Europeans Charmed but Not Swayed by U.S. Missile Shield Pitch

A diplomatic charm offensive by the Bush administration aimed at persuading skeptical NATO allies that they need a space-based missile shield has sold Europeans on the style of the U.S. pitch but not the substance of the project.

The high-level delegation that swept across the continent this week also made headway in convincing security partners that a new concept of strategic deterrence is needed to ward off threats from strange new menaces labeled “nations of concern.”

But the primary mission of the two dozen experts headed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz appeared to be to make a good impression after several moves that had allies worrying that President Bush was embarking on an “America first” approach to foreign relations.

Washington’s promise that it won’t bulldoze through existing arms control structures or place friends and trading partners in peril offered a modicum of relief, say those who listened to the delegation’s presentation of a defense shield that is still very much a work in progress.

“I think what was comforting was that we were genuinely made to feel we are accepted in an ongoing process, that this isn’t going to be like Kyoto,” a NATO official in Brussels said. He was contrasting the let’s-talk-about-it approach on missile defense with the Bush administration’s decision in March to abandon global climate accords reached four years ago in the Japanese city.

Those hit over the last three days by the diplomatic blitzkrieg, which sketched out the missile defense project to officials in eight European capitals and to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said the modesty, candor and sincerity of the Americans impressed them. But the allies are yet to be disabused of their reservations.

“They were trying to create open-mindedness by saying, ‘We’re not the ugly Americans coming to tell you what we are going to do and what you are going to do with us,’ ” said the NATO official, who related details of the consultations on the condition he not be named. “They made headway. People understood the rationale.”

The risk of nuclear or biological attack against the United States by nothing-to-lose “nations of concern” or renegade forces is the driving argument of the Bush team for building a defense system that could intercept and neutralize missiles in flight.

Germans who met with the delegates here for five congenial but intense hours found the talks more encouraging than enlightening.

“We have a number of questions to which we need answers, and we don’t have them yet,” Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s foreign policy advisor, Michael Steiner, told reporters Thursday. “This is why the German position is that we say neither yes nor no. We will position ourselves in the light of the answers to these questions.”

Schroeder was the first European leader to break from those warning that a U.S. national missile defense would destroy the existing network of arms control pacts and extend the global race for military superiority to outer space.

He suggested in March that the allies reserve judgment on the project until it was more clearly defined, and he hinted that German industries might even take part in construction.

During a relaxed dinner meeting on the riverside terrace of the new chancellery, the German hosts detected a more open posture on the U.S. side.

“I have the impression that the Americans came here because they genuinely want to approach the creation of this new system in cooperation with us,” said a senior official who took part. “They don’t want to proceed with a unilateral project, and that was the impression that we had before.”

Germans also accept that a change in deterrence strategy is needed, he added.

“We agree that there has been fundamental upheaval on the security and political landscape since the end of the Cold War and that this fundamental upheaval necessitates rethinking of strategic assumptions,” the official told journalists at a background briefing.

U.S. development of a shield would scuttle the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which has been the cornerstone of nuclear deterrence for nearly 30 years. That stability is treasured by European members of NATO, who are closer neighbors of Russia and less likely to be targeted by rogue nations.

Bush announced last week that he was pressing on with the project, despite allies’ reservations, taxpayer frets about what it could cost and questions about whether the system is technologically feasible.

NATO officials who met with the U.S. delegation this week in Brussels said they came away convinced that the Bush administration intends to build and deploy “at least a rudimentary system” before the 2004 presidential election.

The diplomatic foray is an outgrowth of Bush’s announcement May 1 that he intended to pursue the missile defense system, but in close and regular consultation with the allies.

“One thing they emphasized many, many times is that the United States didn’t come here to dictate a policy on which the Europeans could only agree. We are still able to have some influence on the decisions to be made, and we are convinced this is a sincere attitude,” said Col. Peter Cobelens, military advisor to the Netherlands’ ambassador to NATO.

In Britain, the Guardian newspaper said the initiative was “a surprisingly soft sell.”

The Italian Foreign Ministry expressed appreciation for the chance to air its views, though Marc Grossman, the U.S. undersecretary of State for political affairs, acknowledged that this weekend’s national elections in Italy might make the trip moot, as a center-right coalition is expected to oust the current government.

In Paris, the delegation seemed to make little progress, eliciting from French Foreign Ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau only the terse report: “Our position and our questions are well known. We repeated them to the American delegation.”

One constant and unrelieved worry among the allies is the project’s potential to destroy the existing arms control architecture before creating a new anchor for deterrence.

“We think it is dangerous to unravel the ABM Treaty without knowing what we will have in its place,” said Belgian Foreign Ministry spokesman Koen Vervaeke.

Though the U.S. team’s visit was important, Vervaeke said, it did nothing to change the European consensus that the missile defense project poses more risk than reward.

“We need far more details before we can come to any conclusions,” he said.

Wolfowitz told journalists here that the delegation hadn’t expected to sway opinions but rather to make clear Washington’s good intentions.

Conceding that there has been too little give and take to date, Wolfowitz observed somewhat contritely: “We need to get away from the notion that consultation involves declaring what we’re going to do and informing our allies the day before we announce it. We know that’s what we do sometimes, but that’s not what we’re doing here.”

*

Maria De Cristofaro in The Times’ Rome Bureau contributed to this report.