Well Done America: Now it’s Europe’s Turn to do its bit.

Barack Obama’s landslide election brings with it impossible expectations of, according to the front page of the Times, “The New World”. In his speech last night Obama promised a new dawn of American leadership based on the enduring power of American ideals. Yet one man’s beneficent leadership is another man’s ignoble imperialism, and talk of universal values and American leadership could well have come from the mouth of George W. Bush. If Obama is to realise the hopes contained within notions of American leadership and avoid the traps of leading without followers he will need to work with Europe, but Europe must also be prepared to fulfil its side of that particular bargain.

Nicholas Sarkozy has pledged that Europe “will find a new energy to work with America”. It needs to. Multilateralism is not just about shared decision making but about sharing the responsibilities entailed by those decisions. And good leadership is not just about bringing others along with you, it is about delegating roles and responsibilities. In the post-Cold War world to date Europe has not given the United States the opportunity to be a good leader because Europe has been a negligent multilateralist – demanding American activism but unwilling to back those demands with significant contributions of its own. The Clinton administration derived very little political capital at home from leading where Europe asked – in Bosnia and Kosovo – and an Obama administration would be wise to demand more from its European allies in return for activism.

So Europe must expand its capabilities, be prepared to contribute, and above all refrain from the kind of petty, electorally expedient ad hoc anti-Americanism that characterised much of the Bush era. In Robert Kagan’s phraseology, if Europe wants American foreign policy to be sprinkled with a touch of Paradise, then Europe will have to bring some Power to the table.

The opportunity is there. Obama won this election, not by moving his party to the centre-right, the modus operandi of Bill Clinton, the great triangulator, but by asking the American people to move themselves out of their political comfort zone. The American public feel that George Bush squandered the goodwill of the world that followed September 11th, and wants America’s prestige restored and its alliances rebuilt. Rebuilding the global financial system is the first major task, an area in which Europe is already possessed of both power and ideological authority.

But Europe should be warned: fail to fully engage, fail to back fine words with the means to help achieve them, and the United States will have little option to continue upon the unilateral pursuit of its interests rather than embrace a shared approach to our shared transatlantic goals. The Bush Doctrine was not so much of an aberration as many in Europe believe, and we would be wrong to assume that with Bush gone enlightened liberal multilateralism will simply fall into being. For that to happen Europe must be prepared to step up to the plate.

Nick Kitchen is a Fellow of the LSE IDEAS Transatlantic Project

Lessons in Diplomacy à la Kissinger (1): Don’t be afraid to bend the truth….

US-Chilean relations during the Allende presidency

Memorandum of Conversation, Henry Kissinger, Chilean Foreign Minister, Cloromiro Almeyda, and the Chilean Ambassador in Washington, Orlando Letelier, c.7 October 1971, Fondo Orlando Letelier, National Archive, Santiago, Chile. 

"Mr Kissinger indicated that he agreed totally with [Chilean Foreign] Minister Almeyda that it was important to isolate the issue of copper and avoid this transcending into other areas of the two countries'  [US and Chile] relations. He said that, even if press speculation was impossible to control, the attitude of his government would be to make every effort to avoid any factor that could harm ties and calm dialogue between both countries. Referring to the Chilean revolutionary process, Kissinger indicated to Minister Almyeda that, as he had already had the opportunity to state to Ambassador Letelier, he profoundly admired the way in which President Allende was leading the Chilean political phenomenon. He signaled...his interest in Chile and in maintaining the most constructive relations possible with his government, which was reflected in the fact that Orlando Letelier was the Latin American Ambassador he had the most open relationship and most permanent contact with. He also indicated that if at any moment the Chilean government wanted to present his government with a proposal of a confidential character with respect to the relationship between both countries or pending problems, this could be managed through him at a presidential level with the safety that there existed an attitude of understanding and orientation towards facilitating constructive links between both countries [in the Nixon administration]. He also commented that as far as his country was concerned, Chile had a great importance within Latin America and he indicated that it would be very incongruent if, while the United States was able to seek a form of understanding with the PRC from which it had been separated for so many years, it could not find positive solutions to problems with Chile with which it had a long tradition of friendship. In this respect, he alluded to the tendency towards ideological pluralism in international relations."

