Obama and Europe: close or distant?

Aspenia 47

Milan
1 February 2010

Discussions at this talk-debate, organized in collaboration with ISPI and TG1, focused on assessing the first year of Obama’s presidency, and examining the economic and financial crisis and the mechanisms developed to overcome it, as well as the relationship between the new US administration and Europe.

It was noted that a year after his election, Obama has proven to be an essentially domestically-focused president, committed to curbing the economic crisis, dealing with serious budgetary problems and managing an increasingly complex relationship with Congress, which has worsened in the wake of the recent Democrat defeat in Massachusetts that has once again raised doubts over the Senate’s approval of the health reform package.

Technically, the United States seems to have come out of recession, with GDP in the last quarter of 2009 rising by 5.7%. However, figures for the same quarter also show an unemployment rate of 10%. Hence, whilst Wall Street might now be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, Main Street – particularly middle-class America – is bearing the full brunt of a particularly severe crisis. The slide in his approval rating after the heady days of the election has prompted Obama to change tack by focusing on more populist economic policy approaches – such as attacking the financial system – and attempting to win back the middle classes by providing incentives geared particularly towards small and medium-sized businesses. Faced with a growing budget deficit, the president has also promised to freeze discretionary spending, which accounts for 6% of the federal budget. It was observed that the particularly tough and determined line taken by Obama in his recent State of the Union address shows that there can be no question of dealing with major economic issues by delegation to experts, but rather that solutions to the crisis will come from decisive and well-considered political measures.

With his attention essentially taken up with domestic issues, the American president has pursued a foreign policy line in keeping with that of Bush’s second term, which, under the apparent guise of openness to dialogue, has in reality once again proven – as the G-20 has clearly demonstrated – to be a unilateralist approach.

Against this backdrop, Europe seems to have found itself in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, Europe’s inertia during the Bush era was in a sense justified by the fact that it did not “ideologically” support its American ally’s policies, yet during the presidency of Obama – who, as it happens, remains very popular on the Old Continent – it has begrudgingly had to take a less passive role. It was noted that the President’s foreign policy approach is in fact shifting the fulcrum of international power towards Asia, and particularly China. The insignificance of Europe’s role at the Copenhagen summit is a recent manifestation of this approach on the part of the Democratic administration. It was therefore stressed that if Europe wishes to retain importance (and many believe it is perhaps already too late for this), it needs to demonstrate vision and leadership not just by monitoring these new tendencies, but also by developing a strategy that requires international decisions to be taken in consultation with a G-3 structure rather than at an increasingly more likely G-2 level.

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Obama and Europe: close or distant?, Aspenia 47, Milan, February 1, 2010

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