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EDITORIAL - Who Spies On Friends?
Published: Tuesday | July 2, 2013
We are hardly surprised at the outrage of the likes of François Hollande and Angela Merkel over America's reported bugging of European Union offices in New York and Washington and, perhaps, even Brussels.
What is shockingly scandalous is President Barack Obama's blasé response to the revelation.
The essentials of Mr Obama's argument are that it's no big thing. For it is not only the Americans who do it in the quest for "insights beyond what would be available through open sources".
Except that Mr Obama, in this context, misses two fundamental points. First, we see little to gain from the covert behaviour in comparison to the potential damage to relations with the countries offended.
But the more critical issue relates to Mr Obama himself: the image he sold to the electorate in the quest for the American presidency and how well he succeeded in convincing the rest of the world that he was that person. The second is the damage that has been done to trust for America.
After the seedy arrogance of the Bush-Cheney era, with their readiness to sideline 'Old Europe' and jackboot everyone else, Mr Obama, supposedly, represented a new America. Implicit in the Obama doctrine was that Washington's exertion of power would rest as much on its moral authority as its economic and military strength. America would build genuine partnerships, where no one would be subordinate.
We might have all along suspected that for all the charm of Mr Obama's rhetoric, these assertions were not entirely true; America's execution of foreign policy was necessarily daubed with many shades of grey.
But even beyond that, the illicit monitoring of the communications of one's closest political, economic and military allies, including leading members of NATO, strikes this newspaper as particularly vulgar.
Indeed, as Mr Hollande, the French president, said, such behaviour is unacceptable "between friends and colleagues".
Or, as Steffen Seibert, the spokesman for the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, put it: "The bugging of friends is unacceptable. We are not in the Cold War any longer."
OBAMA'S SHIFTING SHADOW
Mr Seibert, and the rest of us, may have misapprehended what happened two decades ago when we declared the Cold War over and America the victor. We may also have misread Barack Obama and how he has been shaped by the demands of US domestic politics and foreign-policy interests.
The thaw from the Cold War represented a lessening of hostilities, but not a total disengagement of the troops. America, or its foreign-policy/security apparatus, we suspect, remains distrustful of Old Europe; those of the continent who were disinclined to recklessly join the crusade of Bush and Cheney and the neocons. These now form part of the front line of a decidedly warmer, but as events have revealed, not entirely trustful relationship.
Further, either Mr Obama was being deliberately misleading when he was enunciating his new foreign-policy contract with the world, or he has been convinced by the security/foreign-policy apparatus that while it is good to talk about morality in power relationships, it is another thing to practise as you preach.
Published: Tuesday | July 2, 2013
We are hardly surprised at the outrage of the likes of François Hollande and Angela Merkel over America's reported bugging of European Union offices in New York and Washington and, perhaps, even Brussels.
What is shockingly scandalous is President Barack Obama's blasé response to the revelation.
The essentials of Mr Obama's argument are that it's no big thing. For it is not only the Americans who do it in the quest for "insights beyond what would be available through open sources".
Except that Mr Obama, in this context, misses two fundamental points. First, we see little to gain from the covert behaviour in comparison to the potential damage to relations with the countries offended.
But the more critical issue relates to Mr Obama himself: the image he sold to the electorate in the quest for the American presidency and how well he succeeded in convincing the rest of the world that he was that person. The second is the damage that has been done to trust for America.
After the seedy arrogance of the Bush-Cheney era, with their readiness to sideline 'Old Europe' and jackboot everyone else, Mr Obama, supposedly, represented a new America. Implicit in the Obama doctrine was that Washington's exertion of power would rest as much on its moral authority as its economic and military strength. America would build genuine partnerships, where no one would be subordinate.
We might have all along suspected that for all the charm of Mr Obama's rhetoric, these assertions were not entirely true; America's execution of foreign policy was necessarily daubed with many shades of grey.
But even beyond that, the illicit monitoring of the communications of one's closest political, economic and military allies, including leading members of NATO, strikes this newspaper as particularly vulgar.
Indeed, as Mr Hollande, the French president, said, such behaviour is unacceptable "between friends and colleagues".
Or, as Steffen Seibert, the spokesman for the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, put it: "The bugging of friends is unacceptable. We are not in the Cold War any longer."
OBAMA'S SHIFTING SHADOW
Mr Seibert, and the rest of us, may have misapprehended what happened two decades ago when we declared the Cold War over and America the victor. We may also have misread Barack Obama and how he has been shaped by the demands of US domestic politics and foreign-policy interests.
The thaw from the Cold War represented a lessening of hostilities, but not a total disengagement of the troops. America, or its foreign-policy/security apparatus, we suspect, remains distrustful of Old Europe; those of the continent who were disinclined to recklessly join the crusade of Bush and Cheney and the neocons. These now form part of the front line of a decidedly warmer, but as events have revealed, not entirely trustful relationship.
Further, either Mr Obama was being deliberately misleading when he was enunciating his new foreign-policy contract with the world, or he has been convinced by the security/foreign-policy apparatus that while it is good to talk about morality in power relationships, it is another thing to practise as you preach.
...nor even the year the internet became available to the 'common man'...this is the era of greatest growth - take that any which way we wish...population...wealth...'gadgetry'...artifici al intelligence...exploration - sea, land, space, you name it...we are just flying along...and as we seek to 'jump higher', run faster...OK? ...travel in more comfort and faster...live with thinking on pleasure, creature comforts, etc. and are moving towards inventing tools whereon what we think appears for and to us privacy will be a thing of the past. Just think the more we give up the greater 'our gadgets' can please us...the more we can be pleased (simple example - plastic money and the conveniences associated with same...we had to agree to give up tremendous privacy for such to b developed to current usage. Trust me, the uses of 'virtual' transactions.shall move to areas....uses...for purposes we have not even dreamed of... an implanted chip with infinite access to information on the individual and 'out there'?
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