In both cases, the Libyan intervention has in fact proved the precise opposite. First, when Washington needs military support from allies in the world’s most explosive strategic location – the Middle East – it can realistically turn only to Europe for help, both in securing UN legitimization for the action and in carrying it out. In fact, throughout the early part of the U.S. bombardment of Libya Washington went to great lengths to stress that France and Britain were leading the way.

Second, Libya has once again revealed the emptiness of the European Union’s pretensions to be a major player on the world stage, and exposed its vaunted common foreign and security policy as a meaningless charade. Germany, for instance, continued to oppose the Anglo-French call for a no-fly zone over Libya to the bitter end, and could not even bring itself to vote for the UN Security Council resolution authorizing the action. Germany abstained – putting itself in the company of Russia and China, rather than its supposedly best allies, the United States, France, and Britain, which all voted in favor.

A March 18 Spiegel Online opinion piece, Berlin Lets Its Allies Go It Alone, suggests that Berlin’s reluctance to stand with its allies “could damage the country’s international standing.” It adds, “some politicians within (Chancellor Angela) Merkel’s center-right coalition are already warning that Germany could be drifting even further away from France, Britain, and the U.S. …It’s clear that (Foreign Minister Guido) Westerwelle enjoys playing the role of Germany’s pacifist-in-chief.” Spiegel says that, as a concession to its allies, “there is talk of Germany taking part in AWACS surveillance flights” over Afghanistan, which would free up allied aircraft for operations over Libya, but asks, “is it enough?.”

A “Fiasco” for Germany

The point is hit hard by an American author in Berlin, Steve Kettmann, who writes in The Huffington Post March 21, “Germany’s place on the world stage has been undercut time and time again over the last year and a half by the unfortunate elevation of a foreign minister lacking both vision and skill – but never as unfortunately as in the last week.” His piece is entitled Germany Comes up Small on Libya – Wrong Time to Duck Responsibility.

“It’s too early to work out just why Germany abstained on the United Nations vote authorizing the use of military force against Libya,” Kettmann continues, “but the vote was clearly a fiasco both for Germany and for the future of European diplomacy in the world. Put simply, Germany is and must be the single most important leader of unified Europe, given its economic strength, and the clumsy stance on Libya has cleared the way for France to assert itself in a way that delays any hope of Europe coming of age politically in the world as a combined political entity.”

Germany was not alone in opposing the Franco-British initiative. In a March 14 report, the daily news report Europolitics says that at an EU summit meeting in Brussels March 11, the Franco-British proposal for a no-fly zone “irritated most of the member states, which prefer to adopt a much more cautious position.” It reports that, “Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt also publicly rejected the idea proposed by London and Paris. ‘Any discussion of a military intervention is an issue for the UN, NATO [of which Sweden is not a member] and the Arab League,’ he said.“ The EU was notably absent from this list.

In a commentary March 13 Cameron’s Rude Awakening as Rallying Cry Falls on Deaf Ears in Britain’s The Sunday Telegraph, Con Coughlin writes that UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s no-fly zone proposal “even got short shrift from (British) Baroness Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy guru, whose appointment was engineered by the previous Labour government in the forlorn hope that London would be able to exert more influence over the direction of EU policy.”

“The cry of appeasement can once again be heard ringing through the corridors of Brussels,” Coughlin writes.

A similar theme is struck by Ian Traynor and Nicholas Watt in The Guardian of London, who say in a report on the same meeting March 12, “an emergency EU summit in Brussels summoned the ghosts from the 1990s of division, appeasement and impotence when Europe failed to halt the fighting in former Yugoslavia.” It is not often that The Guardian, a left-leaning newspaper, agrees with the conservative Telegraph on the need for foreign military intervention.

Traynor and Watt say Cameron “put a brave face on the rebuff” and claimed that the summit communiqué still contained strong language by referring to “all necessary options.” They report Cameron as saying, “of course the EU is not a military alliance and I don’t want it to be a military alliance. Our alliance is NATO.”

And that is indeed the point. There was never a chance that other EU countries would “veto” British or French military action in support of the United States, as so many American conservatives have liked to claim. EU rules stipulate that the bloc can only even begin forming a common policy on a foreign issue if all its leaders agree that there should be one. And the Brussels summit again demonstrated how unlikely that is on a burning issue involving possible military action, such as Libya.

