Tomorrow night, the European Union will have its first-ever president.  Time’s Leo Cendrowicz reports that few Europeans much care, perhaps because they have no voice in the selection.

In my New Atlanticist essay “Europe’s President Selected, Not Elected,” I both marvel at the fact that Europeans “not only have no direct voice in choosing the leader but don’t even know who the likely candidates are a day before the announcement is made” and argue that the person who holds the office first will, as with George Washington here, “have enormous power to shape the position.”

My personal favorite would be Tony Blair, although I assess his chances at being selected as virtually nil.  Former Latvian president Vaira Vike-Freiberga is a more plausible winner, who would be an excellent choice for reasons Caroline Hammargren outlines.

“Obama Has Failed the World on Climate Change,” blares a Spiegel op-ed by Christian Schwägerl.  The essay is another data point in the growing notion that the new American president’s aura is fading on the other side of the Atlantic.

But, as I argue in my New Atlanticist essay “Obama Disappoints Europe Ahead of Copenhagen,” this was all too predictable.  Indeed, Bob Manning and I both predicted it before Obama was inaugurated.   Obama is, like George W. Bush before him, president of the United States.  Our priorities are simply different from those in Western Europe.

Obama’s personal ideology on climate change and other environmental issues is much closer to that of the European leaders than was his predecessor’s.  But there’s simply no way that Obama is going to swim upstream on this one in the midst of two shooting wars, a global recession, and a major fight to reform the healthcare system.

[...]

Obama is a cautious, pragmatic politician.  This is a fight he can’t win.  He’ll therefore avoid entering the ring.

None of this will prevent Bruce McQuain and others from enjoying some well-deserved Schadenfraude.

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.”

As widely anticipated, an EU report on last year’s Russian invasion of Georgia finds plenty of blame to go around, finding that Tblisi “triggered” the conflict but that Moscow violated international law by its invasion and with numerous atrocities thereafter.

This leads John Cole to quip, “Was the McCain/Palin campaign right about anything?”

As I detail in my New Atlanticist post, “EU: Georgia ‘Triggered’ Russia’s Illegal Invasion,” this is quite wrongheaded.    Not because the McCain/Palin “We’re all Georgians now!” posturing was wise — it wasn’t — but because they at least understood the basics of international law in a way the EU panelists do not.

Only the most ardent Georgian nationalists believe that Mikheil Saakashvili was other than a reckless fool in his actions leading up to the Russian invasion. However, once one recognizes — as the EU panelists here explicitly do — that Abkhazia and South Ossetia are part of Georgia, it no longer much matters.

If sovereignty means anything, it means that leaders of a state have license to take actions within the confines of their borders as they see fit, so long as they don’t create adverse spillover effects for their neighbors.  Saakashvili’s actions against internal groups conducting illegal activities within the borders of his country, while unwise and perhaps even provocative, are simply no justification for an illegal invasion of its sovereign territory by another member of the United Nations. Period. End of story.

I don’t actually end the story there, of course, so click the link for more.

Photo: Reuters Pictures (cropped).

As part of their ongoing effort to cement George Orwell’s reputation by making him the most accurate prophet in history, the British Home Office is now investigating the possiblity of forcing every Pub in Britain to replace pint glasses with plastic pint cups:

The BBC reported recently that the British Home Office is seeking a new design for pint glasses that it hopes may reduce the number of incidents in which people attack each other with pint glasses. According to official statistics, 5,500 people are attacked with glasses and bottles every year in England and Wales. (Probably lots more in Scotland, though maybe they just use swords.) This public safety emergency has spurred the government into action, seeking a design that cannot be used as a weapon.

Designers say they are considering two basic approaches: (1) plastic, or (2) something else. First, glasses could be made from plastic, or could be coated with it so that the glass would not shatter into sharp pieces if broken. Second, “[w]e could do something more radical,” said one designer, “by looking at the whole shape and substance of the pint – we could come up with something that is completely different [from] glass.” Seems a lot like the first approach, and it wasn’t clear what he had in mind. But he continued: “Remember that years ago people used to drink out of pewter tankards. It could be quite a significant paradigm shift.” That’s a great idea – I’d much rather be clubbed to death with a pewter tankard.

As Cory Doctorow notes, this is an essential piece of legislation

Because, you know, most bar-brawlers are fundamentally upset at the pint, not the people around them, and if they can’t smash a pint sleeve, they will contain their anger and not use a chair, bottle, or imposing scarred forehead.

Indeed.

I’ve been busy at the Atlantic Council today covering two huge events.

First, Senator Richard Lugar delivered a speech on the Future of NATO.  In addition to the usual niceties about the important of transatlantic cooperation, Lugar argued that we need “boots on the ground” in Eastern Europe to assuage their fears about Alliance commitment and that NATO should consider unconventional threats such as energy cut-off as the equivalent of armed invasion.  Click the links for the full text of Lugar’s remarks as well as my analysis of his major proposals.

