Tag Archives: Obama

Pre-US election links and the like worth a look

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- As that all-important US election looms ever closer, EU foreign ministers are meeting today to discuss how to rebuild those battered ties between Europe and America that conventional wisdom sees as having been so badly damaged during the Bush years. Across Europe – hell, across the world – everyone is waiting for Wednesday’s result. But pretty much every prediction is just speculation.

- Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, is Barack Obama (a half-Kenyan, half-American born in Hawaii and raised in Indonesia) just too European? Well, according to (some) Americans, perhaps.

- For Europeans there are a number of signs that Obama may not be quite as sympathetic to this continent as his famous trip here a few months ago might suggest. These are also hardly new concerns – and despite some promising signs that Obama realises the EU’s potential importance, there remains much we don’t know. So why is Barack Obama so popular in Europe?

- Shifting off to random bits and bobs, via Pubic Affairs 2.0, a long-overdue and most welcome addition to the European Parliament website: a handy range of RSS feeds. (Ignore the podcasts for now, though – they don’t seem to be overly regular…)

- The old straight bananas row seems to be back:

A leading supermarket has been forced to ditch a healthy eating campaign at the eleventh hour after discovering its staff could be individually prosecuted under EU regulations.

This, methinks, is worth looking into in more detail, especially as the Commission is set to rethink various fruit and veg regulations later this month.

- Will the credit crisis see the Eurozone expand, rather than contract? It may look attractive at the moment – but is the single currency a sensible option?

Barack Obama’s European Vacation

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Marshall Plan poster, shamelessly leeched from WikipediaI’ve largely ignored Obama’s European vacation because – like that fairly shoddy Chevy Chase vehicle – I couldn’t see the point of it.

But one thing from his much-analysed Berlin speech did stick out – and I’ve not seen it commented upon elsewhere (though if you do want a good range of analysis, try Kosmopolit, Federal Union, EU Referendum, Jan’s EU Blog and Mark Mardell).

Anyway, here’s the line: “I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before.”

The press, of course, have been comparing this visit to JFK’s famous June 1963 visit. But Kennedy’s just one man.

Who are the “many” Obama’s speaking of?

At first I thought about making a joke about the invading armies of 1944/5 – America threatening Europe with a big stick if we don’t step back into line over The War Against Terror.

But then I pondered further – and yes, he probably did mean the Americans who beat back the Nazis. But not just them. The American occupying forces of 1945-89. The troops still on military bases throughout both Germany and Europe, relics of the Cold War. The technicians still working on early warning systems and plotting out new missile defence shields. The financiers, stockbrokers, accountants and analysts found in all major European financial centres and countless cities throughout the continent. The workers in American multinationals Europe-wide. The tourists who come in their droves to see what real history looks like. And on, and on.

Without post-war American investment, Europe would never have bounced back so quickly from the most devastating conflict the world has ever seen. But the Marshall Plan was not the end of the matter – once the Yanks arrived in ’44, they never went away again. Hell, the EU itself evolved in part out of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) and behind-the-scenes postwar planning by first Roosevelt, then Truman and (more subtly) Eisenhower.

Many have asked why a US presidential candidate has wasted time travelling to Europe during the campaign, not least his Republican opponent. Considering how intimately tied up America has been with Europe for the last 60 years, the real question should be why haven’t we seen more presidential candidates take the trip? Sod European self-importance, sod Bush’s poor people-management skills. If you invest your money somewhere, you do so because you expect a return on that investment. If you invest a lot of money, you sure as hell make sure that you manage that investment. How can so many American leaders have been so blase about a region in which their country has invested so much? Yes, the American people couldn’t care less about us foreigners – but it’s surely irresponsible to pay so little attention to any area in which the US has so much tied up?