At the same time, the EU summit – and the UN Security Council vote on Libya – again showed Washington that its best allies are still individual European countries, above all Britain and France, and not the new “partners” that President Barack Obama is so eagerly courting in Asia and Latin America.

The false comparison seems to reflect the instinctive tendency of some Americans to project their own historical experiences onto other countries, neglecting hugely divergent circumstances, while sometimes contradicting themselves by simultaneously asserting American “exceptionalism.”

A good example is a March 1 column in The Wall Street Journal, Is There an Arab George Washington?, in which the usually incisive Bret Stephens compares America’s War of Independence to the French Revolution and the Egyptian coup led by Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1952. He concludes that, “America’s revolutionary history was exceptional because we had a Washington while the French had a Robespierre and the Egyptians had a Nasser.”

Stephens assumes that in most other respects the uprisings were similar, and that it was Washington’s leadership that made the difference in ensuring a happy outcome in the United States. If today’s demonstrators are demanding the overthrow of a dictator in the name of democracy, they must be following in the footsteps of the angry colonists of the 1770s, according to this facile interpretation, and everything will turn out fine if only a new George Washington arises in Arabia.

Most journalists indulging in this fantasy, however, misinterpret both America’s revolution and today’s Arab revolt.

The fallacy is exposed by Nader Hashemi, a professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, in a WSJ column March 11 entitled The New Mideast Will Still Mix Mosque and State. He writes “Westerners should avoid the so-called problem of transference: the natural tendency to assume that our historical experience is universal.”

It is wrong to suppose that “the protesters seek to build replicas of the societies that exist in the West,” Hashemi says. “That assumption is erroneous because the Arab world is only beginning to debate basic questions of civic and political life—especially what role religion should play in government.”

In The Washington Post February 10, David Ignatius doesn’t even get his own country’s history right when he writes, “King George III (meaning Mubarak) may be holding on. But he won’t last.” (King George did last – with a reign of nearly 60 years in total.) Daniel Henninger, in March 10 column in The Wall Street Journal, draws a parallel between today’s protesters in Cairo and “the Massachusetts rabble” of 1770.

Mitchell B. Reiss, the president of Washington College, expounds the same theme at greater length on the Fox News website February 21, in a piece entitled Searching for George Washington in Tahrir Square.

“For Washington,” he writes, “the unfolding crisis presented an awful choice: the terrifying disorder of revolution or the stability of despotism… Today, Americans viewing the scenes of revolution across the Middle East may share some of Washington’s ambivalence.”

It may give some Americans a romantic satisfaction to see the protesters of Tahrir Square as a reincarnation of the “embattled farmers” who fired the shot heard round the world in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1775, but it is an illusion that can only lead to false forecasts about the likely emergence of Western-style democracy in the Middle East.

Here are just a few of the fundamental differences that distinguish America’s revolution from those of today:

1. The American colonists were not seeking to, and did not, overthrow their government (the King and Parliament in London) but to escape from it. This was a secession rather than a revolution. King George III stayed on the throne for another four decades after America’s victory in the War of Independence – a period in which British imperial power vastly expanded, not least through the defeat of Napoleonic France.
2. The colonists already had a well-developed political and legal system, including a free press and elected assemblies, based on the best contemporary democratic practices. The issue was whether decisions on questions concerning the colonies, especially on taxes, should be made in London or America.
3. Arabs today are opposing their current forms of government, not trying to create new independent nations.
4. Far from suffering from dictatorship, Americans in the mid-18th century were the world’s freest people. They rebelled – mostly reluctantly – when they believed that London was making intolerable encroachments on their traditional “English rights.” They were not claiming new rights but defending old ones.
5. The colonists owed their success to decisive military help from a foreign power (royalist France) – whereas no foreign power, least of all the United States, currently intends to provide similar support to the rebels in the Middle East. Libya is a possible exception, although the aim of NATO’s military intervention is not officially meant to be “regime change.”

Americans are right to regard their revolution as “exceptional.” President Ronald Reagan called it the only conservative revolution in world history. But that means it shouldn’t be used to draw false conclusions about today’s uprisings in the Arab world.

Of course, not.

Sometimes, however, such editorials are worse than a waste of time. They parade the newspaper’s ignorance and cross the borderline from patronizing to offensive. A case in point is an appallingly ill-informed editorial in The New York Times November 8 on the recent defense agreement between Britain and France, which was clearly written by someone with little or no knowledge of defense and strategic issues, particularly with regard to nuclear weapons.

