Obama’s Europe Visit – Promises and Problems

M N Hebbar (View from Europe)
29 March 2009

It was less than a year ago that Barack Obama, then a candidate for
president, swept hundreds of thousands of cheering Berliners off their feet
with his charisma, youth and statesmanlike vision for the future of the
trans-Atlantic alliance and the role of Germany as a pivot therein.

Now in less than a week, as President Obama embarks on a four-nation tour of
Europe, his reception is likely to be far removed from the earlier euphoric
one. What has changed?

Ever since Obama took over at the White House, the financial crisis in the
US has turned into a global contagion and with opinions differing across
European governments on how best to deal with it, the divergence is
beginning to tell on US-European relations. France and Germany, for
instance, have been resistant to the American idea of stimulating economies
through tax and spending policies, laying emphasis instead on tighter
regulation of financial institutions. Indeed, the economic philosophies
dividing nations that are opposed to Obama’s repeated pleas have been
reminiscent of former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s branding of
`Old Europe’ and `New Europe’, the latter being the ex-communist states of
eastern Europe.

Addressing the economic malaise will be the task of the G-20 summit of rich
and developing nations in London that will provide the first backdrop for
Obama’s arrival in Europe on March 31. But the concord one expectswill be
sadly missing because a serious division has already taken place over the
size of necessary national stimulus packages among European
governments. Efforts to provide desperately needed help for the economies of
Central and Eastern Europe, (`New Europe’), have been similarly resisted by
the EU partners, who prefer instead to push for narrow national plans for
redrawing oversight of financial markets.

Obama has already made it known that he expects the London summit to provide
a forum for a new kind of global economic cooperation that would help
galvanise collective action towards forging a secure recovery. He also
would like the summit to deploy resources to stabilise markets, boost the
emergency capacity of the IMF and assist regional development banks to
accelerate lending.

All very well, one might say. But Germany, like the proverbial naughty
pupil, has been made to look like sitting in a corner in that chancellor
Angela Merkel has refused to be distracted by `artificial discussions=80=9D
over the respective size of US and Europe’s financial stimulus
programmes. She will not notch up the relatively modest German package
totalling some 50 billion euros, corresponding to Germany’s own
priorities. Never mind that a New York Times column by Nobel laureate
economist Paul Krugman has directly criticised the German finance minister
for his `know-nothing diatribes’ against stimulus measures.

The French have sided with the Germans, an allusion to the times when both
countries led international opposition to the Iraq war seven years ago. The
British have been taking the Blair approach, wanting to be seen working in
tandem with the US on major world issues, with Gordon Brown, the prime
minister, leaning towards Obama’s position that governments ought to spend
first and regulate later. But EU leaders have echoed Ms Merkel’s words,
underlining the EU’s reluctance to go deeper into debt to end the recession.

The new US administration wants to remake the trans-Atlantic alliance and
looks to its `special partner’, the UK, to be a more active player than
hitherto. But Gordon Brown has been busy projecting himself as a `saviour’
while leaning on Washington in the line-up of economic actions. In the
process, he has been showing less solidarity with his EU partners and has
consistently sidelined them.

But as host to the G-20 summit, Brown has an additional responsibility
towards proffering solutions and cannot afford to be seen as being out of
tune in Europe, his own backyard. How could he carry any weight with India,
China and Russia, for instance, if he cannot leverage his own EU partners?
But he now seems to be making amends by assigning an important role to the
EU in calming the economic conflagration. Perhaps Brown would have done well
to listen to the cautionary warnings emanating from European governments
about the dangers of unfettered financial capitalism. The G-20 summit is an
opportunity to begin to right =80¨the wrong.

Obama’s onward journey to Strasbourg for Nato’s 60th anniversary comes at a
time when the alliance is planning to increase its deployment in Afghanistan
by 17,000 troops. Not all EU nations are on board. Germany has some 3,500
soldiers in Afghanistan but on non-combat duties. The best that Obama can
hope for is additional financial and logistical support.

Disarray among EU’s member states would become evident when the USpresident
arrives in Prague later for a US-EU summit. The Czech Republic, which holds
the EU’s rotating presidency, raised eyebrows when its president, Vaclav
Klaus, openly criticised the style of EU’s functioning and lamented the
democratic deficit in its conduct, even warning against `recreating the
Soviet bloc in Europe’. The structural weaknesses of the EU will not escape
Obama’s attention and he may well conclude that an institution that the US
had looked forward to as a strong and united partner in Europe is yet to set
its own house in order.

Perhaps, the most delicate part of Obama’s tour would surface whenhis final
leg takes him to Turkey where he would be delivering a much-anticipated
address to the Muslim world. Contrast this with the stance of the EU, where
France and Germany have been consistent in their refusal to welcome
Turkeyinto the European Union so far.

Obama’s learning curve will have progressed very fast indeed by the time he
heads back to Washington on Air Force One.

M N Hebbar is a Berlin-based writer
© 2009 Khaleej Times

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress