1.17.2005
Bush's 2nd term: What the world wants from America
January 17 2005
By Roger Cohen
«International Herald Tribune»
PARIS "From time to time," said Michel Barnier, the French foreign minister, "it can be useful to listen to each other."
The comment, made in an interview devoted largely to France's desire to improve ties with the United States, reflects a global preoccupation as President George W. Bush embarks on his second term this week with a new foreign policy team.
Countries around the world, whether allies or not, want to be heard - about terrorism, yes, but also about development, trade, the environment and the weak dollar.
The first-term view of America as an unrivaled power with a single focus, uninterested in consultation, its perceived arrogance captured by the photographs at Abu Ghraib, will be hard to shake.
Still, Barnier suggested, "the United States cannot be alone for the next 30 years, confronted by the problems of the world."
For a moment after Sept. 11, 2001, the war on terrorism dictated new alliances. Russia and China, among others, found common cause with America in battling militant Islamists.
But that season may be ending: Russia is irked by what it sees as U.S. meddling in its backyard, not least Ukraine, and China is complaining about U.S. support for Taiwan and opposition to the lifting of a European embargo on arms sales.
America, of course, is not as isolated as the French may believe.
Romania's new president, Traian Basescu, rode to victory last month on a platform of close adherence to the line in Washington and London.
Romanians loved it. Like others in Central and Eastern Europe, they still see the United States as a beacon.
But in the West, America's image is tarnished, and Bush is widely disliked.
From Berlin to Madrid, people want proof that the trans-Atlantic alliance still counts and still involves mutual respect.
Bush is scheduled to visit Brussels next month, a gesture meant to show new sensitivity to Europe's concerns. His mission will not be easy, but the situation in Iraq may focus minds on the need for cooperation.
The Middle East is the nexus of the world's expectations from the president. Bush and his secretary of state-designate, Condoleezza Rice, may ease hostility to America if they are seen to bring fresh energy - and greater balance - to their approach to the Palestinian conflict, and if they can find a way to start withdrawing from Iraq this year.
The war against Islamic terrorism will inevitably remain a central focus for the United States, one whose urgency pushes all else aside in many Americans' view. How Bush conducts it, and especially the outcome in Iraq, will probably prove to be pivotal to his legacy.
But to concentrate on Islamic terrorism to the exclusion of all else would probably hurt the president in the rest of the world.
Africa wants greater attention to debt relief and more open trade.
Latin America feels neglected and is turning to China as an economic partner. The Dec. 26 tsunami focused attention on poverty, an issue where the world wants more American leadership.
That is America's lot, the poisoned fruit of its power: The world looks to it for peace, for prosperity, for virtually everything. The burden is an impossible one, and one complicated by all the ambivalence that great power inspires. Even as they look to Washington, countries resent the fact that they are obliged to do so.
What most of the world wants from Bush is for American power to be wielded with greater subtlety. Otherwise, the coalitions he has fostered to confront North Korea's nuclear weapons or Iran's nuclear ambitions may prove fragile, potentially leaving him to face an expensive, perilous and lonely new war.
America's might is unrivaled. The question is how best to use it.
Europe
As Europeans reconcile themselves to another four years of the Bush presidency, there is a growing recognition that the trans-Atlantic alliance, while not sundered, has changed irrevocably.
The bitter clash over the Iraq war, the open yearning in some European capitals for Bush's defeat at the polls, even America's tolerance of a weaker dollar, which has hurt European exporters - all attest to a relationship tinged by suspicion and mutual incomprehension.
For some in Europe, the best remedy is simply to have more realistic expectations of the United States. Europeans, they say, must accept that they are no longer the fulcrum for U.S. foreign and economic policy.
"When you go to Texas, when you go to Florida, you find Europe is no longer the center it once was," said Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French writer-philosopher, who recently completed a seven-month trip around the United States.
"The center of gravity in the United States has completely shifted west, to Asia rather than Europe," Lévy said. "It's not because of American mischief. The map of the world has a different shape."
