Europe Builds Itself Up at Bush's Expense

By GREGG EASTERBROOK

WASHINGTON — THOUSANDS of protesters chanted against President Bush during his stops in Spain, Belgium and Sweden last week, some baring their rear ends; European leaders spoke condescendingly of America's president; the European press depicted him as a cowboy hayseed. In other words, from the European perspective, the Bush visit could not have gone better.

As the European Union struggles to expand, to "harmonize" its thousands of overlapping rules, to manage its uncountable internecine jealousies and to formulate a new understanding of what it means to be European, there is one thing all Europeans seem to agree on. It is faux horror about the United States.

For all their pretenses of being dismayed by Mr. Bush, if European Union leaders were to describe their dream American president for this moment in time, they might well specify someone exactly like Mr. Bush — seemingly, at least to European eyes, unsophisticated, swaggering and brash, all the qualities the European Union can unite on in dreading the United States.

"The European Union has a hormone problem," says Jeffrey Gedmin, a Europe scholar who runs the New Atlantic Initiative at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "They are developing a sense that whatever diminishes the stature of the United States is of benefit to Europe."

During Mr. Bush's visit, President Jacques Chirac of France, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany and Prime Minister Wim Kok of the Netherlands all criticized his positions on global warming and missile defense, breaking the taboo that heads of state do not air disagreements during state visits. The Council of Europe, roughly analogous to the Organization of American States, was so underwhelmed that the American president was in its jurisdiction that by midweek the front page of its Web site had no mention of his presence. Instead, the major news was, "Parliamentary Assembly to Observe Elections in Bulgaria."

Such slights against the leader of the best friend Europe has ever had were intended to inflate the European Union's collective ego. For great issues have recently made the European Union fractious: proposed expansion from 15 to 27 member nations (basically all the former Eastern Europeans states want in, and Ireland just voted no to that); whether Turkey should become part of Europe (if it qualifies for the European Union, Turkey would receive huge subsidies); whether there should be a European meta-government that supersedes national capitals. And with the demise of the Soviet Union, Europe now has no enemy to unite its competing states.

In such a context, Europe might find it useful to have a common antagonist. Enter Mr. Bush.

The Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto global warming treaty, supposedly bad news, actually could not have been scripted better. European Union leaders got to repeatedly denounce Mr. Bush for saying the United States will not ratify Kyoto — though no European Union nation has ratified it, either. After the 1992 "Earth Summit" in Rio, when Mr. Bush's father declared that the United States would not accept mandatory greenhouse-gas reductions, he was lambasted by European leaders, who vowed prompt, decisive action to impose restrictions on their own. They did nothing.

Last week, after deriding the Bush position on Kyoto, the European Union again vowed prompt greenhouse action, promising to ratify Kyoto on its own. Yet no European nation other than Denmark has any serious greenhouse-reduction strategy even in the planning stages, while a stand-alone European Union ratification of Kyoto is a million-to-one shot. From the Europeans' standpoint, the ideal outcome was for the Kyoto treaty to collapse but for Washington to take the blame. Now Europe gets to act outraged, while being spared the hard work and cost of actual reform.

Indeed, despite European protestations, American ecological standards are far more strict than European rules, and have been for 20 years or more. "Europe is now the world leader on environmental issues," the Swedish environment minister, Kjell Larsson, said as Mr. Bush arrived in his nation. But Paris today has worse smog than Houston; water quality, especially of rivers, is lower in Europe than in the United States; acid rain reduction has been more rapid in the United States than in Europe; European Union nations like Greece, Italy and Portugal still discharge huge volumes of untreated municipal waste water, a practice all but banned in America. In addition, the European Union did not act against leaded gasoline till more than a decade after the United States; the forested percentage of the United States is higher than the forested percentage of most European countries, while America has fewer threatened species than Europe; and many other environmental indicators favor the United States.

It is true that Europe is more energy-efficient than America. And moreover, as Bjorn Lomborg, a professor at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, demonstrates in the forthcoming book "The Skeptical Environmentalist," smog is declining and water quality improving everywhere in the West, Europe and America alike. But the idea that Europe is ahead on environmental matters is a convenient fiction of European politics.

TRYING to build up Europe by acting outraged against America has become the European national sport on many fronts. One is anger about globalization by American companies, though European firms are themselves active globalizers.

European diplomats harp on America's refusal to agree to a global treaty banning land mines. (The Pentagon maintains that its defense of the North-South Korean border rules out a land-mine ban.) Land-mine reduction is an important goal, but pales on the arms agenda compared with reduction of nuclear warheads — something that, inconveniently, Washington is pursuing.

On no subject is Europe's internal need to feel superior to the United States more clear than capital punishment. Outlawing capital punishment is now a condition of European Union membership, and European commentators like to suggest there is a huge values gap between Europe and America. Always skipped is that 12 American states ban the death penalty, while polls show public pro-and-con views regarding capital punishment are nearly identical in the United States and the European Union. When the French politician Jack Lang was campaigning for mayor of Paris, he ostentatiously traveled to Texas to meet with a death- row prisoner; he was lauded in France. (Imagine if a candidate for mayor of Dallas traveled to Paris to meet with poor North African immigrants to discuss French racism.) Something besides moral opposition to the death penalty underlies this European obsession.

That something may extend to a realignment of American-European relations. Speaking in France before Mr. Bush's visit, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger said the European allies now perceive a need to check American strength. Using the balance-of- power calculations that are the mainstay of traditional European diplomacy, Europe worries that America is too strong, and wants to bring it down a notch.

Mr. Gedmin of the American Enterprise Institute thinks the day may not be far off when Europe sides with Russia or even China against America on some key issue. A possible preview: When Mr. Bush first decided to review North Korea policy, the European Union sent a delegation to Pyongyang to confuse the situation.

It seems certain there's more Euro-static coming, because for the moment, many European leaders believe that making small of America is in their interest.

Gregg Easterbrook, a senior editor of The New Republic and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, is the author of "A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism."