My first piece for ForeignPolicy.com, “Europe’s Obama Fatigue,” is online.

Despite George W. Bush’s defiant “you’re with us or you’re against us” public stance, he actively solicited advice and input from his NATO partners. Obama, by contrast, is saying all the right things in public about transatlantic relations and NATO but adopting a high-handed policy and paying little attention to Europe.

[...]

It would be ironic, indeed, if the Europeans started longing for the good old days of the Bush administration. But that nostalgia is closer than you might think.

Supporting arguments at the link.

UPDATE: As one might expect, this piece is generating some strong rebuttals.

Daniel Larison argues:

You cannot gauge the importance or unimportance of Europe to the United States on the largely cosmetic, superficial and procedural clashes Washington has had with various European states in the last nine months. Under the previous administration, Europe continued to be “important” to the U.S. even when major EU powers opposed administration policy in very public, dramatic ways. To the extent that Obama is losing ground with Europeans, he had far more goodwill and support to lose; in almost every European country, he continues to rate higher after the drop-off from unrealistic expectations than Bush did at almost any point. Obviously relations were and remained far more strained under the last administration than they have been so far under this one. We notice the minor clashes that have taken place because there was a widely-shared, unreasonable expectation that amity and concord with Europe would prevail under Obama.

[...]

European and especially German interests were flatly ignored by Bush when it came to handling Russia. Promises to Ukraine and Georgia of eventual membership in NATO were given over strenuous German opposition. Were European interests and opinions being heeded then? No. The missile defense ploy prompted Moscow to threaten abandoning its commitments under the European conventional forces treaty and elicited a great deal of bluster from Medvedev about targeting Russian missiles on European soil. Was European security strengthened by any of this? No. What matter then if Bush went through the motions and observed the right formalities when he was getting the major decisions wrong?

Most western European allies were not seriously consulted, nor were their objections given much weight, when the Bush administration decided to push ahead with the missile defense plan. In all of the new commentary claiming that Europe has soured on Obama, this seems not to count at all.

Judah Grunstein adds:

[I]f George W. Bush learned to listen to Europe, and in particular NATO, it was largely after he’d been chastened by the failure of the Iraq war and the 2006 mid-term elections. Up until his final NATO summit, Bush continued to talk loudly about the largely unpopular measures of NATO expansion and missile defense. He listened in the sense that he allowed the alliance — led by France and Germany — to turn him back, but it was out of weakness, not out of strength. There was no movement at all when it came to climate change, which is a major driver of public opinion here.

As for Obama’s handling of Europe, I’d agree with the characterization of his aloofness, especially with regard to the current Afghanistan strategic review. But while my sympathies would normally be with Europe on this sort of thing, I do think that Obama invited the NATO allies last April to assume greater ownership of the Afghanistan war. Given their refusal to do so, I don’t blame him for the freeze-out now. That said, Obama’s brush-off of the U.S.-EU summit is inexcusable and reflects a myopic view of the EU’s potential, especially with the advent of the Lisbon Treaty.

I actually don’t disagree with either Dan or Judah on most of these points and think some of the disagreement comes from the provocative  title the FP folks chose.  My argument is neither that the Europeans have tired of Obama or even that Bush was particularly adept at transatlantic diplomacy.  Rather, it is that Bush cared more about Europe — and particularly the UK and New Europe — than Obama and therefore invested more of himself in the relationship.

It’s true that Obama’s stance on, for example, missile defense and NATO expansion is more popular in some quarters than Bush’s.  Indeed, I prefer his approach on the latter and quibble with him on the former mostly on how the rollout was done vice the policy itself.  But the policy differences are  a reflection of Obama’s prioritizing Russia’s views over that of Europe, especially East and Central Europe.   I think Bush was ultimately wrong in his zeal to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO but it was a policy preference motivated by the stated ideals of the Alliance of “a Europe whole and free.”

Time for the Thursday OTB Caption Contest^TM

REUTERS/Eliana Aponte (MEXICO SOCIETY)

Winners will be announced Monday PM

Greece’s Socialist Party has defeated the New Democracy Party in the country’s national elections with enough seats to form a government:

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece’s Socialists, who campaigned on a promise to inject a 3 billion euro ($4.36 billion) stimulus package into the economy, have won Sunday’s national election with enough seats to form a government.

