By Hannes Artens

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown seems to
have a hard time with President Bush at his side
at the NATO Summit in Bucharest.

In order to get attuned a potpourri of comments from leading European newspapers on George Bush's accomplishments in Bucharest (my translations from Austrian Der Standard):

Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich):
"He [President Bush] was prepared to offend major allies - it is his own fault to feel vanquished now (…) He embarked on this venture fairly counterproductive and undiplomatic, ignoring that the previous NATO enlargement only worked because Russia was mainstreamed into the decision making process. Bush has mainstreamed no one, now he got what he asked for."

Le Figaro (Paris):
"At the NATO Summit in Bucharest the lack of American leadership became apparent in times, characterized by the war in Iraq and a transatlantic crisis, he [President Bush] has to account for. Quite a pathetic result for a presidency that has commissioned violence for a reckless ideology of conquest."

Il Messagero (Rome):
"At the end of the day, old Europe was victorious (…) It was the first summit at which it was dared to dissent with the wise words Lord Ismay said half a century ago, that the alliance was created to keep America in, Russia out, and Germany down, … well, this time, it did not work."

Der Standard (Vienna):
"This summit rather contributes to the destabilization of Europe … NATO is set on blind flight, lives from hand to mouth and compensates a lack of strategy with enlargement-rounds … with its too fast and too aggressive behavior, this U.S. administration inflicts damage on no one but NATO itself."

And ultimately Timothy Garton Ash's sharp pen in The Guardian (London):

"Recall that after the 9/11 attacks, Nato invoked its famous Article 5 - one for all and all for one! - for the first time in its history, and offered its services in Afghanistan. The then secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, spurned this offer of solidarity from European and Canadian allies. Washington's court chronicler Bob Woodward summarises Rumsfeld's response at a top-level White House meeting: "the coalition had to fit the conflict, not the other way round ... Maybe they didn't need a French frigate." Seven years on, Washington is begging for a thousand French soldiers to help shore up the Canadians' valiant struggle against the resurgent Taliban (…)
"In short, the W in George W stands for weak. For all the macho Texan swagger - "your man [Blair] has cojones" and so on - this Bush has been, on the things that really matter to the world, a weak president. Whereas the outwardly mild and preppy George Bush Sr was, on things that really mattered to the world, a strong president - that is, an effective practitioner of international statecraft. Bush the son reportedly has a complicated relationship with his father, some would even say a complex. Well Oedipus, shmoedipus ... but daddy did better."

It truly seems as if after seven years of American unilateral arrogance, divisiveness, smart-alecking, and neo-colonialist hubris, Europe is celebrating having to host George Bush one last time and to soundly sock him on the jaw for goodbye. All across "old Europe" the Franco-German alliance that brought down President Bush's declared pet project to launch a MAP (Membership Action Plan, the first step towards NATO membership) for the Ukraine and Georgia, is hailed. In best Remember the Alamo!-mood - although in this context it rather is the Azores, where the fateful March 16, 2003-meeting was held that cemented the division of Europe in "who's not with us, is against us" - German Foreign Secretary Frank-Walter Steinmeier copied Sam Houston and Bucharest became San Jacinto, where the imperialist USM, no USA, were defeated.

That's the accepted version in European media, yet when reading the official Summit Declaration, the reality seems to differ considerably:

"NATO welcomes Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO (…) MAP is the next step for Ukraine and Georgia on their direct way to membership. Today we make clear that we support these countries' applications for MAP. Therefore we will now begin a period of intensive engagement with both at a high political level to address the questions still outstanding pertaining to their MAP applications. We have asked Foreign Ministers to make a first assessment of progress at their December 2008 meeting."

There is no room for ambiguity. The Communiqué and NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer clearly state a commitment to future NATO membership of the Ukraine and Georgia. This language and approach reminds me of the 1999 Helsinki European Council, when Turkey was recognized as an official candidate for EU ascension. One day in the near future, the now celebrating European leaders will be called upon not only to talk the talk but also to walk the walk and won't be able to backpedal. These kind of commitments gain a momentum of their own, a momentum that in many cases proves inexorable and irreversible, as the example of Turkey highlights. Make no mistake, yesterday NATO's eastern enlargement to admit the two former SSRs of the Ukraine and Georgia was set on track. Together with the agreement on missile defense, Russia permitting land-transit of non-lethal equipment to Afghanistan, and France fully returning to NATO's command structure, the results of this summit don't look at all like a European knock out victory to me. On the contrary, I assess them as a win on points for President Bush; not even he, perennially caught in his pipe dream world, has expected the Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO tomorrow. The irreversibility of NATO's eastern enlargement put down in ink and signed on by all allies, though, is the best he could get from this year's summit.

Consequently, conservative American commentators keep wallowing in imperialist hubris, Ralph Peter's op-ed in the New York Post just constituting the most disgusting example of, no, not shortsighted arrogance towards Europe - we got used to that - but a neo-colonialist 'white man's burden'-lordliness that reminds me of the Hearst Press' appeals to American manifest destiny to civilize the savage, uneducated, irreligious Filipinos in the early 20th century:

"Ukraine's a divided country, with a European western half (much of which used to be Poland) and a backward eastern portion populated by seldom-sober Russian- speakers (…)If we could integrate only the western, civilized (sic!, my highlighting) part of Ukraine into NATO, the answer would be a no-brainer (…)But when all is said and done (in NATO, a great deal more is said than done), neither Ukraine nor Georgia is the problem here. The skunk at the garden party is Russia. Those blue-nosed bureaucrats in Paris, Berlin and Brussels shouldn't be too anxious to stroke the critter lifting its tail over by the open bar."

With American evangelicals and missionaries of democracy having found a new area of operation in the Ukraine - as if Iraq and Afghanistan weren't enough - I wonder if the American people fully comprehend what they got dished up yesterday: an Article 5 commitment to rush to the defense of Georgia, haunted by its territorial disputes with secessionist Abchasia and South-Ossetia, caged in between Chechnya and further to the south, Iran, and plagued by all ethnic powder kegs of the Caucasus? Furthermore, the question of NATO membership has the potential to tear the Ukraine apart and will inevitably set the alliance on collision course with Russia - no matter when this enlargement will take place. And with the declared Russia-hater John McCain in the White House, we can bet on this issue being addressed rather sooner than later. My deepest condolences to the American people and to all citizens of NATO member countries, just yesterday you have inherited another round of Pandora's boxes from George Bush's legacy.

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Hannes Artens is the author of The Writing on the Wall, the first anti-Iran-war novel.