The Expulsion of Washington's ambassador to Bolivia

Early this morning, my wife assured me that the Bolivian government was tossing out my ambassador, not me or any other Americans. I woke up to see the Minister of the Presidency, Juan Ramos Quintana, explaining tensely that the government has nothing against Americans in general, just US Ambassador Phillip Goldberg, who has spent the last few weeks meeting with leaders of separatist groups in Santa Cruz and Tarija, who are seeking the overthrow of the first Bolivian government headed by an indigenous president, Evo Morales Ayma. The expulsion of Goldberg, whose previous experience includes long stretches war-torn Yugoslavia and Kosovo, marks the culmination of his months-long battle with the Bolivian president, one based on a history of mistrust that is deeply reminiscent of the Cold War.

Last June, for example, a 20-year old Miami woman was arrested at La Paz's El Alto International Airport trying to enter the country with 500 rounds of .45 caliber ammunition while the wife of Washington's military attaché waited to greet her at the airport. The story barely made headlines in the US, mostly because Ambassador Goldberg resisted Morales’s demand for a full investigation, characterizing the event as an "innocent error.”

Then, three months ago, thousands of protesters descended upon the US embassy in La Paz, threatening to burn it to the ground. They were demanding that Washington accede to President Morales's extradition request for former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and former Defense Minister Carlos Sanchez Berzain. Both leaders are wanted in Bolivia on charges of genocide and human rights violations for their role in Black October, a series of protests in October 2003 in which dozens of indigenous Bolivians were gunned down by troops, allegedly upon government orders. Sanchez de Lozada currently resides in Chevy Chase, Maryland, while Sanchez Berzain works in Miami for a former US Ambassador to Bolivia, Manual Rochas, a firebrand who in 2002 warned that Washington would cut off aid if Bolivians elected Morales or his allies.

While these developments have served to strain the US-Bolivian relationship, it was Ambassador Goldberg's perceived role in stoking ethnic conflict, regional separatism, and violent insurgency that finally sparked last night's shock announcement. For the past several months, powerful interests, mainly in the country's east, have brought the country to the precipice of civil war. The capital of the insurgency is Santa Cruz, where political and economic power remains in the hands of a white and mestizo feudal elite, historically loyal to the United States and the anti-communist dictators that occupied the Palacio Quemado for much of the Cold War.

Over the past two weeks, violence against Indians, government buildings, and national gas installations has increased significantly, much of it led by the neo-fascist Unión Juvenil Cruceñista, the youth counterpart to the Pro-Santa Cruz Civic Committee, a business-led activist group founded decades ago as an anti-communist counterweight to Bolivia’s 1950s revolutionary governments. In neighboring Tarija, the newly-formed Unión Juvenil Tarijenista is occupying the airport to prevent the government from flying in reinforcements. Meanwhile, another group of anti-government youths attacked a major gas pipeline, which is now costing La Paz an estimated $8 million a day in export revenues.

President Morales’s apparent hesitancy to meet the insurgency with serious force reflects two historic fears. First of all, his movement suffered greatly at the hands of the country’s military in the Gas War of 2003. Secondly, Morales’s supporters harbor a historic mistrust in their country’s military leaders, who in the early 1960s took power for themselves when they were called upon by the country’s revolutionary leaders to put down a rightwing rebellion from the east. Despite having vowed to remain loyal to the 1952 revolution, Bolivia’s generals reversed many of the redistributive policies set by the revolutionary regime and did not relinquish power until the 1980s. Since Morales and his supporters see themselves as the heirs to the revolution, they are reluctant to make the same mistake by turning its reins over to the country’s generals.

Not waiting for government action against the rioters, many of Morales's fervent indigenous supporters have vowed to march on Santa Cruz and Tarija, confronting the mostly mestizo youths. Meanwhile, indigenous campesinos have attacked opposition headquarters and the offices of UNITEL, the country's main television station which has fervently taken up the opposition's banner. Again, anti-US sentiment is stoked by Washington’s history of bankrolling opposition media outlets in Latin America, whether or not a US-UNITEL connection exists.

I was passing by UNITEL's offices last night when I found out that my ambassador had been expelled. Military police in riot gear were guarding the opposition television station, despite the fact that the government’s supporters had been behind the attempted arson. The taxi driver explained that a group of campesinos loyal to the government had just tried to burn down UNITEL, expressed lament that their attempt had failed, and proudly stated that his president had just declared the US ambassador to be persona non grata.