One of the main thrusts of the editorial is that Britain and France don’t need nuclear deterrents, and that, if they are going to keep them, they should use money saved by their new cooperation on warhead testing to boost their conventional forces. The same should apply to savings from their plans to share aircraft carriers on a regular basis (not just “in times of crisis” as the NYT editorial wrongly states.)

The editorial contains the following astonishing statement: “The Pentagon can easily provide NATO with all the aircraft carriers and nuclear missiles it is ever likely to need.”

What on earth does this mean? NATO already has “shared” short-range, U.S.-made, theater nuclear weapons in Europe, but a number of European countries, notably Germany, are trying to get rid of them. There appears to be confusion here between theater missiles and strategic nuclear weapons, such as the British and French deterrents.

The NYT seems to be saying that France and Britain should scrap their nuclear deterrents – “weapons they do not really need,” in the editorial’s words – and rely on “the Pentagon” to provide NATO with nuclear missiles if necessary. But there is no way “the Pentagon” is going to provide NATO with a strategic deterrent. Although national strategic nuclear weapons are taken into account in forging alliance military strategy, NATO as such would have no control over their use, nor can one imagine it doing so in the future. The British and French governments have sole independent control over their deterrents (as, of course, does the United States.) Nor would it be up to the Pentagon to transfer intercontinental ballistic missiles to anyone else without reference to the highest political levels of U.S. national security decisionmaking.

Much the same applies to aircraft carriers. “NATO” is not going to ask to operate U.S. aircraft carriers, nor is it going to be provided with them. The latest Anglo-French agreement is intended to allow the two countries to keep running their own aircraft carriers more economically, still subject to their own political control. Nor is anyone suggesting that France or Britain might be provided with U.S. carriers if they needed them. Control over aircraft carriers, and even more over strategic nuclear weapons, remains the ultimate preserve of a country’s sovereignty. Indeed it is precisely to protect that ultimate sovereignty that countries like France and Britain go to such lengths to keep these weapons in their national arsenals.

A Call for Unilateral Disarmament

By telling Britain and France that “they do not really need” nuclear weapons, the NYT seems unaware that it is endorsing a discredited policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament that has often been espoused by the extreme left, especially in Britain, but which both countries have consistently rejected ever since they have possessed nuclear weapons. It is idiotic for the NYT to stumble into this long-running debate in such an off-hand and ignorant manner.

The NYT editorialist also seems unaware of the political context of the Anglo-French agreement, arguing that money saved through cooperation on nuclear testing and carriers should “be used to expand the number of combat troops, trainers and peacekeepers they [Britain and France] can contribute to NATO missions like Afghanistan.” But the whole point of the plan is to save money in order to reduce budget deficits. If the money was simply spent elsewhere, it would frustrate the entire object of the painful and politically difficult exercise.

What the NYT really seems to be saying is that Washington wants more allied combat troops and trainers in Afghanistan, so Britain and France should scrap their nuclear deterrents to pay for them. This is not a particularly intelligent way to present the argument if it is to carry weight in Paris and London, which base their defense policies on their own, not Washington’s, interests. It also reveals ignorance of latest thinking in the U.S. military, which increasingly regards foreign troops in Afghanistan as a nuisance. The U.S. armed forces want to run their own show and are tired of having to support foreign forces that get into trouble and call in U.S. air strikes against the better judgment of U.S. commanders.

Finally, the editorial argues that strategic nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers are “20th-century prestige weapons” that do not meet the two countries’ “most pressing 21st-century military needs.” But the 21st century still has 90 years to go, and it would be foolish in the extreme to rely on an editorialist to make long range military planning decisions for the next three or four generations. If strategic missiles and aircraft carriers are scrapped, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to get them back when conditions change – as they certainly will. Perhaps the NYT writer is unaware that the imminent acquisition of nuclear weapons capability by Iran is likely to lead to a proliferation of nuclear weapons in other Middle Eastern countries – hardly the best time for Britain and France to give theirs up.

Editors Should Ask More Questions

There are a number of lessons here. First, editorials about whatever subject should be written by someone who knows something about it. Second, editorials should not ignorantly pontificate to foreign governments on issues with which the governments are far more familiar than the author. Third, before commissioning editorials, those in charge should ask themselves the following questions:

1. To whom is this editorial addressed?
2. Whom is it meant to impress?
3. Does it have the slightest chance of securing the recommended policy changes?
4. Does it make us look ignorant, patronizing, and ineffectual?