Still, there is much the Atlantic partners can do together, whether it is curbing the nuclear ambitions of Iran, rekindling the Middle East peace process or righting the imbalances in the global economy.
Among immediate steps, Europe hopes the Bush administration will curb its trade and budget deficits, which would bolster the dollar and take some pressure off the euro. And Europeans, notably Prime Minister Tony Blair, want the White House to get serious about brokering a deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
The tumultuous events of the last few years show the complementary strengths of the United States and Europe: America's military might and unswerving political principles; Europe's ability to find multilateral solutions, exemplified by the quiet success of the European Union.
Realism about the United States does not mean cynicism. Many Europeans who deplore Washington's blunt methods and go-it-alone tendencies still say the United States can recapture its moral leadership.
"The most burning priority is to return to the due process of law in the prisons the U.S. established after 9/11," said Michael Naumann, editor of the Die Zeit, the German newspaper. He said that only after a full accounting of the Iraq war, admitting what went wrong, could the United States play a positive role in fostering democracy in the Middle East.
For Naumann, who once worked as a book publisher in New York, America's most lasting contribution would be to reclaim its status as a wellspring of the arts. Too many Europeans, he said, view American culture as synonymous with raunchy television like the "Sex and the City" series. "What I wish most from the United States is the next novel from Tom Pynchon," he said.
- Mark Landler in Frankfurt
China
Few countries are benefiting as much as China these days from the international status quo - and Beijing knows it. So, as U.S. criticisms of China have shifted from human rights to the value of its currency and the aggressiveness of its trade practices, Chinese leaders have tried hard to keep the peace while exporting ever more.
China's economy is doubling in size every 10 years, and personal incomes have been climbing steeply, especially in the cities. Trade with the United States plays a huge role in that growth, as investors around the world pour money into Chinese factories that make goods destined mainly for the U.S. market.
China's trade surplus with the United States now equals slightly more than a tenth of its entire economic output - an extraordinary figure.
China is both a huge beneficiary of American consumer appetites and profoundly dependent on them.
That dependence makes China nervous, especially when the Bush administration imposes restrictions on Chinese shipments to the United States - anything from steel to brassieres.
China needs a prosperous America, with economic policies that not only steer clear of protectionism but also encourage consumption and keep the dollar fairly stable. Low U.S. interest rates and big budget deficits have helped China in the short term, by fueling a consumption binge in the United States and making it easier for American companies and individuals to borrow huge sums and invest the money in China.
From Beijing's point of view, although not Washington's, the thorniest issue is also the oldest: America's continued support for Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province. China has warned again in recent weeks that the United States should stop providing military support for the island.
- Keith Bradsher in Hong Kong
Latin America
What will it take to get the United States to pay attention to Latin America? A resurgence of anti-American guerrillas?
That rueful question crosses minds in Latin America because, even as Washington worries that poverty and inequality generate new enemies for America in the Islamic world, it has shown much less urgency about similar problems festering in its own backyard.
When Bush began his first term, Latin Americans had reason to hope that the pattern, evident since the collapse of the Soviet Union, would change. In a speech during the 2000 campaign, Bush had promised that, "should I become president, I will look south, not as an afterthought but as a fundamental commitment." After he took office, his first state visit was to Mexico.
Then, of course, came the Sept. 11 attacks. As Washington focused on Afghanistan and Iraq, the Western Hemisphere quickly reverted to the ancillary role it played during much of the war on communism.
During the cold war, at least, there were moments when Cuba, Chile or Nicaragua riveted Washington's attention. But now, Latin Americans say, their region is almost completely off Washington's radar screen.
Last year, much of the region's economic growth came from booming trade with China, which is increasingly seen as a card to be played against American hegemony. In the absence of the respect Latin America has always craved most from the United States, money talks loudest, and at the moment, it is China, not America, that seems to be accomplishing the most with it.
- Larry Rohter in Rio de Janeiro
Africa
More than dollars or drugs or deployments, Africa these days wants a change in philosophy from America: Give up trying to help in the old way, with assistance conceived from afar and parachuted in. Instead, the message from South Africa to Sudan is the same: Help find African solutions to Africa's many woes.
