Bush trip to Europe demonstrates durable alliance

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George W. Bush this week embarked on what will almost certainly be his last visit to Europe while in the White House. The itinerary included a Slovenia summit with representatives of the European Union, plus meetings with leaders of France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the Vatican.The EU summit was the usual diplomatic dance, including receptions, toasts and tete-a-tetes, but no substantive business. Bush's lame-duck status rules out major initiatives.NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine was a priority for the Bush administration at a European-American summit in Bucharest in the spring. That initiative failed. Russia has been particularly hostile to membership for Ukraine, a nation that in an earlier time provided significant support for Nazi Germany.On this trip, Bush is emphasizing collective efforts to limit Iran's nuclear development. Diplomacy is the preferred device, and so far a direct confrontation with Tehran has been avoided. The president also has talked with emphasis about employing alliance diplomacy to seek peace in the Middle East and pursue other broad policy challenges removed from the Atlantic region.Two very positive points emerge from this Bush swan song. First, the trip underscores White House recognition of the importance of working with allies. Second, closely related, Bush clearly has learned the basic foreign policy fact of life that international institutions are indispensable, a point which applies as much to the United Nations and NATO as to the European Union.The confident cowboy unilateralism of his first few years in the White House, including declarations that other nations were 'either for us or against us', has disappeared. The White House media message about this trip is that relations with European nations have improved considerably, indicating by implication that alliances matter after all.This White House shift has significance reaching well beyond Europe. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung made a special effort to ensure he was the first foreign head of government to visit the newly inaugurated American president early in 2001. For his trouble, he was publicly scolded by Bush for being too accommodating to North Korea.By contrast, the Bush administration now actively encourages diplomatic initiatives regarding limitation of North Korea's nuclear capacity, and the preferred means is the six-party talks that include China, Japan and Russia along with the U.S. and South Korea.Iran and North Korea represent particularly dangerous nuclear flash points on the globe. Whatever the specific differences between these two cases, in each Bush has chosen to give priority to collective diplomacy over unilateral military action.Emphasis on acting with allies spreads the burdens and costs involved, and provides a useful practical test of the advisability of proposed actions. This point applies very directly to our European allies in the context of NATO. Refusal of the alliance as a whole to join the United States in the 2003 invasion of Iraq was an early warning that the Bush administration was cavalierly underestimating the task.In 1954, as France was suffering defeat in Indochina, an urgent appeal was made to Washington for direct military intervention. President Dwight D. Eisenhower asked Paris to find additional NATO allies willing to participate. When none would join, Ike had a persuasive and plausible reason for abstaining as well, in hindsight a very insightful decision.The next American administration should give high priority to strengthening our international institutional ties. Both Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain have reflected this basic insight in campaign statements on foreign policy.(Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College and author of "After the Cold War," NYU Press and Palgrave/Macmillan. E-mail acyr(at)carthage.edu)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)