These rules, of course, should apply equally to European publications offering futile and ill-informed advice to the leaders of the United States.

The misunderstanding arose after a number of media outlets that should have known better – including the BBC, Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal – billed the summit as a meeting of heads of state, meaning that it would be attended on behalf of the UK, for example, by Queen Elizabeth II. Spain would be represented by King Juan Carlos I, and so on for other countries with royal families.

Of course, the media should have reported that the meeting would be attended by “heads of state and government.” The only head of state to participate in EU summits is Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, who is head of both state and government – like his counterpart Barack Obama in the United States. The other European participants are only heads of government.

While this may seem a pedantic distinction, it is vital to understanding how parliamentary systems, like those of most European countries, differ from presidential systems like those of the United States and France. If you think a prime minister is a head of state, you have failed to grasp the most elementary constitutional principles of parliamentary government. It does not bode well for the writer’s comprehension of how political decision-making works at the most basic level.

If media people don’t know the difference between heads of state and heads of government they should stick to saying “leaders.”

Meanwhile, the simple word “summit” is also becoming the subject of abuse, with journalists increasingly using it sloppily to mean almost any high-level meeting. Thus The Washington Post placed the following headline on a September 11 report by staff writer Howard Schneider: “Swiss summit will shape future of banking industry.”

The report described the meeting as a “coterie of central bankers and government regulators,” which is far from qualifying for the lofty appellation of summit. In international negotiations a summit means a meeting of top-level leaders, that is to say heads of state and/or government. If these worthies are not present, Swiss summits are to be found exclusively in the Alps.

According to the virtually universal political folk memory, former President George Bush prematurely declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq from the deck of an aircraft carrier in May 2003, when some of the worst fighting still lay ahead.

We all remember that, don’t we? And if not, Kevin Connolly of BBC News in Washington has just reminded us of Bush’s much mocked statement. Analyzing President Obama’s August 2 announcement that all U.S. combat operations would end in Iraq by the end of the month, Connolly said:

The president was careful not to repeat the mistake of his predecessor George W. Bush who famously declared that America’s mission in Iraq had been accomplished seven years ago – long before the violence and instability were ended.

But Bush didn’t say that. In fact, in his speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, Bush declared: “Our mission continues.” It is true that Bush’s speech, in which he announced the end of major combat operations, was far too triumphant about U.S. military achievements. But he never “famously declared that America’s mission in Iraq had been accomplished.”

On the contrary, he said that following the fall of Baghdad, “now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country… We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We’re bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous.” Bush’s goal in Iraq was never purely military – his mission was to bring freedom and democracy to a vital part of the Middle East.

Here are some more quotes from the speech:

• “The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done and then we will leave and we will leave behind a free Iraq.”
• “Our mission continues. Al Qaida is wounded, not destroyed.”
• “The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001, and still goes on.”
• “America and our coalition will finish what we have begun.”

So how did the belief that he declared “mission accomplished” become so deeply embedded in the public consciousness? The reason is that the ship’s crew, in collusion with White House staff, had strung a large banner bearing the words “mission accomplished” behind the spot where Bush was due to speak. The banner was seen on TV throughout the president’s speech. But Bush himself knew nothing about the decision to display the banner, and certainly did not approve it.

“Irregardless,” as Bush himself used to say, the speech became known as the “mission accomplished” speech, and will probably always be known that way. A striking visual image trumps the spoken word any day. And it’s almost certainly too much to hope that the media will go back and read the speech and see what he actually said. You can forget about renaming it the “mission continues” speech, even if that would be much more accurate.

In his The Ed Show, Schultz commented sarcastically, “Well, Tony, don’t feel too bad. Remember, you still have that $18 billion severance package and a lot of space to spend it in.” That’s billion with a “b” – a ludicrous figure, repeated without correction in the show’s online transcript, which raises a big question mark over Schultz’s numeracy.

In fact, the media generally calculate Hayward’s severance pay at $18 million (with an “m”), or about ₤12 million. As The Economist reports, “Mr. Hayward will receive severance pay of a year’s salary (about £1m, or $1.6m) and the right to start drawing from a pension pot conservatively valued at £11m.” He is also to become a non-executive director of BP-TNK, the company’s joint venture in Russia, an appointment gleefully described by both the U.S. and British media as Hayward being “sent to Siberia.”

