Avuncular American

NATO deals with sustained turmoil

Wall art near Brussels' EU institutions

"Sustained turmoil" might be a metaphor for the presidential whirlwind that just blew through Europe, but the phrase is actually a heading in the German Marshall Fund's (GMFUS) survey of the NATO Mediterranean Dialogue.  Last Friday, when the wheels of Air Force One were just up from Brussels, GMF hosted a round table to launch their in depth study of this NATO initiative which began in 1994.  Though some of the participants, during the coffee before the proceedings got under way, marveled at sighting "The Beast" or FLOTUS in person, it must be said that the name of DJT himself was never mentioned.

Shows you that not everything revolves around the Man Baby, and that serious NATO business goes on, despite his tantrums.

Well attended by a roster of diplomats, journalists, and civil society people from a number of Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia are the seven non-NATO member partner countries), as well as NATO International Staff from the Political Affairs and Security Policy Division, the round table showed how NATO goes beyond traditional East-West concerns (NATO's "comfort area," as one of the participants called it) and engages with countries whose stability matters to NATO member states.

"Beyond crisis management, NATO and partners must address protracted instability," summarized one of the participants.  Several lamented NATO's role in Libya, which was seen as unfinished business, contrary to the extensive stabilization work done over years in Bosnia.

The Med Dialogue is relatively unknown outside specialist circles, and is seen as under-resourced.  With all the shouting about "2 percent" or even "4 percent" at the summit last week, how much will trickle down to this effort in preventive diplomacy?  Luckily, the European Union (EU officials were present too) knows the value of this NATO effort, and is increasing its cooperation in the same region.

This long term and low profile engagement with its southern flank shows that NATO defines security in a holistic fashion.  Limiting the discussion to how much countries devote to military spending - the POTUS doctrine of spending = security - is way too simplistic an approach to collective security.  What if encouraging Med Dialogue partners to invest in coast guard patrols contributes way more in the long run than buying a couple of F-35s?

The Med Dialogue, like much of great value at NATO, has no warships or tanks at its command.  But it does have a network of experienced people committed to dialogue, and the GMF is to be commended for its serious evaluation of this program that contributes to human security, among NATO countries and their neighbors to the south.

Appel du 20 janvier

[Sorry, anglophones, but I had to write this one in French, an attempt to get it published in the Belgian press today.  Since that didn't happen, my readers get to see it here.]

Ceci a été inspiré par l'excellent "Appel aux Américains libres" d'Antoine Buéno, sur France Inter à la suite de l'élection du 8 novembre dernier aux Etats-Unis.  Ma tribune n'est pas drôle comme le podcast, mais s'adresse aux européens qui s'inquiètent - comme beaucoup d'américains - en ce 20 janvier 2017.

Appel du 20 janvier: un américain parle aux européens

Si aujourd'hui, vous vous êtes réveillé avec une vague angoisse, c'est peut-être en connaissance du fait qu'à la fin de journée, l'adulte intelligent qu'est le président Barack Obama sera remplacé par Donald Trump. Après la cérémonie d'investiture, le déni ne sera plus possible; Trump investit la Maison Blanche. Que faire?

Pour les américains ayant voté pour Hillary Clinton - près de 3 millions de plus que les électeurs du candidat républicain - Trump représente le plus grand clivage politique que le pays ait connu depuis la fin de la guerre civile en 1865. Certes, la Grande Dépression anéantit quasiment l'économie américaine dans les années trente, mais il n'y eut pas de véritable poussée extrémiste. Il y eut bien des charlatans engagés dans la politique, mais ils n'accédèrent jamais à la présidence. Des présidents médiocres aussi, mais jamais à la tête d'une superpuissance mondiale et nucléaire.

Quand il faut se référer aux magazines de psychologie pour essayer de comprendre un président ultra-narcissique, il y a problème: une dichotomie dans notre fascination pour Trump. Nous ne pouvons nous empêcher de regarder, tout en nous moquant du style "Louis Farouk", les photos des appartements couverts de dorures de la Trump Tower. L'internet nous inonde des sorties incessantes de Trump. Mais il ne faut pas nous laisser intimider par sa dernière tirade publiée sur Twitter; il dira sans doute le contraire demain. Gare aussi à ceux qui se contentent de se gausser du comportement bouffonesque de cette ex-star de télé-réalité. Aujourd'hui, il est président.

