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Why Europeans Don't Like Bush TruthNews Commentary, August 17, 2001 A recent poll jointly commissioned by the Council for Foreign Relations and the International Herald Tribune reveals that President Bush says President Bush is highly unpopular among Europeans because - get this - "he makes decisions based entirely on U.S. interests." Well, it's about time. After 8 years of Clintonian multilateralism, in which every U.S. foreign policy decision was held hostage to what the rest of the world might think, we finally have an American president who makes decision based on U.S. interests. That's why Europeans don't vote in our elections - because we don't want them to have a say in our affairs. The Europeans are upset that Bush withdrew from the Kyoto accord struck by Clinton and his internationalist cronies. Kyoto is another feel-good treaty that would require "industrialized" nations to cut greenhouse emissions while allowing India, China, Indonesia, and other "developing" nations to continue to throw gobs of smoke, soot, ash, and poisons into the atmosphere. The Kyoto treaty is so flawed that not a single European country has ratified it, nor has Japan, the country of its origin. Bill Clinton didn't even bother to submit it to the Senate for a ratification vote. But these European hypocrites are upset that Bush has decided to discard it. The Europeans are upset that Bush is thinking about withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, a Cold War arms control treaty between the U.S. and the now-defunct Soviet Union. Never mind that the Europeans aren't even signatories to the ABM treaty (nor are the Chinese, another foe of missile defense), why are the Europeans so against missile defense? They claim that if the U.S. has an ABM system, a new arms race will result. This argument made some sense in the days when the Soviets had 10,000 nuclear weapons pointed at us. The argument was that if we deployed a capability to intercept 10,000 missiles, the Soviets would simply deploy another 10,000. The logic wasn't altogether sound, since the Soviets were already at the breaking point with their arms production, and another arms race would have driven them into bankruptcy (which is exactly what happened with the Reagan defense build-up). What about today, however? Aren't the Russians our friends? Well, some people think so since now they have only 6,000 nuclear weapons pointed at us. That's beside the point, however, since the proposed missile defense system is for the purpose of defending against strikes from rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran, and potential accidental launches from "friendly" countries such as Russia and China. Even America, the richest nation in the world, cannot afford to build a system to defend against 6,000 missiles launched from Russia. So if they decide to nuke us, we'll have to go back to the old nuclear deterrence posture of nuking them back. But for limited strikes, a missile defense system makes sense. And for those Democrats who claim that the real threat is a ship sneaking into one of our harbors with a nuclear weapon on board, we'll just have to make sure that the Navy can defend our ports. So, what is Europe's beef with Bush? Well, as we pointed out in an earlier column, Europe is not our friend. They may not be our enemy, but they definitely don't have our best interests at heart. If Kyoto weakens us economically, well that simply helps them to the top of the heap. If ABM weakens us militarily, then Europe is stronger by comparison and can bully us to do what they want. So, it's a good sign that Bush is unpopular in Europe. Reagan was unpopular in the Soviet Union, Churchill was unpopular in Germany, and Sharon is unpopular in the Arab world. But respect is more important than popularity, and even a bully respects strength and decisiveness.
© 2001 TruthNews. All Rights Reserved. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
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