This article by Roger Cohen, on The New York Times' Week in Review of Sunday, May 2nd, explains the changing attitudes of the US towards "Europe at 25".
'WHOLE AND FREE' AT LAST
By ROGER COHEN
WASHINGTON — The expansion of the European Union this weekend from 15 members to 25, marking the formal end of Europe's postwar division, presents America with a choice. Should it embrace this new union that stretches to the Russian border or try to foster Europe's many fissures in order to divide and rule?
For the moment, there is scant official comment, but perhaps Europe should not take this personally. The United States has shifted paradigms: Europe is old news. Still, the less-than-benign neglect surrounding the European Union's addition of 10 members, 8 of them once part of the Soviet bloc, reflects a moment of great difficulty.
"The situation has never been so bad in 50 years," Gunter Burghardt, the union's ambassador in Washington, said in an interview. "It is a fact of life that America is a hegemonic power, but the question is how that power is used. We need to know that America is open to a confident relationship, not just with certain member states but with the E.U. as such."
This assessment reflects the enduring wounds of the Iraq war and the feeling among many European officials that an American administration has determined that its interests may lie more in division within Europe than in unity, more in forging improvised coalitions of the willing than in honoring a partnership of the wedded.
"This is an administration that simply does not care about Europe," said Philip H. Gordon, an expert on European affairs at the Brookings Institution. "I don't think they do anything solely to divide Europe, but if that's a consequence of an action, fine, because they don't want a counterweight to American power emerging."
In many respects, the new European Union is a potential major power. Its highly educated population of 455 million people is far larger than America's and it accounts for 28 percent of world trade.
But it is also divided between formerly Communist states in Central Europe that are enthusiastic about Atlanticism, and other countries, led by France, where dislike of President Bush's America is intense. This is the basic ideological split that America could choose to quicken or quiet.
America might, for example, try to use the sympathies of Poland, Slovakia or Hungary to undermine European unity and pursue its own goals, which may include the establishment of military bases in at least one of these countries, quiet attempts to assure that Europe's military identity remains muted or the obstruction of moves toward a more federal United States of Europe.
But Iraq has been a sobering experience, and American officials seem, for now, to have dropped talk of "old" and "new" Europe in favor of a rediscovered pragmatism.
"Whatever the differences over the past year, we know that a Europe that is open, at peace, broadly united and reaching out toward Turkey is in the American interest," one State Department official said.
The mention of Turkey is significant. Faced by the union's expansion, many Americans respond by asking why Turkey is not included.
The question, of course, reflects America's shift from a focus on uniting Europe to the overriding quest to change the Middle East. Admitting Turkey, a Muslim country, to a core institution of the West like the European Union would, in the American view, provide an important example of bridge building to the Islamic world. It is therefore vital, American officials argue, that the union decide at the end of this year to begin negotiations on membership.
But the impatience over bringing Turkey into Europe also betrays enduring American misunderstanding over the nature of the European Union. The immense complexity and cost of offering membership to a country as big and poor as Turkey are not widely appreciated here.
The extent of integration within the union, and the surrender of sovereignty involved, are blurry ideas in America, perhaps because the notion of such transnational merging is anathema to a country at or close to the apogee of its power. If America, Mexico and Canada were as integrated as Europe's states, it would be possible to have a Mexican in Ottawa setting United States interest rates. But that, of course, is unthinkable.
This European indivisibility, despite all the continent's difficulties, makes it inevitable that new members like Poland will tend to seek shared European positions, whatever their strong American sympathies.
At the same time, these institutional differences complicate trans-Atlantic understanding because a sovereign America run by an administration for which power is the coin of the realm faces European states that have put their faith in international institutions like the European Union or the United Nations or an international criminal court.
But a lot is at stake in trying to overcome the current crisis of confidence. Between them, the European Union and the United States account for 40 percent of world trade. They are each other's largest trading partners. Business transactions between them run at close to $3 billion a day.
This web of economic interests is so rich that it tends to compel a quest to resolve differences and harmonize regulations. The problem is that, in the strategic area, the common purpose that long drove America's broad support of European unity - delivering stability to a continent with a debilitating penchant for war - has been lost.
