The Ugly American

aWol charged into the NATO summit like a bull in a china shop and immediately started embarrassing everyone capable of feeling shame.

What a schmuck.

First, he hijacked a press conference, cutting off questions and asking the Romanian President - who was hosting the press event - if he was ready to take a stroll along the waters edge.

"Just a moment," said a flabbergasted President Traian Basescu.

"Oh, you got..." Bush started, obviously astounded that it wasn't all about him.

"Just a moment," Basescu repeated.

"He's not through," Bush said, seemingly bemused.

Basescu, determined, went on "[T]he information I would like to add to refer to two delicate issues, issues that are visible for the Romanian public...

And by this point, I was curled in a fetal ball, feeling shame to the point of nausea.

And the summit wasn't even underway.

I checked the supply of Tums. Good thing I did, too, because I needed them in short order.

The summit was barely convened when he went off script and started whoring for membership for Georgia and Ukraine. "This is my last NATO summit," was his explanation for co-opting the proceedings and making salvaging something he can call a legacy a NATO priority. Even though France and Germany have both announced that they will block the move.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, was described by some German officials as upset and even angry Wednesday, especially after she and Bush had had numerous conversations over the last two months about the issue.

Merkel had thought that a compromise solution was in the works, so that Washington would support a warm statement welcoming the interest of Ukraine and Georgia in NATO and encouraging both countries to work toward a membership plan in time for NATO's 60th anniversary summit meeting next year in Berlin.

Germany and France believe that since neither Ukraine nor Georgia are stable enough to enter the program now, a membership plan would be an unnecessary blow at Russia, which firmly opposes the move.

In fact, senior diplomats in Bucharest said, President Vladimir Putin, who is scheduled to come to his first and last NATO summit meeting on Friday, has threatened to cancel the visit if the two former Soviet states enter the membership program.

Merkel visited Moscow on March 8 and met with Putin and his successor, Dmitri Medvedev, who will take over as president in May, and told them that Russia would not be allowed a veto over NATO membership.

Nevertheless, a senior German diplomat, Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador to London, said that a MAP offer to a divided Ukraine could destabilize the new government there, and that not enough diplomacy had taken place beforehand with Russia.

The hubris and arrogance Bush brought to the proceedings and put on prominent display are unprecedented. And an affront to every civilized American with any sense of protocol or diplomacy.

Can it be January now?

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Germany says "Halt!"

Germany has a different perspective that the United States,
being as they are in the neighborhood and all.

Next week, when the NATO summit gets underway in Bucharest (good Gawd, I never thought I would ever say that with a straight face) aWol Bush will swagger in and try to bully our allies into admitting former Soviet bloc nations, regardless of how much unnecessary strain that move would put on relations with Russia.

Fortunately, Germany is standing in the way (that's another thing I never thought I would ever say and mean).

From Spiegel Online:

German objections dominate the debate over NATO expansion in the final days leading up the military alliance's summit meeting in the Romanian capital Bucharest. James Goldgeier, a member of the National Security Council in the administration of former US President Bill Clinton, told SPIEGEL ONLINE: "I am amazed at how openly the current differences between Berlin and Washington are being aired. In February it was the German role in Afghanistan. Now it's about the issue of NATO expansion, in which Germany quite openly orchestrated the resistance to Ukraine and Georgia. This is relatively unusual in advance of this sort of summit."

REUTERS

Romania's Ceausescu-era parliament building in Bucharest will host next week's NATO summit.

Goldgeier's words ring especially true when one considers the importance of the issue for the Bush administration. NATO expansion is one of the few strategies it took over almost seamlessly from the Clinton administration. "Bush absolutely wanted to get the acceptance process for Georgia and Ukraine underway in Bucharest," says Goldgeier.

A clear signal that things will not go quite as smoothly as Bush had hoped was the discussion among foreign policy and security experts at the Brussels Forum, sponsored by the German Marshall Fund, less than two weeks ago. Moderator Ronald Asmus, who, as a senior official in the Clinton administration in the 1990s, played a key role in the initial push to expand NATO eastward, opened the meeting by calling EU and NATO expansion an historic success. Asmus went on to rave about how the map of Europe had been redrawn, and praised the joint tour de force by Europeans and Americans.

