Some Europeans are worrying that Bush might be right after all about the forward march of democracy in the Middle East, writes John Palmer
These are confusing, even disorienting times, for President Bush's more outspoken European critics. International developments since Mr Bush's high-profile pilgrimage to the EU last month - above all the first tentative signs of a democratising trend in important parts of the Middle East - have nonplussed many of those Europeans.
They watched with alarm the unilateralist, "bull-in-a-china shop" strategy of the first Bush administration. Suddenly it now seems that the right wing, neo-conservative Bushites are the champions of democratic transformation who can cite the elections in Iraq, the demonstrations in Lebanon and the tentative steps towards democracy in Saudi Arabia and Egypt as evidence of their triumph. This has left European politicians, deeply suspicious of US motives, thrown back on vague realpolitik arguments for questioning the wisdom of too rapid popular change from below.
Of course, European multilateralists are not the only ones scratching their heads to see why the world has been so suddenly turned upside down. There are American neo-cons who have already expressed bewilderment at Washington's retreat from an "Axis of Evil" perspective for viewing all world problems. They are particularly alarmed at the way the administration has decided to row behind the EU's diplomatic "carrots as well as stick" approach to Iran's nuclear aspirations.
Some are also uneasy at the first hints of a greater even-handedness in the way the US views the Palestine/Israel conflict and a softening of the US critique of the EU's commitment to global governance and the global rule of law.
This radical reordering of the traditional divisions between the US and its European allies maybe more apparent than real. The rediscovered US commitment to multilateral diplomacy is in part a tactical necessity. Iraq has revealed the stark limitations on American power and its de facto dependence on allies to get it out of the mess into which its unilateralism has led it.
In this perspective, there is little to be lost in buying some time for the US to review its worldwide strategy - even if it means swallowing pride and giving space to the European way of doing things. The more far-sighted neo-cons argue that the anticipated failure of the European way will in the end only reinforce the view that US hegemony is essential to world stability.
It is also worth asking whether the impressive welling up of popular demand for democratic change in the Middle East will necessarily produce outcomes convenient to US interests. It cannot have escaped the attention of the Washington ideologues that the Iraqi election results were bad news for the main pro-US Iraqi politicians. If the Shia majority finds a nationalist consensus with those Iraqi "resisters" who want to break with the Islamic terrorists, the resulting demand for US withdrawal may yet prove a humiliation for the hawks in the US.
Nor can it be assumed that fully democratic elections will produce comfortable partners or allies for the US in Egypt, Saudi Arabia or even Lebanon. In this region memories are long enough to recall the way in which the US and its allies conspired to overthrow a secular democratic government (led by Musaddiq) in pre-Shah Iran, worked to exploit Nasserist and Baathist nationalists to undermine support for parties of the left in Iraq, and then abandoned the nationalists to their fate at the hands of Islamic extremists and absolutist rulers.
But none of this can or should explain the reaction of some left-wing European opponents of the Bush project. The campaign for a democratic transformation of the Middle East or the wider Islamic world cannot be abandoned because its cause has, belatedly, been taken up by a right-wing Republican administration in the US. Nor can there be the slightest justification for those in the European foreign policy establishment who mutter darkly about the potential "threats to European interests" from a whirlwind popular movement for democracy.
The topsy-turvy transformation of the current transatlantic dialogue about democracy, human rights and "western" interests is also highlighted by the dispute over the proposed lifting of the EU arms embargo on China. We now have the extraordinary spectacle of the US invoking China's failure to come to terms with the crimes of Tiananmen Square to oppose lifting the embargo, while EU governments, which led the denunciations of Chinese repression of Tiananmen, its mass executions and its repression of dissidents, plead that China is too big and too economically powerful to be refused the legitimation which lifting the embargo would involve.
It does look as though the EU is determined to lift the embargo while at the same time protesting that it will not involve any greater actual sales of arms to Beijing. Any attempt to strong-arm the European Union by either the administration or Congress is most unlikely to work and may strengthen its determination to press ahead. The last best chance of the EU reconsidering its position lies precisely with those human rights organisations who are Mr Bush's most outspoken critics.
The Belgian and Swedish governments have signalled that they want a far more explicit link between progress by China on democracy and human rights and a step-by-step lifting of the embargo. A vital first step should be the immediate and unconditional release of all those political prisoners held in Chinese jails since Tiananmen. Beijing should also be expected to express its stated desire to "move on" by lifting all the bans on those who want to give public expression of grief and horror at what happened when the proto-democratic movement was crushed in Tiananmen Square.
It took the European allies a long time to understand that something was not necessarily the truth or certainly the whole truth because it was espoused by the US - as self-appointed leader of the western alliance. Now some Europeans at least need to understand that a cause is not necessarily wrong because it is espoused by the US. It was radical and revolutionary European democrats who helped inspire the birth of America's democratic revolution. Europe now needs to reclaim the banner of liberty as its own.
John Palmer, political director of the European Policy Centre in Brussels, writes in a personal capacity.