President Obama had
to cancel his most recent trip to Europe due to the huge ash
cloud, but this week Europeans will get the next-best thing -- a visit from
Vice President Joseph Biden.
The White House is billing the trip as a big freaking
deal in the security sphere, with Biden slated to give a "major address" to the
European Parliament and hold
discussions with several European leaders on the future of NATO, U.S. nuclear
weapons and missile defense in Europe, and the U.S.-EU-Russian relationship.
"We no longer see Europe
in zero-sum, Cold War terms," Biden writes in an op-ed that will appear in the International Herald Tribune Thursday. "Promoting
trust within Europe requires understanding how neighbors understand their
security challenges and how they intend to confront those challenges."
And he's not showing up in Europe empty-handed.
Biden will have brought with him proposals to improve military transparency
through more data sharing, and says he is willing to "explore" limitations on
the size and location of conventional forces there. He is also supporting an
expanded role for the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe in conflict prevention and mediation in the wake
of the Russia-Georgia war of 2008.
Biden makes a clear reference to former U.S.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's January
2003 claim that there was a "new Europe" and an "old Europe," a comment that angered Western
European leaders at the time.
"Sustainable security in Europe requires
peace and stability for all of Europe -- not old or new Europe, East or West
Europe, NATO or non-NATO Europe," Biden writes. "We seek an open and
increasingly united Europe in which all countries, including Russia, play their
full roles ... And most importantly, we cannot permit the re-establishment of
spheres of influence in Europe."
Biden's whirlwind itinerary shows that the
answer to former U.S. Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger's famous quip, "Who do I call if I want to call Europe?," has not
gotten much simpler, if at all, since last year's ratification of the Lisbon
Treaty.
Biden will arrive in Brussels Wednesday
night and meet with NATO Secretary General Anders
Fogh RasmussenThursday morning, before addressing the European Parliament.
Later Thursday he will meet with the body's president, Jerzy Buzek, as well as European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European
Commission President José Manuel Barroso.
Thursday
evening he'll sit down to a working dinner with all 28 permanent representatives
to the North Atlantic Council, NATO's political committee.
Friday, Biden will meet with Belgian Prime Minister Yves
Leterme
before taking off to Madrid, where he will meet with King Juan Carlos. Saturday, he will meet with President José LuisRodríguez Zapatero,
hold a press conference, and then head back to Washington. Spain is due to take
over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union next year.
but they need Old Europe to get important details right:
1. "Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme", though correct, he is now in demissionary status now. His cabinet fell some weeks ago.
2. Zapatero is Prime Minister of Spain, not its President. The head of state, as you correctly assert is King Juan Carlos.
3. Spain is not "due to take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union next year."
Actually, it's the current president of the Council of Europe and is actually about to hand over this task to Belgium, which will assume this responsibility on July 1st.
Thus Biden visits both the outgoing rotating president and its successor.
Someone call King Juan Carlos of Spain.
The FP has pronounced Zapatero as President of Spain for the 2nd day in a row! My goodness, another coup there?
Josh Rogin reports on national security and foreign policy from the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom, the White House to Embassy Row, for The Cable.
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