Instead of grant aid from America, Africa wants relief from its foreign debts. African leaders want America to stop pushing expensive patented medicines to fight scourges like AIDS, and instead to make it easier for poor countries to buy generic versions. Where peacekeeping troops are needed to quell the continent's conflicts, Africans say, instead of sending the U.S. Marine Corps, offer logistical support and resources so that African peacekeepers can do the job.
Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni suggested recently that the peacekeepers from Uruguay, Nepal, Pakistan, India and a variety of other non-African nations that are already stationed across the continent do not understand Africa and are demoralizing an already demoralized place.
The same goes for the fostering of democracy on the continent, and the American habit of passing judgment on African efforts, publicly declaring elections either free and fair or crooked.
"We cannot be heartily independent if we incline to subdue ourselves to the stamp of approval of foreign governments every time we go to the polls," said Tanzania's president, Benjamin Mkapa; he urged Africans to monitor African elections instead.
So too in the economic realm, where African leaders are urging America to open the drawbridge to its products. For example, Africa's tens of millions of cotton farmers say they could compete profitably in the world market, if not for the lavish subsidies Washington gives their American rivals. Play fair, they say. The respect that African leaders are seeking from America would mean imposing fewer grand "initiatives" on the continent, however well intentioned.
- Marc Lacey in Nairobi
East Asia
North Korea is not a country, but a cult. In dealing with a cult, it is not usually very productive, as Bush has done, to call its Dear Leader "evil" and "a pygmy."
After four years of ideology and imprecations but no progress in dealing with North Korea, with its comatose economy and its increasingly worrisome nuclear weapons program, many in Asia want the United States to change its approach and start trying to achieve practical results patiently and in small increments - even if that means being civil to the North's dictator, Kim Jong Il. At the least, they pray that Washington will resist the urge to do anything precipitous that would set off a crisis.
Whether by explosion or implosion, any sudden change in North Korea could be calamitous for the region, many Asians believe. For one thing, its nuclear weapons could be used, or could slip into rogue hands.
A collapse of Kim family rule would probably unleash floods of desperate refugees on the country's neighbors. The coast guards of Japan, Russia and South Korea have detailed plans to head off an expected rush of boat people, and China has stationed more troops along its border with North Korea.
But in America, a broad coalition of Korean-Americans, Christian and human rights activists and conservatives in Congress wants to hurry such a collapse by flooding North Korea this year with cheap portable radios that can receive broadcasts from outside the country, and with prepaid cellular phones that can connect with the Chinese network.
News of these plans spurred North Korea's propaganda machine last fall into a fury of hostility.
A positive sign to Asians: Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador in Seoul and a moderate, is expected to be the new assistant secretary of state assigned to deal with North Korea.
- James Brooke in Tokyo
Russia
What Russia wants from the United States, increasingly, is less and less.
A much-touted "dialogue" on oil and gas that only two years ago was supposed to open the spigot to American consumers has languished instead, as Russia has turned to markets in China, Japan and India.
President Vladimir Putin's handling of the prosecution of Yukos Oil, once the country's largest, most-Western-oriented producer, has exposed what can only be considered his indifference to American opinion on matters of transparency and the rule of law.
Even in the war on terror, one area where Putin and President Bush have found common ground, the scope for cooperation appears to be shrinking, in large part because of concerns about U.S. involvement within what Russia regards as its historical sphere of influence.
Not too long ago, Russia seemed to value American respect. Putin is a proud leader of a proud nation that still considers itself a balance, if not a rival, to the world's only superpower.
But judging by his brusque public remarks recently in response to a Houston bankruptcy court's actions in the Yukos case, the overturning of disputed presidential elections in neighboring Ukraine and other issues, Putin intends to reconstruct a strong Russia politically, economically and militarily, regardless of what Americans may think of his methods.
- Steven Lee Myers in Moscow
The Arab World
At large in the Arab world, my daily banter with taxi drivers, bazaar merchants, waiters and the like flows amiably enough until they ask, as they invariably do, where I am from.
