NYTimes.com Article: President Rewards Like-Minded World Leaders With St

This article from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by tganesh@stlawu.edu.


Sanger writes of the new alliances, the new favorites, all measured by whether 
or not they get invited to 'the ranch'.  We are all cowboys today!  It is a 
rare feat to have been born Texan.

tganesh@stlawu.edu

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President Rewards Like-Minded World Leaders With State Visits

May 28, 2003
By DAVID E. SANGER 




 

WASHINGTON, May 27 - Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's
visit last week to President Bush's ranch in Texas was
punctuated by an unannounced, last-minute surprise: Mr.
Bush invited his house guest to sit in on his highly
classified morning intelligence briefing, the daily global
review of terrorist threats, loose nukes and brewing hot
spots. 

Just a few weeks before, Prime Minister John Howard of
Australia got similar insider treatment at the ranch: he
was given a precious seat at the table for Mr. Bush's
strategy session with the American negotiators with North
Korea. 

Last week Mr. Bush pulled out all the stops for the
president of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo -
even enduring a formal news conference in the East Room,
one of Mr. Bush's least favorite venues - to make clear to
her constituents half a world away that they would be
rewarded for allowing the American military to pursue
terrorists on their territory. 

Such efforts to rebuild and reshape alliances - and to make
clear which foreign leaders are considered members of the
Bush inner circle - are part of an effort by the White
House to compensate for the breaches with the traditional
allies that became so visible during the war in Iraq. 

While many presidents have used private visits to Camp
David and state dinners to impress and honor foreign
leaders, Mr. Bush is taking the process a step further:
since the fall of Baghdad, he has issued invitations to
reward allies who have signed on to his view of the world -
and are willing to join him in the next steps of his plans
to confront both terrorists and so-called rogue states. 

Just as notable as who has been invited into the cozy
intelligence reviews in Mr. Bush's living room, with its
view of his private fishing pond, is the list of those not
likely to be enjoying the view anytime soon. Mr. Bush will
meet the leaders who led the opposition to the Iraq war at
the annual Group of 8 summit meeting this weekend in Évian,
France, where he is expected to spend as little one-on-one
time as possible with President Jacques Chirac of France
and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany. 

(Why France? "Let's say it wasn't the President's idea,"
one of Mr. Bush's senior diplomats deadpanned last week.
"But they are the hosts this year, proving that the
diplomatic gods have a sense of humor.") 

Mr. Bush's aides insist he is not abandoning traditional
allies, even if Secretary of State Colin L. Powell warned
not long ago that France would have to face the
"consequences" of its actions. 

But clearly the highest honors have gone to those who sent
in forces to aid in Iraq - a short list that includes
Britain, Australia and Poland. Mr. Howard received the
highest compliment in the Bush lexicon: "you're kind of
like a Texan." The next highest honor for countries is
reserved for nations that have come around to share Mr.
Bush's view that the only way to deal with terrorists and
blackmailers is to confront them or, in the case of North
Korea and Iran, to choke off economic interchange until
they change their ways. 

So Mrs. Arroyo's visit was intended to bolster a leader who
is still facing considerable opposition at home to the idea
that American forces would hunt down terrorists in a nation
that was once an American colony. And Mr. Koizumi's
treatment was intended to give some more spine to a nation
still struggling to reconcile its post-World War II
aversion to confrontations of any kind with modern threats
on its borders. 

Introducing Mr. Koizumi to the distinctly American ritual
of a morning intelligence briefing was particularly
notable, because Japan has just launched its first spy
satellite, with lenses that will be focused intensely on
North Korea's nuclear and missile sites. 

Whether all of this will work is anyone's guess. Mr. Bush
first used the ranch near Crawford for diplomatic ends when
he entertained Presidents Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and
Jiang Zemin of China and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi
Arabia. In retrospect, Mr. Putin's visit was the high-water
mark of United States-Russia relations: Mr. Bush's aides
even taught Mr. Putin and his wife the country-western
dance "The Cotton-Eyed Joe." 

Since then Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin have descended into
rougher times - first over Iraq, now over Russia's aid to
Iran's nuclear program. Relations with the Saudi royal
family - Crown Prince Abdullah chose not to stay overnight
at the ranch - are clearly rocky as the royal family
debates the risks of getting too close to the United States
in its battle with terrorists. 

(Prime Minister Tony Blair has been to the ranch, of
course, as has another close ally, Prime Minister Jose
María Aznar of Spain.) 

"Bringing in Blair and Putin and Jiang and Abdullah was a
clear signal that there is a new alignment," said James
Steinberg, who arranged many a visit for foreign
dignitaries when he served as deputy national security
adviser for President Clinton. "Now, for almost everybody,
the definition of being in the first rank of America's
friends is an invitation to the ranch, because it is a
place so special to the president," added Mr. Steinberg,
now the vice president and director of foreign policy
studies at the Brookings Institution. 

They also are part of an effort to build coalitions that
the president will clearly need as he rolls out his
post-Iraq plan - a plan that starts in the Mideast, but
also takes on the Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, and
a series of failing states, the future Afghanistans of the
world. Mr. Bush is to take that plan on the road this week,
in a trip that starts in Krakow, then moves on to a long
planned observance of St. Petersburg's 300th birthday, then
to the Évian meeting, and then, most likely, to Kuwait,
Jordan and Egypt. 

Mr. Bush, his aides say, has no illusions about the
resistance he will encounter - from Europeans still bitter
about Iraq, Arabs deeply suspicious of Mr. Bush's Middle
East road map, and many others still resentful of American
power. 

But those who tell him they share his worldview - or even
those who suggest that, with time, they may think about
sharing it - could soon find themselves on the patio in
Texas, being briefed about Al Qaeda in the morning and
learning the "Cotton-Eyed Joe" under the stars.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/28/politics/28MEMO.html?ex=1055148882&ei=1&en=234b60ff82cb7b01


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