As for the severance pay, The Economist notes, “this ‘payment for failure’ has prompted outrage: ‘£12m payoff for Captain Clueless,’ fumed a typical headline. Edward Markey, a congressman, grumbled about ‘multi-million-dollar golden parachutes.’”

But The Economist puts the payment into the kind of sober perspective clearly incomprehensible to Schultz. “This [the criticism] is unfair,” the magazine writes. “Mr. Hayward has worked at BP for 28 years, most of them successful. At least half of his pension pot was earned before he became chief executive. And the plunge in BP’s share price has wiped out the equity-related part of his pay package as CEO—a significant punishment.”

Anyway, Hayward’s package pales in comparison with the most notorious American examples. According to often-quoted research entitled Are Large CEO Severance Packages Justified?, published in September 2007 by the Kellogg School of Management:

Robert Nardelli, the former CEO of Home Depot, received $210 million, Disney’s Michael Ovitz received $140 million, Conseco’s Stephen Hilbert received $72 million, and Hewlett-Packard’s Carly Fiorina received $21 million. Even the average CEO severance package—$5.38 million when severance is negotiated prior to employment—raises eyebrows among the most vocal opponents of excessive severance pay.

Meanwhile, The Business Insider, a frequently provocative business news site, claims to have discovered why BP did not offload Hayward earlier.

In a story entitled The Real Reason BP Kept Tony Hayward So Long, The Business Insider writes that Hayward was “chewed to bits in the press over his management of the Gulf oil spill.” It continues:

But that’s exactly why the new CEO Bob Dudley is so lucky. At least according to a piece in Fast Company by Robert Sutton, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford. For a new CEO, says Sutton, it’s all relative. “Because of the power of psychological contrast, the more that Mr. Hayward comes across as an insensitive buffoon, the better a scapegoat that Mr. Hayward becomes–and the better that Mr. Dudley looks in contrast.” Sutton gives credit to the BP board for keeping Hayward on during these last two months. He took all the abuse while the crisis was unfolding. Now that a solution finally seems to be in sight, a new leader like Dudley can step in and start off with success.

Now that’s a much more interesting story than Shultz’s wildly inaccurate bleating as he follows the vengeful herd.

Britain’s new prime minister, David Cameron, has created his first policy rift with France and Germany, the backbone of the European Union, by promising aggressive help for Turkey’s bid for EU membership, which both Paris and Berlin oppose. In a visit to Turkey, during which he openly indulged Turkish sensitivities, Cameron declared, “I want us to pave the road from Ankara to Brussels.”

Cameron unabashedly sought to gain favor with the country’s mildly Islamic government, ostensibly because of Turkey’s loyalty as a NATO ally, its growing political prowess, and, perhaps most of all, its geostrategic potential in the struggle between the West and Islamist extremism. Reporting on the visit, headlined as Cameron Alienates France and Germany over Turkey’s EU Bid, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle emphasizes a different kind of strategy: “The rumor-mill in Brussels suggests that Caeron’s support may not be purely out of solidarity with Turkey, but a political move aimed at weakening the EU.” That would not be surprising, given Britain’s objective under successive governments to weaken centralized EU control in Brussels by extending the Union to more and more members.

But Cameron feels strongly that Europe has treated Turkey unfairly, and that many Europeans are opposing its entry for the wrong reasons. “He attacked… ‘the prejudiced, those who willfully misunderstand Islam’ and who ‘see no difference between real Islam and the distorted version of the extremists.’”

Daniel Hannan, a conservative columnist at The Telegraph, does not hide his distaste for what he sees as the EU’s hypocrisy in his article, The EU Will Regret Its Dishonest, Humiliating Treatment of Turkey. The combination of Turcophiles, who want Turkey in the EU, and Turcosceptics, who don’t, has led to what Hannan calls “a policy based on deceit.” He claims that the EU “risks creating the very thing it purports to fear: an alienated, snarling Islamic power on its borders” and even goes as far as saying, “the EU’s treatment of Turkey will one day be seen as an epochal error.” Hannan has an interesting take on what is monumental and disastrous. He is disgusted at what he perceives as the EU humiliating Turkey by calling attention to “the status of minorities [and] the history of the 1915 Armenian massacres.” One could argue, however, that not to address these issues would also be an “epochal error.”