In a few minutes, Anders Fogh Rasmussen will deliver his first major speech in the U.S. as NATO Secretary General.  Commentary and analysis will be forthcoming.

UPDATE:  See “Rasmussen: ‘Things Are Going to Have to Change’ in Afghanistan” and “Rasmussen: Afghanistan Proves NATO Solidarity, Not Weakness” for my initial wrap-up and analysis.

Via Steven Taylor, we note that neither Poland nor the Czech Republic feel “abandoned” by Obama’s decision to scrap missile defense replace an expensive, ineffective boondoggle “missile defense system” with a less expensive, mobile, effective land and sea-based SM-3 interceptor force. Here’s the Polish Prime Minister:

Tusk said that Obama’s “proposal of an alternative strategy should not affect the security of Poland” or of Europe.

“I would not describe what is going on today as a defeat for Poland,” Tusk told reporters, adding that he spoke to Obama on Thursday and the U.S. leader signaled to him that “Poland has a chance to win an exclusive position” in the new system.

And here’s the Czech President:

Czech President Vaclav Klaus also brushed off any concerns about the decision’s impact on relations with the United States.

“This decision of the American government did not come as a surprise to those who closely followed the signals over recent months,” Klaus said in Prague.

“I’m 100 percent convinced that this decision of the American government does not signal a cooling of relations between the United States and the Czech Republic.”

It’s also worth mentioning, as Dr. Taylor notes, that the Czech government never actually approved the Bush Administration’s plan in the first place. President Klaus signed the treaty, but it has yet to be approved by the Czech Parliament.

So here’s the thing: if the Czech Republic and Poland aren’t opposed to Obama’s decision, why on earth should we be? For my own part, I’d rather that American tax dollars weren’t spend to defend Europe from what are currently hypothetical threats–I fail to see why Europe can’t shoulder the financial burden to defend itself. That said, if we are going to expend tax dollars in this way, the prudent course of action is to spend those tax dollars wisely on military technology that actually works, not boondoggles whose only purpose is to enrich the pockets of defense contractors and make us feel “tough.”

UPDATE (James Joyner): I agree that 1) there are solid technical arguments to be made in favor of the new plan vice the old one and 2) there is a divide in Eastern Europe on the issue.  I did a rather comprehensive roundup this morning on just this: “Obama’s Missile Defense Decision: The View From Europe.”  Not only has public opinion there been divided — with the Czechs generally opposed and the Poles lukewarm — but both countries voted out the center-right governments which negotiated the original deal and voted in center-left governments that were less enthusiastic. I do, however, take the official government statements since the announcement with a grain of salt: The decision was a fait accompli.

I disagree, of course, that the purpose of the Bush program was to serve as a sop to the defense industry and think the “boondoggle” descriptor wrong.  And I’m a BMD skeptic.  We’re not talking about SDI, which may well be impossible to create, but rather theater defense, with which we’ve had much more success.  And, of course, sending a man to the moon was impossible until we actually committed the resources to solving the problem.

I’ve been critical of the optics of President Obama’s decision to abandon missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic on the 70th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Poland. But I disagree with Jim Geraghty’s assertion that it also represents breaking a promise made in April. Here’s what he said in Prague:

So let me be clear: Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran’s neighbors and our allies. The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles. As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven. [emphasis mine]

He can quite reasonably argue that he’s done precisely that in dropping an expensive and unproven land-based system for a cheaper and proven (albeit  less comprehensive) ship-based system.  While the Poles and Czechs — or, at least, their governments — are far from thrilled (more on that later) Obama may will have been intentionally signaling yesterday’s move in April.

Nathan Hodge has a good backgrounder on the technology.

On the 70th Anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Poland, Barack Obama announced that he was abandoning Bush era plans to install ballistic missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, pleasing Moscow and igniting fear among our Eastern European allies.

In my New Atlanticist essay “Obama Abandons Poland and Czech Missile Defense,” I take exception to the strategic rationale offered by the president and his ministers and chalk it up to ideology, instead.

The strategic situation has not changed radically in the thirteen months since the system was first announced, although May’s launch of a Sejil-2 missile did change the urgency of getting a system in place. What has changed is the political landscape. Obama is continuing the Democratic Party line, going back to the announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative by Ronald Reagan, of skepticism on the merits of missile defense.

While I believe Russia had little to nothing to do with this, they will see it as appeasement and a reward for bullying.

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.

My New Atlanticist essay “German-American Partnership in Peril?” answers a question that likely hasn’t occurred to many Americans. Angela Merkel is in town, though, and a spate of pieces in the German press this week have expressed the concern that Asia and “Europe” are getting all the attention while Berlin is becoming an afterthought.