It is not delight but some dismay that is accompanying the arrival of the Europe "whole and free" sought by the elder George Bush and reiterated as an objective by President Bush, who said in Warsaw in June 2001 that "our goal is to erase the false lines that have divided Europe for too long."
Europe has worked hard on eliminating those divisions. But Mr. Burghardt believes recognition of this is scant in an America whose attention has moved elsewhere."The E.U. delivered on Nov. 9, that is the fall of the Berlin Wall," he said. "But we got hit by the geopolitical earthquake of Sept. 11." In other words, 9/11 trumped 11/9.
In his Warsaw speech three months before Sept. 11, President Bush also said something else: "When Europe and America are divided, history tends to tragedy."
These are only two of the many recent articles where Senator John Kerry is accused of being too French and of his cousin trying to distance Kerry from his Gallic relations and tendencies, presumably for his benefit.
But the undercurrents of such accusations tend to suggest that rift between the U.S. and France, at least with the Bush administration in the White House, isn't showing any signs of mending.
On the other hand, as the article mentions, the editor of Le Monde approvingly told a New York audience that Kerry "looks French."
International Herald Tribune - Globalist: If Kerry 'looks French,' look for an ugly fight
Chicago Tribune - Sen. Kerry's French connection
Globalist: If Kerry 'looks French,' look for an ugly fight
Roger Cohen IHT
Saturday, April 3, 2004
PARIS It is not going to be a pretty American election. Already the Bush administration has embarked on a campaign to portray John Kerry as a flip-flopping, tax-raising, European-educated wimp. The presumptive Democratic candidate has responded by describing the president as a job-destroying, budget-busting, alliance-breaking unilateralist.
But perhaps the surest indication that the looming political season will be ugly has come from repeated Republican suggestions that Kerry “looks French.”
Not only that: the senator is said to betray a dubious fondness for things French, even the language. A recent comment from Commerce Secretary Don Evans that the Massachusetts Democrat is “of a different political stripe and looks French” was only the latest of several jibes, mainly from conservative talk-show hosts and columnists, that have included allusions to “Monsieur Kerry” and “Jean Chéri.”
For some months now, the Republican House majority leader, Tom DeLay, has been opening speeches to supporters with an occasional routine. He says hi, then adds: “Or, as John Kerry might say, 'Bonjour.'”
The remark “always brings the house down,” said DeLay's spokesman, Stuart Roy, who added that its purpose was to highlight “Mr. Kerry's lack of support for the war on terror and the way he seems to be in agreement with the arguments of the French.” What is going on here? Ever since the Iraq war divided the Atlantic Alliance and the French government emerged as its most vociferous opponent, France has become a dirty word in some Republican circles. The France-bashing has had its lighter side - French fries disappearing from menus - but it has been no laughing matter. The criticism has carried the serious suggestion that France is not to be trusted. So if Kerry “looks French," the inference is clear enough.
Impugning the patriotism of a Vietnam war hero may seem an outlandish political tactic. But the Republicans have focused on other aspects of Kerry's life. He attended a Swiss boarding school and speaks good French; his maternal grandparents had a house in a village in Brittany, Saint-Briac-sur-Mer, where he spent several vacations; he has a French first cousin, the ecologist politician Brice Lalonde. The Republican National Committee recently circulated this last fact. Asked why, Christine Iverson, a committee spokeswoman, said the French family was not a big issue because Kerry would “be judged on his support for tax increases, not on his fondness for brie and Evian.” As for Lalonde, now the mayor of Saint-Briac, he is reluctant to be drawn into his cousin's campaign.
Many others in France have been less reticent. The broad French hope that Kerry will replace Bush in the White House is no secret. The Democratic candidate has been getting very good press; Jean-Marie Colombani, the editor of Le Monde, recently told a New York audience that Kerry “even looks French.” This time, the tone was one of approval.