Aux Etats-Unis, la résistance à tout ce que représente Trump s'organisera surtout au niveau local. Ces villes qui passent des lois en faveur d'un salaire minimum décent, ces états qui continuent à installer panneaux solaires ou éoliennes face au réchauffement de la planète, nié par Trump. A Washington, la minorité démocrate au Sénat va peiner à restreindre la vague de nominations d'idéologues ou d'acolytes peu qualifiés aux postes les plus importants, où la tendance Trump est de mettre le loup dans la bergerie (un avocat des plus grandes banques d'investissement pour "contrôler" Wall Street; un promoteur de toutes les énergies fossiles à l'agence pour la protection de l'environnement, etc.). Le plus grand défi pour les Démocrates: préserver l'héritage des présidents Roosevelt, Johnson, et Obama, pour sauvegarder les acquis en matière de droits civiques, de pension vieillesse et d'assurance santé, ciblés de longue date par le parti républicain.

Et l'Europe, que peut-elle faire pour assurer que le choix malheureux d'une minorité des électeurs américains ne pénalise pas l'Europe et n'affaiblisse pas les institutions issues de la deuxième guerre mondiale? Si Trump approuve le Brexit, c'est son affaire, et ses commentaires anti-Union Européenne devraient inciter les pays membres à lui répondre "None of your business". Et barrer la route à ceux qui veulent imiter Trump ce côté-ci de l'Atlantique.

Les propos de Trump sur l'OTAN - il traite l'alliance atlantique d'obsolète, et a fait comprendre que la mise en oeuvre de l'Article V définissant la stratégie de défense commune en cas d'attaque serait assujettie à une participation financière accrue - ces propos devraient inciter les chefs d'état et de gouvernement européens à resserrer leurs liens. Non seulement à défendre l'OTAN (et à rappeler à Trump que l'Article V fut invoqué pour la première fois au lendemain des attaques du 11 septembre 2001, quand l'OTAN mobilisa des avions AWACS pour défendre les Etats Unis), mais aussi à renforcer une défense strictement européenne.

Ready or not, here he comes

This is it.  Tomorrow, January 20, is Inauguration Day in the United States, and you know what that means.  Donald Trump will change his acronym from PEOTUS to POTUS.  With that title go other titles like Commander in Chief, and unofficial ones like "leader of the free world."

Let's see if he comes to deserve them.  President Barack Obama famously said "words matter," so let's see if Mr. Trump, once he starts signing his name on White House stationery, can think before he tweets, or can link words to consequences.

Robin Wright in the New Yorker, writing about her conversations with diplomats in Washington trying to interpret Trump for their capitals, presents their dilemma: “Every day I send back the same cable saying, ‘We don’t really know’" what to make of Trump's pronouncements.  Friends are confounded and dumbfounded, foes can't believe their dumb luck.

How can you lead anything, like NATO for example, when you call the organization both "obsolete" and "important" in the same sentence?

When I wrote on November 9, the day after the 2016 presidential election, that we needed to bone up on our history books (especially one about the upset election by a minority German vote-getter who came to power in 1933), many readers wrote to share their concerns.

One referred to the next four years as the "new season of Presidential Apprentice," and several had awakened thinking that it was all a nightmare (see Nicolas Vadot's nice "Nightmare before Christmas 2016" dedication on my copy of his book).  Some admitted to crying, they were so distraught at this hard-right turn in American politics.  An Englishman, talking to Brexiteers who expressed solidarity with Trump voters, said he felt like a liberal in Munich in the 1930s.  And from Germany, someone who saw Stephen Bannon, the "alt-right" presidential counselor, as "the American Julius Streicher," the rabid anti-Semite who was judged at Nuremberg.  My book review apparently wasn't the only reminder of analogies with the dangers of the 1930s: Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, his 1935 novel on the rise of a crass, nativist populist in America, sold out on Amazon after the November 2016 election.

