Intelligence

Diplomacy's just not his style

TheStar.com - Diplomacy's just not his style

TIM HARPER
WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - When George W. Bush brings his second-term diplomatic tour to Ottawa and Halifax next week, Canadians will see a change in tone, but will observe a man for whom diplomacy will never come naturally.

A quick check of his efforts since re-election earlier this month shows a style of diplomacy that sometimes has all the subtlety of a bulldozer and features a president who still carries grudges.

Just ask Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

The socialist leader of Spain called Bush hours after his victory was confirmed on Nov. 3, but the president was too busy to take the call from a man who pulled his troops out of Iraq. Zapatero is still waiting for that return call. White House aides cite "scheduling problems."

Just to ram home a point to the government in Madrid, Bush had Spanish King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia out to the ranch in Crawford, Tex., last week, for a little Thanksgiving lunch; free-range turkey, giblet gravy, prairie chapel bass, mashed sweet potatoes with maple syrup and chipotles and pan-roasted root vegetables stuffing, topped off with pecan and pumpkin pie and washed down with a 2002 Chardonnay.

Zapatero reportedly passed a message to Bush through the king, who holds no political power in Spain, and Bush did finally dash off a written note to the Spanish prime minister. But the White House has nothing to say about the two men actually chatting by phone.

The souring on Spain is reminiscent here of Bush's cold shoulder to Mexican President Vicente Fox, refusing to acknowledge the Cinco de Mayo national holiday in Mexico, a sign of their differences over Iraq, and Bush's cancellation of a May, 2003, trip to Ottawa for the same reason.

Last month, the U.S. ambassador to Spain, George Argyros, skipped the parade marking the Spanish national holiday, then passed on an official reception later in the day hosted by the king.

In Spain, the move was seen as an official snub from Washington. The Madrid daily El Pais, quoting sources, said Juan Carlos buttonholed Bush at Thanksgiving dinner last Wednesday and asked him, "What's up? Are you annoyed?"

Bush, according to the newspaper, told the monarch he was awaiting some type of "gesture" from Zapatero.

Even when Bush reaches out, things can go wrong.

Santiago, Chile, was the site of a now famously shrunken state dinner last weekend when Bush's security contingent refused to back down on its insistence that all guests — Chilean legislators and Supreme Court justices among them — be put through metal detectors before being allowed to sit down for dinner at La Moneda, the presidential palace.

Chilean President Ricardo Lagos said he would have to withdraw invitations to 200 people if the White House didn't back down. The dinner was cancelled. This came a day after Bush waded into the crowd to stare down a Chilean security officer who was in a standoff with a presidential Secret Service officer. Bush grabbed his man from the melee, dragged him out, then strode over for a photo with Lagos, flashing a self-satisfied grin and a wink to the White House press corps.

That won him the moniker "The Gringo Sheriff" in one Chilean daily. Another dubbed the Secret Service "Bush's Gorillas."

Still, the Bush tone was conciliatory. He told a Chilean reporter that even though Lagos did not agree with his decision to invade Iraq, "I respect that, he's still my friend."

But when Bush was asked about the state dinner fiasco a couple of days later in Colombia, he made no attempt to mask his contempt for the question. He told his startled host, President Alvaro Uribe, that that would be just enough, thank you, after a mere four questions at a joint news conference.

"Do you want to take one more?" Uribe asked Bush.

"That's plenty. No, thank you," Bush replied.

Uribe used his extra time to wander through the White House press corps' filing room to ask reporters to write stories touting Colombia as a tourist destination.

Despite the natural inclination of a presidential visit to stoke resentment by closing roads and turn cities upside down, as it will in Ottawa and Halifax this week, Bush will be on the road because he needs more friends in the global sandbox.

There is danger on the horizon in Iran and North Korea and any pre-emptive, unilateral strike by the U.S. in either hotspot would be a diplomatic disaster.

So Bush has re-engaged France, Germany and Britain to help challenge Iran's nuclear pretensions and has again turned to six-party talks to try to ratchet down the temperature with North Korea.

Since his re-election, Bush has also promised to work toward establishment of a Palestinian state during the next four years. Condoleezza Rice, his secretary of state-designate, sent an important message to the world when she made it known unilateralist John Bolton would not be her deputy.

Bush even injected himself into last-ditch talks to revive power-sharing in Northern Ireland last week, phoning Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. That act of diplomacy reminded some of efforts made by president Bill Clinton in the run-up to the Good Friday peace accord of 1998.

So, expect lots of smiles and proper words of support during the brief Bush visit to Canada. But don't expect him to suddenly become a man of summitry.

Bush is a president who spends as little time at international summits as he can, routinely leaving early; and he openly questions the merits of summits (putting Prime Minister Paul Martin's idea for a "Leaders' Group of 20" way down on his to-do list).

When his top European ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, came calling while the votes were still being tallied in Ohio, Bush gave a frosty answer to Blair's suggestion of a global summit on the Middle East, allowing as how he had nothing against summits, as long as he thought they could accomplish something. An announcement Friday that the U.S. will not attend next week's Nairobi anti-land mines conference, to review progress in the pact brokered by Ottawa, was another reminder of international agreements that do not include the Bush administration. The anti-land mine agreement has been ratified by 143 countries; the U.S. is among 51 nations that have not signed.

Bush is still a man whose diplomacy depends very much on personal relations, but even that is not infallible. He once said Russian leader Vladimir Putin was a good man because he could see it in his soul. But Putin is no longer quite the good man now that his favoured candidate in the Ukrainian presidential election is accused of fraud, and the Russian leader himself is seen as yanking his country back into autocratic rule.

Additional articles by Tim Harper

November 28, 2004 at 11:48 AM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home