Barack Obama’s recent tour in Europe has reopened debate in almost every European capital not only about the standing of Transatlantic relations, but more importantly about strategically vital issues, which directly touch the European political identity and stability of the continent. Addressing some 2,000 young people at an art deco at the arts centre in central Brussels, the US president’s speech last week was probably the most important by an American president since Bill Clinton’s speech over the Kosovo crisis in 1999.
Clinton’s administration was reluctant to rush to the rescue when the armed crisis broke out in 1998. The war then, was fought by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s forces in an attempt to keep Kosovo within Serbia’s territory, and the Kosovo Albanian rebels known as Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Eventually, it was the air power intervention of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation that tilted the balance in favour of the KLA in June 1999 when the war ended.
In this centenary year of the First World War, Obama was clearly careful to remind his European audience of some history lessons behind US and European relations. He began his European trip last Wednesday by visiting a US war graves cemetery in the Flanders, on the outskirts of Brussels. Apart from being his first visit to Brussels as president, his visit was also full of symbolism. Brussels is where the EU and Nato’s headquarters are. Obama’s main theme of his European tour was the Ukraine conundrum and future of relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Unlike Clinton over Kosovo or George W. Bush over Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, and far from the latter’s declared “war on terror” policy, Obama softly-softly approach to the Ukrainian issue was distinctively different and reflected current world political realities. “We must never forget that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom,” Obama said, specifically explaining that the crisis “has neither easy answers nor a military solution,” adding that at this moment “we must meet the challenge to our ideals, to our very international order, with strength and conviction.” Yes, of course the US remains the unchallenged super power around, but it is no longer the power which unquestionably responds to crises by using its military muscle. This has not happened in Syria’s case, nor is it likely to happen in Ukraine’s. Last month, the Syrian civil war entered its fourth year and if the balance of power remains unchanged, the Syrian bloodshed is unabatedly continuing and it is impossible to predict an end to it.
Those days of direct interference have been long gone and Obama was very clear about that. Some European commentators have found justifications and reasons behind Obama’s remarks. Ukraine after all is not a member of either Nato or the EU. “Isolation” was the day’s order. “I come here today to say we must never take for granted the progress that has been won here in Europe and advanced around the world,” Obama said. “If the Russian leadership stays on its current course, together we will ensure that this isolation deepens.” What he is obviously saying is that military force would not dislodge Russia from Crimea or prevent Moscow from moving into other areas in Ukraine (mainly Eastern parts). Instead, he points the way ahead through combined actions to achieve peace: Pressure and open-door diplomacy.
The strongest message sent to Russia so far is quite politically measured. It has been reported that the US has already taken some steps to reassure its allies in Eastern Europe, by deploying Baltic air policing with additional Nato planes over the Baltic countries and an aviation detachment to Poland. Maybe it is not too late to establish a viable dialogue with Russia over Ukraine and Crimea’s future in the years to come. They considered a US plan for a halt to Russia’s military build-up up on the border with Ukraine, a troop withdrawal in Crimea, and moves to protect the Russian speakers in the region. [The US and Russia have agreed to discuss a potential resolution to the Ukraine stand-off, after Vladimir Putin called Obama in a move which may launch a fresh diplomatic effort to de-escalate the crisis.]
The former US Secretary of States, Henry Kissinger suggested a way ahead for Ukraine early this year. “Far too often the Ukraine issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West,” he said. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, “it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them.”
With this in mind, EU-US bilateral solid economic and trade relations remain the cornerstone upon which the two sides can further build on. The trade volume between the two is a little more than $2.1billion (Dh7.7 billion) on a daily basis. This makes the EU and US-based companies account for nearly 65 per cent of the top companies worldwide. EU-US trade climbed to $787 billion in 2013 according to “Transatlantic Economy 2014”.
Furthermore, the Transatlantic economy is the largest and wealthiest market in the world, accounting for over 50 per cent of world GDP in terms of value and 40 per cent in terms of purchasing power. The US investment in the Netherlands alone since 2000 is 14 times more than US investment in China during the same period, and US investment in UK was more than 10 times and in Ireland nearly six times more than China. As the Transatlantic relationship defines the shape of the global economy as a whole, the total US investment in EU is three times higher than in all of Asia.
Mustapha Karkouti is a former president of the Foreign Press Association, London.