Only one reader (not an American voter) thought I had gone too far in the 1932-2016/Germany-US comparison.  He felt that Trump had some useful observations on the dangers of globalization, and on improving relations with Russia (more on that below).  Another, an American historian of 20th century Europe, took solace in the "checks and balances" in America that didn't exist in Thirties Germany.

Now, on those potential safeguards, a word of caution: given the collection of Trump appointees to head agencies and departments that they have a proven record of opposing (Rick Perry, named to the Energy Department, famously said he wanted it abolished - but couldn't remember its name), and the unseemly speed to confirm them before they even complete vetting procedures, can anyone seriously believe that his own party will provide checks and/or balance?  Despite winning a minority of the popular vote, Trump shows no inclination whatsoever to govern cautiously.  On the contrary, he sees his Electoral College victory as a landslide, and he and his party are pushing full steam ahead on ramming through appointees and policies that often are the antithesis of his own supposed "populist" campaign blather.  I would truly like to know if those who chose to regard Trump's election with equanimity have been reassured by anything he's said or done in the past two months.

And on that Russia thing... can anyone, given the overwhelming evidence of Russian meddling in the American presidential elections, still believe that Trump can be trusted to foster American interests - NATO and Western security - when dealing with Russia?  The man never misses a chance to praise Putin, for God's sake.  And Trump puts him on a par with Angela Merkel - seriously?

This may upset the reader who objects to my Thirties analogies, but there was another politician back then who promised great things: "Give me four years, and you will not recognize Germany." We know how that ended.

Be careful what you ask for.

The September 11 Emergency Embassy Drill

There we were, gathered around the table for a long-scheduled emergency planning exercise.  It was September 11, 2001, and the American Embassy in Luxembourg was perhaps the only place in the world where one of these exercises was taking place.

The idea is to put Embassy staff through their paces, and a former diplomat who did this for a living had constructed a scenario which stretched elements of reality a bit to come up with a series of tests of our ability to deal with a crisis.

During an afternoon break, one of our people went back to his office, and phoning his wife, learned that there had been an incident in New York, something about a "small airplane" crashing into the World Trade Center.  When he told us this, we thought at first it was a "plant" by the scenario writer - something to distract us from the fictitious crisis brewing in our exercise.

Shortly thereafter, another report came in about a second plane, and it started to dawn on us that this was stranger and worse than anything in our exercise scenario.  We switched from exercise-land to the real world, and it was then that the Minister of Interior phoned me, to say that the Government of Luxembourg had dispatched armed police to augment our unarmed contract guards.  I looked through the curtains, and they were already on duty.

For several hours that terrible day, US embassies abroad were pretty much on their own.  The news said that the State Department had been evacuated, and there were rumors of a truck bomb hitting Foggy Bottom (unfounded, as it turned out).  We kept in close contact with the nearest larger US Embassy in Brussels, and told our staff to head home.

That evening, one of the communications staff phoned me at home about an urgent message, and said that it looked like there was a demonstration forming outside the Embassy.  That seemed preposterous, and it turned out that this was the first spontaneous outpouring of support that Luxembourgers showed over the coming days and weeks.  People were laying wreaths of flowers and lighting candles outside the Embassy gates.

That evening of September 11, 2001 was just the beginning of what became a national cause.  Within days, the entire government, including the head of state, gathered for a solemn, ecumenical memorial service in the national cathedral.  There was a similar gathering at the American military cemetery, where General Patton and thousands of his comrades-in-arms lie.  All over Luxembourg, used to honoring the Americans who liberated them (twice) in World War II, every town and village organized ceremonies over the following weeks.

And the emotional solidarity translated to political support.  Within weeks of September 11, we were hosting a conference on combatting terrorist financial flows.  On a number of fronts, including NATO, Luxembourg and other European allies joined the US.  When speaking to audiences of concerned youth, I told them to take heart in this solidarity.  It was the time of headlines "We Are All Americans."

