What to do about Bush
Rather than standing by, Europe can influence Washington's evangelical
myopia

Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday November 11, 2004
The Guardian

Houston, we have a problem. The spaceship Bush is up for another four
years, and its commanders think they have the mandate of heaven. God
has spoken through 51% of American voters. He has looked on President
Bush's war on terror and He has found it good. Senior officials assure
me that the administration wants to reach out to European allies in
its second term, but there's every indication that the basic thrust of
Bush's foreign policy will remain unchanged. Colin Powell, whom
Europeans regard as a reality-based moderate, has said Washington will
continue to pursue its foreign policy "aggressively". Even if this is
merely a tactical display of toughness and loyalty, in order to keep
his job, it shows you which way the wind is blowing.

They see the Earth differently from up there on spaceship Bush. This
is a White House team even more than usually sealed off from outside
criticism and realities, except when it comes to winning an American
election. As we saw in his first television debate with John Kerry,
President Bush is not used to being challenged on foreign policy. And
this commander-in-chief has missionary convictions. What chance has
the evidence of reality on the ground against the overwhelming power
of faith?

"I truly believe," said Laura Bush fervently, in a conversation with
CNN's Larry King, "that Iraq is becoming a democracy." And it was as
if, because she truly believes it, it must be true. We pedestrian
Earth-dwellers, still naively believing it's the facts on the ground
that count, ignore at our peril the power of what has wittily been
called "faith-based intelligence" to create its own alternative
reality - and then to project it successfully to the conservative half
of America through Fox News and rightwing talk radio. Some 42% of
those asked in one recent poll thought things were going well in Iraq.

So, Houston we have a problem. The problem is Houston. What should we
do about it? We Europeans, that is, in league with the 48% of American
voters who are even more dismayed than we are at the prospect of four
more years of Bush. Here are three options.

1) Treat America as Big Brother. Not the Orwellian one, but the
reality TV show. This is what most Europeans do at the moment. We
watch fascinated every night, as the inhabitants of the Big Brother
house slug it out. Will Rumsfeld survive, or Powell? What did Laura
say to Condi? We buy millions of copies of Michael Moore, in every
European language. In any bar in Europe, you can hear people trading
factoids about how more Americans believe in the virgin birth than in
evolution, and how ignorant they are about the rest of the world.

Anyone who spends time in America can contribute to this script. For
example: I was driving down Broadway the other day and the cab driver
had his radio tuned to a Christian gospel station called Family Radio.
The announcer was describing a book called The Light and the Glory:
Did God have a Plan for America? The answer is yes. God's plan - the
intelligence dossier on this one, in case you're wondering, is in the
gospel according to St Luke, chapter 2, verse 32 - is that the
Americans should be "a light to lighten the Gentiles". Or, as the
announcer put it, in a slightly sexed-up version of Luke's faith-based
intelligence, Americans have been sent "as a light to the world".
Wuddya believe it?

2) Build Europe as a counterweight. This is the Jacques Chirac
response to Bush's re-election. Robin Cook has urged something similar
in these pages. Faced with another four years of this kind of America,
argue the Euro-Gaullists, we must build a powerful EU as an
alternative pole of world politics. Everyone else in the world, and
especially rising China, should know that there is an alternative
version of the west, which speaks another language (French) and is
peace-loving, law-abiding, socially concerned, humane and seductive -
or, according to taste, weak, cynical, corrupt and hypocritical.

3) Engage to persuade. Tony Blair arrives in Washington today, aiming
to do just that. Continuing what I have called the Jeeves school of
diplomacy, he will be unswervingly loyal in public, while privately
urging moderation, multilateralism and other good things on the
gentleman in the White House. As Arafat leaves the scene, Blair will
encourage the Bush administration to seize the chance for a two-state
peace settlement between Israel and Palestine. With Britain taking
over the chairmanship of the G8, and then the presidency of the EU in
the second half of 2005, he will ask Washington to broaden its
transatlantic agenda, including not just Iraq and Iran but climate
change, the Doha round of trade talks, Africa, Darfur, relations with
China, and so on. If the president starts talking about bombing Iran's
nuclear facilities, Blair will murmur, like the inimitable Jeeves: "Is
that wise, sir?"

Which option is best? Treating America as Big Brother is easy, and
quite fun, but it won't get us anywhere at all. We'll just be jeering
from the sidelines. What we need is a wise combination of 2 and 3.
Chirac's Gaullist dream of a rival superpower is bound to fail because
half of Europe won't follow, leaving the Bush administration with
endless possibilities of "divide and rule". But another lesson of the
Iraq crisis is that the Jeeves school of British diplomacy doesn't
work either. Britain alone no longer has sufficient influence (if it
ever had) to redirect the course of the hyperpower spaceship. The EU,
however, is listened to in those areas where it has real coherence and
clout: trade and competition policy. It even prevented the merger of
two giant American companies, General Electric and Honeywell. If the
EU had anything like the same coherence in foreign or defence policy,
Washington would listen there, too.

So what we need is a European President Blairac. In my view, this
desirable cocktail is ideally mixed three parts Blair to one part
Chirac. Other Europeans will vary the proportions, according to taste.
We need the strong Europe that Paris wants, but a Europe that defines
itself emphatically and genuinely as a strategic partner of the United
States, not a rival to it. Fortunately, in the great cocktail-mixer
that is the EU of 25 member states, especially with its new
Euro-Atlanticist president of the European Commission, Jos=E9 Manuel
Barosso, and its Euro-Atlanticist foreign minister, Javier Solana, we
may have the postmodern possibility of getting a Blairac voice.

One of the few, small encouraging signs from these gloomy
post-election days is a little-noticed announcement from the White
House that President Bush telephoned the Dutch prime minister, who
holds the presidency of the EU, and "expressed his intention to work
with the EU, building on our shared values and interests, to promote
development and progress, defeat terrorists, and encourage freedom and
democracy around the world". You may say I'm clutching at straws, but
this feels like a time for clutching at straws.

"Failure is not an option" was the other great American line from the
movie Apollo 13. History-scarred Europeans know that failure is always
a possibility, even a probability. But our least bad chance of helping
to bring this spaceship safely back to earth is to put a Blairac on
the blower.

What to do about Bush

What to do about Bush
Rather than standing by, Europe can influence Washington's
evangelical myopia

What to do about Bush
Rather than standing by, Europe can influence Washington's evangelical
myopia

Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday November 11, 2004
The Guardian

Houston, we have a problem. The spaceship Bush is up for another four
years, and its commanders think they have the mandate of heaven. God
has spoken through 51% of American voters. He has looked on President
Bush's war on terror and He has found it good. Senior officials assure
me that the administration wants to reach out to European allies in
its second term, but there's every indication that the basic thrust of
Bush's foreign policy will remain unchanged. Colin Powell, whom
Europeans regard as a reality-based moderate,

One of the few, small encouraging signs from these gloomy
post-election days is a little-noticed announcement from the White
House that President Bush telephoned the Dutch prime minister, who
holds the presidency of the EU, and "expressed his intention to work
with the EU, building on our shared values and interests, to promote
development and progress, defeat terrorists, and encourage freedom and
democracy around the world". You may say I'm clutching at straws, but
this feels like a time for clutching at straws.

Which option is best?