April 1, 2008
Well before John McCain proudly strode from his plane to a protected vehicle in Baghdad March 17 – the first stop on a weeklong trip that would also take him to Jordan, Israel, London and Paris - foreign leaders were asking pointed questions: what sort of a US president would this elderly-looking yet jaunty, outspoken, Republican senator be? If elected, would he change, or continue, the controversial foreign policy of the Bush administration, notably with regard to the Middle East, global warming and trans-Atlantic relations? Why does Nicolas Sarkozy appear to be his favorite Western ally?
By the time he returned to Washington, his hosts and most diplomatic and media observers agreed that despite a gaffe quickly corrected, McCain looked presidential –handsome for his 71 years, serious, balanced, well-informed, striving to show that he would change the Bush administration’s course in certain areas, such as closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, abolishing torture by the military, while supporting a new international treaty to combat global warming. The latter pledge is part of his broader agenda to work more collegially with allies, notably in Europe, a theme he repeated in Los Angeles last Wednesday in his first, major foreign policy speech as presidential candidate. Throughout the foreign trip, McCain projected a fatherly image, firm but profoundly conservative and strongly committed to military force in diplomacy, prompting the highly-respected French daily Le Monde to describe McCain as above all, “a military man serving American power.” He repeated his controversial claim that the US was certainly winning the war in Iraq, and would need to remain there for a long time; he strongly supported Israel in its battling with the militant Islamic group Hamas, while shunning any meeting with Palestinians yet affirming his commitment to Middle East peace; and indicating he would back stronger sanctions against Iran for its military-related nuclear buildup. All this was reassuring music to the ears of his powerful, fellow-conservative hosts in Iraq, Jordan and Israel. And commenting on the Democratic Party presidential hopefuls, the popular Israeli daily Maariv, citing government sources, warned that Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama, highly-popular throughout Europe and in liberal circles throughout the Middle East, would “not be a good president for Israel.” That observation reflected fears on both sides of the Atlantic that if elected, Obama, in sharp contrast to harder-lined positions of Senator Hillary Clinton, would move to open talks with Iran and Syria, among others he has termed friends and foes alike. In Amman, fresh from Baghdad, McCain hit what the International Herald Tribune termed a “pothole” by twice mis-identifying some of the main players in the Iraq war, incorrectly claiming that Iran was training Al Qaeda fighters in Mesopotamia. He quickly rebounded, guided by Joseph Lieberman, the independent senator from Connecticut accompanying McCain, who may join the cabinet, assuming McCain is elected president. Later, acknowledging his mistake in an interview with Le Monde that appeared March 23-24, the Arizona senator noted he had visited Iraq eight times. “I know the Middle East,” he declared, adding that Obama also gaffed once when he said he would like to meet with the “president of Canada,” a post that doesn’t exist. Going even further in trying to reassure allies, particularly in Europe, of his multilateralist approach to US foreign relations, and in sharp contrast to critical perceptions of the Bush administration’s approach during the past eight years, McCain wrote that “we need to strengthen our trans-Atlantic alliance…we need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies when we believe that international action is necessary, whether military, economic or diplomatic.” His statement, published in the Financial Times and Le Monde also praised members of NATO and the European Union, but, echoing an administration position, also called on the EU to boost spending “to build effective military and civilian capabilities that can be deployed around the world.” Welcoming President Sarkozy’s plans to fully integrate France into NATO’s military command and to send an additional 1000 French troops to Afghanistan – both measures expected to be confirmed at the NATO alliance summit meeting in Bucharest April 2-4 - McCain, who with Lieberman and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, insisted they were abroad as key members of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, added that “we strongly support the EU’s efforts to build an effective European Security and Defense Policy.” And that a “strong EU, a strong NATO and a true strategic partnership between them is profoundly in our interest.” In an interview with Le Monde editors, McCain delighted Europeans as he made it clear that he supported the recent decision by the US Air Force to award a $35 billion tanker contract to the French-German-led European Aeronautic Defense & Space company – to be built in the US from a refitted Airbus