The $10-million man

VIENNA, Austria – Nani? Who’s talking about Nani? Willie? Who’s he? Who’s he, indeed, when you come to think of it, to talk?

I’m referring to US President George "Dubya" Bush. It cost the American taxpayers more than ten million dollars to get their Commander-in-Chief to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Prague, Czech Republic – which is, by the way, right next door to us here in Vienna, and used to be a part of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The American wartime President had to be escorted by a fleet of warplanes through the hostile skies of Europe to land, still fully secured, among the 10 hostile fellow members of NATO.

When you’re in charge of the world’s only remaining superpower, the midgets around you deeply resent it. And Bush, doomed by fate and habit to play the broad-shouldered role of an unpopular Tall Texan in the Land of the Dwarfs, no matter how he tries to soft-pedal it, can only fan further resentment when he tells NATO to shape up, and asks his . . . er, allies . . . to back up his play on Iraq and Saddam’s weapons of mass distraction. Yep, I meant what it says: Distraction.

The two-day Prague summit was, of course, "protected" by US AWACs or early-warning aircraft, plus squadrons of US fighter F-16s and F-18s, which surely must have only deepened the humiliation and unease of the 53-year-old alliance’s "junior" members – including a sulking Germany and a post-Napoleonic France. But let’s face it. The other NATO nations, for all their bluster, have not been carrying their share of the load. As Philippe Camus pointed out in yesterday’s (Thursday’s) edition of the Financial Times, the US spends twice as much on its military as the 15 members of the European Union combined. The Pentagon’s additional further budget increase of $37.5 billion, which translates into 37.6 billion euros here in Euroland, further widens the spending gap.

Judy Dempsey in an even more sarcastic FT report headlines her piece: "US Flies to Battle While Europe Takes the Train."

Joseph Ralston, NATO’s outgoing US commander, reveals that the US provides 100 percent of NATO’s jamming capability (for some communications), 90 percent of air-to-ground surveillance and reconnaissance and almost 80 percent of the air refuelling tankers necessary to conduct operations. During the first months of the Afghanistan war, virtually every mission over that war-scarred country, whether air force or navy fighter, or long-range bomber, had to be refueled by a US Air Force tanker. The US operates a fleet of 550 tankers, almost eight times the number available to NATO from the other allies. All the 180 intercontinental bombers carrying the NATO insignia are exclusively American, each one fitted out with the latest generation of precision weapons, and "some with cruise missiles".

In the case of wide-bodied aircraft for the carrying of troops, armored vehicle carriers, and humanitarian assistance, the US maintains 250 long-range aircraft. The Europeans combined have only 11. Lord Robertson, a Brit and NATO’s Secretary-General, no less exclaims in disgust: "It is hopeless? What do you do? Take a train? Or call a 53 bus?"

Wrote the FT: "German soldiers did take the train when the country decided this year to send its troops to Afghanistan. They waited for days in Turkey because of poor weather. The German government then decided to go to the commercial market to lease transport aircraft. It ended up paying $245,000 (Euros 244,000) per sortie. It needed 160 sorties."

The Europeans keep on harping on the prospect that they will overcome the gap on strategic airlift by modernizing their fleets with the new A400m carrier – but these new-fangled airplanes won’t be available until the end of this decade. (Recently, Lord Robertson groaned, he even rang up the Russians – mind you, NATO’s former enemies – to ask whether any Antonovs (troop carriers) were available. "Zero," Lord Robertson groused. "They were all tied up, trans-shipping electronic toys!" For Christmas, naturally. In Russia, they call Santa Claus "Father Frost".

Let’s face it. NATO's 10 European nations spend $500 million a day for defense, contrasted to $1 billion a day spent by America alone.

To make things worse, NATO is admitting seven new members-states from Eastern and Central Europe – former stalwarts of their former adversary grouping, the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. Enlarging the transatlantic alliance from 19 to 26 countries, in my estimation, hardly strengthens NATO – merely increases its load.

And who’s the "enemy"? If the Russians, not to mention the Ukrainians and Belarus, and the former Soviet Union states, had their druthers, I’m sure: They’d join NATO, too.

Can NATO be harnessed to fight global "terrorism"? How on earth can this be done? The other NATO bravos are too busy attacking Bush, or sniping cattily at America, to bother about the likes of Osama, Saddam, Hambali, or even Abu Bakr Ba’asyir.

Bush already knows it. If he goes to Baghdad, he’s going alone – well, with the exception probably of Tony Blair. The British Prime Minister is already manfully calling up his reserves.

