Europe's impotent outrage

The president's "axis of evil" speech, both in tone and substance, served to bring this point home in Europe with exaggerated clarity. Not only did it lump Iran, Iraq and North Korea together in a style many in Europe consider simplistic and disturbing, it ignored Europe in a way that was dramatically at odds with Bush's crucial Sept. 20 speech to a joint session of Congress. In September, the White House seated British Prime Minister Tony Blair right next to first lady Laura Bush, as an honored symbol of U.S.-European relations; this time, neither Blair nor Britain was so much as mentioned, and "Europe" popped up only once in the 3,800-word address.

Blair has refrained from defending Bush's "axis of evil" remarks against European attacks -- but he hasn't joined the attacks yet, either. His foreign minister, Jack Straw, suggested that American voters, not foreign leaders, were the intended consumers of Bush's tough talk, citing the congressional elections coming up in November. But Blair ally Chris Patten, the European Union's external affairs commissioner, blasted U.S. foreign policy as "absolutist and simplistic" in an interview published in Saturday's Guardian.

Most European analysts believe an actual U.S. attack on Iraq remains unlikely, at least in the near future. Even before Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke up on Monday, warning Bush against taking unilateral action against Saddam, it was clear that the United States could pay a severe price in the international diplomatic realm if it let administration hawks dictate its approach to Iraq. That's not to say that Europeans dismiss such a possibility. But they believe that for it to happen, the Bush administration would first have to engage in energetic diplomacy to sell the need for war -- and either persuade the allies to join in the fight, or to agree not to criticize it. Such an effort has been notably lacking so far. The United States has not even taken the basic step of sharing intelligence information implicating Iraq -- or Iran or North Korea -- in terrorist activity.

If even Turkey has not been consulted, as its NATO ambassador told Salon, it speaks volumes about the gap between administration rhetoric and deeds. As a neighbor of Iraq, Turkey could expect to face a huge problem with its own large Kurdish minority if an independent Kurdistan were to form out of the remains of a collapsed Iraqi state. Not only that, Turkey has the largest army in NATO after the United States, and serves as an important bridge to the Arab world in its role as the only Muslim country in NATO.

NATO allies may be expected to take Bush's "axis of evil" talk as mere posturing, but it would not be the European way to let words pass without comment. Whether this represents European substance over American superficiality, or merely the European knack for contention, is open to question. What's undeniable is that a variety of voices seem to be making similar points.

London's Independent newspaper struck a more mournful note of criticism than most, arguing in a recent editorial that the State of the Union speech showed that Bush had "betrayed hopes of a kinder and gentler globalization." In what has been a constant refrain across Europe, the editorial wondered why U.S. military action in Afghanistan had not been followed up with similar resolve to rebuild that country and help those around the world who are in need. "Remember when the world was never going to be the same again?" it asked. "When people across the United States struggled to understand what had happened to make their nation the target of such a shocking assault? When sales of the Koran leapt as Westerners tried to learn more about Islam? When George Bush surprised the world with his restrained and considered response to the murder of thousands of his fellow citizens?

"[We have] seen too many examples of how the good intentions of last year have been dissipated. President Bush's State of the Union address took the campaign against terrorism in the sterile direction of aggression towards the 'axis of evil,' naming three unconnected countries, one of which, Iran, has been moving in recent years towards reintegration in the world community."

But some European leaders insist they will not force the U.S. to treat it as an equal partner until it is one. Hans-Joachim Otto, a leader of the opposition Free Democrats in Germany's Bundestag, sees German economic weakness, reflected in the reprimand it took last week for deficit spending, as one key to Europe's depressed international status. He thinks there's no way out for the continent until Germany -- Europe's largest economy -- can grow stronger.

"Bush now goes in a new direction on his policy toward Europe," he said. "Generally it's a demand for more burden sharing. I think the Europeans have to accept that the most heavy burden of the Afghanistan war has been on the shoulders of the United States, and a little bit less on the shoulders of Great Britain. Now I think it's time for the European partners, especially Germany, France and some others, to take on some more burdens.

"For me that's a tough issue. We all know we need a lot of additional funding for the German army, for the French and British, but that costs lots of money -- to be in Kosovo, to be in Afghanistan, and so on. In Germany we don't have that at the moment. We don't have additional resources to fund more strategic projects. So at the moment we have to postpone it."

That means waiting -- not just for additional resources, but also for additional respect. For the time being, the common European currency continues to sag disappointingly, compared to the U.S. dollar, and Europe can neither offer robust economic competition nor military capability that is more than a shadow of the American high-tech military. So it will either make the difficult decisions required to solve one or both of these problems, since that's what it says it wants to do, or it can continue to master the Rodney Dangerfield art of complaining loudly and memorably about not getting enough respect.

But Europe may well have more power than internal doubters believe. The partnership of Tony Blair was invaluable in the early days of the war against terror. The British prime minister was able to argue the case against Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and the Taliban in a way the language-challenged, untravelled Texan in the White House could not.

And European Union commissioner Chris Patten says it's time for Europeans to speak up and keep the Bush administration from launching into "unilateralist overdrive," adding, "Gulliver can't go it alone, and I don't think it's helpful if we regard ourselves as so Lilliputian that we can't speak up and say it."

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