Nicole Bacharan, a political scientist, sees several reasons for the French embrace of Kerry. A conviction that Americans will not re-elect a president widely seen in France as arrogant, simplistic and dangerous. A belief that Kerry will embrace old allies like France. Neglect and incomprehension of the large swathe of American society that finds Bush attractive. A subliminal association of John Forbes Kerry with another JFK, one beloved in France.
“There is a nostalgia for the Kennedy years and a hatred of Mr. Bush that I have never known for another American president,” Bacharan said. “So the French have just blocked out the America of religious faith and straight talk that likes Bush.” Much, it seems, is being blocked out in the talk of Kerry's French side. It is true that some of his promised policies seem attractive to many Europeans. He favors diplomatic engagement - in the past with Vietnam, today with Iran. He has castigated the Bush administration for its “intoxication with the pre-eminence of American power.” He has said he understands the need to “cooperate and compromise with our allies and friends.” He has vowed “to replace unilateral action with collective security.”
But Kerry also voted in favor of the war in Iraq - a fact not much aired in France - and urged the new Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to refrain from withdrawing Spain's troops from Iraq.
The fact is that Kerry understands the reality of post-9/11 America, one often only dimly perceived in Europe. The attack, like Pearl Harbor, changed the country, pushed national security back to the center of the political agenda for the first time since the end of the cold war, and almost certainly made any candidate not strong on defense and tackling terrorism unelectable.
As a result, the differences on foreign policy between Bush and Kerry, while distinct, may be less radical than they appear. The president is not as isolated or as isolationist as he is sometimes portrayed, and Kerry is not as beholden to his multilateralist convictions as the French might wish. “Multilateralist when you can, unilateralist when you must” is how Richard Holbrooke, an adviser to Kerry, describes the candidate.
Still, in an election as tight as this one, the Republicans will do all they can to associate Kerry with what they see as the French penchant for conciliatory weakness and slow-moving international institutions.
The French theme in the campaign is likely to endure, much to the displeasure of Nathalie Loiseau, a French Embassy spokeswoman in Washington. “I regret that anyone would consider that portraying someone as French is negative,” she said. “This is a country of immigrants, after all.” Indeed: Kerry's paternal grandfather Frederick Kerry (born Fritz Kohn) arrived in America from Europe in 1905.
As for the Kerry campaign, it is adopting a certain hauteur in the French affair. “There are more important things to talk about, like affordable health care,” said Stephanie Cutter, a Kerry spokeswoman. “Mr. Kerry is an American citizen.”
Chicago Tribune
Sen. Kerry's French connection
Not wanting to hurt his election chances, relatives in Brittany downplay affiliations
By Jocelyn Gecker
Associated Press
Published April 5, 2004
ST.-BRIAC-SUR-MER, France -- John Kerry's relatives in France bristle at jabs from across the Atlantic that the presidential contender has a French connection.
They say Kerry has no link to France other than the home his grandparents bought here.
"John Kerry is incredibly American," says Brice Lalonde, Kerry's cousin and mayor of this seaside Brittany village. "He has absolutely nothing French about him."
For another cousin, Christopher Curtis: "This is an American story. John is an all-American guy with the benefit of having spent some time overseas."
With the race for the White House turning nasty--and France-U.S. ties not quite mended from the Iraq war--Kerry's Gallic clan, when questioned, talks up his American-ness. Some are keeping a low profile, saying too much talk about France could be political arsenic.
As Lalonde puts it: "I'm afraid to hurt him."
But that hasn't stopped the Frenchman from pasting Kerry bumper stickers on his car--hardly a common sight in this 16th Century village.
St. Briac, near the port city of St. Malo, is a place of rugged seascapes and narrow, cobbled lanes that inspired Renoir and other Impressionists. It was here that the senator from Massachusetts spent boyhood summers and has said he traced his first inspiration to become a politician.
But nowhere on Kerry's Web site does he mention his summers in France or the family estate, known as Les Essarts, a sprawling property on a bluff over the sea.
"Monsieur Bush is angry with France," says Ian Forbes, an 85-year-old Kerry uncle who lives at Les Essarts. "We don't want to accentuate the connection between Johnny and France."
