Rice’s Whirlwind Tour Succeeds in Thawing Ice

At every European stop of her first trip as Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice delivered the same message to America’s oldest allies: We must bury our differences and work together “on behalf of the great goal of freedom” in the Middle East and beyond.

The official response was positive, even in France and Germany, with both countries eager to repair relations badly damaged by their opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq nearly two years ago.

In the course of her eight-day swing through European capitals, which ended Thursday, the reception seemed gradually to get warmer. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s polite stress on shared goals for Iraq and Iran seen during a joint news conference in Berlin morphed over several days into a dovetailing of diplomatic language and warm “Dear Condi” references in Paris.

By Wednesday, when she reached Brussels, the response had become effusive, with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso declaring that it was “more vital than ever that Europe and the United States ... work together to promote democracy, freedom and prosperity throughout the world.”

Yet behind this rhetoric of reconciliation, there was no movement to resolve the prickly issues that divide the United States and its traditional allies in Europe. There also were thinly concealed worries.

In numerous private conversations, Europeans expressed concern that what Rice called “this great alliance that faced down tyranny before” remained in serious danger of drifting apart permanently unless it was quickly repaired and reoriented.

“We have a very special window of opportunity,” said Eberhard Sandschneider, director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, one of several German opinion makers who met Rice privately during her brief stop in Berlin early in the tour. “The transatlantic relationship is no longer held together by a common threat [of Soviet communist expansion]. We have to rebuild this relationship to face global challenges, but there’s no plan to do it.”

In Paris, the director of the Foundation for Strategic Research questioned whether such a reorientation was possible, noting that Europe and the United States were either divided or uncertain about how to move forward on major global issues, including environmental concerns, the rise of China and reform in the Middle East.

“During the Cold War there was one entity, the West, and one overriding issue, the Soviet threat,” said Francois Heisbourg, a former senior French Defense Ministry official who is chairman of the Geneva Center for Security Policy. “This is no longer the case, and now we’re discovering that Europe is not the United States and the United States is not Europe.”

He and others said that Europe and the U.S. remained deeply divided on important issues, including Iran’s apparent nuclear ambitions, Europe’s intention to lift its arms embargo against China and the role of the recently created International Criminal Court. Europeans see the court as an important step in creating a system of international justice, but Washington fears it may become a venue to harass and embarrass the U.S.

Still, the improved atmospherics alone seemed to add up to a “mission accomplished” in preparing the groundwork for President Bush’s visit to Europe this month.

Europeans and U.S. officials agreed that Rice’s trip reflected a mutual desire to end the rift and that it established a better climate for addressing the issues that divide them.

Bush’s visit will be aimed at enlisting skeptical allies in Washington’s proclaimed goals of bringing political reform, freedom and democracy to the Middle East to curb the growth of terrorism in the region.

The extent of the shift in mood at official levels is hard to exaggerate. It was just 2 1/2 years ago that Schroeder won reelection, mainly by mixing Germany’s pacifist leanings with a not-so-subtle tinge of anti-U.S. rhetoric. His then-justice minister, Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, once compared Bush to Adolf Hitler.

In the run-up to the Iraq war, stories flew of angry, personal exchanges between U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his French counterpart, Dominique de Villepin, and talk came from Washington that France would be punished and Germany ignored for its opposition.

For French and German officials, the desire to reconcile is driven more by shared interests than the shared values Rice consistently mentioned on her trip.

“The transatlantic partnership is a precondition for global stability,” said Karsten Voigt, who coordinates U.S.-German relations from his office at the German Foreign Ministry. “The global financial system, the United Nations, the WTO [World Trade Organization] are all affected by this.”

Bush’s decision to seek European help represents a significant shift from the pre-Iraq war period, when his administration was quick to rebuff allies opposed to the invasion with a message that if they didn’t want to help, the U.S. could and would act on its own. Now, gripped with the ambitious vision of remaking the Middle East, Bush knows Europe can be an enormous help.

Europeans and Americans point to the breakthrough in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an area of potential cooperation where they share overlapping views of the way forward. In other areas, this cooperation could be much more difficult.

Germans, for example, are uncomfortable with the kind of grand vision expressed by Bush. They note that the German people once were captivated by the vision of Nazism that led them and the world to catastrophe.

Europeans also point out that Rice’s warm reception by their leaders does not reflect the more negative public mood.

“The government’s movement in the direction of the United States is not supported by public opinion here,” Voigt said. “It’s allowing it, but with considerable skepticism.”

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Times staff writer Sebastian Rotella in Paris and researcher Christian Retzlaff in Berlin contributed to this report.