"New York," I usually respond, waiting to see how long it takes to register that that means "American." Then it is often like watching a shutter clang down: Their chitchat halts, their eyes suddenly avoid mine, and the transaction at hand is brought to a hasty conclusion.
To a certain extent, these everyday encounters suggest the broader state of Arab-American relations today. On every important issue, the region simmers with resentment of the United States and its apparent disdain for the Arabs.
Yet as pervasive as the can't-live-with-them feelings about America have become, the more pragmatic Arabs realize that can't-live-without-them is the only realistic approach. Nabil Fahmy, Egypt's ambassador to Washington, captured that view in a speech at the American University in Cairo:
"I cannot succeed in pursuing my domestic objectives, economic or political; I cannot succeed in pursuing my regional objectives, for peace, stability, you name it, in the Middle East; and I cannot succeed in pursuing my global objectives in trying to add my agenda to the global agenda - be it on social issues, on arms control issues, on economic issues - without engaging America," the ambassador said.
"Agreeing is another issue, but we cannot afford, as Egypt, to pursue any of our national interests and expect to succeed, unless we engage America. Neither side has the option in the near term, nor in the medium term, of ignoring the other."
The issues of Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dominate Arab-American relations; in many Arab minds, they are twin ills that the United States prolongs.
What the Arab world wants from America now is to find some modicum of stability in Iraq and to return in earnest to the search for a solution in the West Bank and Gaza.
While Middle Eastern regimes undoubtedly have exploited the Palestinian question for decades to justify all manner of domestic repression, solving it would remove a taproot for violence and extremism. Arabs universally find the Bush administration appallingly uncritical of Israel, but the lack of engagement is equally troublesome.
Ultimately, those who have not lost all hope in the United States wish fervently that it and the Arab world had one prominent shared enterprise, some proof that being friends with America is worth something.
"We need a success story, be it Iraq, be it in the Middle East peace process, be it on issues of some humanitarian exercise, wherever," said Ambassador Fahmy. "We need to do something that clearly indicates to both sides that we are working together."
- Neil MacFarquhar in Cairo
By Roger Cohen
«International Herald Tribune»
PARIS "From time to time," said Michel Barnier, the French foreign minister, "it can be useful to listen to each other."
The comment, made in an interview devoted largely to France's desire to improve ties with the United States, reflects a global preoccupation as President George W. Bush embarks on his second term this week with a new foreign policy team.
Countries around the world, whether allies or not, want to be heard - about terrorism, yes, but also about development, trade, the environment and the weak dollar.
The first-term view of America as an unrivaled power with a single focus, uninterested in consultation, its perceived arrogance captured by the photographs at Abu Ghraib, will be hard to shake.
Still, Barnier suggested, "the United States cannot be alone for the next 30 years, confronted by the problems of the world."
For a moment after Sept. 11, 2001, the war on terrorism dictated new alliances. Russia and China, among others, found common cause with America in battling militant Islamists.
But that season may be ending: Russia is irked by what it sees as U.S. meddling in its backyard, not least Ukraine, and China is complaining about U.S. support for Taiwan and opposition to the lifting of a European embargo on arms sales.
America, of course, is not as isolated as the French may believe.
Romania's new president, Traian Basescu, rode to victory last month on a platform of close adherence to the line in Washington and London.
Romanians loved it. Like others in Central and Eastern Europe, they still see the United States as a beacon.
But in the West, America's image is tarnished, and Bush is widely disliked.
From Berlin to Madrid, people want proof that the trans-Atlantic alliance still counts and still involves mutual respect.
Bush is scheduled to visit Brussels next month, a gesture meant to show new sensitivity to Europe's concerns. His mission will not be easy, but the situation in Iraq may focus minds on the need for cooperation.
The Middle East is the nexus of the world's expectations from the president. Bush and his secretary of state-designate, Condoleezza Rice, may ease hostility to America if they are seen to bring fresh energy - and greater balance - to their approach to the Palestinian conflict, and if they can find a way to start withdrawing from Iraq this year.
