For Earth Day, Barack and David Recycle Some Cliches

I’m not going to waste time decrying the way Obama pretended to like Cameron: we’ve all read his Atlantic interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, in which he makes it perfectly clear that he regards Cameron as yet another free-rider. Nor am I going to complain about how he reduced the Special Relationship to the fawning, and frankly embarrassing, desire of an unnamed staffer to see the Queen. Nor I am going to laugh about his pretense of being inspired by Churchill (“I love the guy!”) or the Queen: since he only refers to Sir Winston and Her Majesty when he’s in Britain, it’s clear that they’re just personages to be deployed rhetorically when convenient, not individuals to be respected, never mind learned from. And can any sane person say that the past seven years of U.S. foreign policy have shown even the slightest Churchillian touch?

No, let’s just jump right in on Europe. I wrote my doctoral thesis at Yale in the 1990s on British relations with Europe in the 1950s, and its first application to the EEC (as it then was) in the early 1960s, and I’ve continued to research the subject since. A lot of what I have to say here borrows from that research, which focused on the way the British government tried to sell participation in Europe, in various forms, to the British people. So I’ve been thinking about this rhetoric, and how it’s used, for a long time.

And the strange thing about Obama’s performance is that, while he prides himself on rethinking U.S. foreign policy (and most of the time, I wish he wouldn’t), he’s absolutely managed to avoid having a single new thought about the EU. Here’s what old, and not new again:

Uncle Sam Wants You. One of the longest-running issues in Britain’s relations with the continent are the tensions created by the perception that the U.S. is seeking to bully Britain into a deeper political relationship with Europe than it actually wants. This was an issue almost from the very beginning – I found the first traces of public disgruntlement about it in 1961, when awareness began to spread of the Kennedy Administration’s enthusiasm for a British application to the EEC. On the right, it surfaced in complaints (still heard today) that the U.S. was jealous of the British Empire, which later evolved into more contemporary concern for British sovereignty . The left, naturally, sees the U.S. as the home of unfettered capitalism (if only) and views Europe as a capitalist club (no laughs, please) that will destroy its chance of creating socialism in one country (current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn belongs to this school of thought). But no U.S. president has ever come out as forcefully for the EU as Obama did on Friday – and by doing so, he’s validated every single British complaint about the U.S. role since 1961. Worse than that: by tying the U.S. to the EU, he’s ensured that every single British complaint about the EU in Britain will now also be a complaint about the U.S. Great job, Barack.

Let’s Talk Money. Even more important than the U.S. role in shoving the U.K. into Europe has been the absolute refusal of any pro-EU politician in Britain since 1961 to talk honestly about the nature of the political commitment that being in the EU entails. The pattern, always, is that British politicians talk up the trading opportunities of being in the EU, and either give the impression that the political commitment is meaningless, or that Britain can have the trade without the politics. That is not how the EU works: in the EU, trade is not good in itself: it is a device that is used to lever politics. The Euro is a political institution, not a financial one. Twenty years earlier, Margaret Thatcher’s Single European Act was transmuted from a free market initiative into a means to promote top-statism and rule from Brussels. Friday’s press conference was the finest illustration of this approach I have ever seen, as, time after time, Obama and Cameron avoided tough questions and tricky issues associated with sovereignty by talking up trade.

Top of the World, Ma! When Europe first became a serious issue in Britain in the mid-1950s, it was because the U.K. was starting to lose its imperial world role, and the imperial trading system was no long adequate, as future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan put it privately, to serve as a basis for British power. This became a near-constant in British thinking about Europe: it was a way to have a world role in the absence of the Raj. Again and again, Obama returned to this theme, arguing that Britain was stronger in the EU than out of it, and that the EU was a means to advance British influence. (Of course, if he was really interested in a stronger Britain, he wouldn’t dismiss the idea of a. U.S.-U.K. free trade area so quickly). But this belief was an illusion in the 1950s, and it remains one today. Britain wasn’t a great power because it had the Raj: it had the Raj because it was a great power. More broadly, the idea that you have to be the leading part of some exclusive club of nations in order to be economically, culturally, and politically vibrant – which is what makes you powerful – is old-fashioned thinking of the most tired sort. I’m not the kind of guy to waste time haranguing the British Empire, but this is an example of an imperial mindset that’s way past its sell-by date.

I’m a Leader. Now Where Are My Followers? Closely connected to this club mentality is one of the more tedious aspects of Britain’s relations with the Continent: Britain’s persistent tendency to believe that, if only it signals its willingness to get into Europe, its natural gift for leadership will allow it to take command of the continental rabble. If only. This belief badly distorted British policy in the 1950s, and it continues to be deployed rhetorically today, as shown by Obama’s historically ill-informed claim that the EU represents some sort of triumph of British values and leadership (if so, it’s hard to explain why Britain wasn’t one of the EU’s founding members, and why it’s persistently been the so-called “awkward partner” in Europe.) In reality, political Europe has never followed Britain’s lead for any significant length of time – which is why, in the 1950s, Britain tried its best to channel the nascent EU into what was then the OEEC (today’s OECD). The fact that it failed then (a mere 10 years after the end of the Second World War) is evidence enough to show that the fantasy about British leadership in Europe is just that: a fantasy.

That Trojan Horse Is Full — of Greeks. From a British point of view, the only really complimentary thing about the U.S.’s long-standing enthusiasm for getting Britain into Europe, and keeping it there, is what it implies about the continentals: the U.S. doesn’t much trust them. The U.K., by this way of thinking, is the U.S.’s Trojan Horse on the continent – and on Friday, we heard all the usual claims about how the U.K. helped to get the U.S. what it wanted by way of EU sanctions on Russia. I’m sure that the U.K. does sometimes help the U.S. get what it wants, and that British and American desires overlap more than, say, those of Germany and the U.S. But the problem with announcing that we value British membership of the EU because it helps get us what we want is that it’s about as subtle as building the Trojan Horse out of plate glass. Continentals since de Gaulle have been well aware of this strategy, and as the EU has grown, deepened, and developed its own institutional structures, this approach has become even less effective. Harping on it now is hardly moving with the times: it’s living in the past.