Kerry's maternal grandparents, James Grant Forbes and Margaret Winthrop--a descendant of Massachusetts' first governor, John Winthrop--bought the estate in the 1920s. They had 11 children, including the mothers of Kerry, Lalonde and Curtis, a British-American who lives in Paris. The home served as a summer hub for their cosmopolitan clan.
In his youth, Kerry joined the family gatherings while his father, a U.S. diplomat, was posted in Europe. Young Kerry also attended a Swiss boarding school and brought a touch of America to this corner of northwestern France.
"He introduced us to games like capture the flag. We still play something called kick the can," said Lalonde, who at 58 is two years Kerry's junior.
Politics also run in the family here. Lalonde was environment minister under then-President Francois Mitterrand. Like his American cousin, Lalonde ran for president. But that was 1981 and he received less than 4 percent of the French vote.
Kerry's campaign and his days in France have been widely reported here. A recent story in Liberation newspaper was headlined, "John Kerry, too Frenchy for the Republicans." It catalogued insults by allies of President Bush and the tendency of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to start speeches with: "Good afternoon, or as John Kerry might say, `Bonjour.'"
For Lalonde, Kerry's long, angular face "resembles Abraham Lincoln, without the beard."
The French media like to compare John Forbes Kerry, who speaks fluent French, to John F. Kennedy.
This is an argument that has received some attention outside of the mainstream media, but has been derided by many critics as essentially flawed.
Being a little shaky on global economics, its hard for me to really weigh in here, but it does seem interesting.
Basically, the argument is that in 2000 when Iraq switched its currency for oil transactions to euros from dollars (in its oil for food transacations), that was a key reason why the US became obsessed with taking over the country. Because Iran and Venezuela had also voiced similar sentiments, and due to unsurity about the political situation in Saudi Arabia, its key OPEC ally, the US wanted to stave off a move to the euro by these 3 OPEC countries and perhaps others following suit.
So, to protect the hegemony of the dollar as the international reserve currency b/c of the huge volume of oil transactions, it was in the US interest to try to preserve all these petrodollars around the world.
Anyway, like I said, I dont really understand what the impact of turning all those dollars into euros would be, and how that would affect the overall value of the dollar, etc., but I wonder how oil politics play into the respecitve attitudes of the US and European countries towards Iraq. Heres some perspectives on the issue. If you like long conspiracy theories, check out the last link.
The Globalist - Iraq, the Dollar and the Euro
NY Times - Whos Afraid of the Euro?
Revisited - The Real Reasons for the War with Iraq
Iraq, the Dollar and the Euro
By Hazel Henderson | Monday, June 02, 2003
The euro is finally taking its place alongside the U.S. dollar as a new global reserve currency. This has been further enhanced by the euro's recent gains against the dollar. But what would happen to the U.S. economy if OPEC decided to use euros, instead of dollars, to price oil? Hazel Henderson explores the consequences.
uturists like me specialize in “what if” scenarios, outside the box thinking and trying to anticipate surprises. In even the best-laid human plans, events rarely unfold as predicted — even by experts.
Blind spots
Mostly, these surprises are the result of “blind spots”, or because experts use different models or specialized approaches and languages — making communication difficult.
As countries diversify into euros, the currency has taken its place alongside the dollar as the world’s other global reserve currency.
One such surprise scenario is rooted in the close relationship between oil, dollars, gold and Europe’s euro currency. Remember back in 1973, OPEC countries quadrupled the price of their oil and tied it to the U.S. dollar.
Over the years, this flooded the world with “petro-dollars”, which were recycled through banks as loans. The U.S. dollar reigned supreme as the world’s de facto reserve currency.
A history of dollars
Everyone wanted to own dollars, which were considered as good as gold (even though, since 1971, dollars cannot be redeemed for gold, after President Nixon shut the gold window).
Gold no longer backs the dollar — or any other currency. All currencies since 1973 are called “fiat” currencies — backed only by the faith markets have in a country’s government and its economic fundamentals.
Volatile markets
Central banks that used to keep gold bars in their vaults have sold much of their precious metal. Now, they try to “manage” their currencies by raising or lowering interest rates, buying and selling them in the open market and other techniques.