The war against Islamic terrorism will inevitably remain a central focus for the United States, one whose urgency pushes all else aside in many Americans' view. How Bush conducts it, and especially the outcome in Iraq, will probably prove to be pivotal to his legacy.
But to concentrate on Islamic terrorism to the exclusion of all else would probably hurt the president in the rest of the world.
Africa wants greater attention to debt relief and more open trade.
Latin America feels neglected and is turning to China as an economic partner. The Dec. 26 tsunami focused attention on poverty, an issue where the world wants more American leadership.
That is America's lot, the poisoned fruit of its power: The world looks to it for peace, for prosperity, for virtually everything. The burden is an impossible one, and one complicated by all the ambivalence that great power inspires. Even as they look to Washington, countries resent the fact that they are obliged to do so.
What most of the world wants from Bush is for American power to be wielded with greater subtlety. Otherwise, the coalitions he has fostered to confront North Korea's nuclear weapons or Iran's nuclear ambitions may prove fragile, potentially leaving him to face an expensive, perilous and lonely new war.
America's might is unrivaled. The question is how best to use it.
Europe
As Europeans reconcile themselves to another four years of the Bush presidency, there is a growing recognition that the trans-Atlantic alliance, while not sundered, has changed irrevocably.
The bitter clash over the Iraq war, the open yearning in some European capitals for Bush's defeat at the polls, even America's tolerance of a weaker dollar, which has hurt European exporters - all attest to a relationship tinged by suspicion and mutual incomprehension.
For some in Europe, the best remedy is simply to have more realistic expectations of the United States. Europeans, they say, must accept that they are no longer the fulcrum for U.S. foreign and economic policy.
"When you go to Texas, when you go to Florida, you find Europe is no longer the center it once was," said Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French writer-philosopher, who recently completed a seven-month trip around the United States.
"The center of gravity in the United States has completely shifted west, to Asia rather than Europe," Lévy said. "It's not because of American mischief. The map of the world has a different shape."
Still, there is much the Atlantic partners can do together, whether it is curbing the nuclear ambitions of Iran, rekindling the Middle East peace process or righting the imbalances in the global economy.
Among immediate steps, Europe hopes the Bush administration will curb its trade and budget deficits, which would bolster the dollar and take some pressure off the euro. And Europeans, notably Prime Minister Tony Blair, want the White House to get serious about brokering a deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
The tumultuous events of the last few years show the complementary strengths of the United States and Europe: America's military might and unswerving political principles; Europe's ability to find multilateral solutions, exemplified by the quiet success of the European Union.
Realism about the United States does not mean cynicism. Many Europeans who deplore Washington's blunt methods and go-it-alone tendencies still say the United States can recapture its moral leadership.
"The most burning priority is to return to the due process of law in the prisons the U.S. established after 9/11," said Michael Naumann, editor of the Die Zeit, the German newspaper. He said that only after a full accounting of the Iraq war, admitting what went wrong, could the United States play a positive role in fostering democracy in the Middle East.
For Naumann, who once worked as a book publisher in New York, America's most lasting contribution would be to reclaim its status as a wellspring of the arts. Too many Europeans, he said, view American culture as synonymous with raunchy television like the "Sex and the City" series. "What I wish most from the United States is the next novel from Tom Pynchon," he said.
- Mark Landler in Frankfurt
China
Few countries are benefiting as much as China these days from the international status quo - and Beijing knows it. So, as U.S. criticisms of China have shifted from human rights to the value of its currency and the aggressiveness of its trade practices, Chinese leaders have tried hard to keep the peace while exporting ever more.
China's economy is doubling in size every 10 years, and personal incomes have been climbing steeply, especially in the cities. Trade with the United States plays a huge role in that growth, as investors around the world pour money into Chinese factories that make goods destined mainly for the U.S. market.
China's trade surplus with the United States now equals slightly more than a tenth of its entire economic output - an extraordinary figure.
China is both a huge beneficiary of American consumer appetites and profoundly dependent on them.
That dependence makes China nervous, especially when the Bush administration imposes restrictions on Chinese shipments to the United States - anything from steel to brassieres.
