Lining up the sides for a new Cold War

Last week we were treated to what Frenchmen look like when they’re being nice when M. Sarkozy addressed a joint session of Congress. This week, formerly chilly new prime Minister of Britain, Gordon Brown was caught “doing the Sarkozy” by the Wall Street Journal Editorial staff;

So Monday night, in his first major speech on foreign policy since moving into 10 Downing Street, Mr. Brown sought to out-Sarkozy the Frenchman. “It is no secret that I am a lifelong admirer of America,” he said in London. “I have no truck with anti-Americanism in Britain or elsewhere in Europe. I believe that our ties with America — founded on values we share — constitute our most important bilateral relationship.” In noting the recent pro-U.S. tilt across the Channel, Mr. Brown said, “It is good for Britain, for Europe and for the wider world that today France and Germany and the European Union are building strong relationships with America.”

GI Jane wrote yesterday on this blog, that Denmark elected a center-right govenment with Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a staunch Bush supporter at it’s head, and of course Germany has center-right Andrea merkel calling shots for them. So all of our allies are lining up with us again – that’s good, I suppose. Mike’s America says it’s better than the alternative;

Meanwhile, both Bill and Hillary Clinton continue to insist that America’s standing in the world has been damaged by President Bush and only THEY can restore it!

Yeah, that’s what we need to restore America’s image: more Europeans making jokes about a stain on a blue dress!

Fausta says;

That’s what happens when George W. Bush squanders the good faith of the EUros…

But I see all of this good news a bit differently - always the cynic, I see an impending disaster. I wrote back in September about the Axis of Ultimate Evil;

Well, you’ve got Hugo Chavez buying weapons from Russia, drilling oil with China (who is, by the way, drilling oil off the coast of Florida in cahoots with Cuba) and forming alliances with Iran and Nicaragua (not to mention Chavez coming out against boob jobs), Syria getting weapons technology from North Korea.

[…] 

I’m starting to see a pattern here. This growing alliance is cartoonishly evil – like some kind of alliance of fiends set against the Justice League or Superfriends. Except there isn’t any Justice League or Superfriends – there’s just us. Well…some of us. 

Well, now we have friends. China and Russia, who are both running a screen for resource-rich and repressive Myanmar government in the United Nations, are now training their militaries together which completes the circle of the alliance of our political and economic competitors.  In fact the AP writes that a US Panel reports Chinese espionage as one of our biggest threats;

Chinese spying in America represents the greatest threat to U.S. technology, according to a congressional advisory panel report Thursday that recommended lawmakers consider financing counterintelligence efforts meant to stop China from stealing U.S. manufacturing expertise.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission also said in its annual report to Congress that small- and medium-sized U.S. manufacturers, which represent more than half the manufacturing jobs in America, “face the full brunt of China’s unfair trade practices, including currency manipulation and illegal subsidies for Chinese exports.”

China’s economic policies create a trade relationship that is “severely out of balance” in China’s favor, said the commission, which Congress set up in 2000 to investigate and report on U.S.-China issues.

With the war in Iraq winding down, the cartoonishly evil axis probably needs to strike at us while we’re trying to catch our breath, and before our own alliance has any real strength. We know that the French are always the friendliest when they’re in trouble – that probably should have been my first hint.

Category: Foreign Policy, Politics