even photographed attacking a policeman during a 1970s demonstration.) And EU foreign policy supremo Javier Solana, the former NATO Secretary-General, once led opposition to U.S. bases in Spain and opposed his country's entry into NATO. Never mind the French.
By and large, maturity and the realities of power have changed these men dramatically. Mr. Solana has called his former views "a case of juvenile delinquency." And none were pacifists on Kosovo. But it is still an open question whether their instincts are in the right place.
Europe still isn't willing to spend money on defense. The EU had to call in America on the Balkans because it hadn't invested in the lift capabilities to get its forces to the battlefield. It still hasn't. One of the defining images of the Balkans conflict was that of fearsome Dutch peacekeepers simply watching the slaughter of thousands at Srebrenica. In that light, doesn't the U.S. have reason to worry about the EU upsetting the NATO apple cart with its "unilateral" move toward a Pan-European "Defense Identity"?
Such problems should prove amenable to mature diplomacy and leadership. So while it may be tempting to tweak the Europeans in response to things like the U.N. vote, the best course for the Bush Administration is probably just to press ahead consistently and forthrightly with its plans.
Mr. Reagan surely shocked Europeans used to dealing with Jimmy Carter, as Mr. Bush will shock those used to Bill Clinton. But Ronald Reagan's steady hand won deployment of the Pershings, and ultimately the Cold War. Mr. Bush should probably consider being damned in the same terms as our most successful foreign-policy President in generations a pretty auspicious start.
