Good lead line in this article.
He came, he saw, he conquered … nothing.
I don’t think there were expectations as the European Union and Nato met with the American President other than some style diplomacy.
EU leaders never had any illusion in the first place. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in her turn-on-the-charm European tour before Bush, had laid down the law: we want democracy in the Middle East and trade, not the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Protocol. Javier Solana, the EU’s top diplomat, had already admitted publicly that “they won’t change, and neither will we, so we might as well forget it”.
Bush’s trip may have been to Brussels, but it was all about Asia (China) and the Middle East (Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Iran). Bush insisted at all stops he now wants a “partnership” with Europe: Chirac and Schroeder, on the record, praised the new tune, but their diplomats insist that only facts will test the rhetoric. “It may be the same wine in a different bottle,” quipped a diplomat. Bush certainly did not engage in his trademark born-again Christian fundamentalist rap that makes cultured Europeans cringe. But he insisted he wants to see “an arc of reform from Morocco to Bahrain, passing through Iraq and Afghanistan”, which for many a European still means regime change by force.
