What Bush Owes Blair

It is safe to assume that the two men will spend little time sympathizing with the plight of Jacques Chirac, who is reeling from France’s massive vote against the E.U. constitution. Or shed a tear for Gerhard Schröder, who seems to be headed for rejection by Germany’s voters this fall. Blair’s views of Chirac cannot be printed in a family magazine, and Schröder’s anti-American, anti-Bush campaign still rankles in the White House.

Indeed, Bush and Blair might permit themselves a bit of a gloat, both having been reelected, along with Australia’s John Howard, while voters are preparing to retire the leaders of the Franco-German antiwar, pro-Saddam axis.

Chortling done, the serious business of the meeting starts. Blair personally makes no claim to payback: He did what he thought was right when he leapt to America’s side, still says he was right, and is willing to pay the domestic political price for his beliefs. Instead of asking for a quid pro quo, the prime minister wants to persuade the president that this is a historic moment–that we are witnessing the collapse of what Don Rumsfeld aptly called “Old Europe.” In Blair’s view the United States now has an opportunity to turn “New Europe,” and sensible residents of France, Germany, and other countries, in what the prime minister’s aides call “the right direction.” They agree that America has done a great deal in recent months to restore the transatlantic relationship; that Europe now recognizes that its crisis is about Europe, not about the United States; and that the president’s recent statements that America welcomes Europe’s leadership role in dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions has gone down well. Now is the time, they think, for Bush to capitalize on those developments to convert Europe into an outward looking, pro-American ally, rather than a “sulking alternative pole of attraction.”

In order to do that, to put the East European countries firmly on the path to market-based economies and pro-American foreign policies, Blair, who will be president of the E.U. for a six-month term starting in July, and chairman of the G-8, is hoping that the president will reach out to Europe at the G-8 conference next month in Edinburgh.

That will require Bush to support–indeed, to lead–in addressing two problems: climate change and African poverty.

Administration officials have long regretted the brusque manner in which they dismissed the Kyoto protocol, supposedly designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Not that the White House thinks the protocol makes any sense: Without the cooperation of China and India, emissions will increase. Besides, the reductions called for would cripple the U.S. economy–and are anyhow unattainable, as Blair found to his embarrassment when Britain failed to meet its own emission-reduction target.

Blair knows that the president does not find the data used by those who believe the earth is warming convincing. But he knows, too, that Bush is concerned about energy security, a good reason for wanting to reduce the use of emission-causing oil, and that the president “has a good story to tell.”

America is spending more on clean coal technology, and on reducing the cost of nuclear power, than all of the other members of the G-8 combined. So Blair thinks it absurd that the United States should allow itself to be painted as an anti-environmental thug, opposed to efforts to prevent global warming. He wants Bush “to become part of the conversation,” as one member of the Blair team puts it. That means using the G-8 meeting in Edinburgh to present an American alternative to Kyoto, including a plan to make clean coal technology available to China and India, both of which countries are planning to build hundreds of new coal plants to meet the electricity needs of their rapidly growing economies.

Which brings us to Africa. Blair has two reasons for wanting to tackle the problem of that continent’s poverty. The first is pure Blair: It is the right thing to do. Those who know the prime minister know that he may vacillate when he is conflicted on an issue–he has trouble deciding whether to tackle crime by arresting bad guys or by sympathizing with them because of their “social deprivation”–but when he thinks he is right, he is immovable. And he thinks he is on firm moral ground when he says that richer nations have a responsibility to eliminate poverty in Africa.

Blair’s second reason is more practical. The restive left wing of his Labour party has always supported antipoverty and development programs aimed at bringing Africa into the modern age, no matter how ineffective those programs might be. With his parliamentary majority reduced because so many of his natural supporters opposed the Iraq war–he estimates that some 20 percent of these voters either stayed away from the polls or voted for some other party–Blair needs to give his left something its members want.

So morality and practicality dictate attacking African poverty. Blair thinks that Bush can lead that attack, but not in the old-fashioned, support-your-local-dictator manner that swelled so many Swiss bank accounts. Instead, the prime minister wants the president to join him in an aid-for-accountability program. Just as we are at a historic moment in the future of Europe, so, too, in Africa. With aid as carrot, Blair believes we have a unique opportunity “to change the governance” of African nations. If America will make funds available–“a little bit of new money and some repackaging of old money, disbursed more quickly,” as one Blair official put it–to nations willing to establish high standards of accountability, Africa can begin to end its awful history of poverty and war.

So this prime minister believes. He believes, too, that if Bush signs on to a leadership role, America’s friends in old Europe will have a weapon with which to fight the more numerous, anti-American Bush-haters who have dominated the political scene in France, Germany, Spain, and other countries. Even more important, Blair is convinced that America’s willingness to join his Africa campaign will solidify support for America in new Europe. In return, he is prepared to argue that when the world measures America’s commitment to the amelioration of poverty, the massive contributions of the U.S. private sector should be counted along with Washington’s contribution. That quite appropriate change in measuring compassion, long advocated by neoconservatives such as my Hudson Institute colleague Carol Adelman, but resisted by Europe’s left, would propel America to the top rank of international donors.

Whether Blair can persuade the president that we are indeed at a turning point in European history, and that he should seize the opportunity to reassert American values and leadership, is not at all certain. The president has to consider not only the validity of his friend’s arguments, but the fact that Blair’s success as E.U. president and G-8 chairman, and therefore his political standing at home, very much depends on whether he can rally the president to his cause. Payback time.

Finally, the prime minister will press the president to increase his efforts to persuade Congress that the protectionist road down which many of its members are traveling will have dire consequences not only for the American economy, but also for the U.S.-U.K. alliance. Of particular concern is the inclination on Capitol Hill to insert “buy American” requirements into defense contracts. Two countries that “have been through the fire together,” as one Blair official put it, should be able to cooperate, especially in the case of the joint strike fighter, a project that Blair will tell Bush is characterized by a constant battle by the Brits to keep the information exchange a two-way street. (History buffs will see a repeat of the U.S.-U.K. relationship during the development of our atomic bomb.)

And one last chit-come-due. Blair needs the president to reaffirm his willingness to press Israel and the Palestinians to continue following the so-called road map. No problem for Bush, who is confident that his Middle East policy is succeeding, a confidence that Blair shares. Both men agree that Iraq is coming right, that the momentum provided by the elections, the formation of Iraq’s first freely elected government, the drafting of a constitution followed by a referendum and then by new elections, will in the end overcome the deadly insurgency. And both are prepared to keep troops in Iraq as long as necessary. In addition, Blair is prepared to commit some 5,000 troops to Afghanistan, and, if the recent E.U.-NATO deal to pacify Darfur comes unstuck, other troops to end what Bush authorized then-secretary of state Colin Powell to call genocide. That would make it easier for Bush to respond to pressure from his allies on the Christian right and his enemies among the African-American left to do the same.

An ambitious agenda for a relatively brief meeting. But two savvy conviction-politicians who share the same toothpaste, as Bush famously noted at one of their meetings, shouldn’t need a lot of time to reach agreement on climate change, African relief, information-sharing, trade policy, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Darfur.

Irwin M. Stelzer is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute, and a columnist for the Sunday Times (London).