There are legitimate and substantial policy differences, which I outline in the piece.  The bottom line, though, is that America and Germany are very close allies who work together routinely on all manner of issues.

Part of the reason Washington pays less attention to Berlin than in the not-so-distant past is that members of the transatlantic community simply take one another for granted.

There are many pressing problems to juggle and China, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and others suck up an enormous amount of oxygen because they are so perplexing to deal with.   The differences between the United States and any country in Western Europe, by contrast, as relatively small and viewed through a shared historical prism.

Ultimately, while Obama and Merkel may disagree on many policies, all they need to do to discuss their differences is to pick up the phone.  That makes this controversy, much like the recurring questions about the US-UK “special relationship,” silly in the grand scheme of things.

Indeed, there seems to be much more “does America like us, check yes or no” contemplation in Europe than there is reverse self-examination here.

Photo: CafePress

Amidst the blogospheric solidarity for the Iranian protestors, it’s worth pointing to news that has been overshadowed by those events: The UN and OSCE monitors are leaving Georgia.

Despite declarations that “we’re all Georgians now,” the fact of the matter has been from the beginning that neither the United States nor Western Europe had any appetite to go toe-to-toe with the Russians over the fate of two disputed provinces.  That remained true even once Russian troops moved into “Georgia proper.”

The man who famously made the above pledge, Senator John McCain, made some similarly bold statements about Iran in a Twitter interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper. Most notable of his tweets: “we must stand strong for democracy in Iran as we stood for Democracy in Poland, Germany, and Czechoslovakia” and “if we are steadfast eventually the Iranian people will prevail.”

As I note in a New Atlanticist post contrasting the American and European responses to Iran’s election fiasco,

The American president is, for good and bad, in a unique position.  As important and powerful as the leaders of the UK, France, and Germany are, they’re not the international lightning rods that the occupants of the White House are.

Aside from the fact that backing from America could quite likely harm Mousavi’s cause and help Ahmadinejad’s, big words from the Leader of the Free World^TM must be backed up by action in a way that a statement by the European Union do not.

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The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan, probably the American blogosphere’s most passionate supporter of the Iranian protestors, writes, “I’m relieved we don’t have a president McCain. His heart is in the right place but his head is a blogger’s, not a president’s.”  My strong guess, though, is that, had McCain prevailed in November, he would be saying much the same thing.   Presidential candidates and senators have the luxury of spouting off about their ideals, while a president’s words have much more consequence.

A whole lot more at the links.

Steven Taylor points to a BBC report that, in response to EU complaints about its monopsony oligopoly power, Microsoft will ship Windows 7 to Europe minus Internet Explorer.  In addition to thinking, as I do, that the whole thing is rather silly, he wonders about the practicalities of this:

[O]ne suspects that a new Windows machine will have a tool to download IE (a distinction without a difference, in many ways) even if IE itself isn’t on the harddrive, since it is possible that the machine might not even have a web browser on it to start with (which would be a real pain, come to think of it).

And I say all of this as someone who downloads Firefox as one of the very first acts performed on a new Windows-based computer. Indeed, come to think of it, I consider IE my Firefox Download Utility, as apart from a handful of work-related functions that only work in IE, I never open it up after downloading Firefox.

Quite right. One has to get online in some fashion, which requires that a browser of some sort be installed.  Or no?

UPDATE: Via Andrew Sullivan and Ezra Klein, an NBC News report about “something called the Internet.”

The press had a field day with the election of various racist and oddball parties to the European Parliament over the weekend.

A quick scan of the headlines: “European election results Battered and bruised” (The Economist); “European elections 2009: far-Right and fringe parties make gains across Europe amid low turnout” (The Telegraph); “European elections: extremist and fringe parties are the big winners” (The Times); “The European Parliament: Now further right and pirate-friendlier” (National Post); “Angry Europe embraces the fringe” (The Globe and Mail); “Fringe Gains Four EU Seats In Dutch Vote” (Wall Street Journal); “The European Parliament: Where the Fringes Flourish” (TIME); “Europe’s shift to the right – Why conservatives, far-right fringe parties, and Swedish pirates won big in EU elections” (The Week); and “European fringe parties set to gain seats in European Parliament” (Vox Africa).  And those are just stories that had the word “fringe” in the headline.

As I argue in my New Atlanticist essay , “Europe’s Lunatic Fringe in Charge?” that’s journalistic hyperbole rather than solid political analysis.  In fact, the centrist parties won 75 percent of the seats and most of the so-called “fringe” are harmless small parties elected only because Europe’s voting system isn’t winner-take-all like ours.

Photo: Reuters Pictures.

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