Disgraceful, Mr Obama!
Threats. A cynical attempt to exploit the Allies’ war dead. A former Tory Chancellor says the President’s bid to bully Britain is ...
AvISIT to Britain by an American president is always an impressive affair, and Barack Obama’s fifth as U.S. leader this week has been no exception. As an official visit, rather than a state one, it may not possess the razzmatazz and pageantry of gun salutes, marching bands and formal dinners.
But the Obamas were nevertheless guests at lunch yesterday with the Queen — where the President was the first head of state to wish her a happy 90th birthday in person — and last night they enjoyed dinner with Prince William and Kate at Kensington Palace.
Yet there is, of course, something that makes Obama’s visit on this occasion very different: his determined appeal for Britain to stay in the European Union.
Let me say at the outset that I am an admirer of Barack Obama. What most Conservatives criticise as his reluctance to intervene decisively in the Middle East, I see as a wise contrast to the foolhardy rush to war of his predecessor, President Bush.
But if Obama is wisely cautious about intervention in the Middle East, why on Earth does he think it appropriate to blunder into Britain’s referendum on the EU?
The President is a subtle man and he assured us that, when it comes to the vote on Europe, ultimately it is for the British people to decide. Thank you, Mr President! Who else would it be?
Whether or not Obama’s intervention in this highly contested debate backfires and boosts the ‘Out’ vote, it certainly deserves to do so.
For his meddling stems not from his concerns for Britain or, indeed Europe, but from his own — America’s — interests.
In an article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, he mentioned the special relationship between our two countries three times. A special relationship, he wrote, that ‘was forged as we spilled blood together on the battlefield’ of World War II.
Just in case we did not get the point, he added that Britain was ‘a friend and ally to the United States like no other’.
Really? Forgive my cynicism, but President Obama and his officials have used the phrase ‘special relationship’ or similar ones extensively with regard to several countries.
They include Israel, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Canada and Ireland. John Kerry, his Secretary of State, has referred to France as the U.S.’s oldest ally.
Special appears not to be very special at all — a point made clear in Obama’s threat at his Downing Street press conference yesterday that, if we leave the EU, we’ll be ‘at the back of the queue’ where any trade deal is concerned.
The point is that every country wants to be told it has a ‘special relationship’ with the United States, and Obama knows it. He also knows how to use it to get what he wants.
FOR instance, in a recent interview with American magazine The Atlantic, it was revealed that Obama had said Britain would no longer be able to claim a special relationship with the U.S. unless it committed to spending at least two per cent of its GDP on defence. So the Government had jumped to attention and promptly done so.
Yesterday’s unsavoury threat over trade deals — which, incidentally, would be negotiated after Obama left office — is another case of him trying to get his own way.
The stark warning amid the pleasantries reminds us that the friendship can only remain true if the British people do as the U.S. says.
The President insists he has a stake in the referendum debate because of his country’s sacrifice in the war.
He says the tens of thousands of U.S. servicemen who rest in cemeteries on the Continent are testament to how intertwined the fortunes of America, Britain and Europe are.
That is, of course, true. But it is disgraceful that a war we fought to keep our independence — and in which Britain and the Commonwealth lost more troops than the Americans — is being used by Obama as a reason for us to give up our sovereignty.
And surely it is Nato, a military alliance between sovereign countries, that was created to meet the challenge of keeping peace in Europe.
Obama almost seems to be buying into the Euro-myth that it is the EU, rather than Nato, which does so on our continent. Moreover, the hundreds of thousands of British citizens who gave their lives in the war did so believing they were fighting for their own country. very few believed they were fighting for a European political entity.
Ironically, there were in fact plenty of Thirties fascist thinkers who believed in European unity.
No, I am not implying those who support the EU are anything other than honourable — but it is certainly the case that the idea of European integration has historically not been owned exclusively by the good guys.
Another argument that Obama uses to persuade us of the perils of leaving the EU is that our ability to co-operate over intelligence and to fight terrorism would be compromised.
But whereas, with GCHQ and our intelligence services, we have a counter- terrorism machine that is the envy of the world, the fact is that the EU doesn’t really do intelligence.
Richard Walton, head of Counter Terrorism Command at New Scotland Yard from 2011 to 2016, explained why in February.
‘The European security organisations — Europol and the Schengen Information System — are both interesting constructs per se,’ he wrote.
‘But Europol, while a useful discussion forum, is largely irrelevant to the day-to- day operations within the counterterrorism sphere; and the Schegen Information System does not necessarily control the movement of terrorists across borders — besides, you don’t have to be in the EU to use it.’
Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA, has also said that EU decisions, including privacy laws, have been made at the expense of security.
Indeed, he endorsed the view of Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, that Britain could be safer outside the EU.
