Allies being undiplomatically bushwhacked

"If we're an arrogant nation, they'll view us that way," George W. Bush said during his 2000 presidential campaign. "But if we're a humble nation, they'll respect us."

Little more than two years later, the world's verdict on Bush's diplomacy is split - between critics who see it as arrogant and allies who support its goals but sometimes wonder where the "humble" went.

The leaders of France, Germany, Russia and China, all nations Bush hoped to count as allies in the confrontation with Iraq, have joined to resist the president's drive toward war, with complaints over what they see as American highhandedness.

Even staunch allies such as prime ministers Tony Blair of Britain and Jose Maria Aznar of Spain have sent word to Bush that some U.S. bravado - such as Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's dismissal of "Old Europe" - has done more harm than good.

And a few senior Republicans, such as Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Charles Hagel of Nebraska, have warned that the administration's take-no-prisoners style risks alienating allies it needs in the long run.

"In an era when allied cooperation is essential in the war against terrorism, we cannot afford to shrug off negative public opinion overseas as uninformed or irrelevant," Lugar said at a hearing last week. "The governments of most nations respond to public opinion, whether it is demonstrated in the voting booths or in the streets."

"The responsibility of leadership is to persuade, not to impugn the motives of those who disagree with you," Hagel said. "They are seen as bullying people. You can't do that to democracies. You can't do that to partners and allies. It just isn't going to work."

Bush and his aides, not surprisingly, push back.

"What you have here is a president who is willing to point out what's right and wrong, maybe sometimes undiplomatically," said a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Some administration officials privately acknowledge that the critics may have a point - at least on the question of style. And Rumsfeld, without acknowledging any error, took pains to soften his acerbic comments on Europe after British officials complained.

But beneath the flap over a few ill-chosen words lie deeper, more difficult questions: Should the world's only superpower adjust its goals and strategies at the behest of weaker allies? And is Bush likely to do so?

When Bush arrived at the White House in 2001, many Europeans assumed that he would turn out, in foreign policy, to be his father's son: a cautious consensus-builder with great-power relationships at the centre of his strategy.

In retrospect, they may have missed signs that Bush's diplomacy would more closely resemble that of President Reagan: assertive, sometimes impatient with more cautious allies, and prone to divide the world into good and evil.

The new president's willingness to override traditional partners surfaced early: Bush surprised his first major foreign visitor, South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, by announcing that he did not intend to resume U.S. talks with North Korea, talks that Kim saw as important for his own efforts to open ties.

In short order, the new administration also announced that it intended to withdraw from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming, that it would not agree to a newly completed agreement on biological weapons, and that it planned to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty prohibiting most long-range missile defences.

None of those decisions was a surprise; all stemmed logically from conservative foreign-policy principles that Bush and his aides outlined in the campaign. The ABM Treaty, for example, would have blocked the missile-defense programme that was the centrepiece of Bush's military strategy. And the Kyoto Treaty had already been dead in the U.S. Senate for three years.

Still, many U.S. allies reacted with dismay. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin said he believed the ABM decision was "a mistake," but added that he had little choice but to accept it. On global warming, allies said they hoped the United States would come up with an alternative approach to solving the problem; almost two years later, the administration has yet to deliver.

All that was before the September 11 attacks and the war on terrorism - a global crusade that both rallied a vast coalition to Bush's side and gave the president a new sense of mission.
"You've probably learned by now, I don't believe there's many shades of gray in this war," Bush said last year. "You're either with us or against us. You're either evil or you're good."

That stark battle cry told countries such as Pakistan and Uzbekistan in 2001 that they had to choose either to help the United States hunt down Al Qaida terrorists or be counted as enemies. But once Bush turned his focus last year to Iraq, the slogan had a different effect: It told Europeans that they were expected to join the uncompromising U.S. campaign against Iraqi President Saddam Hussain or risk being considered "evil."

Most European governments supported the Bush administration's approach, but not all. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, facing a tough re-election campaign, announced that he opposed a war in Iraq, period. French President Jacques Chirac objected to Bush's warnings that the United States would disarm Iraq with or without the approval of the United Nations, and waged a tenacious campaign for the UN Security Council's authority to block military action.

Most striking, though, was the change in the image of the United States in European public opinion, from embattled ally to arrogant bully. Across most of the continent, polls find large majorities opposing a war. In largely friendly Britain, a poll by The Times of London found respondents divided evenly over who posed the greater danger to world peace: Bush or Saddam.

"This is the product of a long accumulation of problems," Hagel said. "There's a pattern perceived by our allies of straight-out unilateralism on the part of the United States. Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong. But then comes Iraq, and the president says, 'We're going to do this with you or without you.' And that raised the stakes."

Part of the administration's undiplomatic style comes from Bush's fondness for what his Texan aides like to call "plain-speaking." When a reporter asked Rumsfeld last week if he intended to heed European suggestions that he take a lower profile, the defence secretary replied: "I haven't heard it from the president."

Part of it comes from straightforward policy differences that could no longer be bridged by soothing language, such as the disputes over the Kyoto and ABM treaties.

And part stems from a long-running debate within the Bush administration over how far to bend to the wishes of allies. In one camp, officials say, Vice President Dick Cheney has argued that the United States has too often allowed alliances to constrain its freedom of action. In the other camp, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has maintained that strengthening alliances for the long run is worth making more compromises in the short run.

One side effect of the Iraq debate is bitterness among Bush aides