Even a Republican president must understand Western Europe

By Llewellyn King

Hearst Newspapers

DUBLIN -- U.S. elections may not turn on foreign policy, but history does.

If Mitt Romney wins the presidency, it is on foreign policy that his mettle will be tested.

Sadly, already Romney is under siege by the conservative foreign policy elite to embrace a muscular, Cold War-era vision of the world -- of good and evil doers and deprecating of Europe.

Underlying this empire motif is a deep belief in American exceptionalism, that we are always right and that we will prevail through force of values.

This also was the thinking that got us into Iraq.

There is a time in global affairs for cold steel, and a time to sheath it in soft velvet.

As a businessman, Romney must know that the first thing you do in a new company is to take inventory. Despite the bellicosity of his rhetoric, he needs to take inventory and to act on what he finds.

One of those findings ought to be that his success in international relations will be determined as much by his relations with Western Europe as by the big, new U.S. Navy (three more submarines and more destroyers).

Another finding ought to be that Western Europe is extremely important to the United States in many ways and presents a problem for all Republican presidents.

The mere fact of being a Republican conjures in the Western European mind a fear of maverick cowboy presidents who shoot first and ask later. This reaction is as reflexive as American fear of socialist governments: It is a reaction to what we think they will do.

Likewise, Western Europe prejudges American presidents on what it believes they think. This turned out to be a harsh and unfair judgment of Ronald Reagan and of George H.W. Bush, and close to right about George W. Bush.

Though Europe may be in a state of economic extremis, it will be essential to the success of the next U.S. presidency.

Consider these unique European assets in American foreign policy:

-- Europe is our largest trading partner, nominally Christian and peaceful.

-- Europe does share most of our values; that is where we got them.

-- Europe provides leverage for us with difficult customers like China, Russia and Iran.

-- Europe is our essential partner in any Middle East settlement; it is seen in Arab communities as being more even-handed than the United States.

-- Western Europe is home to the vital small countries -- Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Holland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland that provide diplomatic services to facilitate peace talks, provide back-channel communications and supervise post-hostility policing.

-- Collectively, the countries of Western Europe act as a modifying force between East and West. If Romney wants to tighten sanctions further on Iran, he had better get Western Europe to speak to China and Russia.

-- NATO, which has troops in Afghanistan, is the critical partner in American security. The alliance is less effective than we might wish, but important in holding North America and Europe in partnership.

Yet, in the conservative foreign policy establishment, Western Europe is dissed as "Old Europe." The criticism is that Western Europe is, to use a term from Margaret Thatcher's day, "wet" -- too many social services, not enough defense spending, too much regulation and not enough religion.

To Western Europe, with the exception of a small and very conservative fringe, America is harsh place without national health insurance, with the death penalty, very terrible prison sentences and a philistine lack of interest in art and culture at the government level.

We have lived with these issues for a long time, and they should not influence a possible President Romney from preventing further drift in European-American relations, which was so corrosive in the George W. Bush presidency.

What does not wash in Europe is talk of American exceptionalism. It offends because it declares an overall superiority -- and Europe has had enough of that.

Besides, all nations deeply believe themselves to be exceptional. I know because I grew up in the last years of the British Empire. We thought we were the most exceptional people since the Romans, and we had doubts about them.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle on PBS. lking@kingpublishing.com

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