A strong euro makes for a more stable world — and takes the burden of the sole reserve currency status off the U.S. dollar.
Gold is still popular for jewelry and as a safe haven. It trades actively on the world’s commodity and futures exchanges, along with platinum, oil, hogs, coffee, sugar — and fiat currencies themselves.
These currency markets, oil and gold markets are very volatile — dependent on the expectations about the future of millions of their investors and speculators.
What drives the markets?
These markets reflect a collective speculation on the future of such items as Iraq, U.S. foreign policy, the Middle East, oil supplies, alternative energy sources and technologies, the rise of China, the expansion of the EU — and the weather.
They all drive today’s global financial markets, including the $1.5 trillion of daily currency trading.
Losing ground
In the past 12 months, the U.S. dollar has lost some 30% of its value against the European euro. The Bush Administration has played up the bright side. The cheaper dollar makes it easier for U.S. exporters to sell abroad.
Many believe that deeper reasons for the U.S. attack on Iraq were its decision in 1999 to require payments for its oil for food program in euros.
The United States needs to increase its exports because it has a whopping trade deficit (currently reading 5.2% of our GDP). Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill dismissed this as “a meaningless concept.”
But global investors and currency speculators take it seriously — along with the bursting of the U.S. stock market bubble, accounting scandals and heavily indebted corporations and consumers.
No surprise
The list goes on, and includes the U.S. savings rate at almost 0%, the increasing budget deficits due to President Bush’s tax cuts and his build-up of military spending, the Iraq war and the new Bush doctrine of preemptive attacks on any country that might threaten our future national security.
In light of all that, global investors started unloading dollars and U.S. assets. No surprises here.
A new global reserve currency
But as countries that formerly held mostly U.S. dollars in their currency reserves begin to diversify into euros, the currency has taken its place alongside the dollar, as the world’s other global reserve currency.
Back in 1973, OPEC countries quadrupled the price of their oil and tied it to the U.S. dollar. The dollar reigned supreme as the world’s de facto reserve currency.
While current data are hard to come by, the euro now accounts for as much as 35% of global trade and reserve holdings. This new reality makes for a more stable world — and takes the unsustainable burden of the sole reserve currency status off the U.S. dollar.
Clearly, with its enormous, open-ended commitments in the global war on terrorism, the U.S. economy cannot at the same time, continue to absorb most of the world’s exports — and remain the locomotive of the world’s economic growth.
An oblivious administration?
This new situation seems a surprise to the Bush Administration. It is still keen on expanding its overseas commitments, re-building Iraq — and offering aid packages to Turkey, Pakistan and other countries whose support is sought. In the meantime, it has passed a $350 billion tax cut package in late May, 2003.
While Mr. Bush tells Americans to continue shopping, traveling and enjoying the American way of life, federal deficits grow, domestic programs are cut — and half of all U.S. states are engulfed in budget crises.
Dropping the other shoe
What happens if global investors continue pulling out of the United States — and the dollar keeps falling? Many market players expect it to fall another 20%. Other countries that have lost money in the dollar’s fall may continue buying more euros.
In the past 12 months, the U.S. dollar has lost some 30% of its value against the European euro.
The other shoe may drop, too. OPEC may decide to officially re-denominate their oil in euros (since most of the organization’s customers are in Europe anyway).
OPEC economists have been considering this “no-brainer” scenario for sound financial reasons — even though they feared U.S. wrath and retaliation.
War speculation
Indeed, many believe that a deeper reason for the U.S. attack on Iraq was its decision in 1999 to require payments for its oil for food program in euros.
The United States — heavily dependent on imported oil — benefits price-wise and in influencing markets through OPEC’s U.S. dollar pricing. Iraq’s dinar will also be replaced by dollars — if the United States has its way.
A major adjustment
Thwarting President Bush’s global dollar diplomacy and its designs on breaking OPEC’s oil pricing power provide additional reasons for OPEC to switch to payments in euros. This would mean that the United States would have to buy euros with dollars before it could buy OPEC oil.