Various analysts are quoted:

Voters gave a clear, strong mandate to (PASOK leader) George Papandreou, who will now have adequate power to fight the crisis. There is no if, there is no grey area.

PASOK won’t have a long period of grace. This percentage … is more the consequence of New Democracy’s collapse than a victory for PASOK. These voters won’t forgive it if it doesn’t respond immediately to the social and the economic problems the country faces and this could result to social tension.

A parliamentary majority means we will have political stability ahead. If the final tally gives socialists 155 seats, that’s a pretty decent majority.

The new government will have a mandate to go to Brussels and ask for more time to get Greece out of the excessive deficit procedure.

I think the only way to interpret this result is that this is a hard time for ruling parties. Neither right-leaning nor left-leaning parties have clear answers to the downturn and, indeed, whichever party would have won the election’s freedom of action would have been limited very severely by Brussels. If, as I expect, sluggish economic conditions persist for any significant period of time, it’s pretty likely the ruling parties in other countries will see a reversal of their fortunes.

Back in 2003, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously noted that while “Old Europe” (particularly France and Germany) was hard to work with, America could count on “New Europe.”   Fast forward to 2009 and we may have reversed polarity.

My latest New Atlanticist essay, “Losing New Europe, Too?” explores this evolution, including why Western Europe is back in the fold and why Eastern Europe has every reason to be disappointed.

The eagerness of “New Europe” to side with the U.S. came from the combination of the cold shoulder they were receiving from their Western neighbors and the warm rhetoric from across the Atlantic.  But it now seems obvious that the talk will not be backed with action at the cost of risking war with Russia, especially for those states in its “near abroad” that have not yet been admitted into the NATO club.  That realization obviously and reasonably puts a damper on “New Europe’s” enthusiasm.

Relations with “Old Europe,” meanwhile, will return to what they have been for the postwar period: a mature engagement between peers that will ebb and flow as the situation warrants.  Such a relationship can withstand sharp disagreements, angry words, and hurt feelings.  Resentments and rifts will occasionally arise but they will be temporary.  Our shared values and interests, however, are permanent.

Much more at the link.

Graphic via Economist.

Norm Geras (who just celebrated his 6th blogging anniversary) points us to this hilariously annoying SPIEGEL interview with Wired editor Chris Anderson:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Anderson, let’s talk about the future of journalism.

Anderson: This is going to be a very annoying interview. I don’t use the word journalism.

SPIEGEL: Okay, how about newspapers? They are in deep trouble both in the United States and worldwide.

Anderson: Sorry, I don’t use the word media. I don’t use the word news. I don’t think that those words mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century. Today, they are a barrier. They are standing in our way, like a horseless carriage.

SPIEGEL: Which other words would you use?

Anderson: There are no other words. We’re in one of those strange eras where the words of the last century don’t have meaning. What does news mean to you, when the vast majority of news is created by amateurs? Is news coming from a newspaper, or a news group or a friend? I just cannot come up with a definition for those words. Here at Wired, we stopped using them.

Anderson compounds his obnoxiousness, as Norm points out, by going on “to use all of the words ‘media’, ‘news’, ‘newspapers’ and ‘journalists.’”  Naturally.

Slightly apropos of the above, it occurred to me recently that the thesis of Anderson’s new book, Free, was stated more than thirty years ago by Ted Nugent:

Well I don’t know where they come from
But they sure do come
I hope they comin’ for me
And I don’t know how they do it
But they sure do it good
I hope they doin’ it for free

I’m guessing Nugent isn’t getting any royalties, however.

Word cloud via Alfred Hermida

I begin my New Atlanticist roundup essay “European Parliament Moves Right” with, “The weekend’s European Parliament produced good news for the center-right parties, bad news for the center-left, and good news for radical parties of all stripes.”

I plan other posts today on the implications for the major governments and smaller states in Europe.  This post, though, focuses on the general picture for the EU, notably the odd fact that the Right won at a time when they seemed ripe for rebuke and the fact that turnout has declined in every successive election for the European Parliament.

