Europe's misplaced relief after Trump's Syria strikes

Does Trump's military strike in Syria signal that the American military protectorate over Europe is back? 

Last night at a mixer of policy wonks here in Berlin, I could feel the relief in the air.

The details were still emerging, but we knew at that point that President Trump was launching airstrikes against Bassar Al Assad's forces in Syria in retaliation for a brutal chemical weapons attack against his own people.

"It took some time but he's finally becoming serious," one Berliner told me. "He can say all he wants on the campaign trail but now that he's president he has to live up to American responsibilities."

A relief for Europe - but will gridlock persist?

Anxious Europeans have been able to breathe easier the past two days, after Tuesday’s reelection of US president Barack Obama. But the relief has much more to do with the defeat of Mitt Romney than with Obama himself.

Europe isn’t the only place feeling relieved because of a dislike for Romney. Outside Israel, there probably wasn’t one country on the globe that was excited about the prospect of a Romney presidency.

The Republican candidate's dangerous rhetoric seemed almost guaranteed to launch a war with Iran which no US allies would have been keen to sign up to. He had described Russia as America’s “greatest geopolitical foe” and had spoken of China as if it was the evil empire, promising to “get tough” with them in a way Obama hadn’t (although he never provided details about what that would mean). Latin America recoiled at his extreme anti-immigration rhetoric, and Africa was less than excited about his promises to cut US overseas aid.

In Brussels, there is a sense that long-stalled bilateral issues that were waiting until the resolution of the election can finally be taken off the back burner. There is (perhaps naïve) hope that a second-term Obama can show up to the UN climate summit in Doha next month with a reverse-course on the US intransigence in taking action to combat global warming. Negotiations on a US-EU free trade deal can now begin. Most importantly – fears that Europe was about to see a return to the trans-Atlantic tensions that marked the George W. Bush era have now been allayed.

US focus on French sex attitudes echoes Lewinsky saga

Something is very wrong with France, if we are to believe the Anglophone media commentary this week. The arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund and contender for the French presidency, has provoked some soul-searching in France about whether the media was right to have kept quiet about his history of unwanted sexual advances toward women. This soul-searching has been reported on with fascination by the American and British media. But for many in France, the Anglo-Saxon attention to their national trauma is bordering on smugness.

Back in the late 1990's, the French were quite vocal in their confusion and disgust with the impeachment proceedings against US President Bill Clinton. France has long had an expectation that politician's private lives are just that – private – and should have no relevance to their office. 'What kind of a society would impeach their president because he had an affair?' they asked. In fact the period during the Monica Lewinsky saga was probably the only one in which the French openly talked about their history of philandering presidents – from Mitterand to Chirac – if only to demonstrate how different their society was to America. If their politicians were oversexed "séducteurs" it was none of their business. Indeed, sometimes it was celebrated as a good thing, a sign of a healthy libido.

But what goes around comes around, and it seems that now it’s the Americans' turn to look derisively across the Atlantic, shake their heads and say, 'if only they were more like us.'

Denmark to probe CIA terror flights

Denmark has become the latest European country to launch an investigation into covert CIA flights transporting terror suspects. Interestingly, this time the renditions in question took place in a territory outside of Europe: Greenland.

A documentary broadcast Wednesday by the DR1 TV network in Denmark made a claim that CIA flights transporting terror suspects touched down at an airport in Greenland in 2005. The Danish prime minister responded on Thursday by saying it is fully investigating the claim. Greenland is an overseas province of Denmark.

The flight would have been part of the controversial and top-secret “extraordinary rendition” program the CIA has been running in which terror suspects were transported to countries outside the United States. Human rights groups have claimed the flights were intended to transfer the prisoners to countries or jurisdictions that allow torture.

Obama's loss: the view from Europe

Given that I wrote about Europe's reaction to Obama's win in Iowa last week, I thought it logical to now write about its reaction to his loss this week. Just from personal observation, I've been surprised at the huge level of relief being expressed by most people I know here in the UK. It seems that though they were impressed with and surprised by Barack's win, they are still rooting for Hillary to win the Democratic nomination. In fact I don't know a single European who actively wants Obama to win.

Part of this of course is that they know Hillary, they adored Bill Clinton and are eager to see a return to the Clinton years. They know almost nothing about Obama, and being removed from the domestic situation in the US they can't quite understand the enthusiasm for a man who has outlined little of his actual platform or policy plans.