Good-Bye, Friend: RIP, IHT's John Vinocur

If there ever was a pundit worth quoting from the International Herald Tribune (which used to be jointly owned by The New York Times and The Washington Post), it was John Vinocur. 

The lone conservative pundit who rose to become the executive editor of the IHT (amazing, as he was a conservative) was always worth reading, as I discovered through the years that it became more and more evident that the plethora of liberals there (half from the Times and half from the Post) were often boring and oftenpredictable (not to mention flat-out wrong). 

And No Pasarán linked to John's pieces in the IHT many a time over the years, — not least when he seemed to be the only man in the MSM not to feel "a thrill go up the leg" about Barack Obama — and he was the true red-blooded conservative (not the David Brooks type) in a liberal newspaper.

I communicated with him once or twice — precisely because our blog would be quoting large swathes of his pieces. When I started blogging, indeed, I decided that I would not only link to pieces on the internet but regularly quote extensive excerpts on our blog (which turns 18 this month), because you never knew when a website would disappear.

I communicated this to him at the time, and he seemed happy about it as well as intrigued.

But I admit that I never believed that the website of a major newspaper like the IHT (the descendant of an American-language newspaper founded in Paris in 1887) would suffer that fate. But because the Times did nothing to save it, the IHT's online presence is gone from the web (probably for all time) — that is, with the exception of Vinocur from the early 21st century, if you are a reader of No Pasáran.

I'll be honest: I cannot deny that I'm damn proud that I started copy/pasting long quotes, or the IHT's Vinocur would be lost on the internet (perhaps for all time?).

God bless you, John Vinocur. And godspeed.

• Related: Not John Vinocur, Who Was a Breed Apart: “Journalists used to act like cynics but at heart we were idealists; Now we’re often cynics masquerading as idealists”

PS: Here is a piece mentioning Joe Biden that dates from the election of 2004 (on this occasion, Instapundit is — again — involved):

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Europe in for a letdown if it's counting on Kerry, says Vinocur

Via Instapundit and Just One Minute: the IHT's John Vinocur, who went to Oberlin, had an article to-day on a U. Michigan seminar (thanks, Mr. Minuteman, for the link) attended by ranking Dems and European diplomats. Vinocur has Senate Foreign Relations committee chairman Joe Biden making the following remarks:

Recalling that he had talked to six European government chiefs about the war, Biden caricatured how they would have done things better. "Blah blah blah, international cooperation," the senator mimicked. He added, in his own voice, "Give me a break, huh."

When Biden offered the possibility, beyond more civility, of a future in contrast to the Bush administration, it was in a plague-on-your-houses context. He said of the two, Europe and Bush, "You have fallen in love with international institutions to the extent that this administration has fallen in love with unilateral action."

For good measure, Biden threw in the view that the European Union will not have a unified foreign policy, and with it, the phrase, "I hope you do, I wish you well, but I see no evidence you're going to spend the money needed" to create a serious European military force either.

One Exception Was John Vinocur, Who Was a Breed Apart: “Journalists used to act like cynics but at heart we were idealists; Now we’re often cynics masquerading as idealists”

The title of Bret Stephens latest opinion piece in the New York Times is When Did ‘Me,’ ‘We’ and ‘Us’ Become the Media’s Preferred Pronouns?

But on the front page of its global edition (the International New York Times is the successor paper of John Vinocur's beloved International Herald Tribune), the title is a more sober Honoring old-school journalism.

In Honoring old-school journalism, Bret Stephens discusses the present state of the craft, and mentions his friend, the late John Vinocur, as the antidote.

The IHT pundit, almost all of whose final decade of weekly opinion pieces were linked to by No Pasarán, died at 81 on February 13.

I feel exactly like Bret Stephens, when he says that Vinocur's 

column in The I.H.T. was the one thing I would never miss 

when he (Stephens) was a graduate student in England and later when he worked as a journalist.

Over drinks not long ago, a friend summed up the way journalism had changed over the course of his career. “Journalists used to act like cynics but at heart we were idealists,” he said. “Now we’re often cynics masquerading as idealists.”

I thought of that line twice last week. The first time was on Wednesday, while reading, against my better judgment, about the abrupt resignation of Jeff Zucker as president of CNN. The second was on Sunday, after learning that my friend John Vinocur, the former executive editor of The International Herald Tribune, had died in Amsterdam at 81.

In these two stories lies the difference between the kind of journalism Americans used to venerate and the kind we have today.

 … When did “me,” “we” and “us” become the news media’s preferred pronouns?

One journalist who was not much for navel gazing was Vinocur, whose column in The I.H.T. was the one thing I would never miss when I was a graduate student in England and later when I worked as a journalist in Brussels and as an editor in Jerusalem.

From reading him over the years, I gleaned that Vinocur had covered, so it seemed, everything. The Biafran war. The Munich massacre. The Rumble in the Jungle. The Stroessner regime in Paraguay. Spy games in Germany. The Mitterrand monarchy in France. He was almost absurdly well sourced, thanks to years spent as The Times’s bureau chief in Paris and Bonn. And his prose — confident and confiding, energetic and endearing, intimate in detail and Olympian in scope — was, by far, the best in the paper.

 … [His lines from a vintage Vinocur lede] … made the morning paper a joy to read. And they gave a young journalist a sense of what his vocation might be like when practiced at its best: adventurous, literary, significant. As I read John in my 20s, I figured out what I wanted for my own career: to see the world without illusions — but without losing the ballast of personal ideals.

About 10 years ago, I got an unexpected visit from John in my office at The Wall Street Journal. Would I, he asked, give him a job? He was retired from The Times. But he still knew everyone, he had plenty to say, his skills were intact. In this way I became his editor, he became my mentor, and we became friends.

For the next several years he delivered a string of columns that look only better with the passage of time. From a 2015 column on the Minsk agreement, which helped set the stage for the present crisis in Ukraine: Its holes, he wrote, were “so gaping as to allow Russia to drive tanks unhampered through an open Ukrainian border for next to forever.” From a 2017 column raising alarms about Berlin’s increasingly neutralist foreign policy: “Is there a kind of German complicity or reflexive softness involving Russia that permits Moscow’s blatant (and strategic) lying without anything resembling serious retaliation?”

For many readers, these topics may have seemed distant. They didn’t trend on Twitter. They didn’t have the gossipy salaciousness of a newsroom scandale.

But they mattered. They looked outward. They dwelt heavily on the inner mechanics of politics and diplomacy. But they did so not for the sake of the game itself, but for the large things at stake.

I last saw John in Florida, shortly before the pandemic began. We had a gloomy conversation about the state of journalism. But when we parted, he said, “It’s a noble profession.”

