If Obama's America can't make soft power work, what hope does Europe have?

By Charlemagne

I HAVE been writing about Herman Van Rompuy for this week's print column, so I missed Catherine Ashton's big speech to the European Parliament yesterday. Reading it a day late, it seems pretty sensible stuff. It makes a plea for European unity, as the old "west" watches economic and political power shift rapidly to other corners of the world. In her best soundbite, Lady Ashton told MEPs:

"If we pull together we can safeguard our interests. If not, others will make decisions for us. It really is that simple."

Shortly after reading her speech, I began wading through the morning's papers, many of which discussed the "humiliation" dealt out to the American vice-president, Joe Biden, when Israel announced the construction of 1,600 new houses in an Israeli-annexed district of eastern Jerusalem. Some noted that this was not the first humiliation dealt out to President Barack Obama's administration by foreign powers, despite his high-profile decision to extend a hand of American friendship to the world, seek dialogue before confrontation, and "reset" strained relations with powers like Russia. In exchange for American offers of dialogue, it is noted, Iran has stepped up nuclear work and internal repression; China has treated Mr Obama to a series of snubs and slights, both on a China trip and in Copenhagen; Russia is playing tough on missile defence and even supposedly cuddly Brazil announced it did not favour nuclear sanctions on Iran, just as Hillary Clinton touched down for a visit.

The press reports in today's European papers asked what this all means for Mr Obama, which is fair enough. But is there not another question that Europeans should ponder? Fresh from reading Lady Ashton's declaration that more European unity and coherence is a prerequisite for safeguarding European interests, I wondered what the apparent travails of Mr Obama's foreign policy might mean for us.

To simplify, Mr Obama's overarching strategy for foreign policy—embrace multilateralism, offer dialogue instead of lectures, listen as well as talk and play up America's multi-cultural, tolerant, immigrant-friendly model of society—is just the sort of soft power strategy that Europeans say they want.

And when you ask European officials or scholars of foreign policy why our soft power model is struggling in the current, rather brutally Westphalian world of the early 21st century, they talk about unity, and the need to defend common interests. If we can just speak with one voice, goes the refrain, we will count.

Take the Copenhagen climate change talks, which have become a symbol for EU types of all that is worrying about the current state of the world. I recently heard a very senior official give his take on why the EU was more or less excluded from the talks, and it came down to coherence. Someone asked him a question that is very popular around Brussels just now: What can we do about the EU's lack of a clear vision of its place in the world?

Well, replied the VSO, when you speak with leaders from America, do they have a clear idea what America's global role is? Do the Chinese? Everyone is looking for their place on the new world stage, because things are moving so fast. And we in the EU are in an even more difficult situation, because even if we agree on something—and climate change is a good example, because the EU had an agreed mandate there—then in Copenhagen the problem still came up of, who speaks on behalf of the union?

But here is the question that I am starting to turn over in my mind. If our big bet in Europe is that speaking with one voice will make our norms-based, soft power approach work, what lessons should we draw when Mr Obama's outstretched hand of friendship is smacked away? Because even in a perfect, parallel universe, in which the EU magically falls in line behind Catherine Ashton and the new EU diplomatic service, we will struggle to become one half as united as the American government is. Our 27 countries will always find it hard to match America when it comes to identifying and defending our interests. And though there can of course be differences in the messages sent out by the White House, the State Department, Congress and so on, in general America speaks with one voice to the outside world, in a way that the EU can barely hope to match.

And yet all that speaking with one voice, in defence of agreed, common interests, does not seem to shield the Obama administration from snubs.

This is a very preliminary thought, which I need to ponder some more. I bounced the idea briefly off a couple of foreign policy types I know, who cautioned me usefully against assuming the Obama administration is a perfect experimental subject, when it comes to the efficacy of diplomacy. Israel is a complicated case, and the Americans have also made mistakes in their foreign policy, one of my contacts noted. He was too polite to put it like this, but yes, it would be hard to draw clear conclusions from incompetent multilateralism, if that is what the Americans have been pursuing.

There have also been successes for the soft power of cultural and economic attraction, my contacts noted. Plenty of neighbours still want to join the EU, and the enlargement process remains our best hope of stabilising all kinds of tricky places, like the Balkans. It is good, for example, that the new president of Ukraine, once seen as a Kremlin stooge, now sees a need to look west to the EU, as well as east to Moscow.

Both my contacts said that the lesson might instead be that the "west" is simply losing power in a rough, tough new world, and that goes for America as well as Europe, so Americans and Europeans need to stick closer together. I think that is credible, but then I am a raving Atlanticist, so I would.

And just because the Obama administration has been having a torrid time of it, does not suggest that Europe will do better by squabbling and presenting a disunited face to the world. Or that a return to the muscular policies of the Bush administration would help.

I think I need to think about this some more, and talk to some more people. All your thoughts are very welcome.