[Mb-civic] Lost in Europe

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0225-23.htm

Published on Friday, February 25, 2005 by the Guardian (UK)
Lost in Europe
President Bush has reached a dead end in his foreign policy, 
but he has failed to recognise his quandary
by Sidney Blumenthal
 
President Bush has reached a dead end in his foreign policy, but he 
has failed to recognise his quandary. His belief that the polite 
reception he received in Europe is a vindication of his previous 
adventures is a vestige of fantasy.

As the strains of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral, filled 
the Concert Noble in Brussels, Bush behaved as though the mood 
music itself was a dramatic new phase in the transatlantic 
relationship. He gives no indication that he grasps the exhaustion of 
his policy. His reductio ad absurdum was reached with his 
statement on Iran: "This notion that the US is getting ready to attack 
Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the 
table." Including, presumably, the "simply ridiculous".

Bush is scrambling to cobble together policies across the board. At 
the last minute he rescued his summit with Vladimir Putin, who 
refuses to soften his authoritarian measures, with a step toward 
safeguarding Russian plutonium that could be used for nuclear 
weapons production. This programme was negotiated by Bill Clinton 
and neglected by Bush until two weeks ago.

The European reception for Bush was not an embrace of his 
neoconservative world view, but an attempt to put it in the past. New 
Europe is trying to compartmentalise old Bush. To the extent that he 
promises to be different, the Europeans encourage him; to the 
extent that he is the same, they pretend it's not happening.

The Europeans, including the British government, feel privately that 
the past three years have been hijacked by Iraq. Facing the 
grinding, bloody and unending reality of Iraq doesn't mean accepting 
Bush's original premises, but getting on with the task of stability. 
Ceasing the finger-pointing is the basis for European consensus on 
its new, if not publicly articulated, policy: containment of Bush. 
Naturally, Bush misses the nuances and ambiguities.

Of course, he has already contained himself, or at least his pre-
emption doctrine, which seems to have been good for one-time use 
only. None of the allies is willing to repeat the experience. Bush 
can't manage another such military show anyway, as his army is 
pinned down in Iraq.

The problem of Iran is in many ways the opposite of Iraq. The 
Europeans have committed their credibility to negotiations, the 
Iranians have diplomatic means to preclude unilateral US action, 
and Bush - who, according to European officials, has no sense of 
what to do - is boxed in, whether he understands it or not.

The secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, seeking to impress 
French intellectuals while in Paris, referred to Iran as totalitarian, as 
if the authoritarian Shia regime neatly fitted the Soviet Union model. 
With this rhetorical legerdemain, she extended the overstretched 
analogy of the "war on terrorism" as the equivalent of the cold war to 
Persia. Her lack of intellectual adeptness dismayed her 
interlocutors. One of the French told me Rice was "deaf to all 
argument", but no one engaged her gaffe because "good manners 
are back".

Regardless of Rice's wordplay, it is not a policy. Rice has vaguely 
threatened to refer Iran to the UN security council. The "simply 
ridiculous" remains on the table at the same time as the US is 
unengaged in diplomacy. Bush doesn't know whether to join the 
Europeans in guaranteeing an agreement to prevent Iran from 
developing nuclear weapons or not.

"So long as Iran remains within the non-proliferation treaty and the 
[UN weapons] inspectors remain on the ground there, there's 
nothing the US can do within the security council," John Ritch, the 
former US ambassador to the UN International Atomic Energy 
Agency, told me.

The argument for keeping the Iranians within the treaty was 
overwhelming, he said. "As long as they are in the inspection 
system it gives us maximum opportunity to evaluate every step of 
their nuclear development ... The US should be willing to support a 
European-brokered deal under which the Iranians forgo their right to 
build a domestic nuclear enrichment and processing capability. 
Ultimately, the way to promote a satisfactory outcome is to empower 
the Europeans by asserting that the US will back up a sound 
agreement."

Bush has hummed a few bars of rapprochement. With their 
applause, the Europeans have begun to angle him into a corner on 
Iran. In time Bush must either join the negotiations or regress to 
neoconservatism, which would wreck the European relationship. If 
he chooses a course that is not "simply ridiculous", on his next visit 
the Europeans might be willing to play Beethoven's Third 
Symphony, the Eroica.

Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and 
author of The Clinton Wars.

© 2005 Guardian Newspapers, Ltd.

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