It is. We should do more to live up to his example.

Some voices in Germany are growing louder in portraying the Merkel government’s inaction as a disaster

There will be an interesting diplomatic moment at the White House next month

muses John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune,

when President Barack Obama presents the Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian distinction, to Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Just what do you say at a state dinner honoring the leader of an allied country that, against the instincts and commitments of France, Britain and America, declined to vote in favor of a U.N. Security Council resolution to protect Libyan civilians in rebellion against the dictatorship of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi?

In February, before the Libyan uprising, the German U.N. abstention, and the allies’ efforts at interdiction, praising Mrs. Merkel’s embrace of liberty didn’t present a problem. Handing out the freedom medals for 2010 — Mrs. Merkel could not attend the event — Mr. Obama chose to quote her: “Freedom does not come about by itself. It has to be struggled for, and then defended anew, every day of our lives.”

Next month, the easy diplomatic course might be to toast Germany’s great democracy, its economic prowess and to let the rest lie — without any reference to a German strategic choice seemingly inspired by the government’s fear of the effect of Libyan intervention on a series of important regional elections this year.

But Mr. Obama’s dilemma is real. The postwar Germans, to their immense credit, are usually their own harshest critics. Should the president listen to them these days, some leading voices are becoming increasingly insistent in portraying the Merkel government’s inaction as a disaster.

Last week, Lothar Rühl, a former high-level Defense Ministry official, said Germany was now regarded in NATO as a “second-class” player

Oh, and for those of you who thought, who predicted — who knew! — that Barack Obama's replacement of George W Bush in the Oval Office would usher in a new golden era of mutual understanding and productive diplomacy, John Vinocur (who wrote about Germany's "hysterical" reactions a month ago) has this:

some Americans have heard complaints from Germans that they were insufficiently consulted as the Obama administration weighed — and hesitated, and then measured out — its military involvement.

Ach ja. Plus ça change… Read the entire original article, also to see how, in the final paragraph, John Vinocur manages to bring John Cleese and Fawlty Towers into the equation. As for us, we will let Kurt Volker, who served the Bush and Obama administrations as ambassador to NATO, have the final word:

As for Germany, Mr. Volker did admit to some surprise: “It didn’t do what Germany normally does — say ‘yes,’ and then not do much of anything.”

Here it is again, The German Question

The German Question is back, ponders John Vinocur.

In fact, it’s German Questions, plural, and fateful enough for Europe and the euro’s future to merit the capital letters.

…The German Question these days has other, considerably more biting formulations. Ulrich Beck, a sociologist at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and the London School of Economics, offered two.

“Does Germany consider that the time has come to defend itself against Europe’s excessive clutches — the German model of success against its jealous European neighbors?” he asked. And: “Has the united Europe referred to in the German Constitution’s preamble stopped being the lodestar of the Germans’ vision of themselves and German politics?”

John Vinocur goes on to discuss the subject with four Germans "who represent deep political engagement in an integrated Europe" — former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt; Joschka Fischer, former foreign minister, Greens party chief and urban street fighter; Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, a Christian Democrat and former chief of staff to Chancellor Helmut Kohl; and Hans-Ulrich Klose, the Foreign Ministry’s coordinator for German-American cooperation and a former Social Democratic leader of the Bundestag’s Foreign Relations Committee.

For them, doubts among its friends about Germany’s solidarity, accelerated since the beginning of the recession by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s perceived Germany First reflexes, can’t be a comfortable notion.

…A darker view came from Mr. Beck in an essay titled “German euro-nationalism.”

He sees a new kind of German economic unilateralism replacing its old multilateral creed. He believes an “intellectual nationalism” now exists in Germany that bridges right-left party definitions.

He wrote, “Chancellor Merkel has employed the European currency crisis to set the euro-zone’s financial policy switches in the direction of a German Europe.”

This, Mr. Beck argues, is a “Germany that no longer personifies the most European of Europeans. Rather, it is one that downplays its European duties and ties. It’s a Germany that has dredged up Europe’s German Question.”

John Vinocur concludes:

Clearly, Germany has changed from the country that, in exchange for German reunification, bartered away the Deutsche mark and the Bundesbank’s roles as de facto European reserve currency and Europe’s monetary arbiter.

The new, most pertinent German Question flows from this reality: How can the rest of the Europeans manage an unabashedly self-interested Germany — normal is what it’s called here — that they hardly imagined would emerge from the deal they signed in 1992 as the Maastricht Treaty.

Change, Mutual Respect, and Russian-EU Relations: When the Obama administration stamps its foot, no one any longer snaps to attention

…“the Russians now have far more leverage in the U.S. relationship [with Europe] than they should”

John Vinocur quotes a former senior State Department official with responsibility for Russia (David J. Kramer) as saying in the conclusion of his International Herald Tribune article.

The United States used to call wayward members of NATO back to the reservation with a whistle or a shout. It decided what was deviation from doctrine, and that decision was pretty much law.

When the Obama administration stamped its foot this time, no one snapped to attention.

Rather, Germany and France, meeting with Russia in Deauville, northern France, last week, signaled that they planned to make such three-cornered get-togethers on international foreign policy and security matters routine, and even extend them to inviting other “partners” — pointing, according to diplomats from two countries, to Turkey becoming a future participant.

That can look like an effort to deal with European security concerns in a manner that keeps NATO, at least in part, at a distance. And it could seem a formula making it easier for Russia to play off — absolutely no novelty here — the European allies against the United States, or NATO and the European Union, against one another.

… As for the Obama administration stamping its foot, what it came down to was a senior U.S. official saying: “Since when, I wonder, is European security no longer an issue of American concern, but something for Europe and Russia to resolve? After being at the center of European security for 70 years, it’s strange to hear that it’s no longer a matter of U.S. concern.”

So, a follow-on burst of European contrition? I asked a German official about it. He spoke of German and French loyalty to NATO. And he said, “I understand there are American suspicions.”

“But,” he added, “the United States must accept that the times are changing. There are examples of it having done this. Why wouldn’t it accept our view in this respect?”

The official did not list them, but there are obvious factors explaining the French and German initiatives.

A major one is President Barack Obama’s perceived lack of interest and engagement in Europe. His failure to attend a Berlin ceremony commemorating the end of the Cold War and his cancellation of a meeting involving the E.U.’s new president has had symbolic weight.

… Consider this irony: the more Russia makes entry into the E.U.’s decision-making processes on security issues a seeming condition for deals the French and/or Germans want (think, for example, of France’s proposed sale to Moscow of Mistral attack vessels), the more the impression takes hold that the administration’s focus for complaint about the situation has been off-loaded onto the Europeans.

