VIEWS FROM THE CAPITALS

Autumn 2008

by David M. Abshire / Alex Douville / Sarah Ficenec

The challenge for the next President of the United States – be it Barack Obama or John McCain – is to restore the country’s strategic position and its image worldwide. He will face unparalleled challenges that include repairing the transatlantic relationship so greatly damaged by the Iraq War. The United States has lost much of its strategic, financial and budgetary freedoms of action as well as its standing abroad, and is faced with deep partisanship at home. There is an increasing realisation in Washington that if these issues are not addressed the country faces the strategic and economic decline suffered by other former superpowers.

Both candidates can learn from two of America’s greatest leaders, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, who were historic in facing war, domestic discord and economic instability. Lincoln saw the US through its Civil War, while Roosevelt led it to victory in World War II. Both were grand strategists who united Republicans and Democrats and instilled a spirit of bipartisanship and inclusiveness within government. A similar bipartisan model existed during the Cold War, but has been tragically lost.

The next President must strengthen the transatlantic relationship, as Europe and the US face the challenge of what is already being called the “Asian Century”. Nobody wants to create a situation where China is the enemy, so it is important to bring China into the international dialogue. Reinvigorating American and European ties should provide a counterweight to China’s influence without antagonising the Chinese.

A major priority being presented to Senators Obama and McCain is the need to reinvigorate the transatlantic alliance by reforming such institutions as NATO. The former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General James Jones, has noted that if the North Atlantic Council and NATO’s Defence Ministers were to work more closely together, creative proposals would rise to the top much more quickly. NATO has already shown a remarkable ability to reinvent itself, as with the Partnership for Peace, the Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and could go further by creating a greater circle of security composed of non-European democracies like Japan, Australia, and possibly Brazil.

Yet, there can be no more urgent issue for the next President than the “forgotten war” in Afghanistan. The Bush Administration has greatly faltered on this; it rushed into the Iraq war without completing the stabilisation of Afghanistan and the elimination of Osama Bin Laden, al Qaeda and the Taliban. This mistake was compounded by defining the central front of the war on terror as Iraq, even though the pivotal front remains Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Afghanistan Study Group here at the Center for the Study of the Presidency, co-chaired by General Jones and Ambassador Thomas Pickering, released its report for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the beginning of this year to sound the alarm that it is time to transfer still more significant US and European military capabilities to the Afghan front. The report also called for an “eminent persons group” of Europeans to rally additional support from Europe for reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.

It is not only the next US President who must rise to meet these challenges; European leaders must do so as well. France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy has already taken some remarkable initiatives to reorient France, including a much more vigorous involvement with NATO. Other leaders across Europe are also making efforts to recognise the problems confronting their countries, and creative measures will need to be taken early in the next Administration to build fresh ideas for renewing European and American relations.