MaxedOutMama
Friday, March 04, 2005
Spiegel's Mirror
"If embarrassment could kill, there would be corpses in the streets of Brussels," said Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, for example, was visibly uncomfortable because he was only permitted to speak with Bush in passing, but not officially. All the Bush haters, even the Greens, suddenly wanted to be seen close to Bush. Oh, it's just a photo, they'd say. Couldn't you take a snapshot of me with the president?This Spiegel article discussing Bush's European tour, while not exactly infused with trenchant analysis, is an excellent indicator of mood:
Bush II, a re-elected president, can afford to be laughing. He may be as much a zealot as ever and he is certainly self-confident, but European governments would be wise to stop underestimating him. Unlike Bush I, the re-elected W. is rather quick on his feet. He is curious, capable of exercising self-irony and apparently a quick study. At times during this trip, he was quiet and seemed almost modest.and:
The "rapprochement" concept was finished quickly, by as early as the summer of 2004. It remained secret because Bush first wanted to win the election by demonizing Europe and the United Nations. But now he is making an about-face so abrupt that it has come as an astonishment to the Europeans.The article begins with a description of the joint Putin-Bush press conference. It's clear that the author sees Europe as somehow caught between two ravening beasts, whereas nothing could be less objectively true. Consider the stupidity of the idea that Bush requires the EU to legitimize his policies. He doesn't - what he needs from the EU is the limitation of arms sales to China, an end to the back-door funding of the Palestinian terrorists and the demonization of Israel, support for the fledgling democratization movements in the Middle East, and most of all that which he will not get, a receptive European ear toward Turkey.
Bush never demonized Europe or the United Nations. As far as I can tell, support for the United Nations (in theory) still runs deep and wide in the US, but ever since Rwanda, troubling ethical questions about the UN in practice have been haunting the American psyche. Darfur is doing nothing to salve that wound.
Klaus Brinkbaeumer writes:
George W. Bush had come to Europe to deliver a simple message: democracy begets freedom begets security begets a peaceful world. This is his belief.Correct. It is his belief. He bet his Presidency, the lives of our soldiers and the security of this country on it. The two opposing forces that Klaus Brinkbaeumer fears are cultural forces. Europe is pinned down into an era of isolationism forced upon it by the process of creating the EU. The process by which Europe is creating its union is one of careful adjustments and the creation of a top-down carefully calibrated technocratic bureaucracy. Bush's anarchic vision of democratic institutions cropping up like weeds represents a vast cultural leap over a terrifying abyss to Europe's culture.
Europe has sought to build a land of formal gardens; Bush figures it is enough to let some rain hit the parched ground, watch the plants grow, and pull out any weeds which threaten to dominate the landscape. This is a cultural divide which will not be crossed, and it is Europe's culture which dictates accommodation and so feels the pressure most. Europe would like Canada to join the EU. Perhaps it will. Nonetheless, it will be another twenty years before Europe succeeds in chewing and swallowing the plate it has selected for itself. While it sits and reflectively dines it is unreasonable to expect the rest of the world to wait in patient immobility for its turn at the table.
There is nothing in Europe's current position that is disgraceful except for its inability to look honestly upon the world as it is. The EU is a noble experiment in world history. Yet those demonstrators in Lebanon, the Kurdish agitation for a place, the rising Asian economies, Putin's struggle to lift Russia from the ashes of the Soviet Union - each of these experiments has its own moments and aspects of nobility as well. If the world evolves toward democracy, it will inevitably evolve political and cultural systems that are quite different.
Europe believes in cultural determinism. Bush believes in political determinism. These two visions don't reconcile well.
