GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

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The landslide victory of the Republican Party in the US midterm elections, which brought an army of conservative and Tea Party candidates to Congress, came arguably as a disappointment to many European observers. Europeans have come to share some of Americans’ frustration with the Obama administration’s sometimes hesitant and inconclusive approach to policy challenges. The US President has also lost some of his earlier appeal among European public opinion by making unpopular choices such as escalating and prolonging the war effort in Afghanistan. But most Europeans simply do not understand why American voters have so soon lost faith in a leader who in so many areas, from the economy to diplomacy, has worked to redress the difficult legacies of the Bush era, restoring America’s influence, image and credibility as a leader in Europe and around the world. The main message for transatlantic relations from the midterm elections is perhaps precisely this: despite all the post-Obama victory talk about Americans ‘becoming more European’ (a dubious characterization from the start), broad differences still exist on the two sides of the Atlantic. On average, Americans seem to be significantly more worried than Europeans about the size of government and its role in regulating the market and promoting equality – even in a time of widespread uncertainty as the present one. Obama’s initiative on healthcare reform – which Europeans praised as finally filling a transatlantic gap – has divided the American public, rather than bringing it into the European camp of welfare state supporters. As a matter of fact, while the French for weeks protested against the downsizing of their welfare state, the majority of American voters flocked to the polls on Tuesday to demand the downsizing of government.

While differences in political culture do persist across the Atlantic (hasn’t this, in fact, always been the case, at least to an extent?) this should not lead to the hasty conclusion that we are entering an era of transatlantic tension. A new phase could open in 2012 if Obama fails to be re-elected and the Republican Party leans towards the Tea Party – an heterogeneous populist movement that is yet to lay out a clear foreign policy vision but which is made of people who are deeply leery of things Europeans tend to like: multilateralism, international treaties, the United Nations, climate change policy, and such. Even in such scenario, however, a new transatlantic rift would not be a foregone conclusion. It would be grossly mistaken for Europeans to postulate that American conservatives are inherently ‘anti-European’: historically this connection is simply not there. Much would depend on the concrete policy choices of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic and, perhaps more importantly, on the type of transatlantic reaction to international developments taking place largely outside the Euro-Atlantic space.

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