Opinion Wider than the Atlantic

The Stillwater reference is a joke. My ex-wife’s family was also from there and I can vouch that it’s a lovely place,but the strategic epicentre of precisely nothing. Another inside joke is the bracketed “Rahm” after Jerusalem — a reference to the White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel,whose ties to Israel are strong.

The serious bit is what this list says about America’s strategic priorities a decade into the 21st century. They have been transformed. Sana is a sleepy little spot that happens to be pivotal to the Obama administration’s new “scalpel” approach to terrorism — picking off al-Qaeda operatives rather than applying the “hammer” of invasion. The other foreign capitals speak for themselves as hubs of war,conflict or escalating nuclear tensions.

What is striking,just two decades after the end of the Cold War,is the absence of a single European city. Europe,for the first time in hundreds of years,has become a strategic backwater. Europe is history.

Since taking office,President Obama has reached out to the Muslim world as a whole,to China,to Turkey and to Iran,but has devoted scant serious diplomatic energy to Europe. In many ways,he is the first post-Atlanticist president,drawn by temperament,upbringing and circumstance to focus elsewhere. “Europe is the object of benign US neglect,” said Camille Grand,a prominent Paris-based defence analyst. “Obama has not established or re-established a strategic relationship with any single European country or with Europe as a whole.”

Obama remains popular with Europeans — even if giddy infatuation has gone the way of giddy infatuations — but European political leaders feel jilted. Obama was supposed to put together the European Humpty Dumpty that President Bush shattered by favouring alliances of the willing over old alliances. He hasn’t.

Central Command in Florida,running the Afghan war,rides roughshod over NATO. New Middle East peace initiatives are launched,new Afghan strategies decided,without even a nod to the Europeans who will pick up part of the tab and do part of the dying. Nowhere else has Obama’s remoteness and distaste for the two-minute protocol phone call been so keenly felt as a brush-off.

France is in a quiet sulk. Nicolas Sarkozy is the most pro-American president of the Fifth Republic. He brought France back into NATO’s military command,rejected the de rigueur cynicism of French political discourse on the United States,and reached out to Obama. For all of which he got nothing. He must hear de Gaulle’s ghost at night whispering,“I told you so.”

In London,the British are shaking their heads. Prime Minister David Cameron,knowing Obama’s cool,set expectations low but is looking for a way to re-energise a special relationship shaken by the Iraq war. He has found little responsiveness in Washington. “The special relationship is in real trouble,” said Julian Lindley-French,a defence expert at the Dutch Royal Military Academy.

I can understand the US attitude: Europe is at peace and reluctant to spend on defence. Some 2,000 Dutch troops are quitting Afghanistan at a critical juncture. NATO,in search of a relevant doctrine,has become an aging experts’ dilemma. France and Britain are smallish countries even if they account for 43 per cent of EU defence spending. There are jihadis to fight and a broken American economy to fix.

Still,benign neglect is the wrong US approach to Europe. It’s short-sighted and dangerous.

The Atlantic relationship remains the cornerstone of world stability even as new powers emerge. With its huge debt,America needs affordable influence; Western allies are the way to find it. The struggle of our age pits the state against the anti-state,with weapons of mass destruction potentially mixed in: The West embodies the values and has the institutions central to winning that fight. America needs a British-French-German defence troika alongside it and an end to NATO’s strategic drift.

“Beside the EU,is there another bunch of countries anywhere willing to work as closely and permanently with the US on almost all issues of global and regional concern?” asked Wolfgang Ischinger,a former German ambassador in Washington. “I wish Obama would say just that.”

Coolness can be reciprocated,the benign turn malign. Sana is not London. Heck,it’s not even Stillwater. Roger Cohen