What a difference a year makes.  In the fall of 2002, when I was preparing to leave Luxembourg and the US Foreign Service, the phrase of concern to America's friends was "You're either with us or against us."  The drums of war were increasingly audible: Iraq, which had had nothing to do with Nine Eleven, was in the US crosshairs.

What a difference a decade makes.  Yes, 2001 was the year of 9/11.  But it was also the year of the first Bush tax cuts, the ones that erased the Clinton budget surplus that was on its way to wiping out the US national debt.  It was also the year where Europeans said goodbye to their national currencies and introduced the Euro.  Ten years later, both decsions are the subject of much soul-searching.

That the intervening decade has been one of dysfunction is in little doubt.  Astronomically expensive wars of choice that are still unresolved.  The economies of nations at the mercy of financial institutions and firms that have little or no sense of loyalty to the countries that spawned them.

It didn't all start with Nine Eleven, but the body blow to once rock-solid institutions shook the confidence of the West.  We have yet to recover.

WW II + 65: Say It With Stamps

It's fitting that former enemies and inheritors of former regimes got together today in Moscow for what may be one of the last big World War II commemorations that can include numbers of walking veterans.  Quite right, too, that the country that suffered the greatest number of casualties be the host.  It's hard to see how Germany could have been defeated without the Red Army's determination.  Click on the stamp at left for an example of the Soviet-era heroic gigantism prevalent in the USSR (from StampRussia).

That other Ally that withstood alone on the Western Front, Great Britain, is of course personified by its wartime leader, Winston Churchill.  His voice, his profile, his very pugnaciousness, stood for so much in the years before the US entered the war.  From the British Postal Museum Archive.

Marching in Moscow for the first time today was the United States, which not only saved the Brits from the Germans, but had to fight off the Japanese throughout the Pacific.  The cartoonist Bill Mauldin, beloved of the foot soldiers but mistrusted by the brass for the scruffy image he gave to GIs, is portrayed in this US Postal Service stamp. Rounding out the Big Four was China, but not the China of Communist Beijing.  Nationalist China, under Chiang Kai-Shek, was at the table with its Soviet, American, and British allies.  No more Soviets at the Kremlin these days, and the Nationalists had to watch the ceremony from Taiwan.  From StampsOfChina.

Finally, France, which though not a member of the wartime Big Four, did manage to stay in the big power league thanks to the sheer will power of then General De Gaulle.  Thanks to French postwar leaders managing to overcome their hatred of Germany for outrages like Oradour (hundreds of men, women, and children killed in cold blood, the entire village burnt to the ground), we have a united Europe today.  Stamp from Timbres-de-France.

Okay, world leaders, well done in the war memorial category.  Now please work together on that even bigger goal: saving the planet from its multiple non-military threats.  It's a much harder target to zero in on.

Cheer Up, Europe: The War's Over

You wouldn't know it, by the looks of the headlines:

"Gloom across Europe as crisis shadow intensifies" Financial Times

"Zeal and angst: Germany torn over role in Europe" Wall Street Journal

"AMB. JOHN BOLTON: We shouldn't rescue Europe" FOXNews.com

Thanks, Ambassador Bolton.  Glad you weren't around during World War II.  And I don't think the Europeans have actually asked the US to rescue them this time.

No, you wouldn't know that today really should be a day of celebration.  65 years of peace across a continent ravaged by two world wars last century.  VE Day - Victory in Europe - never was much celebrated in the United States, which preferred to lump its commemoration of its dead of all wars in May's Memorial Day.

But on this side of the Atlantic, as the BBC On This Day website reminds us, Britons lost no time in celebrating the end of hostilities in Europe on May 8, 1945.  They cheered PM Winston Churchill, "for he's a jolly good fellow."  Didn't keep them, two months later, from voting him out of office.  Gordon Brown shouldn't feel so bad.

VE Day on May 8 is a public holiday in many European countries, though at places like NATO HQ, where some of the losing countries of the war are now major players, it doesn't do to mention the war.  So we have instead the celebration of the postwar peace, embodied in Europe Day, May 9, celebrating 60 years since Robert Schuman sketched out what has since become the European Union.

