Across the Pond

We’ve heard what the American critics have had to say about President Barack Obama’s speech on Tuesday night. On the left, critics voice concern that we are digging ourselves further into a very costly hole. On the right, the talking points were that the speech was insufficiently militant and that Obama failed to provide a sense of assured victory. But, then again, it’s hard to know exactly what the commentariat was looking for. Bill O’Reilly criticized that Tuesday’s speech “was no Gettysburg address.” I suppose that if your standard for every speech is that it be the greatest in American political history, you will suffer occasional disappointment.

But what was the reaction of the foreign press, in particular some of our NATO allies? Afghanistan is ultimately a very backward country, and as long as it doesn’t become a big base for al Qaeda, it has no real bearing on Europeans’ interests. It is more difficult for an American to speak that truth. We inflate the danger due to the shock of 9/11. We also started the war, so we naturally have a greater stake in seeing it through. Europeans clearly don’t feel that. They help us, but there’s no pride of authorship, and their prestige is not on the line.

We are also leaning on them to commit 10,000 more troops to what is effectively our third surge in Afghanistan over the last two years. (In January 2008, only 26,000 American troops were there. By the time this surge has been deployed, we will total 100,000.)

According to sources for the French daily Le Monde, the Obama administration has asked Berlin for somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 additional troops, Rome and Paris for 1,500 apiece, and London for 1,000. The Obama administration also hoped that another 4,000 will come from an increase in Georgian, Turkish, Polish, and South Korean troop levels.

It is hard to know if countries will meet these goals. Yesterday, European NATO ministers met in Brussels to discuss the surge and whether they can be counted on to add to the 42,000 NATO troops already in Afghanistan. Rome is reportedly ready to commit 1,000 more troops in addition to the 2,750 that already there, the largest increase pledged since Obama announced the surge. Gordon Brown pledged another 500 to bring the British tally up to 9,500, the biggest commitment after America’s. Warsaw will increase its contingent from 2,000 to 2,600.  Madrid will send another 200 troops to bring their total commitment to 1,200.

Germany, whose 4,300 troops make it the third-largest contingent in the alliance, is going to sit on its decision until an international conference on Afghanistan takes place in London this January. Their public and politicians have been preoccupied since September with accusations that a government minister tried to cover up Germany’s role in calling in an air strike that resulted in the deaths of somewhere between 30 and 70 civilians. Paris also seems to be postponing a decision until next month.

Part of the media coverage has focused on the developing drama between Democrats and Republicans. In this sense, they are merely spectators of American politics and say little that really implicates them. The Financial Times emphasized the political risk that the surge represents for the commander-in-chief with the headline, “Obama gambles his presidency on Afghanistan,” as did Le Monde, both in its news coverage and in an editorial titled “A Bet.”

The largest Spanish paper, El Pais, framed the speech more as a plan for withdrawal than  a surge proposal. The biggest Italian paper, Corriere della Sera, ran the headline “Obama: Troop Withdrawal Starting in July 2011” and a subhead that reads: “The American president announces his Afghan exit strategy.”

However, another common thread in the European coverage was just plain support for the United States—a sense of playing their part. At least among their political leaders, there seems to be a genuine sentiment that they are there to help us simply because we are allies.

We have a tendency to see enemies in the regions of the world that we don’t understand as well as we might as posing major threats. It’s a product of our leadership in World War II and the Cold War. And it has carried over as a big part of the Republican Party’s rhetoric, which tends to view the enemy as a one-size-fits-all existential threat.

Europeans have a more nuanced view. Le Monde and Le Figaro—the center right, more pro-business French paper—both seemed skeptical of the claim that winning in Afghanistan is vital to American interests and highlighted the inherent contradictions of a strategy that seeks to placate Democrats and Republicans but pleases neither.

Some call this skepticism a lack of leadership. There’s some truth to that. But considering their limited interest in the outcome of this war and the political cost of staying involved, there is something heartening about the fact that they continue to show such solidarity with us.

Clay A. Dumas ’10, a former Crimson associate editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.