A330 jetliner – even though arch-rival Boeing, which lost, has challenged the decision, and is being investigated in Washington by the General Accounting Office. However, the senators’ London visit March 20 was not exactly a howling success, and clear differences of opinion surfaced quickly in McCain’s 45-minute talk with Labor Party Prime Minister Gordon Brown. For example, regarding Iraq, as the Times of London noted, Brown, who is seeking to distance himself from “(Tony) Blair’s war” his predecessor, clearly left the impression that he would like to withdraw all British troops from the south and shift them to Afghanistan. The next day, the Times reported that McCain and Brown were also on a “collision course” regarding eradicating, lucrative, heroin-destined poppy production in Afghanistan, a move supported by the senator, but opposed by Brown and the British and Afghan governments. Times reporters later wrote, following an interview in his London hotel room, that he appeared “pale – utterly exhausted – almost frail, and that his “much admired ‘straight talk’ becomes contorted by painfully polite diplo-speak.” As an example, the conservative-leaning daily commented that “instead of criticizing Britain for pulling most of his troops out of Iraq, he praises it for remaining our staunchest ally, ” adding that the difference with Britain over eradicating opium poppy crops “can be worked out.” While the meeting with Brown was described as cool and perfunctory, McCain held upbeat talks with Blair, Conservative leader David Cameron and Republican boosters at a $1000-a-head fund raising lunch. Summing up widespread opinion abroad, The Independent concluded that a “McCain brand of hawkishness is likely to be less inflexibly and ignorantly, ideological than George Bush’s.” The visit to Paris, the final stop, only lasted four hours and while his talk with Sarkozy also lasted 45 minutes, its significance was far greater – particularly for the French leader whose presidency has been in deep, growing trouble for weeks: his party took a humiliating beating in local-regional elections earlier in the month; despite his marriage to a stunning, former model and singer, Carla, and a moderate shakeup in his staff and government posts, his popularity has continued falling. An opinion survey by the weekly Journal de Dimanche published March 23, showed those unhappy with the way he has been performing as president had climbed to 63%, with only 31% satisfied, amid growing opposition to Sarkozy’s plan to send more troops to Afghanistan; Socialist deputy Jean-Louis Bianco and member of its foreign affairs committee, this week warned the move would contribute to plunging the alliance into a “new Vietnam” war. The remedy Sarkozy has been pursuing, aimed at bolstering his image as a “serious” world leader - termed by his advisers as a “re-presidentialization of his tenure - has involved looking “statesmanlike,” dropping his previously dazzling jet-set style of living and working. The visit by McCain, therefore, couldn’t have come at a better time. Following their talk and a warm, friendly, farewell handshake on the steps of the Elysée Palace, McCain had only friendly, supportive statements for his host, while answering reporters’ questions. He praised Sarkozy for his wholehearted support of the Bush administration’s hardline approach to Iran, Afghanistan and to combating radical Islamic terrorism elsewhere, while predicting that previously-strained French-US relations would continue improving. He also told reporters that the French leader would be returning to the US on a visit in May and would be warmly welcomed back, statements that probably helped Sarkozy more than any other leader McCain met on his trip.
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Axel Krause, contributing editor of Transatlantic Magazine in Paris, reports that while most Americans and most Europeans hardly noticed, or were unaware, of the McCain visit, the interest in the US presidential election, and particularly the battling between Obama and Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination is enormous. Indeed, throughout Western and Eastern Europe, the prospect of the next US president being either a woman or an African-American is simply far more intriguing than the election of another Republican, however collegial and presidential he may look.
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December 30, 2007 Tiny Slovenia's daring in presiding over the giant European Union in the first half of the new year is mind-boggling—to everyone except the Slovenes. "We do not shy away from challenges. We in the recent past have faced challenges bigger than this one—independence, and before that the democratic process that led us out of Yugoslavia" in 1991, explained Janez Lenarcic, State Secretary for European Affairs and Prime Minister Janez Jansa's top organizer of the half-year adventure. "Those were real challenges, existential challenges. The fate of the nation depended on how well we faced them….In the very recent past we faced bigger challenges, and we were able to handle them." Continue Reading... | |
