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January 22, 2005NEWS ANALYSIS Bush's Smiles Meet Some Frowns in EuropeBy ROGER COHEN The start of President Bush's second term has been marked by conciliatory gestures toward Europe: a promised visit to the headquarters of the European Union, the selection of a top State Department team deeply versed in European affairs, restraint on trade, cooperation on the Ukrainian crisis and bold commitments to the active Middle Eastern diplomacy that Europeans want.All of this amounts to a presidential gamble that the Atlantic community is alive and well, despite the divisive trauma of Iraq. But Mr. Bush will want results. As his secretary of state-designate, Condoleezza Rice, said this week: "When judging a course of action, I will never forget that the true measure of its worth is whether it is effective."By this yardstick, can European-American cooperation still deliver? Can it usher in the freer world to which the president is committed? Promising to listen to the counsel of allies, Mr. Bush declared Thursday, "The concerted effort of free nations to promote democracy is the prelude to our enemies' defeat."The initial reaction was generally cool. European commentators asked what new war Mr. Bush might embark on in the name of his idealism, and portrayed his global bid to eliminate tyranny as hubris or hypocrisy. But a few newspapers, like the conservative German daily Die Welt, suggested, "A little bit of this spirit would do the Old World good and help it to renew itself."Pressing tests of cooperation abound: the Iraq war, a Middle East changed by Yasir Arafat's death, the slow-building potential missile crisis in Iran, Ukraine's democratic transition."The president has demonstrated his willingness to re-engage with the Europeans - all of them, not one at a time, and that includes the French," said Simon Serfaty of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "This is critical. But achieving tangible results will not be easy because basic positions have not changed."The French, although they have tried not to trumpet the fact, feel vindicated by the morass in Iraq - the result, in their view, of a war fought on flimsy grounds with inadequate means in a bad neighborhood they know well from bitter colonial history.The Bush administration, by contrast, feels vindicated by what it sees as a significant democratic tide set in motion by a war on terror that has assumed aspects of a war on tyranny.The Palestinian election on Jan. 9, the Iraqi election planned for Jan. 30, even the overturning of a fraudulent election in Ukraine - all of these events are seen as the fruits of the "transformational diplomacy" Ms. Rice embraces, one directed at the spread of freedom and democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere.Such differences of perception will be reinforced by deep-rooted forces that now push Europe and the United States in opposite directions.The most important of these is the fact that, with much of their sovereignty ceded to the European Union, the countries of Europe are post-nationalist states, troubled by military assertiveness and the bold projection of national power.Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador to the United States, said fighting for freedom was fine, but the question was how. "The push for liberty has to come from within," he said, referring to societies America might want to change. He added that if the president's ambitions mean "going out and being a missionary, Europeans may not want to buy into that."Against this backdrop, the potential for renewed discord persists. Differences may erupt over the speed of an American military withdrawal from Iraq that many in Europe would like completed by the end of the year.Where Europeans see dead Palestinians, Americans tend to see terrorized Israelis; as a result, coordinated pressure on the two parties will be elusive.The administration may tire of European diplomacy in Iran if it is convinced that Tehran is close to acquiring a nuclear weapon under a secret program whose reality the Europeans have missed.Still, a real determination seems to exist for the moment to mend the worst trans-Atlantic crisis in many years. The National Security Council has even begun weekly meetings with senior European officials like Mr. Ischinger; the talks, intended to promote a new dialogue, have been welcomed by Europeans."We don't want to give lessons and we have no desire to look in the rear-view mirror," Michel Barnier, the French foreign minister, said in an interview this month. "The alliance between Americans and Europeans must be balanced and effective."In what a senior American official in Europe called "a symbolic event to bring us together," Mr. Bush will go to Brussels on Feb. 22, visiting NATO and the 25-member European Union. His speeches are expected to include not only a powerful endorsement of the alliance but also of the idea of a united Europe.The European Union often felt slighted during the first Bush term, which was marked more by talk of "coalitions of the willing" and of "old" and "new" Europe than