Let’s be friends

Feb 11th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

Relations between America and Europe, frosty since the Iraq war, thawed a bit this week with Condoleezza Rice’s trip to the old world. But they are unlikely to get too warm

THERE has been no hiding the strains between America and Europe since George Bush decided to topple Saddam Hussein. But since Mr Bush’s re-election last November there has also been a clear desire on both sides to bury the hatchet. This week they started to do so in earnest. In her first comprehensive foreign-policy speech since becoming America’s secretary of state, delivered in Paris on Tuesday February 8th, Condoleezza Rice struck a conciliatory tone. She called on Europe to work with America and suggested that together they have a “historic opportunity” to steer the world towards freedom. There was little talk of bad guys, and none of regime change. Instead, it was all partnership this and shared values that. On Thursday, just before flying home, she even backed the idea of a strong, unified Europe, which some on the continent see as a crucial counterweight to American power, saying: “There is not any conflict between a European identity and a transatlantic identity.” Mr Bush is expected to continue the charm offensive on his own tour of Europe later this month.

Ms Rice’s choice of Paris as the venue for her speech was not random. Relations between America and France have been particularly prickly since the Iraq war, which France opposed vehemently. The wounds have started to heal recently, helped by the successful elections in Iraq on January 30th, to which the French responded positively. Paris may have been hoping that John Kerry would unseat Mr Bush, but he didn’t. Faced with four more years of the belligerent Texan, France knows it must try to get along with him—though, as its foreign minister Michel Barnier puts it, “alliance does not mean allegiance”. America, too, is keen to show that the bad feelings are on the wane. On Tuesday, for instance, officials said it had agreed to repatriate the last three French detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

In another conciliatory gesture, the Bush administration sent one of its leading hawks, Donald Rumsfeld, to France this week for talks with NATO defence ministers. However, the American defence secretary, who in 2003 dismissed France and Germany as part of “Old Europe”, was not quite as generous with the olive branches as Ms Rice. Indeed, he called on the defence alliance’s European members to contribute more troops to train Iraqi security forces, despite the obvious political difficulties of doing so for countries that opposed the war. But he was also careful not to destroy the goodwill that had built up around Ms Rice’s trip.

For three years after the September 11th 2001 attacks, the Bush administration was in crisis mode, fighting two wars, re-inventing the doctrine of pre-emption—and treading on toes in Europe and elsewhere. At the start of Mr Bush’s second term, there is hope that the focus will now be on undoing the damage, and that traditional diplomacy—set aside in the first years of the “war on terror”—will make a comeback. Ms Rice may be less obviously multilateralist than her predecessor, Colin Powell, but she has the president’s ear, which many think is more important.
Moreover, America seems to appreciate that there has been a shift in Europe. In 2002-03 the continent’s Atlanticists were evenly balanced with those sceptical of America, which allowed America to pick off support from the likes of Britain, Spain and Poland. But since the fall of Spain’s conservative government, following devastating bomb attacks in Madrid, the sceptics have had the upper hand. Spain’s new Socialist government was quick to pull its troops out of Iraq.

America may also have come to realise that by disengaging from its European allies, it merely allows them to pursue diplomacy in ways that it does not like. An example is the Kyoto treaty on climate change: America refused to sign up, but the accord was still ratified.
One sign that America is now more prepared to engage with issues that the Europeans consider crucial is this week’s declaration of an end to hostilities between the Israelis and Palestinians. During his first term, Mr Bush paid lip service to Middle East peace but did little to push the process forward, to the chagrin of Tony Blair and other European leaders. Now the American president is taking the issue more seriously, and recent comments by Ms Rice suggest America will no longer be so quick to take Israel’s side.

Those other thorny issues

But even if America and Europe can work together amicably on Iraq and Israel/Palestine—both big ifs—there are plenty of other sources of conflict. Chief among them is the question of what to do about Iran’s sneaky nuclear-weapons programme. Britain, France and Germany prefer carrots: using diplomacy and economic incentives to entice the Islamic republic away from uranium-enrichment. America is more minded to wield sticks. Ms Rice said last week that military action is “not on the agenda at this point”—implying that it had not been ruled out.
Among the other diplomatic minefields, China and Darfur stand out. The European Union is hell-bent on wooing China, for obvious economic reasons. The Europeans have made clear that within a few months they will take a step that will delight the Chinese and infuriate the Americans: lifting the arms embargo on China that has been in place since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, returned from a recent trip to Washington, DC, convinced that the Americans could “live with” the lifting of the embargo. They retorted that he could not be more wrong (though Ms Rice was fractionally less dismissive this week). America is deeply concerned about the acceleration of China’s arms build-up and the hundreds of ballistic missiles it has pointing at Taiwan, which the mainland considers to be a renegade province.

The strains over Darfur have now become entwined with a long-running dispute over the International Criminal Court (ICC), set up to try those suspected of war-crimes and genocide. A UN report on the deadly conflict in the Sudanese region, released last week, found no clear evidence of genocide but said that “no less serious and heinous” crimes had been perpetrated. It recommended that the Security Council refer the situation to the ICC. The Europeans are broadly in favour of this, the Americans most definitely not. Washington is against the whole idea of the court, fearing that it will be used to bring frivolous cases against its citizens.
As if all this were not enough, transatlantic disputes are also simmering on the economic front. America and Europe continue to spar regularly over exchange rates and, as America sees it, Europe’s failure to pull its weight in the world economy. And there is still the prospect of an almighty trade war over subsidies to Airbus and Boeing; a temporary truce has been called while the two sides look for a bloodless way out.

So, although this week has been about building bridges, there is still clear blue water between Europe and America on a number of important issues. It will, no doubt, always be so. The key will be to ensure that the making-up is more heartfelt than the breaking-up.

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