Humbled President
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — When President George W. Bush visits Europe next week for the first time since crushing US election losses, allies will find him hobbled by the defeat and chastened by the clamour for change in Iraq.Foreign policy experts and analysts predict at least a glimmer of the humility in international affairs that Bush promised six years ago when he first won the White House but hardly a wholesale rollback of the hawkish policies that angered many European leaders.
“European allies expect a turn back toward the centre and a kinder and gentler America,” said Charles Kupchan, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“There will be a shift in a more centrist direction,” Kupchan said, although he cautioned it could be limited in scope.
The November 28-29 NATO summit in Riga, Latvia, will be dominated by concerns about Afghanistan and Bush will press Europeans to step up their efforts to help fight the resurgent Taliban.
But hanging over the meeting will be the pressure Bush faces on Iraq now that US voters have ousted his Republicans from control of Congress. The November 7 elections were seen as a sharp repudiation of Bush’s conduct of the war and he has since shown a new willingness to listen.
Rampant sectarian killings in Iraq and the daily carnage Americans have seen on their television screens in the weeks since has added to the sense of urgency for a new strategy.
For Europeans who strongly opposed the war, the US elections brought vindication. Now, they wonder if Bush’s post-election emphasis on bipartisanship and the ouster of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is mere window-dressing or a genuine shift away from a go-it-alone stance they reject.
The detention of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is likely to be a continuing source of trans-Atlantic friction and Europeans are less than enthusiastic about Bush’s renewed push to get Senate confirmation for his controversial pick for United Nations ambassador, John Bolton.
But, in Riga, Bush’s tone will be conciliatory in line with an ongoing effort to heal the rift over the 2003 invasion of Iraq, said Richard Morningstar, a former US ambassador to the European Union.
“There is a recognition that it’s difficult to go it alone and that there is a need to cooperate with Europe on issues like Iran, Afghanistan and the fight against terrorism,” he said.
Bush has made clear that an overhaul of his Iraq policies is in the works, although it will not be completed before the NATO summit and he may be reluctant to share many details with European leaders, except perhaps for his closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Bush is awaiting recommendations from a commission led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton studying alternative strategies on Iraq. A separate review is under way at the Pentagon.
Underscoring the urgency, Bush will fly to Jordan immediately after the Riga summit for a hastily convened meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The Baker-Hamilton report will be unveiled next month and its proposals may include the convening of a multilateral conference on Iraq and a recommendation that Washington engage directly with Iraq’s neighbours Iran and Syria.
Blair and other European leaders believe a reinvigorated Middle East peace process could be key to success in Iraq.
Bush’s decision to turn to seasoned hands from his father’s administration like Baker and former CIA director Robert Gates — his choice to replace Rumsfeld at the Pentagon — has pleased European capitals.
Gates is seen as less hawkish than Rumsfeld, who enraged allies with his 2003 barb dismissing countries that opposed the Iraq war as “Old Europe.”
“Bush realises that he, too, has limits,” Szabo said.
