The Continued Absence of a Golden Age

Commenting on the future of transatlantic relations, Anthony writes:

The plain fact of the matter is that there are structural issues at play that will ensure tensions remain. One of the great pieces of historical revisionism spurred by the Bush 43 tenure is the conviction that has emerged that under Clinton Euro-American relations were going well. They weren't. Most of the time it was poison. Even between Clinton and Blair things turned fairly sour...

We should hope for the best with the emergence of the Obama administration. And at the very least it'll give me an excuse to start having a go at the Continentals again. But managing expectations, so to speak, is undoubtedly the right way to go. There are plenty of issues that have the potential to cause ructions.

That's not to say, incidentally, that the problems are ALL structural. This is an argument generally employed by Bush 43 apologists to support the notion that it doesn't matter how undiplomatically the US government acts because the results will be the same and it should be resisted. But let's not get carried away.

This is entirely true. We forget too often how much the Balkan wars strained the transatlantic alliance and how close NATO came to breaking up over Kosovo. That wasn't the only issue, of course, but it was probably the biggest, most complicated one. You'll recall how Blair and Clinton were reduced to shouting matches over Kosovo and, previously, how Clinton and John Major had rowed over Bosnia and Northern Ireland. Now in the end most (or at least many) of these differences were resolved, but they were, in some ways, easier than many of those which face the west today.

Comments

[Anthony]

In the spirit of mulling things over and possibly showing some deviation from my usual stances in these comment boxes, I'd just like to make the further point that, in fact, the unilateralism of the Bush administration post-9/11, especially with regard to Afghanistan, is readily explicable in terms other than chronic gittishness or collective psychosis when one considers the Kosovo experience just a couple of years previously. Does that excuse the horrible incompetence, the torture, the corner cutting, the shitty attitude? No, it doesn't. Can I see why the US government, following a catastrophic terror attack on its home soil, was not keen to engage in a replay of the coalition dynamics that pertained in the Balkans? You bet I can.

[NJB]

Good point. On the one hand, the Kosovo campaign influenced the Iraqi campaign such that Greece and Luxembourg weren't going to be consulted before specific actions were taken. On the other hand, the Bush admin ran rough shod over its NATO allies, especially Turkey.
If I might add, up until the Clinton admin there existed deep and wide networks of people who know each other - Europeans & Americans I mean. So that despite the bickering above, the "bottom-line" common interests were maintained and furthered thanks to the hundres, thousands of anonymous Americans & Europeans who work together on a whole slew of issues. That's the "fabric" so to speak of the alliance. Under Bush, it was as if there was an express design to undermine these relationships. To the point that Americans with European contacts and proclivities were - and in a way still are in the GOP - viewed with suspicion, or "gone native" since they maybe spoke a second language.

[fussball]

Gute Arbeit hier! Gute Inhalte.

[north face outlet]

"Refuse to be a ""yes man.""Although many people try to appease an autocrat by telling him exactly what he wants to hear and following every order to the letter, ""this is a huge mistake,"" Dufour says. Instead, ""wait until you're convinced your manager is making a huge mistake"" -- one that will jeopardize his own stated goals -- ""or until you come up with a better idea that you truly believe in.""
"

[Cheap Uggs]

A French lady frequently visited a small antique shop but rarely purchased anything. Furthermore, she always found fault with the merchandise and prices. The manager and her salesclerk took the lady's grumpy complaints in their stride, but one day she really went too far.