Analysis: Europe on tenterhooks
By CNN's European Political Editor Robin Oakley
LONDON, England (CNN) -- U.S. President George W. Bush has not been popular in Europe.
It wasn't just the war in Iraq, which leaders like Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder condemned, and which even in Britain sparked huge street demonstrations.
Europeans resented Bush's unilateralism in refusing to sign up for the Kyoto treaty on global warming, his opposition to the International Criminal Court, and his administration's refusal of NATO's offer to help after September 11, 2001.
And European teeth have been set on edge by others seeming to play divide and rule.
As U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously said: "You are thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think of that as Old Europe ..."
A second Bush administration could get on better with Europe, say analysts, if it changed style. But expectations of that are low.
Barry Buzan, Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, said: "There's a real possibility that things won't change and if the same old faces and the same old rhetoric turn up then it's going to be a very hard four years."
Does that then mean that victory for the French-speaking Kerry would be hailed in Europe?
His expected change in tone might bring a honeymoon period, say the experts.
But there is huge scope for mutual disappointment because Kerry is committed to seeing through what was started in Iraq and wants more European assistance there.
"That's going to be an uphill fight in the sense that a lot of the Europeans think the war in Iraq was a huge mistake and they don't really want to have anything to do with it," Buzan said.
So who then does UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's staunchest ally over Iraq. want to win?
If Bush goes down, he would have expended huge political capital on a one-term President. And John Kerry would owe him no favors.
 Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in London to protest the war. |  |
But Blair's unofficial biographer says Britain's prime minister is hoping desperately for a Kerry victory.
John Rentoul, commentator for The Independent newspaper, said: "He is very closely associated with Bush in the public mind, and George Bush, rightly or wrongly, is fantastically unpopular in Britain. And so to get rid of him would be like getting rid of the millstone round his neck."
Surprising perhaps to those who reckon Britain's prime minister would look badly isolated if George Bush were to be beaten.
But Blair does have an election to fight himself next spring. And he has this week confirmed for the first time having twice met Kerry.
