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Editorial: Europe must accommodate Bush vision
February 21, 2005
RONALD Reagan once described himself as a bull who took his own china shop around with him.
He meant, of course, that he preferred plain-speaking to euphemism and was prepared to bypass diplomatic niceties to achieve worthwhile results. In this, as in much else, George W. Bush is Reagan's heir, and today he steps into the biggest china shop of all. While it is easy to overestimate the degree of anti-Americanism within the European Union much of eastern Europe is fervently pro-US, and Britain and Italy are among the US's closest allies in the post-9/11, and especially post-Iraq world there are certainly pockets of wounded pride. As he swings through what US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously dubbed "old Europe", President Bush can expect the red carpet, but will need to watch for banana peels.
In a press conference last week, Mr Bush conceded it was after 9/11 that Europe and the US began to "talk past each other". This week's visit is about fence-mending, and Mr Bush will turn on the Texan charm but not budge an inch on any issue of substance, especially Iraq. Neither should he. While the leaders of Germany and France continue to pay excessive attention to internal anti-American elites and drag the EU chain on assistance with Iraqi reconstruction, more than 8 million Iraqis showed last month they intend to take full advantage of the democratic opportunity afforded them by the US-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Among the collateral benefits of that overthrow are democratic openings across the Middle East that promise new pathways towards a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The apparent determination of French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to deal the EU out of the biggest game in town will appear increasingly anachronistic.
Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger once said he would pay attention to Europe when it had a telephone number. By basing himself near EU headquarters in Brussels for this visit, Mr Bush signals he understands Europe now has a voice. In return, EU leaders must get over their unproductive resentment towards Mr Bush. Apart from recent events in the Middle East, what strengthens Mr Bush's legitimacy is his re-election victory and the deeper changes it portends beneath the surface of US political life. If European leaders ever believed they could simply bide their time until the US produced a leader who thinks as they do, that moment has gone. The Bush vision, which is based on an aggressive assault on terrorism and an activist seeding of democracy, is the direct result of what the US learned on 9/11. It will not go away. And when we see the US mounting a full-scale assault on AIDS and hunger in Africa, or following hot on Australia's heels with on-the-ground tsunami relief in Aceh, we are looking at another side of the same vision.
But Australia and the world can greatly benefit from a new era of co-operation between Europe and the US, which after all have many more values in common than dividing them. On nuclear proliferation in Iran, the US has looked with a sceptical eye on efforts by Britain, France and Germany to talk Tehran around to common sense. Yet those efforts deserve US support. Economically, Mr Bush recently put aside nationalism with a promise to cut farm subsidies. If the EU is willing to follow suit, it may start to enjoy something closer to the level of economic growth seen in the US and Asia. In the four-year chill between Washington and Europe, Australia has aligned itself with the US on the issues that matter. But as Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson pointed out in an exclusive interview with The Weekend Australian, this has not marginalised us in Europe, because many EU countries have taken the same positions. As demonstrated by our Europe-friendly policy on arms sales to China, it is our national interest that drives foreign policy settings. So a diversity of powerful democratic voices in international politics is a wholly good thing as long as they talk to, and not past, each other.
