Sunday Times
Sarah Baxter, New York
PRESIDENT George W Bush is savouring headlines hailing him as a new Ronald Reagan spreading liberty in his wake after his tour of Europe.
Yet behind the rhetoric of friendship, divisions of interest and ideology remain, with analysts warning the thaw in transatlantic relations could be threatened by the European Union’s determination to lift its embargo on the sale of arms to China.
The global political landscape has been transformed by heady demonstrations of people power and growing calls for democracy in the Middle East.
The president’s backers have taken heart from an article in Der Spiegel, the German news weekly, asking “Could Bush be right?” on foreign policy and comparing him with Reagan, who was lampooned in Germany for challenging Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, to “tear down” the Berlin Wall.
“History has shown it wasn’t Reagan who was the dreamer as he voiced his demand. Rather it was the German politicians who were lacking in imagination — a group who in 1987 couldn’t imagine that there might be an alternative to a divided Germany,” the magazine observed.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1502619,00.html