She was treated like a movie star wherever she went. Her face launched a thousand front pages. Her every word was news. Europe’s leaders fell over themselves to welcome her. Germany’s Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, looked like a besotted stage door fan. Her speech in Paris was the hottest ticket in town and her fleeting appearances in capital after capital merely enhanced the perception of glamour and power.
In a few breathless days, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice became the Bette Davis of diplomacy. If this was a charm offensive, or what one official called a ”hug campaign”, it worked a treat. After a long, trying estrangement, Europe felt loved again.
And, as the curtain came down on Rice’s overseas debut, the temptation was to say that finally the Iraq schism was bridged and that a new chapter in US-Europe relations had begun.
Signs of a spring thaw abound. This week saw the first Nato meeting on French soil in 40 years, attended by France’s bête noire, the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
President George W Bush will dine privately with the French President, Jacques Chirac, and meet Schröder on a visit to Europe this month. Even Spain’s socialists want to kiss and make up.
Yet if transatlantic reconciliation is to be soundly based, more than good vibes and presentational improvements will be needed, officials say. Both parties have serious work to do.
”Bush is making this magnanimous gesture in coming to Brussels. Wonderful. But we want Bush to change,” a senior European diplomat said.
”It is not right simply to say we will adapt our agenda to theirs.”
Influential Americans agree that Iraq exposed a fundamental divergence in world views that will not suddenly evaporate overnight.
In his book Of Paradise and Power, Robert Kagan points to ”a great philosophical schism within the West” that for the first time has led ”a majority of Europeans to doubt the legitimacy of US power and global leadership”. At the heart of this dilemma lies the post-9/11 US’s unprecedented willingness to wield its unmatched might — and Europe’s wish to control it, says Kagan.
William Drozdiak, writing in Foreign Affairs journal, noted that Washington was ”learning the hard way that even the world’s sole superpower needs allies”. To keep its friends, the US must cede ”a more activist role” to the EU.
Rice clearly wants to mend fences. But her statements on key issues were strictly conformist, following well-worn first-term White House positions. If she has her own policy ideas, she kept them to herself.
Despite European pleas for greater engagement in Israel-Palestine, Rice declined a mediation role and continues to follow the agenda of Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. Like Bush, she was tougher on Iran and Syria than her predecessor, Colin Powell. And her talk of ”transformational diplomacy” in pursuit of freedom and shared democratic values — faithfully echoing Bush’s evangelising inaugural address — suggested, if anything, a hardening ideological stance.
Much store has been set by the departure of administration hawks such as John Bolton and Douglas Feith, and Rice’s appointment of ”realists” to senior state department positions.
Europeans hope this heralds a more collaborative, less confrontational approach. British Prime Minister Tony Blair claims US policy is ”evolving”.
But while Rice addressed the US’s image problem, it remains unclear how far she can or will go in changing real-time American behaviour.
International superstar or not, her political position at home is intrinsically weak. Her Washington power base rests solely on her personal relationship and access to Bush.
So far, she has not dared defy her master’s voice. — Â