TO: Obama Transition Team
FROM: European Think Tank on November 5
SUBJECT: Prospects for Transatlantic Relations
Within hours of John McCain's concession speech, a collection of senior EU officials, academics, journalists, and diplomats met at Brussels' EU Regional Office of the Heinrich Boll Stiftung (motto: "Meddling is the only way to stay relevant") to discuss the outcome of the US elections. When it was originally scheduled, the winner was still an open question, but Barack Obama's healthy win made the group's focus much easier. Europe will now be dealing with a Democratic Obama Administration.
Chatham House non-attribution rules applied, so I will give a sense of the group's thinking without identifying individuals. Here are some highlights:
- The "Real America" is much more moderate than that of Sarah Palin; Republicans were out of touch with the electorate;
- The "symbolism" of a US president of color will strengthen American soft power;
- Obama's strong mandate will enhance his Administration's legitimacy;
- Europe now has an interlocutor; it will be easier to work with the US, but Europe must speak with one voice.
The participants were painfully aware of Europe's problems with the latter, in light of the stalemate on the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, which would give the EU a new institutional framework and a visible "Presidency" with which to engage the world.
European realists took the election of Barack Obama with a certain equanimity, compared to the wild enthusiasm of the crowds the night before. "Will they still be cheering in 6 months?" questioned one. However, they generally see this huge difference between Bush/Cheney and Obama/Biden: the latter do not fear the outside world. They will engage with Europe and the world to further American interests, but not in the exclusively unilateral way that exasperated everyone these last eight years. Get ready, if not for multilateralism, at least "plurilateralism." An open-minded Obama Administration would disarm much of the anti-US sentiment that grew in the Bush years, making it more difficult for certain European leaders to "tap into" anti-Americanism for their own electoral or tactical reasons.
Free traders worry about Democrats' populist tendencies, but console themselves by saying that as President with something short of a filibuster-proof Senate majority, Obama would have to "govern from the center." But European thinkers warn that Barack Obama's plans for stepped-up prosecution of the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban will be a hard sell: European publics are reluctant to expand the NATO effort, and "burden-sharing" arguments - if limited to strictly military contributions - will meet resistance. Europeans already have some 70,000 "boots on the ground" in a variety of deployments on several continents, and will be quick to retort that the US needs to share more of the development assistance burden worldwide.
Not to speak of the climate change burden. "He's from Illinois," said someone to explain Obama's record on coal and ethanol, and his (symbolic) vote against Kyoto while in the Illinois State Senate. But they take solace from his embrace of the challenge of developing alternative energy resources, and from his ability to appoint serious enforcement officials early on at the EPA and other agencies.
Yesterday's conference ended before news broke of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's post-election nasty-gram announcement involving missiles on Europe's border. On prospects for NATO expansion, especially Georgian prospects for membership, participants noted that Obama was less antagonistic toward Russia than McCain. Europe, heading into another winter still very much dependent on imports of Russian gas, is clearly less eager than the Bush Administration to extend Article 5 common defense guarantees to Georgia. Obama's August 2008 support for Georgia's NATO MAP (Membership Action Plan) was couched in terms of "deepening relations between Georgia and transatlantic institutions," the noncommittal nebulousness of which neatly coincides with the prevailing European view.
French ambitions to reform European defense arrangements and to rejoin NATO's integrated military command, in the view of this group, present a new Obama administration an opportunity to redress damage caused by US rejection of French overtures in the Clinton years.
In all, the mood was relaxed, hopeful, and perhaps relieved that Europeans would not have to explain what it is all about to a foreign affairs ingenue like Sarah (Africa is a continent, not a country) Palin. They will be dealing with foreign affairs veteran Joseph Biden and fellow Senate Foreign Relations committee alum President Obama who has a natural constituency of good will in Europe from day one. There are willing interlocutors here, and though they know that Obama will strongly defend American interests, they see Europe's opportunity in making those interests mutual.