Cultivating New Friends Helps Old Ones Flourish, Too

The Economist:

Anyone determined to make the pursuit of freedom and democracy in other people's countries the organising principle of their foreign policy has to feel comfortable leading from the front. Far from being chastened by the difficulties of winning the peace in Iraq, his first term's biggest overseas adventure, George Bush has started his second term bent on tackling tyranny worldwide. After a certain amount of scoffing and some alarm (whose country would the neo-cons be trampling across next?), the idea is catching on in surprising places. READ MORE

As it does so, from Ukraine to Kirgizstan, and from Afghanistan and Iraq to Lebanon, other problems too—especially the rift with parts of Europe over Iraq—are coming to seem more tractable. The hope is that this, in turn, may make it easier to manage the security challenges that America and its friends face in Iran and North Korea. Given a newly co-operative spirit, optimists argue, even the row between America and the European Union over whether the Europeans should lift their embargo on weapons sales to China may be turned to advantage, if the two sides can sit down and sort out their differences.

Administration officials are more cautious. Just as building democracy in new places is a work of a generation or more, so the tensions in transatlantic relations will not disappear overnight. But the recent run of good news is helping.

The watershed in relations with Europe, but also with parts of the Arab world, came on January 30th, with the impressive turnout in Iraq's election. Since then, says one senior administration official, the questions from even the prickliest European governments are no longer about why America fought the war, but how Europe can help rebuild Iraq. America and the EU will jointly sponsor a donors' conference in May or June. Mr Bush and his team have been pleased too with the support from Poland and Germany for Ukraine's orange revolution, and with France's help in winkling Syrian troops out of Lebanon.

Administration officials are careful to take no credit for these outbreaks of people power: all were home-grown. But Iraq's election and the protests against Syria's armed presence in Lebanon were not unconnected, they feel: the Arab television channels that Americans love to hate broadcast both events, including chants of “Syria out!” from Lebanon, all over the Middle East. Other governments have taken note: Saudi Arabia has tried limited local elections, Egypt is contemplating a mildly contested presidential election and others have been telling Mr Bush of their reform plans. Although the aim is not just to please America—a UN-sponsored Arab human-development report published this week predicts “chaotic upheavals” if Arab governments fail to address reform demands—the development is noted with satisfaction.

The administration has also been changing tack. A fresh team, with new energy and ideas, helps. Condoleezza Rice, unlike Colin Powell, her predecessor as secretary of state, has the president's ear. Between them, she and her deputy, Robert Zoellick, well connected around the world from a former cabinet post and as America's trade representative, are making a point of visiting between them all 25 NATO allies in their first few months. Ms Rice, recently in Europe and Asia, will soon add Latin America, the Middle East (again) and Africa to her itinerary. Mr Bush is due back in Europe in May, to mark the 60th anniversary of VE day, the end of the second world war in Europe, and will come again in July for the G8 summit of wealthier nations at Gleneagles, in Scotland. The diplomatic pace has noticeably quickened, but will Mr Bush give ground on any of the controversial issues?

Agenda-building

Last week, America agreed at the UN Security Council to let some of the top people implicated in the killings in Sudan appear eventually before the International Criminal Court (ICC), which America does not support. The administration is hoping to defuse a theological row with Europe over the court that has threatened to undermine efforts to halt the violence. Although the deal applies only to Sudan, it recognises that any American nationals caught up in these events under the auspices of the UN or the African Union would be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of American courts (with other non-parties given similar rights). While America cannot live comfortably with the ICC, says a senior State Department official, this sort of solution may be a way of moving on.

Ms Rice is credited with the new thinking on this issue, and also with encouraging Mr Bush to shift his stance over Iran by recognising that a rejectionist position was making America, not Iran, seem the problem. Reassured on his trip to Europe in February that Britain, France and Germany, who are negotiating with Iran to end its dangerous nuclear dabbling, would keep a promise to take the matter to the Security Council if Iran resumes work to enrich uranium, the president agreed to two European requests: that America would not block talks for Iran to join the WTO, and that licences could be granted for Iran to import spares for its ageing civilian aircraft.

That still leaves the Europeans with the task of trying to talk Iran out of making nuclear fuel. Iran's latest gambit, demanding to keep just a few enrichment machines to do just a modest amount of enriching, is clearly designed to try to reopen the breach between Europe and America. But a more helpful Mr Bush makes it less likely that the Europeans will buckle.

Other issues have also come into play, however. Iran's support for violent groups in the Middle East undermines a cherished European goal: to see peace talks start between the new Palestinian leadership and Israel. The Europeans, for their part, are hoping Mr Bush will press Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, next week over an issue they care deeply about: Israel's settlements in the West Bank.

But as Europeans and Americans start to assemble a more positive agenda, China and the arms embargo could still cause a bust-up. Mr Powell first started raising the issue with his European counterparts early last year. That made little impact in France, which has led the campaign to lift the arms ban in the hope of scooping up contracts (including for weapons, said the French defence minister in a moment of candour earlier this year, though officially neither the quantity nor the quality of the weapons flow is supposed to increase). Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, also favours ending the embargo, partly in hopes of winning China's support for a German seat on the UN Security Council.

Happily for more reluctant Europeans, and for transatlantic relations, China overplayed its hand. Its new law threatening violence if Taiwan moves towards independence was passed unanimously on the day an EU envoy was attempting to convince the administration and Congress that lifting the ban was purely a routine matter, since the EU's strengthened (but non-binding) code of conduct on arms transfers would suffice.

With a breathing space found, there is now talk on both sides of the Atlantic of the need for a “strategic dialogue” on Asia, in which the embargo issue could be included. No amount of explaining of the technicalities of Europe's arms code, say administration officials, will substitute for the reassurance that the EU understands a fundamental point: that it is American, not European, lives that are at risk in ensuring stability in Asia, and that any technological benefit that China may draw from European weapons or weapons-usable technologies will harm the transatlantic relationship. Meanwhile, credible threats of retaliatory legislation have come from all factions of Congress, from left-wing Democrats to right-wing Republicans.

Should America and Europe manage to start their strategic dialogue (more frequent and expanded contacts are being planned among senior American and EU officials, and America is also keen to beef up discussion at NATO), they will find plenty else to talk about too, from the Middle East to environmental issues and an increasingly autocratic Russia. But how to get a confidential discussion going, with 25 countries on the European side? One idea is to revive the “Quad” of America, Britain, France and Germany, perhaps with the addition of Poland and Italy.

The other problem is that the sort of world-shaping dialogue America is keen to have with Europe over China, and much else, is one that EU leaders have never yet had among themselves. By taking the EU seriously as a partner, Mr Bush may force its leaders to start thinking strategically about the world beyond their back yard. That would be an achievement.