My close:

While I agree with Yglesias that the EU’s failure to capture the public imagination by now is problematic, it goes to far to say that they are”the world’s most significant economic actor.”  It’s true that the EU and USA vie for the title of world’s largest economy and that, epending on the day’s euro-dollar exchange rate, the EU is sometimes out in front.  But the fact of the matter is that, while they’ve made a lot of progress, the EU is not a single economy, let alone a unified political entity.  And they’re further away from that goal today than they were a week ago.

It’s also worth noting that, while “the right” were the big winners in these elections, “the right” is even less a coherent entity in EU politics than it is in the United States at the moment.  While Sarzoky is bullish on consolidating gains and making the EU more powerful (naturally, with France/Sarkozy guiding the way) the center-right parties elected in the UK and elsewhere are decidedly not interested in that agenda.

Much more at the link.

Graphic: Euractiv

As the 20th anniversary of the Solidarity movement’s triumph approaches, Poland finds itself divided politically and unhappy with its current state of affairs.   As I argue in my New Atlanticist piece “Poland’s Democracy at 20,” this is a good thing.

Unhappiness with the quality of one’s politicians, too, is a sure sign of a maturing democracy.  Gone are the days when Poles were excited to vote; that’s now simply expected.  But the expectations of new democracies are absurdly unrealistic and thus inevitably dashed.

Twenty years ago, Poland was part of the Warsaw Pact; today it’s part of NATO.  Then, it was on the outside looking in at Europe’s prosperity; now it’s a member of the EU.  Then, it was under Soviet domination; now it’s free.   Then, its people hated the government and they do again.  At least this time, they’re free to complain about it without the risk of being arrested.

Much more at the link, including the irony of Solidarity threatening to shut down celebrations of its own movement with strikes.

My New Atlanticist essay “Australia Prepares for U.S. Decline” discusses a recent Aussie white paper that is generating much discussion in the foreign policy wonkosphere.  Basically, they see a rapidly rising China and a United States that’s overstretched with other commitments and could therefore reduce our commitments to the Asia-Pacific region.  Hence, they’re planning for major defense upgrades.

Andrew Shearer sees this as a wake-up call for the Obama adminstration, while Christian Brose figures it’s about time our allies started taking defense seriously.  Matt Yglesias, meanwhile, figures we’re wasting so much on defense that others won’t even notice if we cut back.  Matt Eckel thinks his namesake is understating how much America contributes to global stability.

I consider the history of American spending and the impossibility of knowing what portion it is “wasteful” until after the fact — and even then.   I conclude,

Yglesias is right that marginal cuts in American military spending don’t necessarily impact other countries. The combination of the sheer volume of American military spending and global conception of our interests creates a free rider problem that we have complained about but accepted for decades.  Even our great power allies have much more limited interests than we do and we’ve got enough excess capacity that they would be reasonably confident that we would meet our treaty obligations even with a somewhat smaller force.

How much would we have to cut back to change that equation?  Again, it’s unknowable.  Clearly, just the hint that we might be recalibrating in Asia seems to have woken up the Aussies.  Then again, they’re arguably our most enthusiastic military ally, having demonstrated an uncommon willingness to join in any fight.  We would likely have to trim our military to levels currently unimaginable to shake most Western European countries out of their comfort zones and into picking up a significantly larger share of the overall defense burden.

More at the link.

Eugene Volokh takes on a pedantic emailer irritated at his use of “the lion’s share” in the way it has been used for the last several centuries rather than the original coinage by Aesop.

Kevin Drum independently draws the same conclusions I do re: the reasonableness of networks’ complaints about Obama’s all-too-frequent prime time press conferences.

Barry Horn reports that Pennsylvania Congressman Bob Brady is proposing to ban Viagra commercials during ballgames.  For that matter, “any other male sexual enhancement product from TV and radio from 6 am to 10 pm.”  For the children.

At New Atlanticist, I react to reports that National Security Advisor Jim Jones is a wallflower with no work ethic and that Ireland won’t let its combat troops in Chad play soccer because the ground is too hard.

