Obama's Challenge

At the G20 summit this week, President Obama confronts a problem no American president before George W. Bush had to face: suspicion and even hostility toward the U.S. government from European allies. Bluntly, the Bush administration all but destroyed traditional transatlantic ties, including the "special relationship" between the United States and Britain. (Article continued below...)   

Even though Obama is popular among the European public, he didn't do the U.S.-U.K. bond any favors last month. When Prime Minister Gordon Brown came to Washington, he brought with him a present for Obama chosen with the care accorded a gift to some valued ally: a penholder carved from timbers of the sister ship to the Resolute, from whose wood the president's Oval Office desk was made. Obama's gift to Brown was DVDs of American movies—a Christmas gift to a not particularly close business acquaintance. As they say, it's the thought that counts. The thought was duly noted in London.  

That was stupid of the White House, which needs all the friends it can get. On the most crucial issue facing this summit (how to organize a coordinated Western response to the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression), Brown has one view, close to the administration's. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France have very different views; the Central Europeans have others.

But Obama's real problem runs deeper. What passes at the G20's plenary sessions will likely be of slight importance. Just going around the table for introductory statements will take hours; and the final communiqué was precooked. Obama's side sessions with individual leaders will be where any real business is done. (See Wednesday's announcement that the U.S. and Russia will restart nuclear-arms negotiations, which came out of Obama's presummit meeting with President Dimitry Medvedev.) In these meetings, Obama will find himself face-to-face with shrewd European leaders—all longer veterans in government than he—who, deep down, have learned from painful experience to distrust America. 

It is hard to overestimate the damage that the Bush administration did to America's historic Western alliance. Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's offhand dismissal of "Old Europe," as against the new states of Central Europe, set the tone. Rumsfeld later said he'd mangled his text; and in another circumstance the European allies might have accepted that. But Rumsfeld's misspeaking, if that is what it was, points to the real damage. At its root, the Europeans believe they were systematically brushed aside—even lied to. At the depth of the Iraq debacle, one senior adviser at No. 10 Downing Street exclaimed: "We've been betrayed by a bunch of incompetents in Washington." Tony Blair, Brown's predecessor and that official's admired boss, was effectively destroyed by his support of W. The same adviser is now in Britain's Washington embassy. Does anyone believe he has forgotten what prompted his outburst?  

The perception of betrayal goes far wider than rigged intelligence estimates and unfounded optimism about Iraq. On issue after issue (Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Guantánamo, Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations), the current cadre of European leaders and officials believe the Bush White House failed to consult them; worse, it did not level with them about its real goals. And, more alarming still, it simply had no idea what it was getting into. The economic meltdown—which all Europeans see as originating in a massive failure by a corrupted U.S. system of government to sensibly regulate Wall Street—is merely, for Europe's leaders, final proof that the Washington they respected and, ultimately, trusted through the Cold War years is no more.  

Summits are gatherings of leaders, and the media tend to focus on personal relationships among them. Expect, in coming days, much White House spin about just how well Obama has bonded with his counterparts. That's a delusion. National leaders are not swayed by charm. Especially not European leaders briefed by their officials. "Sherpas" is what the unseen officials are called who prepare the ground for big international gatherings like the G20 summit. Obama faces European leaders briefed by their own sherpas. All those unseen officials bear the scars of their dealings with Bush. Most had a tour in Washington in the '00s, suffering firsthand the administration's contempt and, they came to believe, double-dealing.  

That outburst by the No. 10 official finds echoes in every European capital. One of  Sarkozy's closest advisers bears the scars of the Bush administration's dismissal of French concerns about an Iraq invasion. When France's most-senior military officer came to Washington to argue France's concerns, he was treated to an angry outburst by a top Pentagon official, who said France's real concern was a corrupt relationship between Saddam Hussein and France's then-president, Jacques Chirac—a relationship that, the Pentagon official said, it would be America's pleasure to expose from documents Washington was confident it would find in Baghdad. No such documents were ever found. One of Merkel's top advisers recalls voicing his concerns in 2006 about the worsening situation in Afghanistan—to be met with the comment that the Germans had always been unreliable allies, so why should the U.S. listen to their fears now? 

Leaders in democracies come and go. Their advisers, at least in Europe, remain. For two generations of the Cold War and its aftermath, those officials were confident that they had relationships with their Washington counterparts of frankness, truth and trust. Differences were explored. Advice was given and weighed. Problems were sorted out before they became crises. Policies were quietly thrashed out before any public announcement. Political sensitivities were mediated by phone calls between leaders. Those unseen day-to-day relationships were the real bedrock of America's influence in its dealings with the United States' most enduring partners. Now President Obama will find himself confronting Bush's legacy, and trying very hard to get Europe back on his side.

© 2009