"Lost in Europe"
Very interesting opinion piece, "Lost in Europe," in The Guardian today by Sidney Blumenthal regarding the EU's evolving, pragmatic attitude towards the 2nd Bush administration. Of course, you also have to consider the source (Blumenthal is a former Clinton advisor) but he does raise some interesting points. Two that stick out:
"The European reception for Bush was not an embrace of his neoconservative world view, but an attempt to put it in the past. New Europe is trying to compartmentalise old Bush. To the extent that he promises to be different, the Europeans encourage him; to the extent that he is the same, they pretend it's not happening."
"Facing the grinding, bloody and unending reality of Iraq doesn't mean accepting Bush's original premises, but getting on with the task of stability. Ceasing the finger-pointing is the basis for European consensus on its new, if not publicly articulated, policy: containment of Bush."
The notion that its welcome of Bush is not a sign that the EU is accepting or condoning US policy, but instead trying to find a way to put it behind them and move on is at odds with the picture presented over here (and maybe even with what Bush himself believes.) I've been getting the impression that the administration sees Bush's European tour as almost a vindication of past policy decisions. I guess we'll see how this plays out moving forward, specifically with the Iran situation. As Blumenthal asserts, "In time Bush must either join the negotiations [with Iran] or regress to neoconservatism, which would wreck the European relationship." Just how important is our relationship with the EU and what will this mean for US foreign policy?
posted by ze roberto @ 2/25/2005 05:53:00 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
As much as the Bush Administration would like to thumb their noses at the EU on Iran as they've done on other major foreign policy issues -- the invasion and occupation of Iraq, withdrawal from the Kyoto Accord, non-participation in the Int'l Criminal Court -- the reality is they can't afford to continue to go it alone. They need the EU's financial support. So, in that sense, their new willingness to work with the EU isn't so much an indication of their new enlightened worldview as it is an indication of the degree to which they're under fire here at home. They're increasinly squeezed from the Right and the Left about the unbelievable cost of the Iraqi occupation. They're spending money we simply don't have, and if we did have it, would likely not be throwing away on democratizing foreign sovereign nations.
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