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Mustafa Kutlay
USAK Center for EU Studies |
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Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Written by Mustafa Kutlay and Lukas Linsi
The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in November 2008 was accompanied by popular enthusiasm in Europe. During his election campaign he had been given a rapturous reception in Berlin where over 100,000 spectators gathered when he spoke at the Victory Column in Berlin. But the support for Obama in Europe was not confined to a popular movement; also the European political elites pinned their hopes on Obama to improve trans-Atlantic ties after the divisions that marked the era of George W. Bush. After all, Obama was a declared multilateralist in international politics and he seemed ideologically close to the traditions of European social democracies on priority issues on the policy agenda, such as health care reform, climate change and tax reform. At the same time, the European leaders in France, Germany and Great Britain were considered to be exceptionally "pro-American.” The moment seemed unusually ripe for trans-Atlantic cooperation and it was no surprise that Obama’s first overseas trip as US President led to Europe.
Less than two years later, however, transatlantic relations have reached a historic low: Last February Obama cancelled his expected visit to the EU-US summit, saying that his "agenda was full.” A few weeks later he didn’t even concede a private appointment to Jos’ Luis Zapatero, at that time the term president of the EU, who was on visit in Washington DC. More recently, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates publicly blamed the Europeans to "push Turkey eastward”. At the G20 summit in Toronto that took place in the last week of June it came yet to another clash between the US Presidency and his European counterparts, who publicly disagreed about the timing of public spending cuts. This accumulation of tensions led European Commission President Jos’ Manuel Barroso to announce in an interview with the London-based The Times last Thursday that "very frankly, this [transatlantic] relationship is not living up to its full potential”.
What Went Wrong?
What went wrong in transatlantic relations? Taking the recent divergence into consideration, two reasons may be put forward. First of all, the cooling down of US-EU relations is certainly an expression of the global shift and reconfiguration of power, which leads both parts to seek new political and economic alliances. In today’s complex world it does not seem possible anymore to speak about a common ’West’ unified against another common bloc, say ’Soviet’ or ’Communist’, as it was the case during the Cold War. The emergence of the Asian powers as new players in the game seems to shake the balances. As Newsweek writes in a recent piece, "United States is dedicated to building a closer relationship with Asia”. It is therefore no surprise that the observers of the G20 summit noted a bias of President Obama towards the Asian representatives and against their European counterparts. At the same time, due to the fizzling domestic agenda, the advancement of increased cooperation between the US and Asia seems more difficult for Obama than expected.
The second important fault line between the US and the EU can be observed in their approach to the global financial crisis. From the very beginning of the financial crisis the US and the Great Britain insisted on the continuation of their Anglo-Saxon free market models and tried to overcome the financial debacle via stimulus packages without substantial changes in financial structure. On the other side, the political leaders of continental Europe, mainly under the flagship of Germany and France, insisted on the reconfiguration of the global financial system and on tightening of capital flows. Moreover, the European leaders have announced historical austerity programs while Obama’s administration insists on the need for a prolongation of the fiscal stimulus. In fact, there is no clear ’exit strategy’ in the minds of European leaders. This became apparent in the recent Greek crisis when they dragged foot to think at the ’union’ level rather than at the ’national’ one. So the vital question becomes: Is there a ’Union’ before the Obama administration to foster further cooperation against the incoming complex problems of our globalized world?
In summary, it is quite clear that the level of US-EU relations is far from being satisfactory. More worrying than the cooling down of transatlantic relations in itself, however, is the fact that latter result from the absence of a clear vision and political will on both sides of the Atlantic. Especially, the European governments obviously lack a clear vision even for their own future. Undoubtedly, this can lead to crucial problems for the functioning of the global political and economic system.
By Mustafa Kutlay and Lukas Linsi
For correspondence; mkutlay@usak.org.tr