… When Mr. Medvedev bestowed Russia’s highest honors at a Kremlin ceremony on a group of sleeper spies who were expelled from the United States last July, a State Department spokesman turned away a reporter’s question with a “no comment.” Washington chooses not to say anything either about Mr. Medvedev’s support, repeated in Deauville, for Mr. Sarkozy’s plan, as next year’s president of the G-20 consultative grouping, to focus its attention on limiting the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency.

Prior to John Vinocur's article appeared an IHT editorial page column in which Roger Cohen appraised us that

France is in a quiet sulk. Nicolas Sarkozy is the most pro-American president of the Fifth Republic. He brought France back into NATO’s military command, rejected the de rigueur cynicism of French political discourse on the United States, and reached out to Obama. For all of which he got nothing. He must hear de Gaulle’s ghost at night whispering, “I told you so.”

In London, the British are shaking their heads. … “Beside the E.U., is there another bunch of countries anywhere willing to work as closely and permanently with the U.S. on almost all issues of global and regional concern?” asked Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador in Washington. “I wish Obama would say just that.”

Somewhat related is Virginie Malingre's interview in Le Monde with Alastair Cameron, who "est chargé des questions européennes au Royal United Services Institute, un think tank londonien spécialisé dans les questions de défense et de sécurité. Ce Franco-Britannique a fait ses études à Londres et à Paris, où il a travaillé quelque temps pour le ministère de la défense."

…on peut penser que la guerre en Irak a mis en évidence le déséquilibre de la relation. On a parlé de la Grande-Bretagne comme du "caniche de Washington"...

William Hague, le ministre des affaires étrangères britannique, et David Cameron, le premier ministre, ont tous deux dit qu'ils étaient les alliés des Etats-Unis mais qu'ils ne seraient pas "son esclave ". C'est une manière d'admettre que les Britanniques, ces dix dernières années, ont eu le sentiment qu'ils étaient trop souvent à la botte de Washington. De ce point de vue-là, la coopération avec la France sera la bienvenue. Mais, sur le fond, rien n'a changé.

Spain's Zapatero: Another Compassionate Leftist's Welfare Heroics Prove to Hide a World of Scamming, One of Hardly Believable Magnitude

It turns out that another one of Europe's patented humanists, a compassionate leftist who doubled as a valiant foe of ths United States, proves to be little more than a scammer, one of hardly believable (i.e., of criminal) magnitude (gracias a la Señora Sarah Hoyt de Instapundit). Washington Examiner's Jose Lev Alvarez breaks the story:

Spain’s National Court made history last week by placing former Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero under investigation for allegedly leading a criminal network engaged in influence peddling, money laundering, document forgery, and related offenses. 

(Filed in the Rules for thee, but not for me department.) Do you remember how Zapatero won his (dubious) victory as prime minister in the first place? Besides a horrific terrorist action that killed or injured 2600 people, anti-Americanism — and betrayal of the White House (in time of war) — was central to the socialist's victory (details below).

 … Investigators are also examining alleged links to Venezuelan regime money tied to PDVSA oil schemes and the CLAP food program, whose corruption devastated ordinary Venezuelans. … This scandal reveals Zapatero as one of former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro’s most valuable international assets. 

 

 … Zapatero’s alleged ownership [of the Orinoco Mining Arc gold mine] implicates him in [an] ecological and humanitarian catastrophe. 

 

 … As prime minister, Zapatero supplied Iran with dual-use technology and authorized Spain’s largest-ever arms export 

 

 … The scandal indicts Spain’s Socialist establishment. As Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government faces its own corruption controversies, Zapatero’s exposure underscores how “dialogue” and “progressive” internationalism [not to mention heroic anti-Americanism] can conceal both personal enrichment and willful blindness to dictatorship. 

I often say that the dream of the world's leftists is to make a world where all citizens are de facto welfare recipients (an update from the serfs and the peasants that they used to be during feudalism and in prior eras). 

 

This, far from incidentally, in turn explains why there is so much anti-Americanism in the world, since statists in the United States as well as in the rest of the world are enraged that Americans (i.e., common citizens) made a rich and successful country with the minimal involvement of politicians and bureaucrats — and not only that but indeed made it the richest and the most successful country on the planet.

 

Spain — and "the mafia that governs" the country  — provides one heck of a perfect example of that. Recall how Zapatero became Spain's prime minister in the first place. In August 2004 (most 2004 hyperlinks now broken), the International Herald Tribune's John Vinocur went back over his (dubious) victory while characterizing the mindset of the European press perfectly: "its logic running that since intelligent Europe hates [George W Bush] so, how could any decent, non-fascistic American contemplate voting Republican?"

• José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain's prime minister, says he does not want to talk about Islamic terrorism. … "I never talk about Islamic terrorism, but international terrorism," Zapatero told Le Monde in an interview marking his first 100 days in office.

A couple of background details enter here. Zapatero's Socialists got elected in March after a murderous Madrid railway station bombing that was undoubtedly planned by Islamic terrorists to affect the election's outcome. An extreme long shot before the attack, the Socialists had campaigned on the theme that Spain would pay for José María Aznar's backing of the United States in Iraq. …

A bit like newspapers that avoid the word "cancer" in obituaries with the explanation that they are sparing sensitive readers, [the secularist] Zapatero is keeping Islamic fundamentalists out of the discussion of terrorism because, he says, Islam is a religion with hundreds of millions of followers "which, like all the religions in the history of humanity, involves an element of religious fanaticism."

The IHT's John Vinocur went on to describe Zapatero's first actions when the new PM reached La Moncloa, Spain's government house.

The detoxed Spain of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, it was pledged, was going to rush back into the family-like warmth of the European Union, and rush home its troops from Iraq. In a whoosh, it would rejoin the community of the just, and end what the new Socialist government called the country's miscast role as superpower-adjunct of the Americans.

Promise keepers, the new guys did what they said they would in their first full week on the job. For which they got something short of an international standing ovation.

Four years after his defeat, the incumbent José Maria Aznar, a vibrant supporter of Bush, had the following to say about the 2004 elections:

Frankly, the left exploited this tragedy. … All the polls were clear: without these attacks, which the left capitalized on, we would have won the elections. What's terrible is that instead of blaming the terrorists, they blamed the government! 

 

 … every day, it becomes clearer that the terrorists achieved their objective: to manipulate the electoral process. This is a crucial point for all democracies to consider—insofar as this phenomenon risks recurring. The decision to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq, which was made in violation of Spain's international commitments and the promises Mr. Zapatero himself had made during the election campaign, was considered by the terrorists to be a significant victory. And when terrorists achieve a victory, they become stronger… 

 

If you ask me if Chamberlain resembles Zapatero, I would answer… that Chamberlain had more depth and even more courage than Zapatero! Indeed, after having collaborated with the Nazis, Chamberlain, at least, had the courage to leave with dignity. 

