As romances go, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s tryst with Europe has been positively whirlwind. She arrived, in the eyes of many Europeans, an ideological stooge for a war-mongering American president. Mere days later she is, as French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier called her during a Tuesday news conference in Paris, “Chere Condi.”
Coverage of Rice charming her way across the continent sparked speculation that, after four years of testy relations between the U.S. and “Old Europe,” the arrival–and welcoming–of Chere Condi might herald an era of warmth.
We can hope. And so we do.
But the bluster that blew out of North Korea on Thursday is a stark reminder that friendship is friendship, and business is business. The world has now heard Pyongyang boast that it has nuclear arms. It’s chiefly the responsibility of the European powers–yes, with Washington’s help–to make absolutely sure that same boast never crosses the lips of the mullahs in Iran.
The long (and still simmering) disagreement between the U.S. and much of Western Europe over war in Iraq has exploited old resentments on both sides and fostered new ones as well. But with Iran on its own path toward atomic weaponry, the Europeans must decide which is the greater threat: America’s cultural hegemony and aggressive foreign policy, or the likelihood that another rogue state will soon possess the bomb and, like North Korea, see itself as untouchable.
Rice reportedly ruffled the feathers of several French intellectuals at a private breakfast by pointedly referring to Iran as a “totalitarian state.” How rude. How American. How direct.
The European way has been for France, Britain and Germany to think kind thoughts about the Iranians, and then attempt to persuade them to halt their uranium enrichment programs in return for economic and other international incentives. Washington is skeptical that mollycoddling the mullahs will yield much beyond still more unproductive delays. That merely allows Tehran to continue emulating Pyongyang.
What next? That’s the point. Governments on both sides of the Atlantic need an Iran strategy that is united, as the Europeans want, but also muscular, as Washington wants.
The prospects aren’t bright. The Europeans loved Colin Powell. He was a sophisticate who cherished the talking cure. In Rice they face a secretary of state whose steelier demeanor is closer to that of her boss than of her predecessor.
On multiple fronts she will press harder than Powell did. Two examples: Old Europe has been reluctant to pressure militant Palestinian extremists for a peace settlement, no doubt for fear of angering their adherents in Europe. And, out of petulance over the Iraq war, France and Germany have refused to train Iraqi security forces inside Iraq, insisting instead on training those troops in other lands. How sensible is that?
In case after case, grudges and jealousies have divided Old Europe (although not, generally, the newer democracies of Eastern Europe) and America. Chere Condi and her admirers on the continent need to turn friendship into business. With Iran in particular, the stakes are too high, the risks of rogues bearing nukes too lethal.
