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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
When Bush arrives in Rome for the start of a series of meetings with European leaders, it won't exactly be la dolce vita.
Jun 2, 2004 | President Bush heads to Europe this week, the beginning of a monthlong diplomatic whirlwind. He starts with a visit to Rome to see the pope and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, heads to France for the 60th anniversary of D-Day, returns to Sea Island, Ga., for the G-8 summit of major industrialized nations and then goes back to Europe for summits with the European Union in Ireland and with NATO in Turkey.
Ordinarily, a first-term incumbent in the homestretch of his bid for reelection would relish a month of high-profile summitry. Americans like their president to be presidential, and globe-trotting on Air Force One usually fits the bill.
But these events will be anything but an opportunity for Bush to revel in diplomatic achievements. The gathering in Normandy is meant to celebrate America's strategic bond with Europe, but holding a eulogy for the Atlantic alliance would be more fitting. The leaders of the G-8 nations will no doubt maintain a facade of unity and declare their shared commitment to bringing about political reform in the Middle East, but only by skirting around the immediate crises in Iraq and in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. At both the E.U. and NATO summits, Bush will be greeted by leaders and publics alike that are deeply skeptical and resentful of Washington's bravado and bluster.
Europe today is home to a rising tide of angry anti-American sentiment. Recent polling by the Pew Research Center indicates that almost two-thirds of the public in France and Germany hold an "unfavorable" opinion of the United States. America's standing in the world has plummeted under Bush's watch, and the Atlantic alliance has been stretched to the breaking point.
Although the Iraq war is the most prominent cause, the story starts well before the fall of Baghdad and the chaotic occupation that followed it. The Atlantic alliance was born amid the bloodshed of World War II, when the world's democracies joined arms to defeat Nazism and fascism. It held fast during the long years of the Cold War, successfully containing the Soviet Union until the communist bloc collapsed of its own accord. On this side of the Atlantic, the task of caring for the West fell to a bipartisan coalition of centrist Republicans and Democrats, cobbled together by FDR during the war. The progressive internationalism that resulted brought a commitment to multilateralism and compromise that legitimized U.S. power through the second half of the 20th century.
The Atlantic alliance first began to weaken after the Cold War, a victim of its own success in ending Europe's geopolitical division. Absent a common threat, Europe became less willing to follow America's lead. And with Europe's major powers at peace, U.S. priorities shifted to Asia and the Middle East. The cracks in the alliance became clear amid its lethargic and tortured efforts to bring peace to the Balkans during the 1990s.
But now, the United States and Europe are not just lapsed partners; they have become open rivals. Some of America's harshest critics are its traditional democratic allies in Europe. In turn, Washington has lost its enthusiasm for European unity, now resisting what has been a fundamental goal of U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II. How did it come to this? How could decades of partnership so readily give way to estrangement?
