When G-8 leaders gather in Kananaskis this month, policy wonks are wondering whether the most powerful member of this elite club will heed the advice of its other members.
Or, they ask, will the United States continue its trend under George W. Bush of forging ahead with unilateral actions rather than working with its allies and the United Nations?
"America can't keep playing Lone Ranger," argues Joseph Nye, former assistant secretary of defence and now dean of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. "It simply will not work."
Nye and other experts gripe the Bush administration has cavalierly pulled out of one international treaty after another, withdrawn from the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty and forged ahead with plans to strike Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein.
On the economic front, it has single handedly slapped tariffs and quotas on U.S. steel imports and Canadian softwood lumber while coddling American farmers with subsidies.
The Republican White House, they say, has flexed its hard military and economic muscle at its allies, but allowed its once persuasive moral authority to become limp.
Never, they say, has the rift between the U.S. and the rest of the western world, particularly its continental European allies, been so great.
Bush exacerbated the transatlantic differences when he swaggered across Europe last month personifying the callow Texan cowboy.
But now it is Canada's turn to try to lasso the cowboy.
Prime Minister Jean Chretien has already signalled he will not let Bush usurp the agenda from a summit on Africa to one on terrorism.
"I will not permit that," Chretien bluntly told reporters on his pre-summit round of consultations with G-8 leaders in Europe. Bush, he ventured, might try it, "but I'm the chair."
"I have a bit of experience," the prime minister boasted, thrusting his jaw out. "I've had to chair a few meetings in my life."
Friends and foes alike agree: Chretien has a unique opportunity in the remote, yet intimate, setting in Kananaskis to get Bush to listen to the concerns of allies.
"It is an opportunity for the allies to press their concerns and get attention," said Nye, author of The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone. "The administration has to listen and be prepared to respond to her allies."
As a North American, but not an American, Chretien can help bridge the divide between the United States and its allies, argues Paul Frazer, a former Canadian diplomat who has attended numerous G-7 and G-8 summits as a delegation member.
"Some would have you believe that it's a showdown at the OK Corral -- the U.S. versus the other leaders of the G-8," Frazer said. "But, it's not and it shouldn't be."
Canada's geography as the "first" neighbour in the hemisphere and Chretien's personal style augur well for the meeting, he said.
"Canada tends to run up the middle between the U.S. and Europe," said Frazer, now a consultant in Washington, D.C., "sharing common policy goals with both, but frequently differing on the approach."
Mild-mannered Canadians, he said, feel uncomfortable with impolitic European statements on their differences with American policies and their sneering distaste for Bush and his plain-spoken simplicity.
Chretien, himself a folksy yet adroit politician, understands the president and knows where he's coming from on issues, Frazer added.
"This is a North American talking, not some high-on-your-horse European talking down to an American," Frazer said. "He's frank and straightforward and Americans like that."
"He's unvarnished and not masquerading behind long words and facetious phrasing," the seasoned diplomat added. "He talks straight and that doesn't jar."
Canadians have a unique voice in America and can raise questions about U.S. policy, agrees William Hartung, President's Fellow at the New York-based World Policy Institute.
"It is not as difficult to hear criticism from Canadians as from Europeans," said Hartung, "so there's an opportunity even though the power relationship is uneven."
One American political insider said Bush's respect for Chretien went up when he reigned in the "disloyal" Paul Martin for plotting to overthrow him in a parliamentary putsch and dismissed other wayward cabinet members.
Bush, after all, the insider said, was chief loyalty enforcer during George Bush Sr.'s term in a city that thrives on who's up, who's down, who's in and who's out.
But, cautioned Frazer, while Chretien is the host and wields the gavel in the two-day meeting, "it's no guarantee Bush will (toe) the summit party line on any of the agenda priorities."
Nor, he said, are Chretien and the other leaders from France, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Japan and Russia sure which Bush they will meet June 26 and 27 -- the man who with a wry nod speaks of a new appreciation for his allies, or the Bush who vows to go it alone when he wants to.
Bush touts the view that the "rest of the world needs us more than we need them," said Lawrence Korb, vice-president of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. "If you want to come along, you do so on our terms."
That attitude of "my way or the highway" has led many in foreign policy circles to decry a dangerous shift away from multilateralism to unilateralism.
Not since the days of the Roman Empire has any country wielded so much military and economic power, but that power is not enough to keep America secure and may well undermine it, Nye said.
Global problems such as terrorism, the spread of infectious diseases, international financial stability and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction demand international co-operation.
"If you act in a unilateral, arrogant fashion, you antagonize others and make them less willing to co-operate," Nye said.
Even when countries do co-operate out of self-interest, the degree to which they do so is not as deep, he said. Already, France and Germany have signalled they will not hand over suspects in the war on terrorism unless the United States guarantees it will not use the death penalty.
"If the U.S. wants co-operation from its allies, it is going to have to listen more and take into account what the allies are saying," Nye said. "It is going to have to use its soft power to attract others."
But, he charges, the Bush administration has squandered its moral authority by such acts as denying the human rights protection guaranteed in the Geneva Convention to al- Qaeda and Taliban prisoners.
The Bush administration's systematic opting out of treaties and conventions that enjoy the support of a great majority of nations -- from global warming to a comprehensive test ban treaty to the International Criminal Court and landmines -- also bolster the view of the U.S. as a "rogue colossus."
Even Bush's staunchest allies agree he has bruised relations with his allies by not consulting them. Nor, they admit, has he done a good job of selling the "Bush doctrine."
At the heart of that vision laid out in the president's state of the union address Jan. 29 is the belief that the greatest threat on the horizon comes from rogue states, such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea, fostering terrorist groups and weapons of mass destruction.
Fifty years of arms control agreements have failed to check the threat, which is now so potent as to justify pre-emptive military strikes, said Gary Schmitt, head of the think-tank Project for the New American Century, which has close ties with the administration.
"That's a lot to swallow," Schmitt admits. "And (the administration) has not done a good job of making the case why the 'Bush doctrine' is right for the allies. I'd like to see the president take more care about the alliances. He needed to do a better job of reaching out and listening to his allies."
But in the end, even the top multilateralist in Bush's cabinet acknowledges that while Bush could do a better job of listening to his allies' views, he will go it alone.
The administration will "continue to stick with those positions that we believe are the right positions and the principled positions," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said.
"The president is that kind of a leader," he added. "He speaks clearly, he speaks directly and he makes sure people know what he believes in. And then he tries to persuade others why that is the correct position. When it does not work, then we will take the position we believe is correct."
So, when Bush arrives into the Rocky Mountain beauty of Kananaskis Park, it will be telling to see if he has come to listen to or lecture at his G-8 confreres.
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