How the US contrived to damage its credibility

 

US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attend a press conference on June 19, 2013 at the Chancellery in Berlin. AFP PHOTO / JOHANNES EISELE 

In Summary

• It is the extent of US intelligence gathering and America’s attitude toward allies that is most damaging.
• There is probably nothing more destructive to friendly relations among democratic states than behaviour by an ally that causes the other side to lose face at home.

Germans used to joke that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s penchant for communicating via fleeting text messages effectively marked the end of traditional historiography.

Well, at least American spy agencies seem to have kept full track of the communications – in Berlin and beyond.

Regrettably, US President Barack Obama and his administration have yet to comprehend the scale and severity of the damage caused to America’s credibility among its European allies.

The problem is not that countries spy on each other (they all do). Rather, it is the extent of US intelligence gathering and America’s attitude toward allies that is most damaging.

Previous transatlantic clashes over diverse issues such as climate change, the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, and the Iraq War exposed a breakdown of mutual understanding, sometimes stemming from sharp differences over how best to achieve certain common objectives.

But the wiretapping crisis and other troubling revelations from the former American intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden point to a deeper problem: a crisis of mutual distrust that risks becoming a serious transatlantic rift at a time when closer political, economic, and security cooperation between Europe and the US is needed more than ever.

There is probably nothing more destructive to friendly relations among democratic states than behaviour by an ally that causes the other side to lose face at home.

After all, it was Merkel who tried to calm the waters after the NSA scandal first hit Europe this summer. That is why the alleged US wiretapping of her cellphone is so damaging for her, both personally and politically.

As someone who served in Merkel’s government from 2009 to 2011, I must admit that I was rather careless in the use of mobile communication devices while in office. In principle, of course, one should always assume that foreign intelligence services attempt to listen in on other governments’ conversations.

Transatlantic cooperation

But it makes a big difference whether such activities are conducted by Russia or China, or by an ally that repeatedly emphasizes the importance of close transatlantic friendship and cooperation.

Obama’s personality makes matters more complicated. It is hard to recall any other US president who has been so personally disconnected from other heads of state.

Instead of immediately reaching out to a friendly country, he decided to lie low and send White House Press Secretary Jay Carney to issue a rather awkward statement that the US government “is not” and “will not” monitor Merkel’s communications.

Of course, it does not take much interpretive skill to recognise a clumsy attempt to avoid confessing that US intelligence services targeted Merkel in the past.

The Obama administration appears to have failed to ask itself some basic questions.

How could it justify spying on a leader who is among America’s closest allies in Nato and in the Afghanistan mission – a leader whom he invited to the Rose Garden to bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honour that America can give to a foreigner?

As a first step, Obama must rediscover the great communications skills that propelled him to the White House in the first place. From a public-diplomacy perspective, his handling of the surveillance scandal has been a failure.

To contain the damage and begin to rebuild much-needed trust, Obama must issue a credible apology to Merkel, other Western allies, and their citizens.