Jeb Bush polishes foreign policy credentials on trip
BERLIN — Jeb Bush, hoping to polish his foreign policy credentials before he formally announces a White House bid, launched a three-nation trip to Europe on Tuesday by lauding his father, former President George H.W. Bush, for his role in the reunification of Germany after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
“The unification, as you all know, was not inevitable,” the former Republican governor of Florida told more than 2,000 people at a major economic conference here. “Many doubted it.”
With his father’s support, “Germany is whole, and Germany is free,” Bush said as the crowd applauded.
He didn’t mention his older brother, former President George W. Bush, in the 30-minute speech.
The disparate treatment is a reflection of the political thicket Jeb Bush faces as he prepares to kick off his campaign Monday. While his father and his one-term presidency are remembered fondly, his brother was deeply unpopular in much of Europe by the time he left office in 2009.
Bush’s speech at Wirtschaftsrat, the annual conference of the Economic Council of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, was his first public event on a five-day trip to Germany, Poland and Estonia. He used it to stake out a muscular foreign policy well within the mainstream of Republican views.
Bush called for an aggressive stance against Russian President Vladimir Putin and slashed at the Obama administration’s foreign and fiscal policies, even as he effectively embraced some of those policies.
“We’re beginning to realize the reset button didn’t turn out so hot,” Bush said, referring to the Obama administration and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s proposed “reset” of diplomatic relations with Moscow in 2009. Putin was then prime minister under Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
Relations have soured steadily since Putin, who had previously served as president, was re-elected in 2012. Russian military forces have backed pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine, and Putin’s policies are fueling concerns in eastern Europe that he will try to go further.
But Bush was careful not to suggest the U.S. should intervene unilaterally, saying the responsibility for regional defense lies with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance, a policy the White House has endorsed. Ukraine is not a member of NATO; Poland and Estonia are.
Putin, Bush said, “will push until someone pushes back, and I believe that is NATO’s responsibility.”
President Barack Obama and leaders of six major industrialized countries agreed Monday to toughen sanctions on Russia, if necessary, to press for a political solution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
At the G-7 summit in southern Germany, the leaders said sanctions will remain in place until Russia helps to fully implement a peace plan agreed to in February in Minsk, Belarus.
Bush appeared to blame the White House for congressionally mandated budget cuts that affect every department, including the Pentagon. He said the cutbacks have led to the perception of a void in hot spots around the world, allowing for Chinese expansion in the South China Sea, among other crises.
Turning to domestic issues, Bush said the United States ought to learn from Germany’s fiscal discipline as it emerged from the global recession after 2009. Germany has the largest and arguably strongest national economy in Europe.
“Endless borrowing is always an invitation to trouble,” he said. “Anyone can talk a good game on fiscal discipline, but to actually apply fiscal discipline as Germany has done, that takes wisdom and it takes political courage.”
Bush also acknowledged a drama underway back home in Miami, where his campaign confirmed a leadership shake-up Monday. Staffing changes are not uncommon in a presidential campaign, but it’s rare a week before the candidate formally announces. Bush joked that he was not informed about the shift.
“I don’t know about the change in the campaign team, but I’ll find out about that I guess when I get back home,” he said.
Bush expressed his support for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a proposed free-trade agreement between the United States and the European Union that opponents warn would hurt unions and make it more difficult for governments to regulate markets.
Bush also expressed regret for the damage to U.S. relations with Germany after renegade National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents in 2013 showing that the NSA eavesdropped on Merkel’s cellphone.