The Bush Administration has played up the bright side. The cheaper dollar makes it easier for U.S. exporters to sell abroad.
The dollar would fall further — and the euro would rise. The U.S. economy would eventually have to adjust to $5-a-gallon gasoline (the average world price).
The bad news would be a deeper U.S. recession, SUV owners would suffer while Toyota and Honda would grab more market-share with their 50-60 mpg hybrid cars.
Good news?
The good news would be that U.S. exports would flourish and that Detroit would accelerate its own fuel-efficient car production. The solar and renewable energy technologies would be fully capitalized as a new sustainability sector of the U.S. economy, providing millions of new jobs.
And the Bush Administration would have to pull back from its over-commitment to the global war on “evil” — and shift its priorities to funding education, homeland security and federal grants to help states fund their new mandates.
Who's Afraid Of The Euro ?
Paul Krugman
I once attended a conference at which a senior Japanese official made an impassioned speech about the need to establish the yen as an international reserve currency. When my turn came, I explained that this was silly; even if the yen did become a reserve currency, it would make virtually no difference to Japan or to anyone else. At the end of the session, the moderator thanked me for my contribution--which, he said, emphasized once again the crucial importance of the yen's role as a reserve currency. I never figured out whether this was a case of the translator having trouble with my accent, or whether it was a polite way of telling me I had said something unacceptable. But I do know that people almost always attach far more importance to the issue of reserve currencies--the role of the dollar and its rivals in international trade and finance- -than the subject deserves.
And so it was inevitable that the coming of the euro --the common European currency that seems set to be introduced next year, and that may eventually challenge the dollar's dominance--would inspire irrational fear. Sure enough, a few weeks ago the intellectual fashion victims at one of those other business magazines ran an editorial entitled "The euro makes trade a new game." "Thanks to the dollar's role as reserve currency in world financial markets," they opined, "the U.S. has been able to do what no other country can-- consistently import more goods than it exports.... The U.S. owes some $5 trillion to dollar holders abroad, thanks to three decades of trade deficits." Gosh, what happens if those people switch to euros?
Well, not to worry. It just isn't true that America's ability to import more than it exports is unique. Since 1980 the U.S. current- account deficit (which includes services and investment income as well as goods) has averaged 1.5% of GDP. That's about the same as Britain's average, less than Canada's 2.2%, and nothing like Australia's 4.2%. These countries paid for their excess imports the same way we did: by selling foreigners stocks, bonds, real estate, and so on. The only difference is that because their deficits were bigger, their debts are also bigger as a share of GDP. Ours, it turns out, aren't that large--at least on a net basis. While it's true we owe foreigners about $5 trillion, they owe us more than $4 trillion; the difference is about $800 billion, or 10% of GDP.
But doesn't the dollar's special role give us some advantage? Most of the international role of the dollar comes from its use as a "unit of account"--the measuring stick for international business. When a Japanese refiner buys Kuwaiti oil, say, the contracts are in dollars. This is a testament to U.S. economic influence, but flattery aside, it's hard to see what we get out of it.
What about our ability to borrow in dollars, to sell dollar- denominated bonds to foreigners? Hey, other countries do that too. But our debts are in our own currency! So? We still pay interest on them. True, we could inflate away our foreign debt. But we won't--and if investors thought we would, they would demand higher interest rates.
Well, then, you may say, surely the international role of the dollar forces people out there to hold dollars for transaction purposes. Yes, but not so you'd notice. When Daewoo repays a dollar loan from Sanwa, it writes a check on its account with some international bank. True, that bank itself surely maintains an account in New York, backed in part by non-interest-bearing reserves held at the Fed. So the U.S. does in effect get a zero-interest loan out of the dollar's international role--but it probably amounts to only a few billion dollars, small change for an $8 trillion economy.
Where the U.S. does get a significant free ride is from the willingness of foreigners to accept our currency--actual bills. Foreigners hold more than $200 billion of American money. Guess what kind of business requires payments of large sums in cash, by people unconstrained by official restrictions on possession of foreign exchange? That's right: the dollar is the world's premier medium of illicit exchange. Every year the U.S. ships foreigners $15 billion in cash (about 0.2% of GDP), and gets real goods and services in return. Better not ask what kind.