If only the general mood matched the upbeat Euro-phoria of the Europe Day poster gallery.  It's hard to find committed Europhiles, especially in places like the British Conservative Party, which just may be poised to take over the helm of what is already a Euro-sceptic nation.

Even on the continent, the angst and gloom is general: in Greece, the epicenter of the latest financial-fiscal crisis, it has erupted into violence.  Here in Brussels, a city whose name is synonymous with the EU, not even Europe can appear to help a country seemingly bent on endless separatism in a slow "death of a thousand cuts."

Too bad Europeans don't see the BIG PICTURE.  Which is, 65 years of peace, the product of an alphabet soup of interlocking institutions: NATO, EU, COE, OSCE, OECD.  These "supranational European bodies" might bore you to death with their endless diplo-speak of collective security, single currency, subsidiarity... but these weighty words keep the swords from being rattled.  If you can't make out the Euler diagram (click on image below) of these overlapping institutions, check out this excellent Wikipedia graph.

"Jaw-jaw is better than war-war," Winston Churchill is reputed to have said.  The European Union does talk to excess, at times, but 65 years of jaw-jaw is better than 6 months of war-war.  Europe, count your blessings, do the necessary, and keep that stiff upper lip in the face of a little currency crisis.  It's important, but seen in perspective, pales when the alternatives to collective security are considered.

There is strength in numbers.

Paying Them To Be Pals

Do you remember the scene in David Lean's epic film, Lawrence of Arabia, where Colonel TE Lawrence, to shouts of "Aurens! Aurens!" rides back to his Bedouin allies in the company of... mercenaries?  "Killers, cutthroats," say the disgusted princes and tribal leaders.  Lawrence has bought himself some protection, but at the cost of the respect of those who are fighting with him for a cause.

A century later, we have lots of modern-day Lawrences in Army and Marine camouflage BDUs, mingling in the Middle East and hiking the Hindu Kush, alternately fighting and tea-drinking with the various bands that make up Iraq and Afghanistan's warring factions.  In Lean's film, it was Ottoman gold that inspired some of Lawrence's Arab allies.  Nowadays, it's more likely to be the shrinking US dollar, shrink-wrapped in bricks of $100 bills.

When I read that the Pentagon's budget is now to include CERP ("Commander's Emergency Response Program") money to woo the Taliban over to "our side," that image of Lawrence's mercenaries looms up.  The $1.3 billion allotted to CERP in Afghanistan may be a drop in the bucket, but as with all such things, has there been much thought given to what happens when the former baddies stop getting money?

Read Shane Bauer's great expose in the September Mother Jones, "The Sheikh Down," for a look at what your money buys in Iraq, where CERP payments created the "Awakening Councils" out of former enemies among the Sunni population.  It's an entertaining read, except the part about the shaking down of the American taxpayer, who gets to pay for "reconstruction" projects at many times their justified price, all in the name of keeping the peace.  Getting a piece, for the sheikhs profiled, is more like it.

But what happens when the money stops?  Surely even Pentagon planners can harbor hopes of a rosy future of declining budget lines when the CERP program "sunsets," to use a term from accounting-speak?  But will the Sunni fighters in Iraq and the ex-Taliban pocketing the payments understand it when the CERP paymasters say "Thanks guys, but our funding has zeroed-out."  Their guns and bombs, bought and paid for by American largess - who will they point them at now?

How about allegations that Italian payments to the Taliban for peace in their sector, when stopped and not communicated to French forces that inherited their zone, subsequently brought the Taliban's wrath on the unsuspecting French?  According to the Times of London, even the US Embassy in Rome protested to the Italian government about such practices.  But now the same thing is in the Pentagon budget?

Tom Engelhardt's "Tomgram" put it squarely: "Will Today's US-Armed Ally Be Tomorrow's Enemy?"  We've been there before, in the self-same Afghanistan:

Let me suggest just one lesson that seems to be on no one else's mind at a moment when a key "option" being offered in Washington -- especially by Democrats not eager to see tens of thousands more U.S. troops heading Afghanistan-wards -- is to arm and "train" ever more thousands of Afghans into a vast army and police security force for a government that hardly exists. Based on the last three decades in the region, don't you think that we should pause and consider who exactly we may be arming and who exactly we may be supporting, and whether, given those 30 years of history, we have the slightest idea what we're doing?

