At the G-8 summit meeting on Sea Island, Georgia, President Bush and
the opponents of the invasion of Iraq displayed a degree of comity not
seen for the past two years, even though the fundamental policy differences
remain. A White House source characterized the President's private talk
with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder as "the warmest meeting
the two have had since ... before the Iraq war." While Schröder
carefully avoided criticizing the Bush administration's foreign policy,
a large majority of his countrymen--in the media and in private--are
not at all hesitant to express their displeasure with America's present
role in world affairs.
No U.S. president in memory, we are told, has asked Europeans to either
follow America's lead or become irrelevant, to be either "with
us or against us." Considered clumsy and condescending, this approach
in itself is probably more resented than any single neoconservative
policy, not only in France, Russia, and Germany but also in Britain.
Fifty-one former ambassadors of the United Kingdom recently wrote Prime
Minister Blair a letter condemning his and Mr. Bush's policies in the
Middle East, particularly on Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"All those with experience in the area predicted that the occupation
of Iraq ... would meet serious and stubborn resistance," the letter
asserted. It calls the new policies announced jointly by Bush and Ariel
Sharon as "one-sided and illegal." Sir Crispin Tickell, formerly
Britain's U.N. ambassador, observed: "I have never seen such despair
among diplomats." Much like their British colleagues, politicians
throughout the continent tend to stress that the terrorist strikes by
radical Islamists would noticeably decline if the U.S. government used
its substantial leverage upon Israel's government to achieve a fair
and balanced settlement in a two-state solution now, not at some undetermined
future date.
Ever since in 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt successfully mediated
the Russo-Japanese conflict, people the world over used to think of
the U.S. government as an even-handed arbitrator. Today they wonder
why neither Congress nor the President take serious steps to end the
terror committed by both sides.
America's European allies also complain that President Bush does not
consult with them. He only informs them of what he wants. While 80 percent
of the German public opposed the invasion of Iraq as ill conceived,
few objected to German participation in providing security and police
training in Afghanistan. Besides, Germans will tell you, most American
operations in the Middle East had to rely heavily upon the logistical
support from U.S. bases on German soil.
Press reports also indicate that the Bush administration does not take
foreign intelligence sources serious, except perhaps for the British
MI 6. The German federal intelligence service (BND), for example, informed
the CIA well before the war that the Iraqi defector nicknamed Curveball
was not credible when he claimed that Saddam had a fleet of trucks and
railroad wagons to produce anthrax. The White House, however, chose
to believe Curveball and therefore ignored the BND's warnings.
Given the emphasis placed in official American pronouncements on the
rule of law, Germans, like other Europeans, find the mistreatment of
prisoners in Guantanamo and Iraq very troubling. Why would a government
claiming to stand for equality before the law demand exemptions from
the Geneva Convention and international criminal law?
Nevertheless, few critics will blame Americans as a nation for the failures
of their present leaders. Europe's respect and admiration for the American
people and their achievements were most visibly evidenced in the expressions
of gratitude on the 60th anniversary of D-Day and the outpouring of
sympathy after the terrorist strikes on the World Trade Towers and the
Pentagon. On September 14, 2001, for example, in a powerful demonstration
of solidarity with Americans, more than 200,000 Berliners gathered before
the Brandenburg Gate, the speakers remembering how the U.S. sustained
the city during the Soviet blockade and protected it throughout the
Cold War.
After four weeks of travels and numerous discussions on the continent,
I gained a fairly clear impression of the prevailing mood: Much of European
criticism of the Bush administration and its neo-conservative policies
reflects deep and abiding concern for America, but not anti-Americanism.