[NSP] Bush's Diplomacy Victory Goes Largely Unreported in USA

[Jela Jovanovic]

Bush's Diplomacy Victory Goes Largely Unreported in USA Bush Unveiled a Remarkably Different US Foreign Policy in Europe By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com) June 18, 2001 The New York Times today reports Sen. Joseph Biden, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman under the new Democrat Controlled Senate, commented about Bush's meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin: ``I'm just happy the president went and didn't make things worse." The Washington Post, on the other hand, did not see anything in the Bush-Putin meeting worth a front page story, but did mention at the bottom of a page A4 story that Bush had said "Russia has 'a resource that's invaluable in this new era, and that's brain power.' Without mentioning the U.S. budget cuts, Bush added that 'Russia has got great mathematicians and engineers who can just as easily participate in the high-tech world as American engineers and American mathematicians. That's an area of great interest to me. . . . It's an area where we can begin fruitful dialogue.'" On the other hand, Paris International Herald Tribune began its report on the Bush-Putin meeting with: "Whatever happens now, for good or for ill, a new era in America's relations with Russia began over the weekend. "Seldom have two leaders so strikingly overcome the limited expectations about their first meeting as George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin did on Saturday, putting their new friendship on a high plane of newfound trust and instructing their defense chiefs, both hard-liners, and their foreign secretaries, to find a common approach for a framework for international security." Bush also said, of Vladimir Putin in a press conference in Slovenia, while standing alongside Russia's president: "This was a very good meeting. He is an honest, straightforward man who loves his country," In response to a reporter's question, Bush answered: "Can I trust him? I can. I was able to get a sense of his soul." Before he left on his European meeting, the president had stated: "Russia is no longer America's enemy." What does all this really mean, after fifty years of nuclear confrontation and cold war politics which remain in place a decade after the USSR collapsed? If Russia is no longer America's enemy and we continue to treat China as a primary trading partner, where, exactly, do we find America's enemy? And, perhaps most importantly, can America's media survive if George Bush keeps talking cooperation, not confrontation? It certainly appears that major media outlets seem threatened more by Bush's determined effort to "change the climate" in Washington, and his success on his European trip, in spite of almost universal dire predictions that he was going to be eaten alive by the Europeans. After having been proved embarrassingly wrong, the media in Europe and America seem determined to blame someone besides themselves for their error in judgment. Today's London Telegraph observes: "THE hostility and ridicule heaped on President Bush during his visit to Europe has provoked a backlash in the United States, with many condemning Continental politicians as anti-American and hypocritical. ...American newspapers have generally judged Mr. Bush's first European trip since winning the White House a success, in part, as William Safire of the New York Times argued, because European expectations were "so contemptuously low". The European reaction to Mr. Bush has been perceived as so vitriolic that it has forced even some of his liberal critics to defend their president and reassess whether Europe is as tolerant and sophisticated as they had previously believed. Why is it, do you suppose, it is so hard for some folks in the media to swallow their pride and admit that, perhaps, there is an outside chance that George W. Bush's success in Europe had SOMETHING to do with George W. Bush? What we are seeing is a 21st century American Foreign Policy being created before our eyes. It is a policy that is not based on fear or acceptance of enough socialism that we don't "frighten" European leaders. It's based on a view of America's interests, while respecting the fact that foreign leaders are going to pursue THEIR best interests. Bush is developing a policy that combines confidence with cooperation to replace a policy based on fear and confrontation. Bush has refused to use America's power to threaten or beg OPEC into increasing THEIR production, because he is smart enough to know that in a free market, the best way to deal with the oil producing nations is through competition, not threats and not begging. When we show we can and will increase our own oil production, the Arab nations will have a reason to lower their prices. After all, after Desert Storm, the oil glut that developed, in spite of the damage done to Kuwait's oil fields, dropped oil prices by two-thirds. This put a lot of American oil producers out of business, because they could not compete with $9 a barrel oil. As a former oilman, Bush not only knows that, he experienced it. Perhaps President Putin, as reported in the Washington Times (www.washtimes.com) caught the tone the best: " "Reality was a lot bigger than expectations," Mr. Putin said. "This was not only a confidential discussion, but all the way to more than what you could expect from frankness, because President Bush, as a person who has studied history, proposed a very global, wide-scale approach and view to history." Mr. Putin -- who noted that the two presidents both named daughters after their mothers and mothers-in-law -- said they have even more in common. "The president�s a history major, and so am I. And we remember the old history. It�s time to write new history, in a positive and constructive way," he said. Mr. Bush clearly bonded quickly with Mr. Putin. Pictures from inside the private meeting show the two men laughing together. They also shared stories about their families and raising children. That's certainly a far cry from Biden's view that President Bush is so incompetent that he would inevitably make a mess of things on his first trip to Europe as President of the United States.. 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