of the promise of the continent's integration. It was not only in Paris that a view gained ground that America now saw its interest more in a divided than in a united Europe.Mr. Bush, the senior official said, will seek to dispel this notion. He is likely to underscore the joint effectiveness and interest of the United States and Europe in spreading democratic market economies. Another potential theme is their shared commitment to a two-state solution in the Middle East, an outcome on which Ms. Rice has said she will expend "an enormous amount of effort."At the heart of Mr. Bush's new policy in Europe lies a push to reconcile with Germany, a firm postwar ally that opposed the Iraq war.From Brussels, the president will travel to Mainz, Germany, for meetings that Ezra Suleiman, an expert on European affairs at Princeton University, said "has focused French minds on the fact that they risk being sidelined and marginalized if they don't get over the Iraq row."A rapprochement with Germany comes naturally to Ms. Rice and her selected deputy, Robert B. Zoellick, both of whom were involved in the country's unification in 1990, an example of transformational diplomacy that left a lasting impression on the incoming secretary of state. The likely No. 3 at the State Department, R. Nicholas Burns, who is now ambassador to NATO, is also a committed Atlanticist."We see old European hands coagulating at the top of the State Department," said Jonathan Eyal, a British foreign policy expert. "We see a secretary of state with the ear of the president, we see the president coming to Brussels and deferring for now to European diplomatic efforts in Iran, and we see a quest for quiet mediation in the Airbus-Boeing dispute. All of that seems to amount to an opportunity we must grab."But Europe, of late, has been characterized as much by division as unity, and hostility to Mr. Bush remains virulent in many countries.An influential current in European thought sees the European Union more as a counterweight to the United States than as a partner. Where Poland and Slovakia embrace America, France and Spain wonder. The Continent is at best ambivalent about American power, at least as it has been exercised under Mr. Bush.If such divisive forces prevail and Mr. Bush's overtures prove sterile, Ms. Rice may find herself quickly outflanked by others in the administration, not least Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, whose views of Europe, or at least European unity and traditional alliances, are far more skeptical
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January 22, 2005NEWS ANALYSIS Bush's Smiles Meet Some Frowns in EuropeBy ROGER COHEN The start of President Bush's second term has been marked by conciliatory gestures toward Europe: a promised visit to the headquarters of the European Union, the selection of a top State Department team deeply versed in European affairs, restraint on trade, cooperation on the Ukrainian crisis and bold commitments to the active Middle Eastern diplomacy that Europeans want.All of this amounts to a presidential gamble that the Atlantic community is alive and well, despite the divisive trauma of Iraq. But Mr. Bush will want results. As his secretary of state-designate, Condoleezza Rice, said this week: "When judging a course of action, I will never forget that the true measure of its worth is whether it is effective."By this yardstick, can European-American cooperation still deliver? Can it usher in the freer world to which the president is committed? Promising to listen to the counsel of allies, Mr. Bush declared Thursday, "The concerted effort of free nations to promote democracy is the prelude to our enemies' defeat."The initial reaction was generally cool. European commentators asked what new war Mr. Bush might embark on in the name of his idealism, and portrayed his global bid to eliminate tyranny as hubris or hypocrisy. But a few newspapers, like the conservative German daily Die Welt, suggested, "A little bit of this spirit would do the Old World good and help it to renew itself."Pressing tests of cooperation abound: the Iraq war, a Middle East changed by Yasir Arafat's death, the slow-building potential missile crisis in Iran, Ukraine's democratic transition."The president has demonstrated his willingness to re-engage with the Europeans - all of them, not one at a time, and that includes the French," said Simon Serfaty of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "This is critical. But achieving tangible results will not be easy because basic positions have not changed."The French, although they have tried not to trumpet the fact, feel vindicated by the morass in Iraq - the result, in their view, of a war fought on flimsy grounds with inadequate means in a bad neighborhood they know well from bitter colonial history.The Bush administration, by contrast, feels vindicated by what it sees as a significant democratic tide set in motion by a war on terror that has assumed aspects of a war on tyranny.The Palestinian election on Jan. 9, the Iraqi election planned for Jan. 30, even the overturning of a fraudulent election in Ukraine - all of these events are seen as the fruits of the "transformational diplomacy" Ms. Rice embraces, one directed at the spread of freedom and democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere.Such differences of perception will be reinforced by deep-rooted forces that now push Europe and the United States in opposite directions.The most important of these is the fact that, with much of their sovereignty ceded to the European Union, the countries of Europe are post-nationalist states, troubled by military assertiveness and the bold projection of national power.Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador to the United States, said fighting for freedom was fine, but the question was how. "The push for liberty has to come from within," he said, referring to societies America might want to change. He added that if the president's ambitions mean "going out and being a missionary, Europeans may not want to buy into that."Against this backdrop, the potential for renewed discord persists. Differences may erupt over the speed of an American military withdrawal from Iraq that many in Europe would like completed by the end of the year.Where Europeans see dead Palestinians, Americans tend to see terrorized Israelis; as a result, coordinated pressure on the two parties will be elusive.The administration may tire of European diplomacy in Iran if it is convinced that Tehran is close to acquiring a nuclear weapon under a secret program whose reality the Europeans have missed.Still, a real determination seems to exist for the moment to mend the worst trans-Atlantic crisis in many years. The National Security Council has even begun weekly meetings with senior European officials like Mr. Ischinger; the talks, intended to promote a new dialogue, have been welcomed by Europeans."We don't want to give lessons and we have no desire to look in the rear-view mirror," Michel Barnier, the French foreign minister, said in an interview this month. "The alliance between Americans and Europeans must be balanced and effective."In what a senior American official in Europe called "a symbolic event to bring us together," Mr. Bush will go to Brussels on Feb. 22, visiting NATO and the 25-member European Union. His speeches are expected to include not only a powerful endorsement of the alliance but also of the idea of a united Europe.The European Union often felt slighted during the first Bush term, which was marked more by talk of "coalitions of the willing" and of "old" and "new" Europe than of the promise of the continent's integration. It was not only in Paris that a view gained ground that America now saw its interest more in a divided than in a united Europe.Mr. Bush, the senior official said, will seek to dispel this notion. He is likely to underscore the joint effectiveness and interest of the United States and Europe in spreading democratic market economies. Another potential theme is their shared commitment to a two-state solution in the Middle East, an outcome on which Ms. Rice has said she will expend "an enormous amount of effort."At the heart of Mr. Bush's new policy in Europe lies a push to reconcile with Germany, a firm postwar ally that opposed the Iraq war.From Brussels, the president will travel to Mainz, Germany, for meetings that Ezra Suleiman, an expert on European affairs at Princeton University, said "has focused French minds on the fact that they risk being sidelined and marginalized if they don't get over the Iraq row."A rapprochement with Germany comes naturally to Ms. Rice and her selected deputy, Robert B. Zoellick, both of whom were involved in the country's unification in 1990, an example of transformational diplomacy that left a lasting impression on the incoming secretary of state. The likely No. 3 at the State Department, R. Nicholas Burns, who is now ambassador to NATO, is also a committed Atlanticist."We see old European hands coagulating at the top of the State Department," said Jonathan Eyal, a British foreign policy expert. "We see a secretary of state with the ear of the president, we see the president coming to Brussels and deferring for now to European diplomatic efforts in Iran, and we see a quest for quiet mediation in the Airbus-Boeing dispute. All of that seems to amount to an opportunity we must grab."But Europe, of late, has been characterized as much by division as unity, and hostility to Mr. Bush remains virulent in many countries.An influential current in European thought sees the European Union more as a counterweight to the United States than as a partner. Where Poland and Slovakia embrace America, France and Spain wonder. The Continent is at best ambivalent about American power, at least as it has been exercised under Mr. Bush.If such divisive forces prevail and Mr. Bush's overtures prove sterile, Ms. Rice may find herself quickly outflanked by others in the administration, not least Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, whose views of Europe, or at least European unity and traditional alliances, are far more skeptical
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