It was the second time the US President hurt Polish feelings. A few weeks before, on September 1, the 70th Anniversary of the start of World War II (when Germany invaded Poland), many Poles were disappointed that the Obama administration did not send either Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Vice-President Joe Biden but was represented by General James L. Jones, the national security advisor.
President Obama worked hard on his goal of restoring the US international standing. Foreign counterparts flock to meet with him and polls show that in many countries people feel much better about the US. Surveys by the Pew Research Center in Washington quantify how the standing of the US in many parts of the world significantly since Mr. Obama’s election: in Germany 64% of the people interviewed recently expressed favourable views of the US, up from 31% a year ago. France, Britain and Spain among many other countries all over the world also saw double-digit increases. But Arab countries and Russia, Turkey and … Poland were largely unmoved.
A recent survey in Europe by the Marshall Fund of the US documented that President Obama is even more popular. While just 19 percent of Europeans interviewed a year ago supported Mr. Bush’s handling of international affairs, 77% approved of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy. More than 90% of the Germans had a favourable view of Mr. Obama, an 80% increase over Mr. Bush!
The good will President Obama won has translated into limited benefits yet. As much as they may prefer to deal with Mr. Obama instead of with his predecessor, George W. Bush, foreign leaders have not given him so far what he wanted. European allies refuse to send more troops to Afghanistan, on the contrary. Some governments, like in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, are confronted with an increasing discomfort among their voters, caused by the rising death toll among their troops in Afghanistan. Obama’s request for more troops makes Europeans saying ‘it is Obama’s war’, as they considered the Iraq war as Bush’s war.
A former Bush advisor, Peter D. Feaver, said, ‘the problem is that Obama is asking for roughly the same thing as Bush asked for. And Bush did not get it, not because he was a boorish diplomat or a cowboy. He didn’t get it because these countries had good reasons for not giving them’.
Craig Kennedy, President of the German Marshall Fund, said there was an inevitable disconnect because Europeans seemed to view Mr. Obama as more European in his sensibilities than his policies actually are. ‘I suspect that, as real political decisions have to be made, we will see ‘Obama Euphoria’ fade as the Europeans begin to see him more as an American and less like themselves’, Mr. Kennedy wrote.
But, President Obama has shown that he is taken his message of co-operation very seriously and that he can play for the long term. Recently he forged a working relation with Russia despite grumbling in ‘new Europe’, his visit to the United Nations General Assembly went beyond the diplomatic meet-and-greet and he will chair a Security Council summit on non-proliferation, try to get Middle East leaders to restart peace talk. Let’s hope it will be ‘yes, he can’!