We Value Your Strength. Now, Where’s My Car? Since Eisenhower, the U.S. has wanted Europe to step up and take more responsibility for its own defense. It’s been persistently frustrated – not so much by European free-riding, as Obama is wont to claim, as by the fact that Europe has learned the lessons of 1945 all too well. It’s been well-reported that U.S. pressure played a major role in convincing the U.K. to keep its defense spending (at least nominally) at the 2 percent NATO minimum. But the reason for this, in spite of all of Obama’s enthusiastic encomiums about British strength on Friday, isn’t that he wants the U.S. to stand shoulder to shoulder with Britain in NATO. On the contrary: as illustrated by the substantial cuts in U.S. strength in Europe since 2009, and the political war that U.S. European Command has had to fight to get a few of those cuts reversed, what Obama wants is for the U.S. to stop subsidizing those free-riding Europeans, and for the U.K. to look like it’s not cutting so that the continentals won’t cut even further themselves. He’s managed to take the least successful part of post-1945 U.S. strategy in Europe – demanding a greater non-U.S. contribution – and wed it to his own lack of interest in using those contributions to sustain the U.S. commitment to Europe, which is what other post-war U.S. administrations have sought to do. Brilliant stuff.

Sharing is Caring. And Only I Care. To me, the most frustrating part of the entire Friday performance was probably Obama’s claim that the EU was just like all the other post-war institutions – NATO, the IMF, the UN, the World Bank, what have you. This is an error so gross that it it is hard not to believe it is deliberately mendacious: none of those other institutions play anything like the same role in governing Britain that the EU does. But what is really infuriating was his argument that not being in the EU is a kind of isolationism and a rejection of all cooperative efforts to address any problems at all, which is an Obama straw-man to rank with his finest. Norway’s not in the EU. Is it a selfish, inward-looking, isolationist kind of place? Heck, the U.S. isn’t in the EU either. But again, this is old, old stuff – as old as the similar appeals in Britain in the early 1960s, which defined anyone who didn’t want to get into the EEC as uncooperative and backward-looking. How long is the EU going to keep on dining out on being a new hope, a bright young thing, when it’s now well into its seventh decade, and riddled with intractable governance crises? Well, certainly as long as Obama’s in the White House.

Anyone who at this point talks about the British issue with Europe as though it’s mostly about money is deliberately missing the point. The reason to get out of the EU has very little do with money in any way, shape, or form. No credible assessment of getting out shows that it stands to make Britain radically richer, or poorer – nor could it, because most of the value the British economy generates comes from economic activity inside Britain itself.

The point of getting out is that it allows Britain to govern itself, to escape from the politicized unknowns of Europe, and to have a chance to lead. It’s not a certainty that it will do so. But the kind of Britain that stays in the EU is the kind of place that believes in safety first, that prefers the modest known to the unknown where there might be greatness, that would rather lose a bit than have a chance at a gain, that isn’t willing to take the risks that comes with leadership, and that would rather gripe endlessly about Brussels than do something about it. That kind of Britain will never be strong, no matter how big its economy is, and no matter how many EU committees and working groups it heads. The EU doesn’t primarily enfeeble the U.K. economically. It is far, far more important for what it represents culturally: a desire to turn away from Britain’s liberal and free heritage, to accept the comfortable, diminished, post-war circumstances, and even to take perverse pride in a willingness to accept its own abasement. The EU represents giving up.

I very much doubt that Barack Obama has the slightest interest in seeing a confident Britain on the world stage. I also doubt that he’s thought much about it. His entire appearance with Cameron bespeaks a president who, in spite of his self-proclaimed desire to reject the verities of the foreign policy establishment, hasn’t gone far beyond the conventional post-war U.S. pieties about its European policy. But those pieties were never wholly satisfactory, and after 1989, they rapidly became badly out of date. Yet in Obama’s words, they live on, forever shiny and new.

I’ve not had sympathy with much that Obama’s done in the foreign policy arena since 2009: the relentless disdain he’s shown for our allies, and his unending willingness to cozy up to places like Cuba are enough to condemn him, and in the long run may have greater significance than his visit to Britain. But I have never had less respect for him that I do now. His performance on Friday was lazy, thoughtless, and cliched, and all the more dangerous because, as always, he seems smugly convinced he’s the smartest guy in the room. I hope the EU is happy with its new best friend and salesman. Brussels is in Obama’s charmed circle – along with the mullahs of Iran, the Palestinians, Raul Castro, and, on his day, Vladimir Putin.

It’s a pity that that Obama’s wish to remake our alliances didn’t extend to giving Britain and the EU any sustained thought. But that doesn’t mean his words don’t matter. The U.S. has always emphasized its bilateral relations in Europe, and of course the institution of NATO. Nothing Obama said on Friday was at all new in itself. But by saying it so strongly, he’s upset any pretense of balance and tilted far more strongly to Brussels as a focus of U.S. policy in Europe than any previous president. That is a tilt that, if sustained, will have enormous ramifications: it’s hard to see how the U.S. security role in Europe can survive a president who prioritizes Brussels and delights in calling European leaders free-loaders. But at least before those consequences have a chance to come fully into being, he will no longer be President. Like Friday’s interminable press conference, these wretched eight years cannot end soon enough.