Left Brain/Right Brain: Bush makes nice with the Europeans

By James Gillen and Lisa Coffey

James: Last week, President Bush took his first trip to Continental Europe since getting re-elected. The press has described it as a "charm offensive" to repair diplomatic relations damaged during his first term, largely over Iraq. Bush even went to Paris to meet President Chirac and listened to Chirac speak. In French. If the Allies are to repair their relationships, does the U.S. need to do most of the work, or do the Europeans need to meet us halfway? More importantly, how much does it matter if most European countries don't have a defense budget big enough to round up stray cats?

Lisa: Bon jour, James. The capacity of our former European allies to finance the messy "cleanup" phase of the initial "Bush Doctrine" experiment in Iraq is irrelevant. The president is turning on the charm because his new secretary of state, Condoleezza "Mushroom Cloud" Rice made him do it. According to the New York Times, she issued him "a lengthy memorandum telling him that improved relations with Europe had to be his foreign-policy priority in the second term (italics mine.)" And, as we know, he always does exactly what his secretary of state tells him to.

As for the Europeans meeting him halfway--impossible when you consider the effort he must have exerted sitting through a whole speech in French. Then again, even a buckaroo can probably conjugate a French verb or two if he's been educated at Exeter, Yale and Harvard; n'est ce pas?

James: Mais oui. Odd that you refer to the SoS as "Mushroom Cloud" Rice when she's the one stressing the need to extend the olive branch. And certainly Bush listened to his last secretary of state, Colin Powell. It was because of the need to get the Europeans on board to deal with Iraq that the U.S. took its case against Saddam Hussein to the United Nations, especially given that the U.N. was supposed to be monitoring Iraq after the last Gulf War. Britain under Blair supported military action because it came through the U.N.--whereas France under Chirac agreed to the last U.N. resolution and then said it would oppose such action. Of a piece with de Gaulle remaining in NATO while withdrawing his forces from joint command. Plus ca change, ca change meme chose.

Lisa: Alors, Condoleezza "Aluminum Tubes" Rice, s'il vous plais. The firm tone she took with her boss shows that she is a bold, independent thinker who has the right stuff to be president herself one of these days. I expect we'll get the details on just how attentively Bush listened to Colin Powell one of these days, too. Probably when Powell's memoirs are published posthumously. Ou est le crayon de ma tante? Le crayon de ma tante est sur la table.

James: The crayon is under the table? Anyway. The main issue right now is how Europe--namely France and Germany, as opposed to Britain, Italy and Poland, who were with the administration all along--deals with the U.S. They know Bush is going to be in office for four more years, and, by the same token, Bush is going to have to keep dealing with the same leaders.

More broadly, this problem is going to crop up no matter who the U.S. president is next time. A Democrat might be more willing to do what the Europeans want, but given how hard it was for Clinton to get Europe to intervene in Yugoslavia's civil war--which was IN Europe--we have to ask hard questions. For one, how much good does a military alliance do if only one party contributes to it?

Lisa: Mais non! That's my aunt's PENCIL, and it's ON the table. See how easy it is for things to get lost in the translation, as in "My aunt's WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION are IN Iraq"? (The French apparently saw right through that one.) As for how much good a military alliance can do if only one party contributes to it, it's probably about the same as the U.S. plus that "Coalition of the Willing" we used to hear so much about.

James: Good point. That coalition is basically just Britain and the U.S., which were the only nations really containing Hussein after the Gulf War in the first place. So maybe there really isn't an alliance worth speaking of anymore, and the reason Europe doesn't do anything is because (as long as Uncle Sam is around) it doesn't have to.

Lisa: That being the case, it seems a shame that the president wasted all that charm on them. Perhaps he should be charming to the Iranians instead. And if they just got to know him, I bet the North Koreans would find him absolutely enchanting.