An opinion column in The Times of London catches readers’ attention with its headline and vivid imagery. In Frenemy or Enemy, Turkey Must Be in Europe, Antonia Senior argues, “the EU carrot doesn’t look that tasty, but it’s in everyone’s interests for Ankara to take it” – even if the carrot is “raddled and moldy.” She admits that Turkey faces “big, intractable problems,” but believes that no matter where you are on the political spectrum, or what you think about Turkey:

Turkish membership of the EU is… the answer. The EU, like it or loathe it, has proved that binding enemies together with economic chains, free trade and shared prosperity is an incredibly effective way of keeping the peace…. It can only aid European relations with the rest of the Islamic world if we build a close fraternal bond with Turkey… Binding the bastards closer, or embracing your Muslim brothers – it all looks the same from outside the huddle.

Under the headline Cameron Sews Discord, Le Figaro columnist Jean-Jacques Mevel blames Cameron for noisily reviving the “stormy” issue Monday. While accusing Cameron of a “sharp attack” on France and Germany, Mevel admits that Paris and Berlin are doing their best to “torpedo” Turkey’s long-running bid. Germany’s Deutsche Welle takes a more diplomatic stance, stating the UK’s “new prime minister’s views jar slightly with many in Europe,” a clear understatement.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Time magazine overdramatically opens its piece on the issue, Why Turkey Still Gets a Cold Shoulder From the EU, thus:

For over half a century, Turkey has patiently sat in the antechamber to Europe’s grand saloon, waiting for the moment that the doors will swing open and it can finally take its place with the rest of the European Union.

Time is wrong. Most Turks are not sitting idly in the waiting room; and if they were at one time, they got tired of waiting and left. A BusinessWeek article, Cameron Backs the Turks, Rattles the EU, puts it plainly, “EU membership is no longer Turkey’s No. 1 priority.” Bloomberg points out, “a Marshall Fund survey last year found that just 32 percent of Turks [hold] a favorable view of joining the EU.” One of the reasons why Turkey is today attracting so much interest from countries such as Britain and the United States is that Ankara is rapidly becoming a regional powerhouse, regardless of the stalling of its EU entry effort.

In any case, however much Cameron panders to Ankara, it is clear that he is not going to bring Turkey’s accession any closer. For now, his only reward was to hear Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish prime minister, respond with a puffed up statement that relations between Britain and Turkey were entering a “golden age” – whatever that means.

Written by Sarah Bellotti

The team, of course, was not that of Britain, but England, which is only one of the nations that constitute Britain, otherwise known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and which includes Scotland and Wales. It is confusing for foreigners that Britain, which includes Northern Ireland, is actually bigger than Great Britain, which doesn’t include Northern Ireland. Some other countries, such as France, add to the confusion by often calling the whole lot “England” (l’Angleterre).

Does it matter very much to anyone else? Well, it certainly does to England’s fellow Brits, the Scots and Welsh, who have their own national teams (as does Northern Ireland), and for reasons of historic and cultural rivalry often support England’s opponents. In the current World Cup there is even a mildly controversial group in Britain called A.B.E. (Anyone But England), composed largely of Welsh and Scottish fans pledged to back any other team against the English. None of the other British teams qualified for the finals in South Africa this year.

Much of the U.S. media used “British” and “English” interchangeably, and the contest against such a longstanding friend and enemy gave rise to numerous if somewhat strained allusions to the War of Independence, the Boston Tea Party, etc., and, more topically, the BP oil spill in the Gulf, as a result of which the New York Post, in an overheated headline, described the game as a “Toxic” Grudge Match. (Footnote: Although U.S. politicians have taken delight in slamming “British Petroleum” for the Gulf spill, BP has not been called British Petroleum for 12 years now.)

American comparisons of the U.S.-England match to the Revolutionary War were also somewhat off the mark. In the 1770s, the English were notably reluctant to fight against the rebellious colonists, being disinclined to take up arms against “fellow English Protestants,” leaving King George III to fill his ranks with Scottish and Irish soldiers (not to mention Germans) who felt no such compunction.

It was also slightly ironic to read accounts of Americans leaving no doubts as to where their patriotic feelings lay by decking themselves in red, white and blue, which are also the colors of the British flag, the Union Jack. The Stars and Stripes evolved directly from the red ensign of the British Royal Navy, containing the Union Jack in its top left corner, which was flown in the American colonies. In fact, of course, true England fans don’t display the Union Jack, but the St. George’s Cross flag of England, a simple red cross on a white field. This distinction was lost on The Sun out of Baltimore, which referred to “the white and red jersey of the Brits.”

