Obama's election was greeted with enthusiasm outside the United States. Even during the election campaign, European public opinion supported Obama over McCain by a wide margin. According to a poll published in the International Herald Tribune on October 24, 2008, between 70% and 80% of Spanish, French and German citizens said they wanted the Democrat candidate to win; McCain supporters could literally be counted in the fingers of one hand (1% in France, 5% in Germany and 8% in Spain). Obama's popularity goes hand-in-hand with the conviction that his victory would help to improve trans-Atlantic relations. According to a pre-election BBC poll, this view was shared by 47% of those interviewed in Europe (only 5% believed that victory for Obama would damage Euro-American relations, whereas 11% predicted a positive shift in relations in the case of victory for McCain).
Many indicators show that there will indeed be an improvement and that over the coming months there will be a honeymoon in a relationship which has suffered severely from eight years of Bush. What's not certain, however, is whether this honeymoon will last. On the contrary, there are good reasons to believe that Obama's election and the resulting change of direction - both operative and rhetorical - in the United States' international stance will lead to new tensions between the United States and its European partners.
One element which will definitely help to improve relations between Europe and the United States is Obama's popularity and the extraordinary enthusiasm sparked by the outcome of both the vote and the election campaign. America's reputation, only two years ago considered to be irreparably damaged, has been greatly enhanced. The elections, the turnout and, above all, the election to president of an Afro-American - young, erudite and with a varied and unusual background - have given a powerful boost to the American dream: the idea that the United States is a country where everything is possible and nothing is a foregone conclusion or unchanging. For a country which has suffered in recent years from a waning hegemony, it is a considerable resource, not least because it has the political and institutional strength of the new presidency behind it. Obama's victory, however unquestionable, was by no means a landslide: McCain still managed to win 21 states and 46% of the votes. But the political consensus was extremely powerful. The Democrats hold a clear majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives and the institutional weight, given the considerable unpopularity of the legislative body, is decidedly behind the president. For a year and half at least, until the time for the mid-term elections in 2010, it will be difficult for a weakened and delegitimised Congress to thwart the administration's policies, although traditional Democrat rebelliousness will make itself felt from time to time, in Congress especially.
A president who is popular, politically strong and free to act without obstruction is also, in Obama's case, a president who speaks the same language as the greater part of Europe. It is the language of liberal multilateralism, which has always been the linguafranca of the trans-Atlantic elite as well as the basis on which to redefine both post-Cold War Europe-United States relations and the objectives of the Atlantic Alliance. The fact that Obama did not support the war in Iraq in 2003, a war which divided Europe's governments but was strongly opposed by the vast majority of European public opinion, is an additional factor favouring convergence between the two sides of the Atlantic.
Everything points to better trans-Atlantic relations. Yet, there are other factors indicating that the honeymoon will be short-lived and that relations between Europe and the United States, while remaining non-conflictual, will go back to being tense and difficult. Firstly, there is the unavoidable gap between the expectations generated by Obama's election and the actual likelihood that the newly elected president will be able to satisfy them. Obama, with his ability to translate into new and effective terms traditional US exceptionalism, has an almost Messianic status. His mythogenic force and political relevance are not to be underestimated. Messiah or not, Obama still has to deal with a series of ties and limitations which will greatly restrict his freedom to act: two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan); massive public debt, which has doubled with 8 years of Bush administration to the point of exceeding 10 thousand billion dollars; a heavily negative current account balance since 2001; growing dependence on the willingness of foreign investors (Chinese and Japanese in particular) to finance the debts. Add to that a fact which is as elementary and often overlooked: although still the biggest power in the international system, the USA today has only limited influence in certain key areas of crisis, the Middle East in particular. The most immediate and dramatic example being the possibility of a return of Netanyahu to the leadership of Israel and the ongoing fratricidal war between Palestinians, both of which will make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict even more difficult to manage.
Secondly, Obama's ambitious agenda for internal affairs could limit his focus on key international issues. The image of America and the new administration would benefit enormously from effective reforms capable of recasting and expanding the welfare state, transforming the health service and laying the foundations for a reduction in the extreme disproportion between income and opportunities that currently characterises the United States. The necessary reforms are both complex and costly, and will call for some tough decisions. It is hard to imagine that foreign affairs and security, one of the few fields where the cuts required to fund internal reforms are possible, will not suffer as a result.
Hence the third point. Great expectations, limited room from manoeuvre and dwindling resources will almost certainly induce the Obama administration to step up their demands on the commitment and collaboration of their allies, Europe foremost. It is not of an unfeasible neo-isolationism that we speak: isolationism is a concept that explains little of the United States' history and practically nothing about the situation today. What there will be - and has already been during the election campaign - is an insistent call for Europe to step up its efforts in Afghanistan, the main front in the war against terrorism for Obama, and to provide a more effective diplomatic response to the Iranian nuclear question.
All this, and this is the fourth and last point, in a context in which Europe has ceased to be the main focus of Washington's concerns and where - think about relations with Russia - Europe and the United States often appear to have divergent views, despite Obama's greater flexibility on further NATO expansion to the East and the deployment of a defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic.
The election of Obama offers Europe a host of opportunities. But it also opens up a series of dilemmas which could generate new tension in trans-Atlantic relations. Above all, it removes the European alibi of Bush being in the White House with his radical policies and their negative effects, which include making Europe less accountable.
