Europe and four more years of Bush

Oh, Condi, Condi, talking to you, girl,
What's it gonna hurt, come on, give me a whirl
Shake your body and let me see you go
One time for me, oh, Condi, I love you so
Skank for me Condi, show me what you got
They say you're too uptight, I say you're not
Oh, dance around me spinning like a top
Oh, Condi, Condi, Condi, don't ever stop
                       - Steve Earle, "Condi, Condi"

If the reports that Condoleeza Rice will be taking Colin Powell's place as head of the State Department, there's going to be even less standing in the way of a further domination of foreign policy by aggressive "neoconservatives" pushing for preventive wars against further targets.

One of the implications will be for the future of US-European relations.  This article points out a number of the issues that could lead to even greater diplomatic estrangement between the US and the European Union.

Rethinking the Western alliance by Charles Kupchan Salon 11/13/04.

The reelection of George W. Bush marks a somber day for America and for the future of the Atlantic partnership. Bush's victory over John Kerry represents the triumph of errant leadership and the politics of fear over prudent leadership and the politics of reason. Bush's reelection, coupled with strengthened Republican control of Congress, promises to reinforce his administration's extremist tendencies, risking the collapse of an Atlantic alliance already strained to the breaking point. ...

The problem goes well beyond stark differences over policy issues -- Iraq, Iran and the Middle East peace process most prominent among them. Now that the American electorate has tasted four years of Bush and willingly chosen four more, what was anti-Bush sentiment in Europe is likely to grow into anti-American sentiment.

If so, the lapsed partnership could evolve into something much more dangerous -- open rivalry. French President Jacques Chirac has already reacted to Bush's reelection by urging the European Union to check U.S. power. Europe's effort to act as a counterweight to the United States would surely invite a response in kind from Washington. As it succeeded in doing during the transatlantic rift over Iraq, Washington would try again to divide the E.U., setting pro-American countries like Britain, Italy and Poland against those calling for Europe to distance itself from the United States.

Now, are there people advocating such a strategy?  Well, yes, as a matter of fact.  For instance: Saving NATO from Europe by Jeffrey Cimbalo Foreign Affairs Nov/Dec 2004 (extract).  The online version has only a summary and the first few paragraphs, unfortunately.  But the print edition does advocate an active American policy designed at dividing and weakening the EU.  This paragraph from the online part shows how he sets the stage:

The proposed European federation is unprecedented: no democracy has ever merged with another to form such an entity. The constitution, which purports to integrate the 25 nations of the European Union, would create a new international actor with its own foreign minister and its own foreign policy. This development would have profound and troubling implications for the transatlantic alliance and for future U.S. influence in Europe. By structure and inclination, the new Europe would focus on aggrandizing EU power at the expense of NATO, the foundation of the transatlantic security relationship for more than half a century. In other words, it would seek to balance rather than complement U.S. power-an outcome for which the United States is wholly unprepared.

Then there's the ever-grim Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle, one of the leading lights on the neoconservatives, who wrote with David Frum in their book An End to Evil (2003) concerning our NATO allies' attitude toward the proposed preventive war against Iraq:

To Americans, this looked like appeasement. ... The same European governments that hesitated to confront terrorists were more than prepared to oppose us.  [French president Jacques] Chirac's warm reminiscences about his youthful experiences in the United States contrast sharply with the open hostility of his government to U.S.policy in the war on terror.  That is what it is - and it is foolish to pretend otherwise. ... Then France went over the top: In February 2003, it led the opposition  within NATO to dispatching air defense units to protect Turkey, a NATO member if Iraq attacked it - a shocking break with the long history and essential purpose of the NATO alliance. [my emphasis, except on "us"]

Note in the following paragraph, the Prince of Darkness and his co-author sound like they have already written NATO off - and of course they're making the case that it's the Other Side's fault.  The Other Side, here, being some of our closest and most long-standing allies until the Cheneys and Rumsfelds based US policy on assuming that they were our vassals.

And they gleefully smashed up up an alliance [NATO] that had kept the peace of the world for half a century, the ministers of the Chirac government preened and congratulated themselves.  "The president of France and the pope" - in that order - "saved the world from a 'clash of civilizations,'" a high Frnech official told a conference in Europe in the spring of 2003.

And where France led, other NATO countries followed: Germany most imporantly, but also France's pilot fish, Belgium.  Outside NATO, France's anti-American campaign had a damaging effect as well, emboldening Russia to adopt an anti-American stance that it would not have dared adopt on its own. [my emphasis]

The neocons see a world of endless enemies.  They even see our allies as enemies.  And we'll have even more of the same the next four years.  It's hard to see how NATO as an organization will survive this.  Because the EU will find itself increasingly having to question the value and desirability of an alliance which a hostile administration in Washington can and will use to undermine European unity.