Doubt in a place where Bush has already lost

By CATHERINE FIELD


PARIS - Few people are loathed so widely and so deeply in Europe as George W. Bush.

Among politicians of every stripe, businessmen, artists, fishermen, gardeners or scientists, the American President would be hard pushed to find much support anywhere, from Ireland's Atlantic coast to Poland's border with Russia.

But even though many Europeans hope with a visceral intensity that Bush loses on November 2, some are starting to wonder whether John Kerry would bring any change of substance to US policies.

Opinion polls show that nearly 80 per cent of adults in Germany prefer Kerry to Bush. In France, Bush's support is even tinier - only 5 per cent would vote for him. Even in Britain, 47 per cent of those questioned would go for Kerry, and 16 per cent to Bush.

"There is this very widespread sense that anything that will punish Bush is good for humanity," said Francois Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. "That keeps the interest alive."

In European eyes, the list of Bush's sins is long.

It starts with his rejection of the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol on climate change in March 2001, one of the earliest acts of his presidency and one that provoked outrage in the most environmentally sensitive part of the globe. Greenies branded him the Toxic Texan.

After that, Bush stoked tensions by tearing up the anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia.

Then he destroyed European goodwill after September 11, 2001, by turning his back on Nato's offer of support for the war against Afghanistan's Taleban; US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's memorable snub was that Washington preferred a "coalition of the willing" for the mission.

On the economic front, Bush has practised protectionism and unilateralism time and again, all the while preaching to Europe about the virtues of free trade and abiding by international rules.

He dished out enormous subsidies to American farmers when the European Union was battling to reduce support to its own agricultural lobby.

He gave protection to American steel producers from European exports and backing at the World Trade Organisation for Boeing, which is being crushed by Europe's Airbus for the world airliner market.

But it is the Middle East which has done most to create Bush's image in Europe as the Ugly American.

His war on Iraq dug the deepest rift between Western Europe and America since the end of World War II, and his indifference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has fuelled worries of turbulence among Europe's millions of Muslims.

Even in the most conservative press, Bush is vilified for shallowness, for arrogant nationalism and for his dyed-in-the-wool conservatism in social matters.

He is seen as terrifyingly ignorant of the world beyond America, brandishing a simplistic philosophy of Good versus Evil, of being manipulated by smart neo-conservatives and corporate lobbies.



The leaders of France and Germany - the "Old Europe" despised by the Bush Administration - enjoy enormous public support for their anti-Bush stance.

Bush's Spanish ally Jose Maria Aznar was kicked out of office over Iraq and replaced by a Socialist opponent of the war, and Iraq has left British Prime Minister Tony Blair isolated at home and in Europe.

Seventy-six per cent of respondents in nine European countries questioned by the German Marshall Fund of the US disapprove of Bush's foreign policy, up 20 points from 2002. Eighty per cent said the Iraq war did not merit the cost in lives and money.

Steven Everts, of the Centre for European Reform in London, says the rift between Europe and the US over Iraq has not healed.

"Europe wants a fresh start, and that includes Europeans who are pro-American ... who feel that there's just too much bad blood around," Everts told the Herald.

"Europe and America need a chance to start again, and that's easier to do under a new administration."

But the interest in Europe has switched in the past few weeks from ABB (Anyone But Bush) to some pointed questions about Kerry and whether his election would mean anything substantial.

Kerry has a cultural pedigree that reassures Europeans. Compared with Bush, he has travelled extensively. He has a wife who was born in Africa, he attended school in Geneva and speaks French. He even has a French cousin, Brice Lalonde, a Green who is mayor of a small town in western France.

In his foreign policy, Kerry has spoken reassuringly of mending fences with the European allies, of reviving multilateralism and of negotiations on ways to tackle climate change.

But in the election campaign, where candidates like to hold fuzzy positions to keep the centre ground, none of Kerry's positions is detailed. He may speak of a multilateral approach on global warming, but has not said anything about whether he would bring the US back into Kyoto.

Similarly on Iraq, Kerry's position is not identifiably different from Bush's except where he talks about gaining allied support.

"Some [Europeans] even recognise a real danger that Kerry would expect Europeans to offer more support to them, support that most European countries would be politically and even practically ill-placed to provide," notes the US think tank the Atlantic Council.

"As a result they can see a new set of transatlantic tensions arising out of the good intentions of a Kerry administration."