So the threat to the U.S. from the rise of the euro is this: five years from now, when wise guys in Vladivostok make offers you can't refuse, the payoffs may be in 100- euro notes instead of $100 bills. The loss of such business might cost the U.S. economy as much as 0.1% of GDP. Somehow, I think we can live with that.
Even before the Madrid attacks, and despite hints that US-EU relations were starting to thaw, global public opinion voiced increasing distrust of the United States.
According to a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in association with the International Herald Tribune, nearly a third of respondents in Turkey thought that suicide bombings against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq was justifiable.
Support for the U.S. since the "end" of Iraq war continues to drop in Britain, France and Germany and nearly 60 percent of Brits responded that they had mistrust for Uncle Sam.
Americans, however, still think that they are merely viewed as misunderstood crusaders for good, and 70 percent believe the U.S. considers other countries' interests. American opinion of the French and Germans have even improved slightly since the end of the war.
But with Rodriguez Zapatero's strong stand and move back toward Europe the unilateral approach the Bush administration took seems to be pretty cold. The survey found that the majority of respondents in Britain, Germany and France (in, as can be expected, ascending order) believe Europe should be more independent.
These sentiments have led to increasing support, it appears, to make the EU as powerful as the U.S., and perhaps, the establishment of its constitution.
International Herald Tribune - European distrust of U.S. role sharpens
European distrust of U.S. role sharpens
Meg Bortin/IHT IHT
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
'No healing of the wounds' a year after Iraq war, global survey finds
PARIS One year after the war in Iraq, European distrust of the United States has intensified, with sharp doubts among America's closest allies of the Bush administration's motives in the war on terror, a global opinion survey has found.
The poll of more than 7,500 people in nine countries, conducted in late February and early March by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, before the bombings in Spain, showed that anger toward America is still fierce in Muslim countries, too, 12 months after the war began.
Resentment is so strong that majorities in three Muslim countries surveyed - Jordan, Pakistan and Morocco - feel that suicide bombings against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq are justifiable.
The poll, carried out in association with the International Herald Tribune, found that even in Turkey, an American partner in NATO, 31 percent felt such attacks were justifiable.
Still more worrisome perhaps for Washington in an election year, however, the trans-Atlantic confidence gap has deepened since a Pew survey carried out in the immediate aftermath of the war, when public ire over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was still hot in Europe.
"There has been no healing of the wounds," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center in Washington.
Unfavorable opinion of the United States, which skyrocketed in the run-up to the war, has become still more negative in France, Germany and Britain since President George W. Bush declared hostilities over in May, the survey found.
British views in particular are more critical, with a 12 percent slide in favorable opinion of the United States. The decrease, from 70 percent last May to 58 percent now, "reflects dropping support for the war" in Britain, Kohut said.
In France, favorable views dropped to 37 percent from 43 percent in May; in Germany positive opinion fell to 38 percent from 45 percent 10 months ago.
Majorities in the three countries - historically Washington's closest NATO partners - also said that as a consequence of the war they had less confidence that the United States is trustworthy. Mistrust was expressed by 82 percent in Germany, 78 percent in France and 58 percent in Britain.
According to François Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris, alienation is increasing in Europe "because there's been no give on the Bush side."
"There is a widespread perception in Europe that we have the choice of being treated as a vassal - a poodle in the case of Britain - or being treated as an antagonist," Heisbourg said.
As grounds for resentment, he cited continuing American neglect of European sentiment on issues ranging from the Kyoto Protocol on the environment to the treatment of prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In France, he noted, anger flared anew recently when the State Department came out against the banning of the Islamic head scarf in French schools.
The survey results also indicate that there has been no rebound among America's allies of post-Sept. 11 sympathy for the United States, which dissipated in the glare of European disapproval during the build-up to war.
Quite the contrary: Majorities in France, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan and Morocco said they thought the U.S.-led war on terrorism was not sincere. Instead, most said it was an effort "to control Mideast oil" or "to dominate the world." Even in Britain only the slimmest majority - 51 percent - viewed the war on terror as sincere.
