Obama

As Ukraine prepares to hold its second presidential election since the 2014 “Revolution of Dignity”, there is less focus on the country in the United States now that at any point in the last five years. That is not to say that it has fallen off the radar or that US policy circles no longer care about what is happening there, but rather that the situation in Ukraine is seen as being a fair way along the inevitable process of moving from crisis to normalisation.

Fra pochi anni, quando presumibilmente sia gli Stati Uniti che la Nato saranno ancora impegnati in Afghanistan, la guerra più lunga nella storia americana compirà vent’anni. È dal 2001 che le forze americane e alleate si impegnano alla ricerca di una stabilizzazione, che tuttavia è ancora lontana a venire. Certo alcuni scopi strategici gli Stati Uniti li hanno già perseguiti con successo: la cattura di Bin Laden e la conversione dell’Afghanistan in un paese poco ospitale per i gruppi terroristici di matrice islamista.

Understanding the current iteration of the two-decade long North Korean crisis is not easy. It is, for what of a better word, complicated. Furthermore, the fact is that it has finally imploded while Donald  Trump is President. “Of all the presidents in all the world, why did you have to start a North Korean crisis with him...?” This is not an administration that lends itself to level analysis. And nor is the topic, for that matter.

Abstract

The conventional wisdom is that Barack Obama is America’s first ‘Pacific president’. Obama grew up in Hawaii and Jakarta. The ‘pivot to Asia’ is Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement. And the Trans-Pacific Partnership is the cornerstone of Obama’s trade policy. By contrast, Europe is – or at least appears to be – less important to the U.S. President. Obama has few if any obvious European roots. His attention to European security has been sporadic rather than strategic. And his determination to conclude the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) before the end of his administration is more rhetorical than real.

This conventional wisdom is pervasive. It is also misleading. The transatlantic relationship is bigger than any sitting president. Moreover, Obama’s policies toward Europe show more continuity with his predecessors than change. Relations have changed across the Atlantic despite this continuity.

When Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping meet in Beijing this week, they will try to reverse the downward spiral in relations between their two countries. There is a growing sense that a promising partnership, one that was captured by the agreement to forge a “new type of major country relations,” has lost its momentum and threatens to run off the rails. 

Abstract