Presumably invigorated by our resounding successes in nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, the editors of the Washington Post have come down in favor of U. S.-led nation-building as the solution for piracy in Somalia:

Last week’s crisis offers the Obama administration an opportunity to avoid perpetuating past errors. No, we aren’t advocating another massive U.N. intervention in the country backed by U.S. troops. As the Bush administration discovered late last year, there is no appetite among America’s European or African allies for such an operation. But what would be possible is a concerted push to strengthen the most recent attempt at a Somali government — a not-unpromising coalition between moderate Islamists and various clan-based factions. The government needs massive economic aid, training and equipment for an army and coast guard, and help in brokering political deals.

A coordinated international effort to build up a Somali government and security forces would cost many billions of dollars and take many years to pay off. It would consume U.S. diplomatic capital and be domestically controversial — like the nation-building missions underway, at last, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is also the only way to end the threats of piracy and terrorism from the Horn of Africa.

I don’t believe the American people have any appetite whatever for new foreign adventures whether they come in the form of “massive U.N. intervention in the country backed by U.S. troops” or a “coordinated international effort to build up a Somali government and security forces”. While I agree that the ultimate solution to the problem of piracy off the coast of Somalia is a strong Somali national government, it’s unclear to me under what conditions such a thing might come about and I certainly don’t think that a strong Somali national government is an immediate solution. It will take far too long to bring that about.

The country suffering the most as a consequence of Somali piracy is probably Egypt. Between the global economic slowdown and Somali piracy traffic through the Suez Canal is down 20% from what it was last year at this time. Egypt is highly dependent on the revenues generated by the Canal.

My quick reckoning of sea traffic in the area (and ships that have been harassed by pirates there) suggests that after Egypt the EU would be the primary beneficiary of an end to Somali piracy. So that’s my prescription for nation-building in Somalia: let France do it. Or the EU.

However, I would like to put a question on the floor. What’s the bright line dividing building up a government in a country other than your own and colonialism?

President Obama says he’ll help GM and Chrysler but they’ll have to agree to some “pretty drastic changes.”

“We will provide them some help,” Obama said. “I know that it is not popular to provide help to auto workers — or to auto companies. But my job is to measure the costs of allowing these auto companies just to collapse versus us figuring out — can they come up with a viable plan?”  He added: “If they’re not willing to make the changes and the restructurings that are necessary, then I’m not willing to have taxpayer money chase after bad money.”

[...]

“Everybody is going to have to give a little bit — shareholders, workers, creditors, suppliers, dealers — everybody is going to have to recognize that the current model, economic model, of the U.S. auto industry is unsustainable,” Obama said.

The president said he agreed with a questioner at the town hall — a Maryland woman with family members who work for GM and Ford Motor Co. — that “there’s been a lot of mismanagement of the auto industry over the last several years.”

Obama stressed that the industry must be preserved, not only symbolically but because of the large number of jobs connected to the companies and suppliers. Obama said his job was to protect U.S. taxpayers and he wouldn’t spend federal dollars on “a model that doesn’t work.” “A lot of it’s going to depend on their willingness to make some pretty drastic changes. And some of those are still going to be painful,” he said.

[...]

The president said that even as the economy bounces back, Detroit can’t focus on “trying to build more and more SUVs and counting on gas prices being low.”  In that vein, the administration on Friday is expected to announce plans to raise fuel efficiency standards by 2 miles per gallon to 27.3 mpg for new cars and trucks in the 2011 model year, an administration official said Thursday. That would be the first increase in passenger car standards in more than two decades.

Under the changes, new passenger cars will need to meet 30.2 mpg for the 2011 model year and pickup trucks, sport utility vehicles, and minivans will need to reach 24.1 mpg, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak in advance of the announcement.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama will announce his strategy for the auto industry before he leaves for Europe on Tuesday. The announcement is likely to come on Monday. Gibbs said Obama still thinks U.S. automakers build cars that Americans want to buy. Both he and the president own Ford Escape hybrids. “It’s a nice car,” Gibbs said. “It really is.”

After speech to the Atlantic Council last evening, EU Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes was asked how she would handle this very question were she in charge of the U.S. economy.  She noted that she didn’t have to put herself into any hypothetical situations, because they’re facing exactly these decisions in Europe, too.   And her answer is similar to Obama’s:  No help for industries that ran themselves into the ground with poor management decisions unless they come up with a radical restructuring plan that recasts the business to compete successfully for the long term.  And, yes, that includes being “green” for sustainability.

