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EUROPE: Watching That Space, and Seeing More of the Same
By David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Jan 19 (IPS) - Polished, clever and charismatic, Barack Obama appears the very antithesis of the bungling cowboy that his predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush was widely believed to be. That in itself helps explain why his election as the first black president of the U.S. in November delighted millions in Europe.
Without doubt, there will be plenty of emotion Jan. 20, too, as his inauguration takes place. Yet once the euphoria is out of the way, many Europeans could have to confront the reality that Obama may not depart too radically from the jingoistic policies pursued by the U.S. over the past eight years.
The sense of continuity with the Bush administration could be especially pronounced in relation to the Middle East, judging by early indications.
Nominally, the European Union steers its own course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet in reality, its policy has been heavily influenced by Washington, as was illustrated in 2006 when the EU emulated the U.S. by freezing direct aid to the Palestinian Authority after Hamas won an unsurprising victory in legislative elections.
Obama has been careful to ally himself with the hugely powerful Israel lobby in his country. He has appointed Rahm Emanuel, an unwavering supporter of Israel, as his chief of staff. Emanuel's father Benjamin belonged to the Irgun, a militant Zionist organisation that carried out the massacre of up to 120 Palestinians at Deir Yassin, a village near Jerusalem, in 1948.
Hilary Clinton, the new secretary of state, also has close ties to the Israel lobby. Even though she angered Israel's U.S. supporters by publicly embracing Suha Arafat, wife of the subsequently deceased Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in 1999, she was careful to cultivate a good relationship with the lobby once she began running for the U.S. Senate.
Her election campaigns have relied heavily on donations from pro-Israel groups, while she told Congress last week - at a time when the number of Palestinian children being killed in Gaza was still mounting - that both she and Obama are "deeply sympathetic to Israel's desire to defend itself."
Ghada Zeidan from United Civilians for Peace, a Dutch organisation campaigning for the rights of Palestinians, said that though there may be much hope that Obama will change U.S. policy on the Middle East, the likelihood of him doing so over the next four years is slim. "Historically speaking, Palestine-Israel is a very difficult dossier for all American presidents in their first term," she added. "In a period when internal issues need so much attention and will be his first priority, Obama probably wouldn't want to burn his finger with such a difficult dossier in the first term."
Obama's plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and his apparent openness to dialogue with Iran have met with widespread approval in Europe. But Kristen Silverberg, U.S. ambassador in Brussels, signalled earlier this month that there may nonetheless be some trans-Atlantic friction over how the Tehran regime should be approached. While she predicted that Obama would resort to direct diplomacy in dealing with the Iranian government, she also noted that he and Joe Biden, the new vice-president, sponsored legislation during 2007 aimed at imposing sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme. Because Europe trades with Iran, it is likely to face calls to help try to shun the country financially, she suggested.
Though perceived as a 'dove' on Iraq, Obama has nonetheless promised to intensify U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan. It is probable that he will exhort European governments to send more troops to serve with the operation run by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) there. Such calls are bound to provoke a heated debate in Germany, where the issue of taking part in a counter-insurgency campaign is politically sensitive.
Despite insisting that Iran is not allowed develop a nuclear bomb, there are no immediate signs that Obama will seek nuclear disarmament worldwide.
Europe continues to host between 200 and 350 U.S. nuclear weapons (exact numbers are kept confidential by NATO). A new study the British American Security Information Council, an anti-war campaign group, says that "even under an Obama administration" the U.S. may be reluctant to remove these bombs from European soil.
"Yet the sustained presence of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe is a legacy from an outdated security agenda and no longer serves a credible purpose within NATO's nuclear posture," said BASIC's Claudine Lamond. "Prolonging nuclear sharing arrangements in Europe may harm global nuclear stability, provide additional tension with Russia and end up a costly enterprise for both the United States and host member states (of NATO)."
On climate change, Bush's refusal to ratify the Kyoto protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions greatly irked European policy-makers and public alike. Obama, by contrast, has spoken eloquently about a "planet in peril" as a result of man-made global warming.
Bush's aversion to environmental protection measures has allowed the EU to present itself as a world leader in fighting climate change. That image was sullied, though, in December when the Union's governments watered down a package of proposals on cutting carbon dioxide emissions, because many of them viewed them as too costly.
Simon Tilford, chief economist with the Centre for European Reform, a London-based think tank, argued that the EU needs to be bolder as it prepares for a conference designed to fashion a new international accord on climate change in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.
"The EU's emissions reduction targets are by far the most ambitious in the world," he said. "But if Europe is to persuade the U.S. and emerging economic powers like China and India to take similar action, it has to back up its rhetoric with action. Also, if the EU retreats from its leading position on climate policy, it will surrender its first-mover advantage, and with it the chance to make European firms leaders in key environmental technologies. In the furore over the costs of cutting emissions, the huge economic opportunities of a move to a low carbon economy are being ignored." (END/2009)
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