Americans with amnesia should go out and rent Charlie Wilson's War, a slick rendition of how we "bought" the Mujahideen those thirty years ago, who then became the Taliban, who then started getting CERP payments...

AF-PAK-IRAN - Eddies of Instability, or Negotiation Opportunity?

Whatever happened to strategic options?

Discussions of Western policy towards Iran have a numbing inevitability to them.  You're going to hear about the sanctions option, which is always there as a way of warding off the Israeli bombing option.  Two flavors - is that all we have to choose from?

The weekend's deadly attack in Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan region should be of concern in capitals other than just Tehran.  And not only because of intemperate Iranian accusations of US or British involvement, which are probably ludicrous.  [UPDATE: Or perhaps not so ludicrous: see Washington Note post by Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett].  It would appear that the Anglo-Americans have quite enough on their hands without poking the eyes of the Iranians, especially in an area where they have little or no leverage.  After all, it was only last week that Baluchis on the Pakistani side expressed fears of US drone strikes in their region, which were apparently nixed by Islamabad.

Thankfully we are no longer in the era of George W. "Axis of Evil" Bush, whose neat phrase lumped together two deadly enemies - Iraq and Iran - by simple conflation.  They were both Muslim-majority countries opposed to the United States - what more do you need?  Bush's crusade against Saddam eliminated the one enemy who had bloodied Iran, and so delivered Iraq into the Shia camp.  Blowback of which I am sure we will hear more as the US wearies of the occupation.

So why, when contemplating Iran policy, are we limited to options that are more worthy of Bush than Obama?

President Obama, after all, is He of the open hand reaching out to the clenched fist.  It's depressing that we are still arguing about Bomb Iran versus Sanction Iran, without considering Co-opt Iran.  Yes, use shared concern over ever-widening arcs of instability, eddying out from their epicenter in Afghanistan.  Pakistan is belatedly trying to deal with multiple insurgencies on its periphery, which, according to Mark Sappenfield of the Christian Science Monitor, won't necessarily help across the border: "All the major terrorist networks attacking US forces in Afghanistan operate from other areas of Pakistan."

Let's use some of the momentum from today's Vienna 4-way nuclear talks to encourage Tehran to expand the diplomatic option.  How about it, Iran: tired of importing natural gas when you're sitting on some of the world's largest reserves?  Find importing gasoline a tad expensive when you actually export the raw material?

In a neighborhood like Af/Pak, wouldn't you want to ensure a bit of stability in the surrounding countries?  India, large, dynamic, democratic to the east.  Central Asia to the north, with its economies trying to transition from Soviet command to capitalism.  And Iran to the west, looking to the west and its markets rather than obsessing about the Great Satan.

Alistair Crooke, writing in Conflicts Forum, questions whether the West (and the Arab Middle East) is again ready to consider Iran as a regional power, as it was under different management.  Whatever the answer, the recent trouble on Iran's Pakistan border may cause some policy makers - Iranian, American, and others - to consider shared interest in stability, in a region where that is in very short supply.

Image: Af/Pak coffee mug, available through Diplopundit.

Treading Water, Under the Radar: Maldives & Diego Garcia

Dots in the Indian Ocean (image: DuniyaLive.com)

The Maldives stand an average of 7ft above sea level, and the government says they face being wiped out if oceans rise.  The government of the Maldives has held a cabinet meeting about 16ft underwater to highlight the threat of global warming.

BBC, 17 October 2009

The island has an area of approximately 10.5 square miles with an average natural elevation of four feet above sea level.  The British wish you an enjoyable stay on Diego Garcia. Upon your arrival, please familiarize yourself with BIOT [British Indian Ocean Territory] regulations and try to preserve the island's ecology.

