The Times has published an article by my old friend Charles Bremner, James Harding, his Editor, and David Charter, Times Brussels correspondent including an interview the latter two conducted with with José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission. It is available behind a paywall at the Times but also freely available all over the right wing blogosphere in the US which has latched onto it as an example that Europe, too, is losing faith in Obama. Not surprisingly, it is also available in part on Fox News without attribution. Why would they after all? Murdoch owns both Fox News and The Times.
The irony is that much of the European unhappiness comes from what would be seen (in the US) as the left, whereas the US Right rather gleefully assumes that Europeans are coming to agree with them. This is obviously not the case on issues such as Climate Change. However the article presents most of European unhappiness with Obama as confirming the US Right’s opposition to Obama.
Europe warns Obama: this relationship is not working
It has been a fractious few months for EU-US relations, culminating in a fundamental clash of ideas at the G20 summit between Europe’s austerity strategy for ending the economic crisis and Mr Obama’s call to maintain fiscal stimulus.
Speaking days before David Cameron visits the White House, Mr Barroso said: “The transatlantic relationship is not living up to its potential. I think we should do much more together. We have conditions like we have never had before and it would be a pity if we missed the opportunity.”
Who would have thought it would be Europe calling for fiscal retrenchment and Obama calling for continued stimulus? The Germans, too, are apparently unhappy with Obama style socialism…
Europe warns Obama: this relationship is not working
A German government official said: “If our austerity cuts lead to street demos, the protesters will be shouting out phrases they heard from Obama. How do you think that makes us feel?”
The article also includes all the usual US clichés about the EU:
Europe warns Obama: this relationship is not working
The US defended itself forcefully against claims that it had neglected Europe. “Expectations were probably so high that they could not have been met when you looked at the European response to the election,” a senior official in the Administration told The Times.
The view from Washington is that communication with Europe on a range of crucial issues is difficult because the EU still lacks “a clear foreign policy apparatus”.
Richard Haass, head of the Council on Foreign Relations, an influential think-tank in Washington, criticised Brussels for the appointments of Herman Van Rompuy as President of the European Council and Baroness Ashton of Upholland as High Representative for Foreign Affairs.
“Europe created these posts to speak for the collective as a whole. But from the perspective of many Americans, rather than building up someone of the stature of [the former Nato Secretary-General] Javier Solana, it looks as though Europe has retreated,” he said.
—-snip
Analysts said that the EU was naive to expect a sea change in US foreign policy just because George Bush had been replaced in the White House.
Hugo Brady, of the Centre for European Reform, said: “Obama was always overblown as a symbol because US foreign policy interests tend not to change. The US does not understand the need for everyone to be around the table at the EU, which they find as frustrating as a mini-UN where people want to talk about the good things they have done.”
The view from the EU side seems to be more philosophical:
Europe warns Obama: this relationship is not working
A senior aide to President Sarkozy of France said: “Obama does not come from the same tradition as his predecessors. He is interested in Asia and Russia, not Europe. There is no sense of a privileged relationship. They seem to take us for granted sometimes.”
—-snip
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former Foreign Secretary, tried to put the cooling of ties into an historical perspective. “We won the Cold War, so of course the problems of Europe cannot be as high a priority as in the past. But that’s a consequence of success, not failure,” he said.
Asked how he planned to reach out to Mr Obama — who visited Europe six times in his first year in office but was said by US analysts to have nothing to show for it — Mr Barroso said: “Of course it is a question of how the Americans are going to reach to us as well because the relationship should be perceived as mutual.”
But is Barroso’s apparent nebulous response part of the problem as far as the USA is concerned? They apparently find it hard to figure out what the EU wants. Obama was previously reported to have been aghast at the number of people in the room at his various meetings in Europe – all saying different things and with no one appearing to have a clear view of how to bring things to an actionable consensus any time soon. Is this all about the stroking of egos, or are there substantive issues Barroso wants progress on? A treaty on Climate Change? A global Tobin Tax? Global financial regulation? A clear plan to avoid a double dip recession? A clear timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan? A plan to resolve the Israeli Palestinian conflict?
If there are, The Times doesn’t tell us. Instead the article is a celebration of all the usual clichés about European decision making, portrays Europe as feeling unloved but having no concrete proposals to improve cooperation, feeds the US Right’s feeding frenzy for anything that sounds like a setback for Obama, and makes absolutely no contribution to helping the reader understand the substantial areas in which US EU cooperation might be improved. So what’s new?
Europe bought the Obama change mantra, but US foreign policy stays the same in substance, if not in style. Bush is gone. Long live Bush! The Europeans are reassuringly dithering as usual. Viva Fox News and its British subsidiary, The Times…
