PARIS, July 23 (UPI) -- When the world changes these days, it really changes fast. The new vogue word in Europe is "Obamania" -- the thrilled and delirious welcome that awaits the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee in Berlin, Paris and London.
The word "Obamania" was first spotted in the German magazine Der Spiegel. Then it was picked up by France's Liberation and then a BBC blog and on the France Inter radio news, and suddenly it was everywhere.
But the most telling use of the word came (according to Christoph von Marschall, U.S. bureau chief of Germany's Der Tagesspiegel) from one of Barack Obama's top foreign policy advisers, explaining to him why there would be no interview with the candidate: "Why should we take the time for foreign media, since there is Obamania around the world?"
It seems like only yesterday the big theme was the growth of anti-Americanism in Europe, the resentment that led to the reassessment of traditional alliances with the country that former French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine called "the hyper-power."
Europe's media and chattering classes ticked off their reasons to dislike a country that was too rich, too fat, too powerful, too greedy, too prone to religiosity, violence, the death penalty, gas-guzzling and putting black people in prison. Oh yes, and far too militarist in its liking for invading smaller countries and spending more on defense than the rest of the world combined.
Well, that was yesterday, and it was always more to do with distaste for the cowboy style of President George Bush, known in France as "the Toxic Texan," than with any serious assessment of the real depths and potential of the Atlantic relationship.
And now the Europeans have had time to consider the implications of a serious American defeat in Iraq, or of an American scuttle from Afghanistan, or an American abandonment of the Middle East to Islamic radicals and/or a nuclear-armed Iran. Some of the farsighted European think tanks are weighing the costs of America's replacement as the dominant power in Asia by a rather less house-trained China. Worst of all, Europeans already have been reminded of the discomforts of being a neighbor of a bullying Russia. It used to be the massed tanks of the Red Army; these days Europe is more concerned about its dependence on Russian oil and gas. Either way, it is a comfort to have America in Europe's corner.
If Obama takes the easy way, he will simply bathe in this warm glow of Europe's rethinking, tell a few anti-Bush jokes, say France and Germany were right all along to have preferred the diplomatic route to war with Iraq and go home to enjoy his new bump in the polls. But all that we know of Obama suggests he is rather more than that and that he will take this opportunity to tell Europeans some things they may not wish to hear.
According to Susan Rice, former assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration and Obama's senior foreign policy adviser, a new Atlantic bargain is required, and for Europe to be a "full partner," Obama would expect Europeans to shoulder more "joint responsibilities," such as counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan, and would press European leaders to send more troops and to let them fight.
"Senator Obama has been very clear that the U.S. and NATO need to recognize that we share a common stake in success and we cannot succeed on the basis of half-measures," she said. "In broadest terms, Obama's view is that for the U.S. and Europe to maximize their effectiveness, we each must do more."
Obama will talk of common values, of human rights and democracy, of common approaches to global warming, to international law and the Geneva Conventions, and he will pledge again to close Guantanamo. But he will also say that terrorism and Islamic extremism and Iran's nuclear ambitions are all common problems and that the Europeans should be contributing a very great deal more than they are.
It is shameful that with almost 2 million troops under arms, the Europeans find it almost impossible to field 40,000 men in Afghanistan, or even to provide the paramilitary and police training required in the Balkan states. It really is extraordinary that U.S. troops stayed so long in Bosnia and Kosovo, in Europe's own back yard. Europe makes helicopters, and the French and German armies each have more than 600 of them listed on their order of battle, so it is odd that it is so difficult to supply the Afghan forces with anything like enough helicopters.
The main reason, of course, is that the altitude and the dust and the terrain (and enemy action) mean that helicopters get used up about three times as fast as they do in peacetime Europe, and the bean-counters don't like it.
This gets to the heart of the matter. Even though the average European country takes close to 50 percent of its national GDP in taxes and other revenues, it finds it difficult to pay for a modern, decently equipped, trained and deployable military. The French and the British are exceptions, since as well as having serious military capabilities, they also understand that sometimes troops have to be sent into danger and even die in their country's cause.
That is what armies are supposed to do, although most European countries appear to have forgotten. The Europeans are not spending enough on defense and get poor value for what they do spend, and this means they are still being protected by American taxpayers nearly 20 years after the Cold War ended.
Obama, to his credit, is going to say so, and since it is hard to reproach London and Paris on this score, he will have to say it most clearly in Berlin, where the adoring crowds of broadly white leftists and liberals and pacifists may not be quite so adoring after they realize what he is asking of a new trans-Atlantic relationship. The Obamaniacs may not realize it yet, but what Obama wants of Europe is a new "coalition of the willing" -- to borrow a phrase from the Bush administration Europeans love to hate.