US Military Sealift Command (MSC) website briefing for US personnel

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How nice that the US Navy is concerned about the "island's ecology."  No such care was extended to the Island's human inhabitants, who were summarily exiled by an Anglo-American pact that denied their very existence (see my post about the long-suffering Chagos Islanders).

But the Maldives President's worries about being swamped under the rising tides of climate change are starting to have their impact in strategic circles.  Here's Senator John Kerry in September:

Diego Garcia Island in the Indian Ocean, a vital hub for our military operations across the Middle East, sits on an atoll just a few feet above sea level.

Kerry's concerns about the security impact of global warning (from the Boston Globe) were echoed weeks later by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, speaking to an audience that probably cares more than most about catastrophic effects of global warming - Lloyd's of London:

Rising sea levels will have a clear effect on the ability of our armed forces to do their jobs.  Look at Diego Garcia.  It is an important logistical hub, including for this country; it is also only a few feet above sea level at its highest point.  A one metre rise in sea levels and most of it would be flooded.   We need to assess the impacts that these kinds of events would have.

Now, though it's gratifying that these two gentlemen are concerned about the planet's health and its defense, I wish that something other than the prospect of a B-52 runway getting flooded would galvanize them into action.

The upside for the Chagos Islanders, who have been quietly rotting away in distant Mauritius for upwards of forty years, is that their native Diego Garcia and other Chagos Archipelago islands might start taking water, and therefore send the US and UK scurrying for other lily pads (how about those in Central Asia?).

Maybe the Chagossians should team up with the Maldivians to drum up support for their respective causes.  With his underwater cabinet meeting stunt - "What else could I do to attract attention?" - the Maldives President appears to be on an effective public diplomacy strategy.

Transatlantic Trends: Can US Surf Obama's Wave In Europe?

The 8th annual Transatlantic Trends survey of European and American attitudes is out.  I must first qualify "European," which includes non-EU Turkey (which is not even in Europe, according to many), but does not include a number of EU countries.  No Scandinavians, no Balts?  Likewise, "American" is just that: North American partners in NATO, the Canadians, don't figure in the report.  Maybe next time, funding permitting.

That said, it is a fascinating survey of public opinion on a range of important policy issues, from what to do about Afghanistan to whether to kowtow to the Russians.  And don't presume you know where public opinion in selected countries already stands on these questions.  Ronald Asmus, the German Marshall Fund's Executive Director in Brussels and former Clinton Administration State Department appointee, says that a common reaction to his numbers is "that can't be so!"

Yes, the numbers don't lie: "Old Europe" Westerners are generally more pro-NATO and pro-US than their "New Europe" Eastern counterparts (Donald Rumsfeld must be saying "that can't be so!!").  And Turks - whom successive US administrations have adopted as their favorite EU candidate country - haven't gotten over their Iraq War slump, when Rumsfeld's Deputy Paul Wolfowitz tried to sic the Turkish Army on a recalcitrant elected civilian government.  Turkish attitudes toward the US - though improved over the Bush years - are the least susceptible to the Obama charm.

But the sheer magnitude of the "Obama Bounce," as Asmus likes to call the chart-topping effect, is what is so different.   "Unprecedented," says Asmus, of the 70 point jump in approval ratings between Bush and Obama (in the case of German public opinion).

I wish I had another slide that was shown at the recent GMFUS briefing, a composite of similar surveys taken since 1952, where European opinion of the US has had its momentary ups and downs, but nothing like the abyssal depths of the Bush years, followed by the bends-inducing rise beyond the surface after Obama's appearance on the scene.

Okay, all this is refreshing but what to do with it?  Confirmed Atlanticist Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, German Liberal Member of the European Parliament, called the findings evidence of "political capital."  "Now, let us use it," he said.   Indeed.

So I pose that very question to the public diplomacy community, which knows that it is good to have public opinion on your side.  How can the Obama Administration build on this groundswell of European public opinion in favor of the person of Barack Obama, which, as the survey shows, does not always have its corollary in support for US policies?

In a week where some of his fellow citizens called him a liar, it has to be reassuring in the White House and in Foggy Bottom that the Obama magic still appears to be working on the European side of the Atlantic.