No more Lone Ranger

European leaders like the internationalist Bush who has emerged from last week's terror attacks.

By Steve Kettmann

Sep 18, 2001 | Up until last week, President Bush had been almost flamboyant about alienating U.S. allies around the world, especially in Europe. Now suddenly the former Texas governor is a committed multilateralist, trying to learn to play the role of global good citizen, mending fences with a sense of purpose sadly lacking in U.S. diplomacy in recent months.

Is it for real? Will it last? Impossible to say, of course. But it's not too early to welcome the rejection of the go-it-alone foreign policy of Bush's first nine months in office. Bush has in recent days opened the door to the rest of the world, diplomatically and in some sense personally, and there seems no going back to the days when he seemed eager to tune out everyone but Mexico and Russia.

Last week was a confirmation, if the Bush administration really needed one, that the problems festering in foreign countries really matter. Now top officials have set about lining up foreign leaders behind the effort to fight the terrorism sponsored by Osama bin Laden and his allies, in a way that previously seemed unthinkable under this president.

Of course, he's belatedly learning lessons his father always knew. Speaking Thursday in Boston, the former President Bush said Tuesday's terrorist attacks should "erase the concept in some quarters that America can somehow go it alone in the fight against terrorism -- or in anything else for that matter." Yet that was precisely what the second Bush administration was doing. So much for those stories about how the elder Bush was advising his son on foreign policy. If so, he wasn't listening -- until now.

And European leaders have repaid the new attention. Last week NATO invoked treaty language declaring the attack on the United States an attack on all of NATO for the first time in its history. Keeping the fractious Europeans in line won't be easy. But the indications are that Britain, France, Spain, Italy and possibly even Germany -- a country that went half a century with no military actions -- are prepared to offer military support to Bush's war on terrorism.

Although the American media has repeatedly questioned how solid Bush's European support really is, most of the cracks that appeared to open up in the alliance have quickly been repaired. Much was made, for instance, of German President Johannes Rau saying it was "his impression" that German troops would not be called for in the expected military campaign. London's Guardian characterized this as Rau having "ruled out" German military involvement. But Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose position matters most, nixed that, insisting, "I cannot and do not want to rule out" German military involvement.

Likewise, Italian defense minister Antonio Martino was quoted Sunday denying that Italian troops would take part in any U.S. military action. But Tuesday he told the BBC he'd been misquoted, and that assuming U.S. intelligence continues to indicate the involvement of bin Laden, Italy will honor its military commitment.

Certainly many Europeans are a little uncomfortable with Bush's "war" rhetoric, which Sunday he ratcheted up to the level of "crusade." And the reality is, until the allies have a better idea what Bush plans, they don't know how involved they are prepared to be. Some NATO allies, like Spain, are more ready to get involved militarily than others. There are likely to be fascinating subplots. Britain's Tony Blair has been an articulate champion of America in recent days, as has Germany's Schroeder. But both hope to exert influence on Bush and urge him to moderate U.S. military retaliation. Blair and Schroeder will meet face to face on Wednesday for talks, and on Friday they will join other E.U. leaders in Brussels for an emergency meeting to discuss the crisis.

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