Obama’s absolutely right that, if the federal taxpayer is going to bail out these companies, then the government has a right to insist on major restructuring.    He’s wrong, though, and Kroes is right on how to get there.

While the government employs some really smart people with substantial knowledge of economic matters, it has no specialized expertise in how to run an automobile company.   To be sure, the people actually running GM and Chrysler haven’t exactly shown themselves as geniuses in that regard.   But, to be fair, they’ve been operating under the pressure of quarterly shareholder reports and hamstrung by a labor structure from a bygone era, which makes it difficult to make good strategic choices.

So, absolutely, Obama’s people (and/or Congress) should approve a restructuring plan before giving the auto companies another dime.  But the auto companies, not the government, should draw up the plan.

There was an old Bill Cosby bit about an uncle who promised him that he’d get a bicycle for Christmas if he’d just be good.  Bye and bye, the uncle would find some minor transgression as an excuse and tell him that he’d ruined his changes at the bicycle.  Eventually, it dawned on Bill that the uncle never had any intention of buying him a bicycle.

As I explain in my New Atlanticist piece “Macedonia Elections Last Chance for Slim EU Hopes,” Macedonia, or FYROM if you like, is now playing the part of young Cosby with the EU as the mean uncle.

In my New Atlanticist piece “Euro Drops Ever So Slightly After Bailout Rejection,” I give a YahooNews headline writer a hard time for turning an insignificant change in the dollar-euro exchange rate into a commentary on Europe’s response to the financial crisis.

Hilarity (or, at least, some historical perspective) ensues.

Photo by Flickr user Alex Segre under Creative Commons license.

A series of discordant columns over the weekend makes it clear that a new American president has not been a magic fix for the transatlantic relationship. Indeed, the global financial crisis has exacerbated differences, not just between America and Europe but within Europe as well.

I round up and synthesize these columns in my New Atlanticist piece “Obama Has Not Yet Fixed US-Europe Relations.”  The conclusion:

None of these sour sentiments should derail the Obama administration’s efforts to repair and strengthen America’s relations with Europe, of course.  There has arguably not been a time in the postwar period when transatlantic cooperation has been more vital.

But it’s useful to be reminded from time to time that George W. Bush’s demeanor was not the sole obstacle to an effective working relationship.  Indeed, “Europe” is far from a monolith and its leaders, too, have some responsibility for the partnership.

Follow the link for the rest.

Looking for the Colonel Jessup discussion I referenced in my last post, I came across the post “GOOD MOVIE, WRONG LESSON,” written on January 31, 2003 and imported over from the original blogspot site (unfortunately, owing to then-existing vagaries, sans comments).  It was the fourth substantive post and fifth total post ever on the site, written on my first day as a blogger:

Jonah Goldberg’s column today is an excellent example of how you can agree with someone’s conclusions but strongly object to their argument. Yes, the Tom Cruise character in “A Few Good Men” was a smart-aleck pretty boy (as he is in all of his watchable movies; he’s dreadful when he tries to go against type). Yes, the Jack Nicholson character (Colonel Jessep) had some great lines and it was easy to cheer for some of them. But Jessup was a villain in the flick. However well intentioned, he believed himself above the rules of his society and ordered his subordinates to break the law, with the tragic result of killing one of the men under his command. And then covering it up rather than taking responsibility. Not exactly heroic. I’d hate for Jessep to be the role model for American foreign policy. And, getting to Goldberg’s direct point, while it’s true that the US provides the lion’s share of the NATO defense burden, that doesn’t mean the Europeans have lost all right to dissent. They’re sometimes (okay, usually) annoying, but they aren’t our subordinates; they’re sovereign states with a rather different set of interests. Indeed, that’s the reason we need to preserve the option to act “unilaterally” rather than having all our actions subject to a NATO or UN veto.

I’d stand by every bit of that still, except for the jab at Cruise.  He’s subsequently done quite well in other types of roles. I’d also use paragraph breaks.