Obama talks about needing the EU to cope with migration, without acknowledging how grossly incompetent it has been in dealing with the issue. He
doesn’t mention the euro, whose creation is the EU’s proudest achievement and yet is a currency which has done so much harm to growth and employment in Europe.
He insists that British ideas are having a profound impact on the development of the European Union.
Yet how often have we heard this claim before — while the march of European integration goes on relentlessly, irrespective of British objections? As I have said, the reason that Obama wants us to stay in the EU is because it helps the U.S.
Britain is America’s best friend in the EU — on most economic questions such as free trade or dealing with the financial crisis, Britain’s views have largely accorded with those of the States.
And this is why Obama wants to keep us on the inside. The U.S. understands that a certain anti- Americanism motivates great swathes of European policy.
Many European politicians believe that American global power must be counterbalanced by the development of power in Europe. A House of Lords select committee report concluded that EU foreign policy tends to oppose U.S. policy simply in order to make its voice heard.
This was memorably epitomised in 1991 by Jacques Poos, the Luxembourg foreign minister and external spokesman for the EU, when he proclaimed at the onset of the Yugoslav crisis: ‘This is the hour of Europe. It is not the hour of the Americans’.
UnfOrTUnATELY, the tragic and criminal events that followed during the conflict in Bosnia exposed the sheer vanity and ineptitude of the Europeans — who failed to support a military intervention to prevent the crisis, allowed endless ceasefires to be broken, and presided over massacre after massacre.
not only that, the U.S. then had to intervene to clear up the mess the Europeans had left behind.
But still the Europeans are determined to forge a common foreign policy, and the U.S. is desperate to keep a pro-Ameri- can voice in Europe in the form of Britain. One wonders how far President Obama really understands the EU.
In 2011, when the U.S. was worried about Europe’s inability to sort out the problems of the euro, which threatened the whole world economy, Obama took a large delegation, including his treasury secretary, to a summit in Cannes.
He then had a crash course in the politics of the EU. It was, by all accounts, a brutal meeting full of recriminations.
According to the financial Times, German Chancellor Angela Merkel burst into tears at one point, saying ‘ das ist nicht fair [ that is not fair] . . . ich bringe mich nicht selbst um [I am not going to commit suicide]’.
The objects of her wrath were french President nicolas Sarkozy and Obama, who were demanding that, yet again, Germany bail out the euro.
Perhaps Obama would have begun to see how so many people who have dealt with the EU regard it as a dysfunctional organisation.
reuters reported that Obama presented himself ‘ as a man struggling to grasp the fragmented culture of multi-national European politics’ and that he appeared ‘ a bewildered spectator’.
At his own press conference, Obama remarked: ‘ There are a lot of meetings here in Europe,’ before adding: ‘There are a lot of institutions here in Europe.’
One report suggested he didn’t know who Jose Barroso, then president of the European Commission, was.
Obama joked that he had learned a lot about the complexity of the EU’s decision-making process, concluding that ‘ having to coordinate all those different interests is laborious’.
He probably does understand more about the EU today. But has he ever actually asked why so many people in Britain resist continued membership?
To put it another way, would he advocate America surrendering a similar amount of sovereignty to supra-national bodies?
Obama shows he does not understand what is happening in the UK when he observes there is a lively debate going on here and that ‘my country is going through much the same’.
He appears to believe the rise of Donald Trump and the economic discontent of his followers is ‘much the same’ as opposition to the EU.
The two are completely different. This referendum is not an election and is not just about economics. It is a continuation of a long-running unresolved constitutional debate about the government and identity of this country.
THE United States has signed the north American free Trade Agreement (nAfTA), creating a free trade area with Mexico and Canada, similar to the Common Market — the precursor to the EU.
America would hardly react favourably to being told there was going to be a nAfTA headquarters, comparable to Brussels, in Ottawa, and that this organisation would have the power to issue laws that applied in the United States.
And what would they make of a nAfTA parliament located in Mexico City and a nAfTA court in Toronto, whose laws would overrule those of Congress and the Supreme Court?
To be like the EU, there would have to be complete freedom of movement between Mexico, the U.S. and Canada.
finally, there would be a nAfTA passport and a nAfTA flag, to be flown on public buildings alongside the StarSpangled Banner.
It is only in Europe that we have talked ourselves in to believing that the nation state is obsolete.
Elsewhere in the world, it has plenty of life left — and the U.S., of all countries in the world, is the least likely to volunteer to give up being a self-governing nation state.
Obama gives the impression that the EU, along with the World Bank and the Un, is just another international organisation. It is not. It is much more than that.
As Elmar Brok, the German MEP, has said, ‘ Europe is a country under construction’.
Americans need to realise that British people value their democracy, their institutions and their independence just as proudly as the Americans do.
President Obama should be warmly welcomed. But he should also be told firmly that not everything in the interests of the U.S. is equally in the interests of Britain.