The Ugly American Needs a Face-Lift

A few weeks ago, John Kerry told reporters that “foreign leaders” or possibly “more leaders” had told him: “You’ve got to beat this guy. We need a new policy.” Ever since, President Bush’s people have been demanding he name names and branding him a liar for refusing.

Perhaps that’s only fair considering the Democrats’ opportunistic use of the “liar” label against Bush. But it is nevertheless deeply silly. Given most Americans’ views of “fereners,” Bush would be better off ceding the “foreign leaders” endorsement to his opponent rather than disputing whether it has in fact been offered.

It’s hard to doubt that there are plenty of foreign leaders who’d like to see Kerry defeat Bush. That category would probably include most of the leaders of Europe outside of Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi and some in Eastern Europe. It is probable that one or another of them said something along these lines privately to Kerry or his advisors. But no one who has to deal with the current U.S. government would go public with such a view. The administration is shamelessly taking advantage of this to put Kerry on the spot.

Bush should take a pause from politics to ask himself whether Kerry has a point when he complains about the isolation of the U.S. That, after all, is the issue raised by the recent Spanish elections. It’s easy to dismiss that vote as appeasement, but what it really shows is how flimsy U.S. support in Europe has been.

Supporters of Operation Iraqi Freedom, including me, have comforted themselves by pointing to all the European leaders who endorsed the war. The problem is that support given in the face of overwhelming popular opposition can be fleeting. It takes only one close election to switch a country from the pro-American camp to the anti-American camp.

If Berlusconi were to lose the next election, that’s what would happen in Italy. Granted, the reverse could occur elsewhere -- Gerhard Schroeder is unpopular in Germany and, if he were to fall, the Christian Democrats would be friendlier to the U.S. But the fact remains that in Western Europe the only country where the U.S. enjoys the support of both government and opposition is Britain -- and that’s because Blair is the leader of the Labor Party. Under another leader, Labor would probably go into the anti-American camp too.

Does any of this matter? On one level, no. The U.S. is powerful enough to do whatever it wants in the world without European help. But although we have the physical strength to go it alone, we lack the psychological strength -- Americans like to be liked. More significantly, we need help from other nations in fighting the war on terrorism. It’s harder to get cooperation from Jordan or Morocco, to say nothing of France or Germany, if the U.S. is unpopular in those places.

In Bush’s defense, it must be said that this is hardly all his fault. The French were calling the U.S. the “hyper-power” when Bill Clinton was president. And they were plotting to turn Europe into a rival power center when Lyndon Johnson was president. But there is no question that the rancor has gotten worse in the last few years.

Partly this is a matter of substance: The Iraq war was intensely unpopular in Europe. So was the U.S. pullout from the Kyoto accord and other treaties. But there is also a matter of style: Bush and company have been so disdainful of “old Europe” that they have made little effort to explain their policies to its people. They missed an opportunity to garner support by selling the Iraq war as a humanitarian intervention, along the lines of Kosovo or Bosnia.

Transatlantic ties won’t suddenly become perfectly harmonious if Kerry is elected president. He has said that he too would not need a “green light” from anyone else to defend U.S. security. And he too voted against Kyoto in its current form. But Kerry would start off with better atmospherics. Bush, instead of simply flogging his opponent on the campaign trail, would do well to consider how he could patch up relations without compromising vital U.S. interests.

*

Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times.