Europeans View Obama’s Exit With a Mix of Admiration and Regret
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Version 0 of 1. BERLIN — When a Democratic presidential candidate named Barack Obama stood at the Berlin Victory Column in 2008 espousing his vision of hope and change, he was surrounded by 200,000 exuberant Europeans, eager to give him a chance. They were enthralled by his youth, multiracial heritage and optimism (“Yes we can”). They saw him as someone more like themselves, a sea change from George W. Bush and American arrogance crystallized by the Iraq war, which Germany and France had always opposed. Today on the eve of the presidential election, much of the world is transfixed on who will replace Mr. Obama and what it portends after a vicious campaign to succeed him. But in Europe, Mr. Obama’s departure is also a bookend moment in what has been a complicated relationship. Even as he exits with rising approval ratings in the United States, Mr. Obama’s legacy in Europe is far less definitive, interviews with a range of ordinary Europeans and foreign-policy analysts show. His popularity is tinged with disappointment over his failures and wistfulness for the optimism he espoused. There also is the hard reality that the problems facing Europe — most notably a more aggressive Russia and an unrelenting migration crisis — are more complicated than when Mr. Obama first captivated the crowd in Berlin eight years ago. And some see Mr. Obama’s caution and passivity as a contributing cause to both. Moni Schneid, visiting the Victory Column from her home in Stuttgart, where she runs catering for 13 schools, remains a fan. “It was really great that a black guy could get elected president, and I have a lot of respect for what he has achieved,” she said. “But no president can achieve what they want. There are a lot of stones in the way. And on every corner there’s someone saying, ‘No, we can’t.’” Dieter Bösche, 71, said he had been amazed by the outpouring of hope that greeted Mr. Obama, who was granted, and accepted, the Nobel Peace Prize based on expectations, not accomplishments. “I feel sorry for him. I’m disappointed,” Mr. Bösche said. “Political strings held him back from fulfilling his hopes and ours, maybe. It’s become more clear to us now in the U.S. presidential campaign.” Mr. Obama, he said, “was a golden, golden light — that’s why it’s so sad.” Mr. Bösche, who was born in Hamburg when the Allies defeated the Nazis in 1945, said: “The Americans made Germany what it is today, with your help. That’s why it’s so disappointing now, that I can’t look up to the U.S. today.” Of course Mr. Obama made mistakes, those interviewed said, especially in the Middle East and in dealings with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin. And many are unhappy that the Guantánamo Bay prison has not been closed, as Mr. Obama had promised. But they also praise the nuclear deal with Iran, the opening to Cuba and Mr. Obama’s reluctance to go to war. They are looking forward to what is most likely his last visit as president, when he returns to Berlin in mid-November to have one more session with his closest European collaborator, Chancellor Angela Merkel, herself weakened by long tenure and the migrant crisis. Their views are reflected in opinion polling in 10 European Union countries done in the spring by the Pew Research Center. The polls indicate that Mr. Obama restored more positive feelings among Europeans after the deeply unpopular President Bush. More than half of the respondents still expressed confidence in Mr. Obama, radically higher approval figures than those for Mr. Bush. Norbert Röttgen, the chairman of the foreign policy committee of the Bundestag, said that for Europeans, Mr. Obama’s legacy would remain largely positive. He noted in particular the president’s achievements with Iran and Cuba and national health insurance. “In the eyes of Europeans and Germans, he is a reminder that there is still an America we can admire and still wish will play a leading role in the world,” Mr. Röttgen said. “He’ll remain the incorporation of the ‘good America,’ which may be naïve, but is important psychologically to underpin trans-Atlantic relations.” Jan Techau, the director of the Richard C. Holbrooke Forum at the American Academy in Berlin, said Europeans “were hoping for a redeemer, who would take away the pain of George W. and the quagmire of the U.S.’s unloved role in the world.” “But they were bound to be disappointed,” he continued, “because he was elected as U.S. president, to defend U.S. interests.” Christopher Meyer, a former British ambassador to the United States, is also forgiving, noting that “expectations of what he could do were grotesquely too high,” symbolized by the 2009 Nobel Prize. “We were all swooning,” he said. “But you knew it wouldn’t last. Now he’s considered more ordinary, and that’s produced an unfairly negative view of what he’s accomplished.” On foreign policy especially, Mr. Meyer said, “Obama’s great insight is that you don’t have to