Europe skewers Bush

US President George W Bush's European tour was a disaster. But that is no surprise given America's current ideological tendencies, argues Gamal Nkrumah
US President George Bush's unilateral decision to dump the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, go ahead with a controversial and exorbitantly expensive new missile defence system and proudly uphold capital punishment outraged his hosts during his maiden tour of Europe. There was more. After parting ways with his European allies over the environment, trade, defence and capital punishment, Bush then had a conspicuously inconsequential tête-à-tête with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the former Yugoslav republic of Slovenia. With typical pontifical gravity, Bush waffled vaguely about a "new receptivity" to his pet obsession: the proposed unilateral strategic defence system (nicknamed "Son of Star Wars"). But challenged on the details, the peregrinating president came unstuck. His Russian counterpart was more politic: "We did not touch in detail on any specific issues," Putin explained.
Putin's conciliatory tone is commendable; it contrasts sharply with American perceptions of the problems of world security. "We dare not risk a world where a Russian scientist can take care of his children only by endangering ours," wrote former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn in the International Herald Tribune last week. But it is precisely the attitude Nunn fears that prevails in today's US. That antagonistic attitude alienates the global superpower from all but the most subservient of states.
Putin has made the US's extremist approach to global security look foolish by proposing a joint strategic defence strategy with NATO, even suggesting working closely with China to allay Chinese fears. Putin has demonstrated the kind of statesmanship required at this particular historical moment. Drawing China into any strategic defence system is crucial for world stability. But, alas, the US, under its current administration, fails to see it. Instead, it bull-headedly insists on treating world security as an American problem only. Bush arrogantly assumes the world will stay silent as he lurches clumsily from one ill-conceived policy to another.
Not so. Son of Star Wars could well fuel a nuclear arms race, with China, India and a host of lesser nations joining the fray. Son of Star Wars, which breaks important Cold War treaties, is a particularly inauspicious project because it diverts resources away from global development to preparation for a war that exists only in the anaemic imagination of a few tub-thumpers who hardly know Kyoto from Kansas. Son of Star Wars is socially unjust, too: it merely serves the interests of a select few US arms manufacturers and their absurd apologists.
Such hope as there is for a better, more peaceful and more secure world rests on international collaboration on security matters, based on understanding and appreciation of the fears of other powers. But Bush, of course, prefers to confront Russia and China head-on, treating their justified worries as the nit-picking of unimportant chattels. But Russia is in no mood to roll over. It is buttressed by the strength of the newly formed Shanghai Cooperation Forum, which groups China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenstan and Uzbekstan together, and may soon welcome Pakistan, which has officially requested admission. Even America's traditional allies are growing impatient. Old- world leaders want to build on the tried and tested foundations which supported post-war European prosperity and security. Many of them find America's wayward plans alarming. They worry that Washington will fail to involve Moscow in its world security plans: and they are right to worry. To marginalise Russia now could have grave consequences for future world peace.
Bush's most ardent support comes from the former Warsaw Pact nations of eastern Europe. Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski said that, "a new security system will be good for all of us, not just NATO countries, but Russia and China as well." Such views are characteristic. After falling on hard times in the aftermath of the Cold War, east European nations are clamouring for NATO membership. For that, they need US sponsorship. But they may have made a Faustian pact. In Warsaw, Bush reiterated the hackneyed prescription for east European prosperity: deregulation, and exposure to the full rigours of the market, American-style. His hosts nodded dutifully. But the region is seeing growing tension between fledgling market economies and a nascent democracy. As the market encroaches, so does unemployment. And even in eastern Europe, Russian and Chinese influence must not be forgotten. The Polish president himself is obliged to take note of Russia and China.
The lightest note of Bush's otherwise worrying jaunt came from the wits of Europe's media. They made Bush a laughing stock. Even eastern Europeans joined the game, lampooning Bush wherever he went. "He suffers from delusions that he is a democratically-elected president...Do not approach him, he is nuclear-armed and dangerous," read a cartoon strip in a Polish newspaper. Yet comic though much of the press coverage was, there was seriousness, too, in Europe's apparent contempt for Bush: that seriousness reflects genuine ideological differences on opposing sides of the Atlantic. "It would be impossible for a country with the death penalty to be part of the EU. In the US, the death penalty exists in legislation and is defended by the government," noted former NATO Secretary General and currently EU High Representative Javier Solana.
In such a climate, Bush's unilateralism is totally wrong and totally worrying. America continues to upset smaller nations with its cavalier approach to world security. That is no surprise. But to do so at the same time as upsetting Russia and China, and dismaying Europeans with ideological gaucheness, is less easily overlooked. These are the actions of a politically immature rogue state, not of a responsible world power. It is hoped Bush's foreign policy team has a rethink before his next voyage out.
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