How Europe beat Bush on Iran and China

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Bush Bends
The U.S. president is having to pay for snubbing Europe in his first term. How the continent's Big Three may have gotten their way on Iran and China

Sean Gallup / Getty Images
Solid front: Bush and Schröder in Mainz, Germany, on Feb. 23
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek
Updated: 1:53 p.m. ET March 3, 2005March 3 - Among George W. Bush’s many talents as a politician is his sense of timing. Having planned his trip to Europe last fall in an icy atmosphere of ill will, Bush arrived on the continent with the fresh wind of the Arab Spring at his back. Faced with democratic stirrings throughout the Middle East, European leaders who had opposed the Iraq war suddenly had reason to question their smug certainties. Bush, meanwhile, blew into Brussels and Paris without an army (he’d left it in Iraq, where it will stay for most of his tenure) or much second-term money to spend (huge budget deficits have tied his hands), ready to acknowledge that he might need some help abroad. So between the newly diplomatic Bush and the newly self-doubting Europeans, there seemed a lot of room for a meeting in the middle.



That’s just what happened, of course. And none too soon. If ever the world’s richest and most powerful nations needed to present a united front, it’s now. Whatever you might have thought about the invasion of Iraq, it is clearly helping to provoke titanic changes in the region, and they’re just getting under way. That will require a lot of smart management from the First World, and this is not going to happen while the boardroom is in an uproar. As the Lebanese people, giddy over the possible departure of Syrian troops, grapple with whether to welcome in Hizbullah; as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak dabbles reluctantly in democracy; as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hesitate over how far to take their rapprochement, all of them need to hear a common message from Europe and the United States.

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Bush is definitely trying to kiss up but not getting anywhere!!!
I think France and Germany have long memories!!!