Europe/ Can the transtatlantic partnership survive the Obama revolution ?

The heretofore unthinkable fact that America has embarked on a revolutionary course compells the Europeans to think twice about their own destiny.

Should the Obama administration be described as revolutionary ? And can the present transatlantic partnership – the Euro-American alliance and symbiosis – survive a revolutionary America ?

The less revolutionary thing about the present American administration is that President Barack Obama is black. Indeed, the issue of race, once so crucial, did not play any role in the 2008 campaign. Nor is it mentioned today by the fiercest President’s opponents. Clearly, America is beyond all that, and that’s good news.

However, nearly everything else about the Obama administration is revolutionary. Either out of necessity, or out of doctrine. Admittedly, it is more revolutionary in a Fabian piecemeal sense than in a Marxian apocalyptic sense. But revolutionary it is.

Necessity may have been the driving force behind the President’s revolutionary economic policies. The 2008 crisis was real. Its sequels are real. Resorting to massive government intervention may not be the right answer and may have frightful long term consequences. But one has to be honest and admit that the Bush administration started it in its final months and that many Americans, including many Republicans, still think there is no other way, at least for a while.

Doctrine is obviously at play when it comes to most other issues, and particularly to international affairs. Just to mention some of them :

–  the rebranding of America, once a primarily Judeo-Christian nation, as a multicultural nation ;

–  the insistance to embrace islam, even radical or fundalentalist islam, as a partner, whatever the cost ;

–  the unwillingness, so far, to confront Iran ;

–  the willingness to embrace post-communist Russia, even when Russia threatens Europe again and plays again a negative role in the Middle East ;

–  the willigness to pressure Israel (to throw it under the bus, to quote one memorable sentence).

Many Americans are unhappy about such steps. Many Europeans are scared. And wonder how they should react.

As long as America was strong, the very idea of « a strong Europe » was questionable.

Many of its supporters were in fact interested in Europe’s decoupling from the United States, and in realigning with totalitarian powers, from Soviet or post-Soviet Russia to the Islamic rogue States and organizations. Such was the case, in particular, of the classic Gaullists in France. When the French Chirac administration mounted a diplomatic offensive at the UN against an American-led operation against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003, and almost brought Nato to a schism, it portrayed its move, with much effectiveness as far as domestic media consumption was concerned, as a step towards « a stronger, more independent, Europe », as well as an act of « national independence ».

Other supporters of « a strong Europe » had in mind a ever more Statist and bureaucratic Europe, ruled by an unelected and unanswerable Brussels Commission, and purged from any vestigial national indiocrasies. While popular among the elite, this view was usually resisted and rejected by the voters and the public opinion in most European throughout the 1990’s and the 2000’s.

Against both deceptions, it was safer to foster « a strong West », or « a strong Euro-American partnership », rather than just  « a strong Europe ». The newcomers in the European Union after 1991  – the former communists countries of Central and Eastern Europe – had no doubt about that.

However, things may change dramatically if the present Obama revolution goes on. Under new circumstances, there will be no other choice for Europe but to strive, indeed, for more strength and effectiveness. Either in order to help America overcome the present ordeal or, should America sink deeper, God forbid, to rise as an alternative focus of freedom in the world.

Whether Europe will succeed, or can succeed, being more independent, is maybe another question. But the heretofore unthinkable fact that America has embarked on a revolutionary course compells us to think twice about our own destiny.

© Michel Gurfinkiel, 2010