Europeans Give Bush Visit Mixed Marks

During the first eight months of his presidency, much of Europe saw in Bush a swaggering, gun-slinging, lone ranger figure whose imagination didn't seem to stretch beyond a certain ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Then he proceeded to back out of treaty after treaty - from Kyoto to the international court to the anti-ballistic missile pact. The latter raised eyebrows in Germany, a country that had been literally divided by the Cold War, and elsewhere in Europe, fueling fears that the move could provoke Russia into a new arms race. Instead, in the intervening months, Bush sought to bring Russia closer to the U.S. and Europe.

And in speech after speech during the past five days in Europe, Bush has sought to allay fears that the U.S. is seeking to go its own way in the world or that a values gap is expanding between the continents.

"There's a heck of a lot more that unites us than divides us," he said on Sunday in France. "We share the same values, we trade $2 trillion (2.173 trillion euro) a year. I mean, I don't view hostility here."

Paving the way for better ties

Bernhard May, deputy director of the German Council for Foreign Relations in Berlin, says the visit has already paved the way for improved transatlantic relations .

"The most important point is that he assured Europeans that he will not implement unilateral foreign policy," May says. "There are other problems in the relationship, like trade and environmental disputes, but nobody expected him to come with solutions for those."

He says the groundwork Bush laid here could help generate support for military intervention in Iraq if diplomatic efforts to get UN weapons inspectors back into the country fail.

"Some Europeans, including German politicians were not yet willing to face the challenge of how to deal with Saddam Hussein. Now many are saying that the first step is to put more pressure on him to allow weapons inspectors in," he says. "But if that fails, politicians are now coming around to the idea of using military means."

Ending the Cold War

May also speaks favorably of the U.S.'s redefined relationship with Russia, which he says will have positive repercussions for Europe.

"Now, the U.S., Russia and Europe are working together on the most difficult security issues. In addition, the enlargement of the European Union and accepting new members into NATO is part of a policy to get rid of the Cold War structure in Europe. That is good news for everyone from Portugal to Siberia," he says.

Another political analyst casts a more jaundiced eye in his dissection of Bush's trip, pointing to what he sees as a growing gulf between European and American values.

"The philosophical divide between Bush and the U.S. and the European Union is quite fundamental. It really is a question of unilateralism vs. multilateralism," asserts Michael Emerson, a senior researcher at the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels.

Europe: The new melting pot

"Europe is now looking at its eastern periphery and its relationship with Russia as integrating Europe," he says. "The U.S. is not integrating with anybody, but we are. We're integrating with Russia, the Middle East and Africa. It's a different type of world that Europeans are looking at, and we feel we need to work it out progressively, integrating concepts and mechanisms."

It's a view of Europe that encompasses a melting pot of beliefs and cultures, from Christianity to Islam.

Emerson doesn't mince his words in his acerbic assessment of U.S. foreign policy: "The U.S. approach is to be as far away as possible and, when they see an enemy, to strike as hard as possible. Otherwise, they prefer to just stay home."

He sees little significance or change as a result of the visit. He describes the disarmament treaty with Moscow as a "vestige, a left over from the Cold War."

May, on the other hand, believes the deal signed in Rome to make Russia a junior NATO partner represents a tremendous expansion of the transatlatic relationship. He feels the deal struck with the Russians, along with his feather-smoothing visit to Europe shows that Bush has quickly learned one of the painful lessons that faces every first-term administration.

"It has been a painful process for Bush that was greatly accelerated after September 11," May says, "but he has learned that if you're the only superpower in the world, you can't protect your own people across the globe by going unilateral."

"It won't be a European type of multilateral approach because the U.S. and Russia look at the world different than we do," he adds, "but I'm optimistic that it will be multilateral."