The Axis of Rudeness

...The next few months will reveal whether the Bush team can master this delicate diplomatic balancing act...

...But that is not the end of the matter, for the administration also needs to do some remedial work of its own...

...Britain's appeasement of the United States at the close of the 19th century was brilliant and forestalled the collapse of their empire for several generations until, well, they tried appeasement once too often, this time in Munich...

...leaders to brush off the European reaction as merely a temper tantrum...

...Under the circumstances, it is not obviously wrong to wonder whether it makes sense to win round one against al Qaeda before starting round two...

...Shortly after the speech, Britain's foreign secretary Jack Straw dismissed it with the contemptuous speculation that Bush was engaging in election-year pandering...

...Isn't North Korea a basket case...

...The Europeans, in short, deserve to be scolded for the scolding they unleashed on the president...

...It scarcely needs saying that their shrill outbursts would be considered intolerable were they coming the other way across the Atlantic...

...If European leaders really want to be heard in the United States, then they will have to master their emotions...

...in an even more impolitic hissy fit, claiming that Bush now posed a grave threat to France: "Today we are threatened by a new simplistic approach that reduces all the problems in the world to the struggle against terrorism...

...Nevertheless, it would be a mistake for U.S...

...This canard substitutes for serious thought, and is usually mobilized when the critic cannot think of a substantive reason for opposing a policy...

...The irony is that these European leaders have used extraordinarily undiplomatic means to protest a speech that they disliked on the grounds that it was undiplomatic...

...Europe is incapable of participating as a peer of the United States in diplomatic initiatives or political-military affairs...

...Of course, diplomacy sometimes involves "a full and frank exchange of views...

...But among close allies, there is a time and a place, and by choosing a knee-jerk reaction in on-the-record interviews, these European officials violated basic time and place tenets...

...It is not simply carping to ask the administration to explain and justify the sequencing envisioned in the new strategy...

...The second question they ask is, Why are we sure appeasement won't work...

...In point of fact, no American diplomat would ever treat a policy dispute with the rudeness and petulance that is standard fare over here...

...Until President Bush's rhetoric is backed up with deeds—deeds the Europeans ironically claim to dread—the Europeans will likely remain quite critical of the speech...

...For example, Europeans ask whether the president has exaggerated the urgency of the threat...

...Isn't Iran's problem the divisions within its government—rogue operators rather than a rogue state...

...Finally, they say: We have heard the speech...

...Witness the masterful response from Secretary Powell: "There are strong points of view in Europe, and we always appreciate hearing strong points of view...

...BY PETER D. FEAVER Cambridge, England PRESIDENT BUSH'S "axis of evil" speech has provoked an extraordinary degree of vitriol from our European allies...

...Europe's seniormost diplomat dismissed the speech with the derisive comment, "I find it hard to believe that's a thought-through policy...

...Now where is the policy...

...Or consider Chris Patten, the bureaucrat in charge of "international affairs" for the European Union...

...If the past few weeks are any guide, they will have to accomplish it without much help from their undiplomatic partners across the pond...

...Carrot-and-stick appeasement, despite its sorry association with World War II, is not always wrong...

...The Bush administration needs to explain why appeasement is bound to fail in each of these instances—an easy case to make with Iraq, but one that requires more explication with regard to North Korea and Iran...

...One wonders whether they were doing some domestic pandering of their own...

...The yowling from the press and intellectuals is predictable and returns those cosseted elites to their familiar habit, interrupted ever so briefly after September 11, of viewing every American initiative in the worst possible light...

...Instead of a substantive (and private) exchange, Europeans have chanted the tired "unilateralist" mantra, the charge that the United States does not care about the views of other countries...

...Prime Minister Blair of Britain understands this instinctively...

...France's foreign minister indulged Peter D. Feaver, associate professor of political science at Duke University and director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies, is a visiting fellow at Corpus Christi College and visiting scholar at the Centre of International Studies, Cambridge...

...Hasn't Iraq been largely deterred...

...Europeans who accuse the United States of stubborn unilateralism have no historical perspective, and must have in mind some Shangri-La in which America never articulates a national interest...

...As a consequence, he has influence in Washington...

...it is a cacophony of voices and conflicting emotions, and when these contradictions are exposed, the cacophony will surge in typically adolescent fury...

...Bush has a tough row to hoe here, precisely because he appears to be talking about preemptive action, moving before any of these rogue states can trump al Qaeda's attack on the United States...

...The Europeans are very keen to keep trying appeasement in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, although, of course, they call it by its politically correct name, "engagement...

...At the same time, the European outburst reminds us that the Bush administration needs to work harder to shore up transatlantic relations...

...It cannot expect Europeans to accept the axis of evil approach blindly and uncritically, and should address carefully their questions...

...Blair may have had reservations about the speech, but he registered his concerns privately and constructively...

...Ramping up the rhetoric without accompanying, visible changes of policy is problematic...

...What is noteworthy this time, however, is the extent to which senior government officials are willing to be shrill on the record, with apparently little thought and less care to the diplomatic repercussions...

...I hear them whether I appreciate them or not...

...European complaints about America are rarely newsworthy, but there is a desperate intensity to recent outbursts that deserves a closer look...

...For the record: No dominant state in history enjoying the power advantage the United States currently enjoys has ever been more multilateralist or has accepted more institutional constraints on its freedom of action...

...The Bush team risks making the same mistake that bedeviled the administration during its first few months: treating Europe as an adult, whereas Europe in its collective political identity is best thought of (privately) as an adolescent...

...It is still unclear what the Bush administration intends to do about the axis of evil, but whatever it attempts will be easier if the allies are alongside—and given our shared interests and values, they should be, if the administration plays its hand well...

...The trick in dealing with adolescents is to accord them the public respect owed adults but privately to hedge, and never to put them in a position where their basic irresponsibility will hurt them or you...

...Above all, you learn to live without the respect you deserve and with temporizing accommodations...