Advice for Obama

U.K.: Help Unite Our States
By Timothy Garton Ash

First the good news: we are all Obamamaniacs now. In a recent Guardian/ICM poll, 53 percent of British respondents said Barack Obama would make the best U.S. president, compared with just 11 percent for John McCain. That means Obama is now the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat candidate for president. Then there's the bad news: even in Britain, America's linguistic motherland and staunchest ally, nearly eight years of George W. Bush have done huge damage to the United States' reputation and authority. This distrust has reinforced a deeper historical trend. The old transatlantic West of the cold-war period is no longer cemented together by such an obvious common enemy as the Red Army in the heart of Europe. So enthusiasm for Obama personally is equaled by skepticism about his country. That means there's a lot of ground for him to make up.

Sometime near the beginning of what many here hope will be the first of Obama's two terms, and at the latest in 2010, the British government will most probably change from Labour to Conservative, from Gordon Brown to David Cameron. But Washington needn't worry: the next lot will be even more pro-American than the last. The Tories adore Obama, NATO, New York and American ways of doing almost everything. A Conservative government will, like the Blair and Brown ones, share Obama's insistence on taking a long-term, multifaceted approach to combating terrorism and his emphasis on the importance of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Britain's armed forces are overstretched and underfunded, but they will still help America as best they can, especially in Afghanistan. London is the place to have a conversation about a joint political, military and economic strategy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan. We have been in those places before. And we're there in several ways now—not just militarily but through our many new Brits of Pakistani origin who live mentally, if not physically, in both countries.

Unlike most Continental Europeans, Brown and Cameron think globally. They're sharp on G8-type issues like energy security, climate change, financial crisis, the Doha Round of trade talks and how to lift Africa out of poverty. Unfortunately, they don't think European. Their analyses and approaches to many issues, from Iran to Palestine to China, are quite similar to those of our German and French partners. Yet they are reluctant to accept that British national interests can often best be realized through a stronger, better-coordinated European voice in foreign policy. Cameron has a particular blind spot here, made worse by his Euro-skeptic party and the Euro-skeptic press. If Obama truly wants a stronger Europe to forge a renewed strategic partnership with the United States in a world of rising giants like China and India, he will need to start getting that message across to the man who will likely be Britain's next prime minister. If such a message comes from Obama, he might even listen. Only a charismatic American could persuade conservative Brits to become more European.

Garton Ashis professor of European studies at Oxford University and author, most recently, of"Free World"(2004).

France: Land(s) of the Free
By Dominique Moïsi

Dear Mr. Candidate,

The first thing you should know about my country, France, is how much we love you here. (Eighty-five percent of Frenchmen would vote for you if they could, according to a Europe-based poll.) There is, of course, an inverse relationship between that love and our strong distaste for George W. Bush. You not only incarnate the best of America, but give us hope for the full integration of our own black and Arab citizens. Your extreme popularity is also indicative of France's traditional schizophrenia toward America. The United States has long acted as a mirror reflecting our fears and our hopes. You clearly not only embody our aspirations but our nostalgia for an America that's a land of dreams.

The special relationship between France and America owes to history and the unique competition between our two universalisms, both of which are based on the principles of our respective revolutions. I suppose our two countries are the only ones in the world that still consider themselves representative of a message that goes beyond them. There is, of course, a big difference between us. When we were a great power, you were a nascent giant. The moment you became a superpower, we were reduced to a middle-sized power with world ambitions. You have therefore become like a barometer of our relative decline. Yet for the first time in modern French history, we no longer feel we need to oppose you in order to assert our identity. To cite one example: unless our diplomats get things wrong, France will return to full NATO membership next spring. This is great progress and a sign of maturity.

Despite France's re-engagement with the United States and the world under our new and energetic president, Nicolas Sarkozy, most French citizens are particularly morose these days. They are uncertain about the future and are searching for protection from the increasing complexities and difficulties they face. They are convinced of the need for structural reforms, yet are unwilling to pay the necessary price for them. Your election in November would demonstrate how much remains possible in the world—even the realization of the once impossible dream of electing a black president, 40 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. If that's possible for you, then why shouldn't it be for us, too? Is there a French Obama waiting in the wings?

Moïsi issenior adviser to the French Institute of International Relations.

Germany: Too Much Hope
By Josef Joffe

For Barack Obama, the good news is also bad news: if he ran in Germany today, he would win by a landslide, with 67 percent of the vote. Why is this bad news? Because hell hath no fury like a nation disenchanted, to borrow from the old English play "The Mourning Bride."

Germany's Obamamania has disappointment written all over it, for two reasons. One is President George W. Bush. Somehow, the chattering class has decided that W is a cross between a demon and a dolt, a one-man Axis of Evil with a room-temperature IQ. Hence the derision and the contempt they direct at him; hence, also, a scapegoat fantasy that confuses the man with his country. Once we finally pack off Bush, so the wishful thinking goes, we will be able to love America again.

Alas, Germany's and Europe's problems with America run a lot deeper than that. W is just shorthand for overweening power; it's Mr. Big and not Mr. Bush that irks the European soul. It is power liberally used—and not, as in Iraq, always used with the say-so of the lesser players. It is America as a league of its own, a giant who will not reflexively submit to the dictates of goodness by which Europe (give or take Britain or France) now lives. At any rate, anti-Americanism is older than Bush, and it will outlive him. In fact, it will last as long as the United States remains No. 1—the world's steamroller of might and modernity.