By standing up to the accursed Republican in the White House, Zapo, also known as Bambi and (on this blog) as El Zap and el caniche de Chiraque, was described as a totemic figure for the Spanish left, who, like his successor Pedro Sánchez, was/is hailed as a humanist champion, another paladin in Europe's pantheon of heroes giving lessons on civility and compassion and peace-making and humanity to America's neanderthals.

 

But also to Europe's neanderthals, it turns out: Likewise blinded to any problematics associated with Islam, Pedro Sánchez (following in the footsteps of Tony Blair and duly lionized in the New York Times for being "Trump's nemesis") has allowed half a million illegal aliens in Spain, many of them Muslims, to become regularized. At a Podemos party rally in Zaragoza, to "chilling" applause, a drama queen like Irene Montero bellowed at the top of her lungs: 

“We have obtained papers and regularization. And now we are going to go for citizenship or change the law so that they can vote, of course. Hopefully, replacement theory, hopefully we can rid this country of fascists and racists with migrants, with working people.”  

Cross the Atlantic: As California and other states seem to be heading in the direction of fraud-soaked Minnesota (the home for many Scandinavian immigrants in the 19th century), it appears that the various welfare systems throughout the American nation might be little more than a scam.

But for the statists, American and foreign alike — whether they turn out to be true believers or hypocritical conspirators — the international situation is far worse than that.

In view of the fact that the global left's major talking point — that leftists like the Democrats and all the Socialist-leaning Europeans — are far more tolerant and compassionate than the egotistical brutes in the capitalistic United States (or, at least, then the neanderthals of America's Republican Party), it would be highly problematic if the welfare systems throughout the rest of the West — and the rest of the world — proved to be a scam as well.

That is what might be happening in the region — Scandinavia — whose countries are often lauded as the very top model of a healthy government and a healthy nation. Certainly, Norway's reputation for honesty and humility, for good governance, and for “least corrupt in the world” rankings has been taking broadside after broadside in the wake of the Epstein Scandal.

And if Norway turns out to be so filled with (for want of a better word) corruption, can Sweden and Denmark be far behind?

 

At this point, a final question that comes to mind is: What is the international left (not excluding America's Democratic Party) if not a cult of irresponsibility filled with drama queens, Sophomoric Teens, Intrepid Cosplayers, and Would-Be Heroes?

More Details at: Scandalous News from Norway: What If All the Planet's Welfare Systems — Supposedly Proof of the Left's Superiority Over Capitalist America — Prove to Be Little More Than So Many Scams? including 

Rebecca Mistereggen

's stunning article titled The Habitus of Norway’s Elite: Lies, Corruption, and the Absence of Consequences.

 

You Read It First on ¡No Pasaran!

…in trying to transmute the fog of [France's] runup to the war into glory, the book may provide more clarity than intended: L'Inconnu de l'Élysée, the country's top nonfiction best seller, while idealizing Chirac's role, brings unexpected new support to a thesis that France's government was not so much struggling to save humanity as looking out for Numéro Un.

Innumerable Frenchmen, -women, pundits, journalists lionized Jacques Chirac for "having the balls" to stand up to George W. Bush in the Iraq crisis (not least in our comments section), but as John Vinocur points out, the French government was flip-flopping all the way. As he says, "France's lurching pursuit of the best yield for itself in the runup left it totally short of what its leaders hoped their opposition would bring."

[The book] credits the idea that France maneuvered for months while considering whether to participate in an American-led invasion of Iraq. And it suggests that Villepin, after summoning the United Nations Security Council to rise in opposition against America, actually thought that France could not sustain its position and would "link up with the United States" before the war began in March 2003.

John Vinocur asked Pierre Péan about

Villepin's wobbling. He replied, "It's an ultra-sensitive subject, an essential subject, but one I didn't sort out. No one wants to talk about it today. It's a place where there was a problem."

No wonder; it's easier (including for Péan himself) to talk (and to crow) about principles, standards, and glorious times.

Moscow has announced that the Arctic will become its “main resource base” by 2020, and plans for troops “capable of ensuring … security in region"

During a week when big ideas have their shot at the Copenhagen Climate Conference, it’s clear the Arctic isn’t getting its share

writes John Vinocur concerning "the worst-case Great Game perspective of guns, gas leaks and oil spills, tanker collisions and nationalist jostling". As John Vinocur explains, the (ignored) problem is that

the Russians … seem more in a rush than the Atlantic Alliance players to create their own kind of Arctic facts.

They have experience in the region, but hardly a resounding record as great stewards of the environment. Their claim to half of the Arctic as their own was described in Halifax as “extravagant” by a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker.

In 2007, they planted a Russian flag under the North Pole. This year, Moscow’s National Security Council announced that the Arctic would become its “main resource base” by 2020, and plans for troops “capable of ensuring military security in the region.” In October, a Russian admiral said that helicopter carriers the Russian Navy hopes to buy from France were earmarked, in part, for its Arctic fleet.

But this could be just woofin’. … All the same, said Mr. Volker, who is managing director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Transatlantic Relations, “The Russians know what they want. They’ve got an Arctic fleet, and incentives to bring people to settle in the region. They want to develop gas fields. It’s not military aggression, but an attempt to build a comprehensive presence.” Washington, he said, “has been a little slow to put the pieces together. And we’re the only country to have the resources and political weight that can get a handle on the development of the region.”

This episode shows the entire French political spectrum locking itself into the depressing cavern of Chirac's political creed

Well, if you can't get a job (or a training course) in France, you can always get one in Algeria.

Panorama, meanwhile, has fullscreen panoramas of the CPE demonstrations (listen to those lovely French songs).

As for Laurent Greilsamer, he quotes (without naming the journalist) John Vinocur's International Herald Tribune article in his history of "manifestations … made in France."

It so happens that John Vinocur had this to say today:

Jacques Chirac is discredited, Dominique de Villepin, too, and with them, it seems, a certain France that told the world it could avoid change and, as exceptionalist as ever, escape immobility's ridiculousness in the process.

Absurdity certainly has caught up with this routine. There's never been a more incongruous political crisis than the country's present misery about relaxing employment regulations for young people: scores of thousands of them - a poll shows 76 percent of the 15- to 24 year-old age group aspire to the privileges, early retirement and ironclad security of civil service jobs - demonstrating for social conservatism on the historical turf of new dawns and revolution.

And rarely has upheaval on the streets led to more ridiculous political repercussions. Here, it has exposed a president who tried to save face for his prime minister by signing a bill changing first-job rules, then explained incoherently that a second measure would soon nullify the original's provisions, and finally turned over the repair job to a rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, who both Chirac and Villepin have long hoped to crush.

For some, this is a hoot. But ridiculousness can be sad, or even ominous. That's the direction this episode points to for the future because it shows the entire French political spectrum locking itself into the depressing cavern of Chirac's political creed.

This article of faith insists that if France will sample the idea of reform, just tasting, it won't willingly swallow real social change. In terms of getting- elected politics, the Chirac precept says that only a presidential candidate who refuses to talk about the necessity of risk, or how France gains through a smaller nanny-state or a freer economy, can inspire enough French trust to win election.

In a new book on the president by Franz-Olivier Giesbert, François Fillon, a Sarkozy ally, describes Chirac as "a psycho-rigid person who's convinced that France cannot tolerate any major reform. This comes to the great irritation of the left which wanted the right to do the job before it returns to power."

Vinocur Uses the John Kerry Postulate to Explain the Yes Camp's Dilemma on France's EU Constitution Referendum

In France, detractors dig in on EU charter

writes John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune as he proceeds to explain the John Kerry Postulate for informed guessing on voting behavior.

As far as the constitution is concerned, the president of the European Parliament, Josep Borrell, has described the real problem as a deep "malaise" in the French relationship with Europe. Most of all, it goes to a sense of lost French influence in an expanded EU, and to the absence of the idea that this new Europe ever could do anything again for France.

Minus any enthusiasm, the very particular weakness of the "yes" campaign lies in the fact that both its Gaullist and Socialist proponents have explicitly said nothing like a catastrophe is at hand as a result of a "no" vote.

Products of French politics' endless incantation on the country's capacity to exist autonomously, voters here just wouldn't believe it — or politicians trying to win them over pre-demonize them as irresponsible and unpatriotic.

So the "yes" camp is stuck with the path of reassurance, saying disasters don't loom whatever the result. That leaves black paint and trepidation mostly to the "noes" and their pitch that the constitution will kill the protection and support systems of the European Social Model.

The only safe play involving cataclysmic warnings by the "yes" people seems to be anti-Americanism. They admonish: don't dump the constitution and leave the world to the domination of the United States. But the "no" campaign's grab bag of dissident voices from the left and right have staked out that zone too, saying a "yes" vote officializes Europe as a vassal to NATO.

The second part of the John Kerry Postulate slides into place here.

In order to beat Bush, Kerry calculated he needed votes from the center. To get them, he promised that America would win in Iraq and do nothing that would look like a dishonorable pullout.

In spite all of the contrary rhetoric, this left Kerry largely not dissociable from Bush on the war.

In France, while the "no" camp warns that ratifying the constitution would put in place a cruel, hyper-capitalist Europe, stripped of its social safeguards, the "yes" proponents reassure voters that nothing irreparable will happen if they say no. The Postulate Part II argues that when you're talking about something grand or ominous, and you validate your opponent's position by saying (or tacitly accepting) it is not fatal, you lose again. (See Kerry on Iraq.)

Identifying the exact meaning of a French rejection of the constitution — its "no" vote would seem to derail the European ratification process — is perilous because so much of the French political establishment has put itself in the position of saying it ain't no big deal.

On balance, though, rejection would almost certainly diminish French influence.

A less reliable France could hardly enchant Germany or continue to serve Europe as quite the same central counterbalance across the Rhine.

At its least reassuring, a "no" vote would come within the context of the view of a group of German political scientists who have warned since the Iraq war that Gerhard Schröder is trying to steer Germany's economic and foreign policy in the direction of strictly national interests.

In their increasingly nervous search for effective rhetoric, some of the pro-constitution folk — unable to talk about a disaster for Europe, or dare say a word about losing a handhold on the Germans — have turned to invoking Charles de Gaulle.

He would have voted "yes" in the referendum, they claim.

The fact is, as he threatened and on schedule, de Gaulle resigned from office in 1969 the day after his project for French regional restructuring was voted down in a national referendum.

In terms of France and its politics' eternal call to grandeur and vision, or of Chirac, who has not laid his job on the line to save Europe's constitution, that seems long, long ago.

A Miserable Precedent? In France's 1st Election Round, Extremism’s Total Promises to Beat Either Mainstream Candidate

The election in France on Sunday won’t decide its next president but will more likely offer a miserable precedent

notes John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune:

a success for a “Rejection Front” that combines the bleak compatibility of the extreme left and right.

Notionally at least, with the Left Front and National Fronts scores added together, the beyond-the-mainstream candidates’ total share of the vote could beat the individual first-round scores of either President Nicolas Sarkozy or the Socialist, François Hollande.

That doesn’t change the near certainty that Marine Le Pen at the far right and Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the left’s distant shore get eliminated on April 22 while Hollande and Sarkozy advance to the final round two weeks later.

But if the Rejection Front (my designation) does as well as most polls suggest, France will have legitimized two political currents that spurn serious solutions for France’s economic grief, reject civility and common sense and variously propose regression through loony yet authoritarian economics, class warfare, class or racial prejudices, anti-Western instincts, and the politics of endless rage.

Sarkozy and Hollande are each projected to win between 26 and 29 percent of the votes cast in the first round among 10 contenders. That means that if parallel estimates hold for Le Pen (16 to 18 percent) and Mélenchon (around 15), extremism’s total beats either mainstream guy.

This isn’t a nerdy detail, but a miserable political signpost in an important and usually intelligent country struggling to retain influence in the world.

Mélenchon, who has Communist Party backing, infantilizes the French with promises of an “insurrection” that in the face of the country’s pledges of austerity would create 500,000 new places in public nurseries, 200,000 new low-rent apartments per year, total reimbursement of all individual health expenditure and tenured status for 800,000 public service workers now without permanent contracts. It is not clear how the Left Front would handle the costs (the health bill alone is estimated at €40 billion yearly), but Mélenchon has given a hint: confiscation of annual individual income above €360,000.

Mélenchon’s world-view goes hand in hand with his economics. He describes the United States as “the world’s primary problem” and wants the U.S. Sixth Fleet out of the Mediterranean. More: Hugo Chávez of Venezuela is a hero, the Chinese invasion of Tibet was justified, and Cuba isn’t a dictatorship.

More on Mélenchon's s worldview: A French Presidential Candidate Vows to Valiantly Fight the American Empire and Bring the World Out From Under Its Domineering Shadow.

In a French political universe where no one need tell a significant percentage of the truth, dealing in fantasy is an easy alternative. The problem with Mélenchon is that his routine is showing it works in 2012 France. As Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the left-wing ecologist politician, has said, “He’s succeeded in restoring national nostalgia for old-time class conflict and statist tradition.”

While Mélenchon’s role in the Rejection Front refuses reality, Marine Le Pen’s National Front summons French instincts in the direction of bigotry and spite.

Read the whole thing but be sure not to miss John Vinocur's conclusion:

Through their complaisant maneuvering, Sarkozy and Hollande have reduced the stature of responsible politics in France and with it given both halves of the Rejection Front enough momentum so that, side by side, they may enter the National Assembly in June legislative elections. Leaving this likely indelible (and repugnant) trace behind, the quality of the French presidential race and runoff round beginning Monday has no place to go but up.

Vinocur I: France and Germany Turning Down the Heat

In a front-page article in the International Herald Tribune, John Vinocur notes that

France and Germany have been strikingly discreet about America's new troubles in Iraq, reflecting what appears to be their judgment that the country's instability threatens any positive development in the Middle East over the long term.

"No one has any interest in an American fiasco," the former French foreign minister, Hubert Védrine, said Friday. That did not take in the schadenfreude of some French and German commentary, but it had the sound of an operative formula to describe a situation in which Washington's misery did not objectively equal Paris' or Berlin's gain.

In attempting to draw closer to the United States over the past months — the Germans actively, with American backing; the French in a less public mode — the two countries set courses for improving trans-Atlantic relations that would be destroyed by Iraq-related ironies or we-told-you-so's from ranking officials.

Besides, the French and Germans shared an absence of alternatives and an element of direct self-interest. With time, France and Germany's attempt to turn Europe against the United States in the run-up to the war has come to be regarded by strategists in both countries' capitals as a tactical mistake that resulted instead in a majority of the 25 European Union countries opposing the French-German drive for European pre-eminence.

In a Europe greatly weakened by its fractures over the war, and frightened now by terrorism on its soil, the error of trying to turn the Americans into the ultimate villains in Iraq while they are still the ultimate guarantors of European security was clearly not one the French and Germans would repeat.

In Germany, where a poll on Thursday found that 53 percent wanted the Americans to pull out of Iraq, the government had a rather different stance. Weeks ago, Defense Minister Peter Struck, in suggesting that a Spanish troop withdrawal would be unwise, said an American pullback would mean total instability.

Since January, while refusing to supply troops for Iraq, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's government has given its approval to the grand lines of a Bush administration initiative for the Greater Middle East, signed a German-American Alliance for the 21st Century that stresses common goals in the region, and, through Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, defined "Jihadist terrorism" as "the new totalitarianism" that constitutes the greatest threat to global security.

In France ... [Jacques] Chirac's opportunities to maneuver were limited. He is hemmed in by the reality that his surge in popularity at home during the 2003 Iraq debate has dissipated into his current grief-filled domestic political situation.

At the same time, he faces a series of encounters with President George W. Bush and other leaders at four major international meetings through the month of June — with sentiment in favor of righting the situation in Iraq unmistakably outweighing interest in doling out blame.

In a sense, Germany and France's options were also limited by the reality that it was no longer possible to justify countering American policy by the selective demonization of the Bush Administration.

Just as John Kerry had called on the new Socialist prime minister of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to reconsider his pledge to bring Spanish forces home from Iraq, the Democratic candidate's reaction on Thursday to the worsening military situation hardly let Europe off the hook from its faulty presumption that no unified American view existed on Europe's ongoing share of Iraqi responsibilities.

"No European country," said Kerry, "is made safe by a failed Iraq, yet those countries are distinctly absent from the risk bearing."

Perhaps remarkably, some French commentators appeared to be taking the idea to heart that assisting the Americans, however passively, in Iraq is the best alternative to chaos in the Middle East.

Le Figaro, in an editorial, said that since the United States was not going to clear out of Iraq, "France would be well advised to abstain from diplomatically harassing its ally on the question of the handover of power, and to stop continuously referring everything to the United Nations."

Vinocur's article ends with Le Monde's correspondent in Baghdad presenting a revisionist account of where France's excellent view of its own record stops in explaining how Iraq had gotten to where it was.

Without directly touching on it, the report presaged French discretion on America's grief of the moment.

It said: "Iraqis remain exceedingly critical of French policy. Contrary to what Europeans often think, the fact of having opposed the American occupation does absolutely nothing to boost the popularity of Europe or of a given country in Iraq."

"French policy over the past year is severely criticized," the correspondent continued. "It's impossible to find anyone, apart from a few out-of-work Baathist officials, who support the French position over the Iraq crisis."

Europe in for a letdown if it's counting on Kerry, says Vinocur

Via Instapundit and Just One Minute: the IHT's John Vinocur, who went to Oberlin, had an article to-day on a U. Michigan seminar (thanks, Mr. Minuteman, for the link) attended by ranking Dems and European diplomats. Vinocur has Senate Foreign Relations committee chairman Joe Biden making the following remarks:

Recalling that he had talked to six European government chiefs about the war, Biden caricatured how they would have done things better. "Blah blah blah, international cooperation," the senator mimicked. He added, in his own voice, "Give me a break, huh."

When Biden offered the possibility, beyond more civility, of a future in contrast to the Bush administration, it was in a plague-on-your-houses context. He said of the two, Europe and Bush, "You have fallen in love with international institutions to the extent that this administration has fallen in love with unilateral action."

For good measure, Biden threw in the view that the European Union will not have a unified foreign policy, and with it, the phrase, "I hope you do, I wish you well, but I see no evidence you're going to spend the money needed" to create a serious European military force either.

Clinton Offers Little Sympathy to Europe's Bush-Bashers

In this week's installment of his weekly column for the International Herald Tribune, John Vinocur describes how a decent American disappoints Europe.

With Europeans lining up and shelling out to read Bill Clinton, he turns out to be a guy who insists on reminding people that two-thirds of the Democratic Party in Congress voted George W. Bush the specific powers he needed to make war in Iraq. Then, piling it on, he goes and says that France and Germany wrongly made light of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

No Michael Moore, this Kid from Hope. And for some Europeans, including a few who invested massive sums in serializing or publishing his autobiography, My Life, not much support either from Clinton for the political notions they may have thought they were buying into with the book or from the Clinton interviews that have accompanied the package.

For Der Spiegel, the Hamburg newsmagazine that has never found an American president subtle enough to match its tastes, this was clearly a problem as it completed its second installment of extracts. In its table of contents last week, it announced a conversation with the former president about "Bush's Iraq debacle."

In the headline over its interview, it promised Clinton's take on "the Disaster of the Bush Administration in the Iraq War."

