George W. Bush, Europe's Godfather in Spite of Himself

By Alain Duhamel
Truthout.org
Wednesday 23 February 2005

In order to take root, the feeling of identity needs several factors to come together at once: the perception of common interests, the pursuit of collective ambitions, finally, a few solid adversaries, or, at least, vigorous resistance and opposition. The European Union is finally beginning to simultaneously fulfill all these conditions. With regard to international commerce or the Euro, for example, the member states involved now know that their interests coincide and are even inextricably linked. Moreover, Europe desires more and more to acquire an international personality, to defend objectives as diverse as the Kyoto protocol, the creation of a Palestinian state neighboring an Israeli state living in security, or the progressive creation of a professional European army.

The only missing element was the need for a counter-model: that's the vocation that the Soviet Union fulfilled with an incomparable effectiveness for a long time, as the European Union emerged as an entity opposite the Soviet Union. The collapse of the Muscovite Empire left a vacuum; George W. Bush fills it in his turn, certainly on a quite different scale, with very different attitudes towards Europeans, with values, methods, and intentions radically different from those of the old USSR, but which have, from a European perspective, a similar function. The Soviet Union constituted a military, ideological, and political threat for Europe that was brutal and constant, that was made concrete by invasions and a terrifying nuclear panoply. The United States settles for aspiring to global hegemony, marginalizing the United Nations, rejecting a multi-polar world and seeking to impose, problem by problem, the formation of coalitions over which, by happy coincidence, it systematically presides. Faced with this imperial, not totalitarian - an appreciable difference - but nonetheless authoritarian, Republic, Europe has but a single alternative: unite or obey.

During the Bill Clinton era, the United States' imperial strategy operated with a virile but seductive style. With George W. Bush, the rules of the game changed: the President of the United States presented himself as the Commander-in-Chief of the West. Europe had to choose between obedience and disloyalty. It was George W. Bush's first approach, the White House man calling out orders during his first term. He proclaimed the validity of unilateralism and preventive war, acted in agreement with his principles, attacking Iraq and the indefensible Saddam Hussein, commanding Europe to take his side, then, when he encountered resistance, undertaking to divide Europe with a rustic efficiency. Since the European Union collectively refused to adhere to his bellicose strategy, George W. Bush broke it in two, enlisting the "New Europe," and ostracizing the "Old Europe." The result did not meet his expectations. If the ever-constant Great Britain phlegmatically followed in his footsteps, if the ten new member states from the East waded into his wake, if the liberal populist governments of Silvio Berlusconi and José María Aznar competed with one another in their zeal, France, Germany, and Belgium stood firm against him, and, miraculously, a massively refractory European public opinion emerged. What the European Council of Heads of Government never was able to do, George W. Bush succeeded in achieving: the citizens of all of continental Europe and a good number of Britons, whether their governments were left or right, whether their Prime Ministers had committed themselves in the American wake or had refused, all these citizens purely and simply rejected their choices and American methods. George W. Bush was midwife to the birth of a European public opinion.

With his second term, the American president is now using a totally different technique. He is going in great pomp to Brussels; he is received by NATO, but also by the Brussels Commission and the European Council (which, incidentally, grotesquely vie with one another in their protocol pretensions, each institution asserting its precedence like old Duchesses during the time of Saint-Simon). George W. Bush is friendly to the Belgian Prime Minister who had strongly criticized him, opens his arms to Gerhard Schroeder who had energetically opposed his plans; he even smiles at Jacques Chirac whom he once cursed and whom his administration had wished to the nether regions. The White House man finally agrees to acknowledge that there is only one European Union, certainly a sufficiently heterogeneous one for him to play around with it, but which, little by little, is becoming an incontrovertible and even priority partner: George W. Bush is discovering the European Union. Obviously, he is not renouncing converting it to his views. He still expects to use NATO as a Pentagon conveyor belt. He's trying to draw Europeans to his side with his "Greater Middle East" strategy. He continues to refuse outright to sign the Kyoto protocol or to accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. He still pursues the American dream of universal leadership. None of that changes the fact: George Bush I denied Europe, tried to break it apart and treated it like a continent in decline. George Bush II is rediscovering Europe, salutes it, and considers treating it like a real partner one day. The first Bush provoked the birth of European public opinion, the second Bush incites Europe to behave like an autonomous actor, like a virtual power little by little - too slowly - morphing into a real power. Posted by Bulatlat

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