China needs a prosperous America, with economic policies that not only steer clear of protectionism but also encourage consumption and keep the dollar fairly stable. Low U.S. interest rates and big budget deficits have helped China in the short term, by fueling a consumption binge in the United States and making it easier for American companies and individuals to borrow huge sums and invest the money in China.
From Beijing's point of view, although not Washington's, the thorniest issue is also the oldest: America's continued support for Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province. China has warned again in recent weeks that the United States should stop providing military support for the island.
- Keith Bradsher in Hong Kong
Latin America
What will it take to get the United States to pay attention to Latin America? A resurgence of anti-American guerrillas?
That rueful question crosses minds in Latin America because, even as Washington worries that poverty and inequality generate new enemies for America in the Islamic world, it has shown much less urgency about similar problems festering in its own backyard.
When Bush began his first term, Latin Americans had reason to hope that the pattern, evident since the collapse of the Soviet Union, would change. In a speech during the 2000 campaign, Bush had promised that, "should I become president, I will look south, not as an afterthought but as a fundamental commitment." After he took office, his first state visit was to Mexico.
Then, of course, came the Sept. 11 attacks. As Washington focused on Afghanistan and Iraq, the Western Hemisphere quickly reverted to the ancillary role it played during much of the war on communism.
During the cold war, at least, there were moments when Cuba, Chile or Nicaragua riveted Washington's attention. But now, Latin Americans say, their region is almost completely off Washington's radar screen.
Last year, much of the region's economic growth came from booming trade with China, which is increasingly seen as a card to be played against American hegemony. In the absence of the respect Latin America has always craved most from the United States, money talks loudest, and at the moment, it is China, not America, that seems to be accomplishing the most with it.
- Larry Rohter in Rio de Janeiro
Africa
More than dollars or drugs or deployments, Africa these days wants a change in philosophy from America: Give up trying to help in the old way, with assistance conceived from afar and parachuted in. Instead, the message from South Africa to Sudan is the same: Help find African solutions to Africa's many woes.
Instead of grant aid from America, Africa wants relief from its foreign debts. African leaders want America to stop pushing expensive patented medicines to fight scourges like AIDS, and instead to make it easier for poor countries to buy generic versions. Where peacekeeping troops are needed to quell the continent's conflicts, Africans say, instead of sending the U.S. Marine Corps, offer logistical support and resources so that African peacekeepers can do the job.
Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni suggested recently that the peacekeepers from Uruguay, Nepal, Pakistan, India and a variety of other non-African nations that are already stationed across the continent do not understand Africa and are demoralizing an already demoralized place.
The same goes for the fostering of democracy on the continent, and the American habit of passing judgment on African efforts, publicly declaring elections either free and fair or crooked.
"We cannot be heartily independent if we incline to subdue ourselves to the stamp of approval of foreign governments every time we go to the polls," said Tanzania's president, Benjamin Mkapa; he urged Africans to monitor African elections instead.
So too in the economic realm, where African leaders are urging America to open the drawbridge to its products. For example, Africa's tens of millions of cotton farmers say they could compete profitably in the world market, if not for the lavish subsidies Washington gives their American rivals. Play fair, they say. The respect that African leaders are seeking from America would mean imposing fewer grand "initiatives" on the continent, however well intentioned.
- Marc Lacey in Nairobi
East Asia
North Korea is not a country, but a cult. In dealing with a cult, it is not usually very productive, as Bush has done, to call its Dear Leader "evil" and "a pygmy."
After four years of ideology and imprecations but no progress in dealing with North Korea, with its comatose economy and its increasingly worrisome nuclear weapons program, many in Asia want the United States to change its approach and start trying to achieve practical results patiently and in small increments - even if that means being civil to the North's dictator, Kim Jong Il. At the least, they pray that Washington will resist the urge to do anything precipitous that would set off a crisis.
Whether by explosion or implosion, any sudden change in North Korea could be calamitous for the region, many Asians believe. For one thing, its nuclear weapons could be used, or could slip into rogue hands.