In fact, people in many countries were dismissive of U.S. attitudes toward the threat of international terrorism.
While fully 84 percent of Americans questioned said the United States was right to be concerned, majorities in France and the four Muslim countries in the survey - Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan and Morocco - said America was overreacting.
Kohut said the survey results might have differed had the question been asked after the March 11 carnage in Spain.
William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard and a strong supporter of the war on terrorism, said the Madrid attacks "could even widen the rift."
Kristol cited remarks this week by Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, that the U.S. approach to fighting terrorism had failed, and added: "If that's going to be the European conclusion of the past two and a half years, I think Americans, and not just Bush, are going to reject that."
In foreign policy in general, the view that the United States acts unilaterally is more widespread now than at the war's end, the survey found.
In France, 84 percent said they felt the United States did not take their country's interests into account in international policy decisions, up from 76 percent last May. Similar strong feelings were expressed in Turkey (79 percent), Jordan (77 percent), Russia (73 percent), and Germany (69 percent).
In contrast, 70 percent of Americans surveyed felt that the United States takes other countries' interests into account.
"Americans think we're cooperative and popular," Kohut said of the perception gap. "Americans think, 'We're the ones on the white horse who do good things for the planet, like dealing with terrorism and evil dictators, and we're misunderstood.'"
The trans-Atlantic chasm in thinking translated into desire in Europe for looser ties with the United States in security and diplomatic affairs, the survey found. Majorities in France (75 percent), Germany (63 percent), Turkey (60 percent) and Britain (56 percent) said Europe should be more independent.
Majorities in the five European countries in the survey - Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Turkey - said it would be a good thing if the European Union became as powerful as the United States. In France, 90 percent expressed this view.
European dislike of President George W. Bush, too, has not diminished. Majorities in every country surveyed expressed unfavorable views, with negative opinion of Bush in France and Germany - 85 percent - higher than in Muslim countries like Pakistan and Turkey.
"I think what has hurt Bush the most, both in Europe and the United States, is his failure to explain why no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq," Kristol said. "We're paying a real price for that."
Most people questioned in the survey said they felt that Bush and Tony Blair, the British prime minister, had lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to have a pretext for war.
Only in the United States and Britain did a majority say their leaders had been misinformed by bad intelligence, and even there sizable minorities said the two leaders had lied: 31 percent in the United States and 41 percent in Britain.
Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden is still viewed as a hero in parts of the Muslim world. Sixty-five percent in Pakistan and 55 percent in Jordan expressed favorable views of the Qaeda leader. In Turkey, however, 75 percent expressed unfavorable views.
As for American attitudes, the anger felt toward the "coalition of the unwilling" - notably France and Germany - has subsided slightly since the war's end, but is still strong.
Thirty-three percent in the United States now express favorable views of France, up from 29 percent in May; 50 percent hold positive views of Germany, up from 44 percent. Enthusiasm for Britain is declining, however, with 73 percent now holding favorable views, down from 82 percent in May.
Given the intense media coverage of the Iraq war and the resulting tensions between the United States and Europe, another surprising finding is that 7 percent of Americans surveyed have never heard of the European Union. That figure, however, is an improvement since early September 2001, when one-fifth of Americans surveyed - 20 percent - said they had never heard of the allied bloc across the Atlantic.
International Herald Tribune
Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune
This “old” review of the book "An end to evil" (February 8, 2004), might be an interesting insight into neocons’ foreign policies and strategies, for those of us who will report on the topic in Paris.
Besides the book review, and the comments on their "angry style" and "muscular idealism", Zakaria's article underscores the fact that - despite accusing the Clinton administration - neoconservatives during the 1990's were totally silent about Al Qaeda.
The article also shows how critic and confrontational is the neocons attitude, not only towards Europe, but in general toward a "world that is full of hypocrites and scofflaws". Finally, it says that "with all its strengths, neoconservatism is ultimately not a serious guide to foreign policy".
"Showing them who's boss", The New York Times Book Review, by Fareed Zakaria.