Transatlantic Transfiguration? Don't Bet on it!

What if what we have got to look forward to is years of two-way transatlantic lip service? Aport from health issues on a global scale, monetary policy coordination as an imperative at the moment, the respective publics on each side of the North Atlantic need to brace themselves for a potential slumber; and a sort of kabuki theater of asking one another for initiatives that might indulge the egos and worries of their populations (move European troops for ISAF, environmental commitments from the US and Canada), only to find it come in at too high a political or economic cost for their taste.


it actually feels like it's already started: the early morning: post U.S. election talk shows on German television (for example.) including a few people speaking at the more venerable looking round tables,were repeating the recitation of cultural and political complaints that we've had to hear over and over these past years including the mantras of the now victorious American left.

We are who we are, after all, and it might he too much to expect that this temperament of the American left and of the European popular media w N be any different today as it was (very literally,) two days ago.

Barring a disaster, I don't see the promise behind that enthusiasm found on both sides of the Atlantic preparing itself to accomplish anything that its' complaints seem to have wanted to promise, and still looks trapped in that vulgar habit of evasion and taunting, if one judges the reactions by and on the press for anything.

As with the kabuki mentioned earlier, there's also a risk of repeating a past no-one is sentimental about – one where the overtures themselves are a depressing and repetitive set of non-starters and amount to little more than domestic ideological politicking 'such as the European interest in bravery the U.S. sign a "son of Kyoto" treaty with some sort of transatlantic lip service as a secondary use.

la fact now we need to genuinely explore the model and ask just what is this ”'transatlanticism” that is so anticipated can really shape up to be. In the past it was largely limited to mutual security, economics, and dealing with potential pandemics on behalf of a world beyond that of the alliance – and this sort of bilateral, mission-oriented statesmanship was always was the strength of the likes of John McCain, JFK, and other veterans who ended up in politics.

It was also intentionally less socially intrusive and invasive, avoiding the issues that resembled the sort typified by "the personal is the political” in the interest of cultural respect and to contain the hegemon of homogeneity, something at risk where social issues are transformed into international issues.

A hope land many also have too is that the relationship isn't informed only by crises. As things go, who warts another "unifying event” to be forced on us in the form of a global financial crisis or large scale terrorist attack? There must be something more that can embolden the alliance in a way that is neither informed by fear or isn't an intellectually thread-bare act of just seeming vacuously "nice”.

The need for that bond is real, and we need it to deal with just those things that we wish didn't have to inform it to begin with - the real calamities, and our mutual well-being and security. But the sophistication just isn't there (zum beispiel) here in Berlin, where the only questions one gets about Obama is about his skin color, and literally nothing else.