But moving on from the "glorious past" and returning t0 a shaky present and looking to a less-than-certain future, the "elephant in the room" is the fact that the bloom is of the NATO and EU membership rose.

Next week at the summit, membership invitations will be extended to Macedonia, Croatia and Albania. The question in the balance is, should overtures be made to Georgia and Ukraine, indicating membership invitations will be extended in the near future?

In addressing the conundrum, Asmus' tone quickly turned from jubilant to sober. Would the United States be able to achieve these goals, he asked the group apprehensively? There are already many critics today, he added, critics like the Germans. "An official from the German foreign ministry told me recently that he couldn't think of one member of the foreign affairs committee of the German Bundestag who supports the initiation of NATO membership negotiations with Ukraine and Georgia," Asmus said.

Many Germans were sitting in the audience -- and agreed with Asmus' characterization. Eckart von Klaeden, foreign policy spokesman of the conservative Christian Democratic and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) parliamentary group, was only too willing to list Germany's concerns. In Ukraine, he said, large segments of the population oppose the idea of NATO membership. And Georgia, with its internal conflicts? "We don't want another Cyprus in NATO," said von Klaeden, referring to the Mediterranean country's division into Turkish and Greek regions.

Now far be it from me to appease Russia. But far be it from me to borrow trouble, too. And admitting either or both of those nations to NATO has the potential for alliance-threatening turmoil in the future. One Cyprus is enough.

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Serbian Protesters Overrun US Embassy in Belgrade

Serbian anger at Kosovo's declaration of independence last weekend boiled over today, and about a thousand protesters broke off from a larger peaceable demonstration and overran the American embassy in Belgrade.





The Ambassador was not in residence, and the Embassy was closed this week, in anticipation of civil protests in the wake of Kosovo formally declaring independence. The embassy guards, however, all active duty Marines, were in the facility.

Protesters went over a first-floor railing, entered the embassy and set several rooms alight. One protester scaled the facade of the building and ripped down an American flag, which was later burned by the demonstrators. (No word on whether it was THE flag, since the Ambassador was out of the facility, it might not have been...and only a protocol wonk would care, actually...)

Demonstrators cheered as the attackers, some of whom wore masks to conceal their faces, leaped onto the building's balcony, waving a Serbian flag and chanting "Serbia, Serbia!" A convoy of police firing tear gas was able to disperse the crowd., but when the demonstrations started, there was no outside police presence protecting the embassy facilities.

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The unrest wasn't confined to Belgrade, however. NATO troops have sealed the border between Serbia and Kosovo after hundreds of angry Serbs torched customs and police facilities at the border crossings in the towns of Jarinje and Brnjak, which were manned by NATO and Kosovo police.

The border closings will undoubtedly infuriate both Serbia as it cuts off ethnic Serbians in the north of Kosovo from greater Serbia, which the ethnic Serbs insist they still belong to.

Protesters arrived at the border crossings in convoys of cars and buses in what a BBC correspondent who witnessed the demonstrations said was an obviously coordinated and well orchestrated action.

Kosovo police and United Nations customs officials retreated to a nearby tunnel and as the crowds of Serbian protestors used bulldozers and explosives to demolish buildings at the border crossings. The Kosovo police called on NATO led K-For troops to seal the border and regain control of the situation.

Slobodan Samardzic, Serbia's minister for Kosovo, said that his government "intended to take control of the customs posts" in order to establish what he called the "full authority of Serbian statehood." The strident pose being struck by Serbia right now makes me nervous about how well they will accept a 2,000 strong EU police and justice mission that is shaping up now and will be launched in coming weeks.

The attacks at the border are at least as significant as the embassy protest - they set the international community, at least all the nations that have recognized Kosovo's independence, on a collision course with ethnic Serb Kosovars, as well as the Serbian government, and possibly Russia, too.

I do know one thing for certain - this is a really bad time to have an overstretched military, and an administration that doesn't do diplomacy.

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