As it turned out, the single time the word "debacle" came out of anybody's mouth in the Q-and-A, it belonged to the Spiegel people asking Clinton questions. The former president verbally sprinted in the other direction.

It was this kind of whoosh: Clinton said his successor was now moving toward a turnaround in Iraq that might take two to five years to achieve. In Clinton's view, sovereignty was being returned to the Iraqis, a new UN resolution had been passed, and the Iraqis were freeing the Americans from having to decide on everything. …

Although you couldn't tell from the magazine's promotional material or headlines, Clinton also took pains to recall why the Democrats had backed Bush's request for war powers and, with it, to criticize the French and German attitude at the time, which he said would not have supported the use of force even if Saddam had refused to cooperate with the United Nations.

Clinton told Spiegel that whatever the state of the Iraqi Army, he didn't agree "with the German and French position that Saddam never did anything that he wasn't forced into" and "didn't constitute a threat."…

This is a long way from the line of anti-Bush Europe's current decent American, Michael Moore, who repeatedly thanked the French and the Germans for their Iraq stance while promoting his film attacking the president.

In fact, for Europeans irritated these days by anything that sounds like an American's support for a non-capitulationist view of the United States' self-interests, Clinton's approach may have come as disappointingly as John Kerry's when he pounced on José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero's Spain for pulling its forces out of Iraq, and urged the Europeans to share the mission's risks and burdens.

The issue here is not Bush, whose admirers in Europe are squad-sized rather than legion. It is rather that Clinton's bottom line on America's world role — like that, as well, of virtually all the mainstream foreign policy players in Washington — may not jibe with the America that Spiegel, or Le Nouvel Observateur in France, another investor in his memoirs, or many of their readers, say they want to love.

"Bill Clinton was a great president," the French magazine wrote. "A cool president for a cool epoch. When the Net-economy propelled growth and melted unemployment. When the American hyperpower didn't deviate into autistic unilateralism." … In fact, Clinton specifically told Spiegel that when it must, America has to be able to deal with events alone (although acting in cooperation with friends is obviously preferable). …

[Here's another of Vinocur's Reality checks.]

Because there is considerable concern among European politicians and the media of being seen as anti-American rather than anti-Bush, which is as easy here as kicking a can, the publication of the memoir looked to some as a good chance, via Clinton, to be publicly counted among the Friends of a Well-Behaved America.

The most conspicuous revisionist among these was Hubert Vedrine, who as French foreign minister spent considerable time saying that Clinton's America was a country indulging in "inadmissible" unilateralism. This, he said, had to be contained by other countries working together to save the world's "mental identity."

France's task in gathering blocking groups to hold Clinton's America in check was of such importance that, like Marcus Aurelius laying out Stoic principles for political action, or Che Guevara defining the revolutionary struggle from the Sierra Maestra, Vedrine actually made up a list of five precepts (like having solid nerves and perseverance) for the undertaking.

Now, with the book out and Bush's defeat a possibility, Vedrine describes Clinton as a president "who succeeded wonderfully on all levels" and who made the American "hyperpower" both "likable and seductive." In contrast to Bush's, he suggests, Clinton's world was a pleasure to deal with.

But this goes only so far. Vedrine rejected Clinton's assertion accompanying the book's publication that Yasser Arafat's unreliability had been the essential cause of the failure of the Camp David accords between the United States, Israel and the Palestinians.

"Clinton is loading this on Arafat because, however brilliant Clinton is, he remains an American politician," Vedrine said. "He's a bit constrained on this point."

Nudge-nudge. Vedrine is not only saying that dark forces, which he is too discreet to name, run American Middle East policy, but that Clinton was not being forthright about a critical moment of recent history.

This is a French vision, like others in Europe involving American motivations on various subjects, that even when larded with flattering phrases essentially demeans Clinton and other presidents, or presidential candidates, for defending American notions of what is both just and in the interest of the United States.

If Clinton, from his spotlight of the moment, persists these days in saying a lot of things some Europeans would prefer not to hear, the explanation may come down to his being, very irretrievably, like Bush or Kerry, just another American. The U.S. Census Bureau's latest figures count 282,421,906 of them.

Multiculturalism is a doctrine of avoidance, placing emphasis on heritage rather than openness, and tolerating pretty much everything

Surely, you could think, the Oslo mass murders might well bring some moderation to Europe’s far-right populist parties in their unyielding denigration of Islam and their Armageddon-is-nigh vision of a future shared with Muslim immigrants

writes John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune.

At the same time, since Norway’s massacre led to statements by populist leaders rejecting violence, you might also suppose that the European left could ease up on its resistance to the idea that multiculturalism has brought parallel societies, disrespect for national laws and traditions, and a threatened sense of identity to countries with hundreds of years of democratic history.

Neither assumption is hopeless. But each enters the area of very wishful, perhaps naïve surmise.

… Now the Dutch are dealing with the fact (and its potential political impact and manipulation) that Anders Behring Breivik, the confessed Oslo killer, spoke in his 1,518-page manifesto of his admiration for Geert Wilders.

Of course, alongside his stated hatred of multiculturalism and Muslim immigrants, Mr. Breivik also said confusedly that the Europeans he most wanted to meet were Pope Benedict and Vladimir V. Putin (whose vision of “democracy” appealed to him), that he read Homer, Kafka, John Stuart Mill and Winston Churchill, and liked Lacoste shirts and Chanel Platinum Egoiste cologne.

In any case, the reaction here, at its most shrill, was at screech level.

At one extreme, talking of Mr. Wilders in a radio interview, Gerard Spong, a lawyer, accused him of having “Norwegian blood on his lips.”

“Wilders has full responsibility for this,” Mr. Spong said of the murders. “He contributed to the development and the acts” of the killer. (An attempt supported by Mr. Spong and Islamic officials to bring defamation charges against Mr. Wilders for anti-Islam statements ended in his acquittal this year.)

Now the Dutch are dealing with the fact (and its potential political impact and manipulation) that Anders Behring Breivik, the confessed Oslo killer, spoke in his 1,518-page manifesto of his admiration for Geert Wilders.

Of course, alongside his stated hatred of multiculturalism and Muslim immigrants, Mr. Breivik also said confusedly that the Europeans he most wanted to meet were Pope Benedict and Vladimir V. Putin (whose vision of “democracy” appealed to him), that he read Homer, Kafka, John Stuart Mill and Winston Churchill, and liked Lacoste shirts and Chanel Platinum Egoiste cologne.

In any case, the reaction here, at its most shrill, was at screech level.

At one extreme, talking of Mr. Wilders in a radio interview, Gerard Spong, a lawyer, accused him of having “Norwegian blood on his lips.”