A collapse of Kim family rule would probably unleash floods of desperate refugees on the country's neighbors. The coast guards of Japan, Russia and South Korea have detailed plans to head off an expected rush of boat people, and China has stationed more troops along its border with North Korea.
But in America, a broad coalition of Korean-Americans, Christian and human rights activists and conservatives in Congress wants to hurry such a collapse by flooding North Korea this year with cheap portable radios that can receive broadcasts from outside the country, and with prepaid cellular phones that can connect with the Chinese network.
News of these plans spurred North Korea's propaganda machine last fall into a fury of hostility.
A positive sign to Asians: Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador in Seoul and a moderate, is expected to be the new assistant secretary of state assigned to deal with North Korea.
- James Brooke in Tokyo
Russia
What Russia wants from the United States, increasingly, is less and less.
A much-touted "dialogue" on oil and gas that only two years ago was supposed to open the spigot to American consumers has languished instead, as Russia has turned to markets in China, Japan and India.
President Vladimir Putin's handling of the prosecution of Yukos Oil, once the country's largest, most-Western-oriented producer, has exposed what can only be considered his indifference to American opinion on matters of transparency and the rule of law.
Even in the war on terror, one area where Putin and President Bush have found common ground, the scope for cooperation appears to be shrinking, in large part because of concerns about U.S. involvement within what Russia regards as its historical sphere of influence.
Not too long ago, Russia seemed to value American respect. Putin is a proud leader of a proud nation that still considers itself a balance, if not a rival, to the world's only superpower.
But judging by his brusque public remarks recently in response to a Houston bankruptcy court's actions in the Yukos case, the overturning of disputed presidential elections in neighboring Ukraine and other issues, Putin intends to reconstruct a strong Russia politically, economically and militarily, regardless of what Americans may think of his methods.
- Steven Lee Myers in Moscow
The Arab World
At large in the Arab world, my daily banter with taxi drivers, bazaar merchants, waiters and the like flows amiably enough until they ask, as they invariably do, where I am from.
"New York," I usually respond, waiting to see how long it takes to register that that means "American." Then it is often like watching a shutter clang down: Their chitchat halts, their eyes suddenly avoid mine, and the transaction at hand is brought to a hasty conclusion.
To a certain extent, these everyday encounters suggest the broader state of Arab-American relations today. On every important issue, the region simmers with resentment of the United States and its apparent disdain for the Arabs.
Yet as pervasive as the can't-live-with-them feelings about America have become, the more pragmatic Arabs realize that can't-live-without-them is the only realistic approach. Nabil Fahmy, Egypt's ambassador to Washington, captured that view in a speech at the American University in Cairo:
"I cannot succeed in pursuing my domestic objectives, economic or political; I cannot succeed in pursuing my regional objectives, for peace, stability, you name it, in the Middle East; and I cannot succeed in pursuing my global objectives in trying to add my agenda to the global agenda - be it on social issues, on arms control issues, on economic issues - without engaging America," the ambassador said.
"Agreeing is another issue, but we cannot afford, as Egypt, to pursue any of our national interests and expect to succeed, unless we engage America. Neither side has the option in the near term, nor in the medium term, of ignoring the other."
The issues of Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dominate Arab-American relations; in many Arab minds, they are twin ills that the United States prolongs.
What the Arab world wants from America now is to find some modicum of stability in Iraq and to return in earnest to the search for a solution in the West Bank and Gaza.
While Middle Eastern regimes undoubtedly have exploited the Palestinian question for decades to justify all manner of domestic repression, solving it would remove a taproot for violence and extremism. Arabs universally find the Bush administration appallingly uncritical of Israel, but the lack of engagement is equally troublesome.
Ultimately, those who have not lost all hope in the United States wish fervently that it and the Arab world had one prominent shared enterprise, some proof that being friends with America is worth something.
"We need a success story, be it Iraq, be it in the Middle East peace process, be it on issues of some humanitarian exercise, wherever," said Ambassador Fahmy. "We need to do something that clearly indicates to both sides that we are working together."
- Neil MacFarquhar in Cairo