interfere in every bloody situation around the world to maintain your position as most powerful nation, and that nation-building is a fools’ errand — let’s all learn something from Iraq and Afghanistan.” A number of European foreign-policy analysts share a more negative view. They see a loss of American credibility in the world, as Russia and China appear to be exercising more influence and rejecting American interests and demands with sometimes open contempt. John C. Kornblum, a former United States ambassador to Germany who lives in Berlin, sees an “Amerexit” from global responsibility under Mr. Obama, which has led to more Russian and Chinese aggressiveness and allowed Russia back into the Middle East as a diplomatic and military power. “Obama leading from behind has damaged America’s standing in the world,” Mr. Kornblum said. “Americans always have trouble dealing with power. It’s always too much or too little. In the last 10 years, we’ve removed ourselves. Obama and the United States forgot that we are the necessary glue to keep Europe on the straight path.” There are many forces at play besides Mr. Obama’s policies, Mr. Kornblum said, acknowledging an American fatigue with foreign involvement. But he said the end of the Cold War did not end Washington’s role in Europe. “We have a very important role in keeping stability,” Mr. Kornblum said. “We could and should have been here to help the Europeans through it. But we go from one thing to another, either invading everywhere or pulling out. We won this tremendous victory in the Cold War, and we’ve essentially frittered it away.” Senior German officials, he said, are “constantly telling me: ‘We need the Americans. Where are the Americans?’” George Robertson, a former British defense secretary and NATO secretary-general, coupled his praise of Mr. Obama with some stinging criticism. “Obama brought a welcome sense of calm and stability to the relationship with Europe after the turbulence of the Bush era,” Mr. Robertson said. But the president “could have worked harder on Russia, because keeping Putin in the fold was important.” Instead, he said, Mr. Obama “allowed Putin to jump back on the world stage and test the resolve of the West,” both in Ukraine and in Syria, “which has been a disaster and the legacy of that will last.” Like many, Mr. Robertson said the failure of Mr. Obama to follow through on his 2013 “red line” over Syrian use of chemical weapons and take promised military action had badly hurt his credibility and that of the United States with Mr. Putin, the Sunni Arabs and the Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Obama has framed his decision to work diplomatically with Russia to remove most Syrian chemical weapons as an exercise in responsible restraint. Mr. Robertson said Mr. Obama’s decision was not viewed that way. “The president of the United States should never be a spectator,” Mr. Robertson said. “The world needs leadership.” Of course intervention has costs, he said. “But caution has a price as well and consequences, too, and it can be grim, as Neville Chamberlain proved in the 1930s. Sometimes you need to step up.” Mr. Obama’s tendency to lecture could also grate. A former British minister under Prime Minister David Cameron remembered Mr. Obama’s pivoting his chair and appearing to lecture the British cabinet, as if tutoring seminar students. François Heisbourg, a former French defense official and chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, praised Mr. Obama’s decency and cool. But he wondered “if these are the qualities to operate in a world that’s become very brutal, in part because of Obama’s legacy.” Mr. Obama pushed both Britain and France to join him in rapid military strikes, but then left allies dangling. “And Putin, Netanyahu, the Iranians, the Gulfies, Xi Jinping, the Japanese and the North Koreans, for all we know, paid attention,” Mr. Heisbourg said. “No one knows if Crimea would have happened without this, or the Chinese building artificial islands in the South China Sea, but it all happened afterwards.” But Mr. Obama is also a man of his time, who is articulating structural changes in the world that have diminished the comparative power of the United States, argued Xenia Wickett, the head of the United States and Americas program at Chatham House, a research institute in London, and a former National Security Council official. “Obama finally did what the United States has been saying for two decades, that given economics and the nature of global challenges it can no longer be the world’s policeman,” Ms. Wickett said. “The broad trend of a less interventionist America is likely no matter who wins the presidency.” In Berlin, at the Victory Column, Roland Huss, 60, an engineer, praised Mr. Obama. “He couldn’t achieve everything, of course,” he said. “It’s a problem of the American system. We can see that in this election campaign.” As for Europe, Mr. Huss said: “Well, he probably couldn’t have done much more. We don’t need Obama’s help to mess up in Europe.” |