“Wilders has full responsibility for this,” Mr. Spong said of the murders. “He contributed to the development and the acts” of the killer. (An attempt supported by Mr. Spong and Islamic officials to bring defamation charges against Mr. Wilders for anti-Islam statements ended in his acquittal this year.)

“Wilders has full responsibility for this,” Mr. Spong said of the murders. “He contributed to the development and the acts” of the killer. (An attempt supported by Mr. Spong and Islamic officials to bring defamation charges against Mr. Wilders for anti-Islam statements ended in his acquittal this year.)

… In a new book, “Immigrant Nations,” Paul Scheffer, a Dutch political scientist, has restated his opposition to multiculturalism in nonconfrontational terms that may have appeal to the left. He says that the reality of multiculturalism is that it is a doctrine of “avoidance,” sustaining immigrant groups’ focus “on what they’ve left behind,” placing more emphasis “on heritage rather than openness” and tolerating pretty much everything “as long as cultures are spared all criticism.”

The message from Europe was that a fresh start in trans-Atlantic relations would require the U.S. to swallow European viewpoints hook, line and sinker

As the new U.S. secretary of state dashed around their capitals, Europeans sat comfortably auditioning Rice for the new role they want her to play in drawing the Bush administration closer to Europe

writes Reginald Dale in the International Herald Tribune (where he is sorely missed — the editor of the policy quarterly European Affairs doubling as a media fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University used to have a weekly feature on common sense economics in the IHT, but that ended after the New York Times took over the Washington Post's part of the global paper).

They produced copious reviews of her performance, from the glowing to the snide. But none felt the need to step up on the stage themselves.

The overwhelming message from the audience was that a fresh start in trans-Atlantic relations would require the United States, and not Europe, to make all the concessions. Typical was the comment of an EU diplomat, who demanded "a complete convergence of views," meaning that Washington should swallow European viewpoints hook, line and sinker.

…If, however, the Europeans think they do not need to do anything to respond to Bush's conciliatory efforts, then the rebirth of the alliance will be stillborn. Rice made that clear in responding to this much-quoted remark by Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair: "If America wants the rest of the world to be part of the agenda it has set, it must be part of their agenda too." Her riposte came in Paris: "America stands ready to work with Europe on our common agenda, and Europe must stand ready to work with America."

Bush has been loudly signaling his wish for better relations with Europe. [He] first sent out doves across the stormy Atlantic waters last May. U.S. officials muzzled their previous anti-European rhetoric; Bush bowed to European insistence that he work more closely with the United Nations, and Iraqi reconstruction contracts were opened up to noncombatant countries. These doves did not return with any sprigs of greenery, at least in part because many European leaders wanted Senator John Kerry to win the U.S. elections.

Now, with Bush due to visit Europe this month, it is time for the Europeans to step up to the plate. The obvious place to begin is Iraq, the main source of animosity, where the recent elections have opened the way for a new approach.

It is not necessary for France and Germany to send soldiers there if they do not wish. What is needed is that the Europeans raise the tone of the dialogue far above the nickel-and-diming over such issues as where NATO should train Iraqis, and whether a few more trainers should be added. It is time to show genuine, overarching political support for what Washington is trying to achieve in Iraq and the broader Middle East, without petty, nit-picking reservations.

…That is what France, Germany, Spain and other European critics of the United States must now offer. Their governments say they want to put past disagreements behind them. If they mean it, they should not be calling for better relations one minute, and fomenting anti-Americanism the next.

(Emphasis mine.) John Vinocur follows this line of thought through with his Politicus column, taking the Germans as an example as he writes from Munich:

Diplomacy in action. Here was Condoleezza Rice scooting to Paris and Brussels and Luxembourg, deftly working the idea that Europe mattered and the United States respected it. And here was a group of heavyweight American pols in town for a postscript, attending the weekend's yearly seminar of defense and security experts (Don Rumsfeld and John McCain among the Republicans, Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton for the Democrats) and thinking, fair traders all, there might be some signs of a quick and generous European response.

The fact was that a speech by Gerhard Schröder, billed as a German-take-on-the-world and read out by Defense Minister Peter Struck (Schröder called in sick), grated. The Bush folk, trying so hard to be Europe-amenable seven days before the president's arrival, suddenly found themselves laboring not to look too wrong-footed, embarrassed or provoked by a message from the chancellor they did not fully expect.

What they got from Schröder was a complaining five pages, mostly about the unsatisfactory state of trans-Atlantic relations. His call for an umpteenth blue-ribbon panel to assess what to do followed. …

His text restated his determination that Germany get a UN Security Council seat cum veto power. It fled any mention of his quest to have the European Union lift its embargo on arms sales to China, a proposal that has enraged Congress across the board. And it urged an end to Iran's isolation and consideration for the mullahs' "legitimate security concerns" — on a day when James Woolsey, a Clinton administration director of U.S. central intelligence, was asking a seminar panelist if he knew of a single shard of fact indicating that Iran was not about to produce atomic weapons. (No answer.)

In fact … there was something both detached and harsh about Schröder's speech.

Its tone was nonconciliatory exactly at a time when America was trying to be. Contradictorily, it came at a point when Germany's increasing ambitions on the world stage are most strikingly complemented, as Gunther Hellmann of Frankfurt University has said, by its declining social and economic competitiveness. And the speech's icy edges were such that Schröder talked of Russia with more palpable warmth than the United States.

[A] Clinton administration Democrat described Rumsfeld, who spoke to the conference on Saturday, as sounding more open and flexible than the chancellor.

"The thing that quite amazes me," said Wolfgang Schäuble, the man who may have the sharpest political intellect within the German conservative opposition, "is that Americans are disappointed with what Schröder said, that they found no givebacks. That's quite naïve. There's nothing to expect except a man looking at poll numbers all day and still thinking he'll stay in power if he turns every election into one in which he runs against George Bush."

… in terms of feeling, Schröder's speech was an even less hearty view of trans-Atlantic relations than one offered by Jacques Chirac, mulipolarity included, in London earlier in the year.

Not to mention the hard issues: Iraq, China (where Schröder's commercial interest is great and his responsibilities nil), Iran? Any indication of new German support from the chancellor? No. …

All this forces the question about what happens if Bush comes to Europe and gets precious little in return. Schäuble has said, considering the people in place in Germany, it's no small possibility. Awkward stuff. Not good.

The American in the marble hallway, upbeat on Europe in the administration's current mode, considered that everything might turn around by the time Bush gets to Mainz on Feb. 23.

The American said Schröder had an important regional election next Sunday, and considering that he won in 2002 opposing the Iraq war, he wasn't going to cross anybody up by sounding America-friendly a week ahead of time.

Not anybody, just George Bush. And perhaps not just momentarily.