Dubya can also count on GMA. For moral support, I mean. Our military is pretty busy right now, fighting their own "war of succession" (to AFP chief of staff) and plotting against somebody. Is it La Gloria? Sus, if they can’t even lick the Abus, or the Jemaah Islamiyah, or the al-Qaeda cum MILF, how can they take Malacañang? No coupster’s or putschist’s tanks (if any) or APCs will be able to fight through those traffic jams. And they won’t be able to refuel in the air from one of those US tankers.

* * *

Here we are in chilly Vienna commemorating the establishment here ten years ago of our world headquarters of the International Press Institute. Our conference is burdened by the pretentious title of "Visions for the Future of Communications."

Yesterday, we held a meeting of the Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organizations at the Salon Fischer von Erlach of the Hotel Inter-Continental Vienna. In the afternoon, we were tendered a big reception in the Hofburg, the former Imperial Palace, by President Thomas Klestil of the Federal Republic of Austria.

Vienna still has the "imperial" complex, although the Austro-Hungarian empire – which extended all the way to Milan and Sicily ruling at its zenith over 50 million people: Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Rumanians, Poles, Italians, Bosnians, Serbs, Croats, and other southern Slavs – is Gone with the Wind.

The old Imperial motto was Austria Erit in Orbe Ultima – Austria will be everlasting among nations. Alas, Vienna today, with its grand structures and glittering palaces is no longer caput mundi – but a head without a body. Those palaces you come upon here were designed for a larger scale of population and imperial glory than Vienna’s present 1.7 million inhabitants.

Vienna, even though merely attired in the rags of glory, is impressive still. Here you find soaring facades carved with Double-Headed Eagles (signifying the two Crowns of a lost Empire); baroque churches and chapels and magnificent edifices in which even the horse stables are adorned with chandeliers; fountains bubbling over with wood-nymphs and grinning satyrs and classical heroes. Hercules forever clubs his lion. The Romans eternally carry off the Sabine women. Diana presides in marble over an endless hunt. Roman shields and Fasces, and the emblems of forgotten legions gleam in polished marble or granite from spacious courtyards looming from unexpected corners, you find groaning giants immured in stone. Atlas holds up the fronts of buildings, or else you espy pretty Caryatids performing the same function.

Guarding the Parliament building stands an immense statue of the Greek goddess Pallas Athene, the goddess of wisdom. Athene is helmeted in gold, her left hand grasps a spear, while her right cradles a golden orb on which balances an image of Winged Victory. The goddess guards the steps of Parliament in vain – the wings of Victory were clipped in 1918, when a monarchy which once held sway over principalities that stretched from sea to sea and up and down the length of the Danube river which flows through eight countries from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, collapsed in defeat.

For the Austrian Kaisers ruled a "Holy Roman Empire" which was neither holy, nor Roman. They had the early courage and reckless gallantry to conquer countries in battle, the guile to annex others by marriage, but, alas, not the wisdom to keep this hodge-podge of nationalities together.

The zenith of this vanished Storybook Empire came during the reign of the second-to-last Hapsburg Emperor, Franz Josef. His fatal fault was that he lived too long, was loved too long, and in the end became too obsolete to lead his kingdom into the modern age. Like his contemporary, Queen Victoria of England, who reigned for 63 years, Franz Josef ruled for 68. He died on November 21, 1916, after plunging Europe into the First World War in which four million of the empire’s best and bravest died – and Austria lost its crown.

And for what? For the assassination of the Emperor’s nephew, by a Serb student, in a familiar-sounding place of tragedy named Sarajevo. The youthful Bosnian Serb "terrorist", crying out for Serbian independence, fired his pistol pointblank at Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, killing both. In anger, the Emperor vowed to crush the Serbs, and got the rest of the neighborhood embroiled in that war. All – the Germans, the Russians, the Belgians, the Turks, the Italians, the French, the British, the Australians and New Zealanders, and eventually the Americans – were drawn into that stupid and bloody conflict.

This is why, for all their posturing and their sometime conceit, one should never underestimate the Austrians. Remember Bosnia-Hercegovina? Remember Kosovo? Remember Croatia and Yugoslavia? Remember the Balkan Wars? These were once parts of that bygone Empire! No wonder the author David Pryce-Jones said of Vienna: "History here is Trauma; everybody has been wounded by it."

As for me, I’m not here for history. I’m here for Sacher-Torte, Viennese pastry, Viennese waltzes, and Viennese coffee. It’s safer that way.