The Financial Times asked Europeans what they thought of US foreign policy:
In a Harris opinion poll, published on the eve of Mr Bush’s latest visit to Europe this week, 36 per cent of respondents identify the US as the greatest threat to global stability.
The poll, conducted in association with the FT, questioned a representative sample of 5,000 people in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain on a range of issues. Thirty per cent of respondents named Iran as the greatest threat to global stability, with 18 per cent selecting China.
[…] At a US-European Union summit in Vienna on Wednesday, Mr Bush is likely to press for full payment of the billions of dollars in aid pledged by Europe for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Of the nearly $14bn (£7.6bn, €11bn) pledged by all countries at donors’ conferences, less than $4bn has been disbursed. Bob Kimmitt, deputy Treasury secretary, and Phil Zelikow, a top aide to Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, are also being sent separately to Europe and the Middle East to press the issue.
European leaders are expected to call on Mr Bush to close the detention centre at Guantánamo bay in Cuba, where three prisoners recently killed themselves.
[…]
The meeting in Vienna has been characterised by difficulty in agreeing texts; European officials say positions taken by the US State Department were subsequently overruled by the National Security Council. But the official statement from the summit will set out the principles for strategic co-operation on energy security, including diversification of energy supplies and market-based energy security policies.
Any good-will the US had from 9/11 is long squandered by now. Iran and China are rated less dangerous than the US. Well done to King George and his Court.
I’m particularly interested by the NSC second guessing the State Department.
