Angela Merkel’s phone is tapped and the transatlantic world seems to be in a shambles. The National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping scandal involving the German chancellor has caused a significant loss of trust and credibility among America’s main allies in Europe and elsewhere. Of course, this is not the first time we have faced a serious rift: Iraq, Guantanamo and climate change are a few issues that have triggered emotional reactions on both sides of the Atlantic in recent years.
But what makes the NSA scandal different is the fact that it directly targets the political elites of some of America’s closest allies. In previous crises, even leaders who officially disagreed with Washington on a given issue would often provide behind-the-scenes support. For example, while Gerhard Schroder, Merkel’s predecessor, won re-election on a populist anti-war platform in 2002, his centre-left government gave far more support — including intelligence sharing and flyover rights — to the intervention in Iraq of George W. Bush’s administration than they dared to admit in public.
During past clashes, the pragmatic professionalism of the political and diplomatic elites on both sides of the Atlantic guaranteed that any fallout would be limited in scope and duration, and would not interfere with the core business of allied cooperation. This time seems different. German opinion leaders are shocked and outraged by the eavesdropping revelations and regard the foundations of the transatlantic partnership as “deeply shaken”.
The problem is not so much that countries snoop on each other. To be frank, who does not? Rather, it is Washington’s attitude and communication that is most damaging. Yes, some of the reaction smacks of hypocrisy, given the level of Europeans’ own spying efforts, and the even support that some countries’ intelligence services provided to the NSA. Yet Merkel must feel deceived by Washington’s surveillance operation; for it was she who — when the initial leaks from Edward Snowden emerged — had tried to calm emotions in a remarkable display of restraint while fighting for her own re-election.
In contrast, Washington’s handling of the NSA scandal has been quite unprofessional from day one. Instead of immediately calling Merkel, US President Barack Obama waited until the media leaked the story and then instructed his spokesman to issue a wishy-washy denial in a clumsy attempt to avoid fessing up about whether US intelligence had targeted her in the past. It is hard to recall any US president who has personally been so detached from his fellow heads of government.
So what will be the repercussions of the NSA revelations? First, the scandal has hit at a time when cooperation between Europe and the US needs to be intensified. Take the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Calls to suspend or even cancel TTIP negotiations are no longer limited to those on the left but also include voices from Europe’s usually pro-US centre-right parties.
Second, the EU’s Swift banking data-sharing deal with the US is another — if temporary — potential casualty of the NSA scandal. Citing privacy concerns, the European parliament has urged the European Commission to stop the agreement, which provides the US Treasury with vital access to millions of individual items of transaction data as part of its terrorist finance tracking programme. Members of the German government seem open to adopting such countermeasures. That said, Berlin has just agreed to a one-year delay in the introduction of tougher EU privacy rules that are contested by US technology companies. Talk about political pragmatism.
Finally, the Obama administration should not be surprised if European leaders are less motivated and face much greater difficulty in convincing their reluctant publics to support the US militarily. In the Bundestag, which needs to approve any mission abroad, goodwill towards Washington appears to be at an all-time low.
It is worth remembering that there is probably nothing more damaging to friendly relations among democratic states than a combination of losing faith (in an ally) and losing face (at home) as a result of an ally’s actions. These two related aspects sum up the destructive potential of the NSA scandal for the transatlantic partnership, both at the personal, elite level as well as in the broader public diplomacy context.
We had better get our act together. It is not just one another that administrations around the world have to cope with. The Snowden revelations, which experts expect to continue well into next year, also highlight the critical role played by the IT sector in shaping political and public policy. The shift from government to “Googlement” — fuelled by the unprecedented ability of companies to gather, store, and evaluate vast amounts of personal data — has just begun.
— Financial Times.
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg served as German defence, economics and technology minister.