Most Britons in the United States have long given up trying to explain these subtleties to Americans, who find them just about as easy to understand as the rules of cricket (incidentally, much simpler than those of baseball). But at least the Associated Press distributed a heart-warming story pointing out that U.S. soccer would not have come as far as it has without the help provided by English clubs and trainers.

So why, then, does Britain field four national teams while all other countries are limited to one each? It’s because the British invented international soccer, and had already organized a championship tournament between England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland in the 19th century. FIFA, the governing body responsible for the World Cup, accepted that the UK’s four national soccer associations had established their independence when it arrived on the scene in 1904.

Q1: Why does the election matter for Americans?

A1: The way Britain is governed is important for Americans because the United Kingdom is in many ways the United States’ closest ally, and British global influence, while declining, is still significant. The United Kingdom is a strategic nuclear power (thanks to cooperation with the United States), a permanent veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council, a member of both the G-7 and G-20 groups of leading countries, and one of the six nations leading efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear problem.

Militarily, Britain is the second-biggest provider of troops, after the United States, to the coalition in Afghanistan (as it was in Iraq) and is usually the ally most ready to fight alongside American forces. This helps provide legitimacy for U.S. interventions, both internationally and in U.S. domestic opinion, and also makes other European allies more likely to join such coalitions. The two countries cooperate closely in intelligence and counterterrorism operations, and their relations are marked by a high degree of mutual trust.

Diplomatically, the United States and the United Kingdom often take much the same line in the UN Security Council and cooperate in framing draft resolutions. Britain and the United States tend to see world problems in much the same light and to agree on the need for action—when other countries are more prepared to live with difficult situations. Washington is also generally grateful for British influence in the European Union, where London’s position is sometimes closer to Washington’s than to that of some other EU members. Britain is the most reliable free trader of the main EU member countries, and it shares similar though not always identical views with the United States on international finance—not least because New York and London are the world’s two leading financial centers.

Q2: So, have the issues that concern the United States figured prominently in the UK election campaign?

A2: No. The campaign has been largely about who should be trusted to rescue Britain from an economic crisis caused by escalating budget deficits—to which no party has wanted to give a full answer—and the differing personalities of the three leaders. Clegg inserted himself into contention with a sparkling performance in the first of three televised debates among the three leaders, the first ever such debates in Britain, upsetting the two-party rivalry that has dominated British politics for most of the past century. Brown, who was chancellor of the exchequer (finance minister) for 10 years as number two to Tony Blair, insists that he is the only one with the economic skills and experience to deal with the economic crisis and has tried to dismiss Cameron as an upper-class lightweight. Cameron argues that the country needs a change after 13 years of Labour government and that the Conservatives are no longer as distant and unfeeling as they are sometimes reputed to be. Clegg, however, has to a large extent stolen Cameron’s message of change and is offering a fresh approach different from those of the “old parties,” both of which have been badly damaged by a scandal involving the rigging of expense accounts by members of Parliament. Cameron’s main problem is that much of the general public is not quite sure where he stands on a number of issues and who exactly he really is. There have not been huge differences on most policy issues.

Q3: Does it matter for the United States, then, which one wins?

A3: In some ways. The most specific concern for Washington is the future of UK defense spending and whether Britain will be able to maintain its role as a global player and a U.S. comrade-in-arms. All three leading parties have promised early defense reviews after the election, which are bound to lead to budget cuts. Generally speaking, the Conservatives will be the least inclined to go for big cuts. All three are committed to the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan—although all would like a way out—with Clegg the least enthusiastic. Cameron and Brown have promised to renew Britain’s U.S.-supplied (submarine-based) Trident nuclear deterrent, while Clegg has equivocated. On a number of issues, the Liberal Democrats are to the left of Labour. A Conservative government would be more hostile to further European integration than either of the others—and would seek to withdraw from some EU commitments—while the Liberal Democrats are by far the biggest euro-enthusiasts. Even if many in Brussels fear a Cameron victory, he would not in practice be banished from the European Union’s inner counsels.

The question of personal chemistry with U.S. President Barack Obama is unlikely to arise in the case of Clegg, as it is virtually impossible to envisage him becoming prime minister. Brown’s relations with Obama are notoriously fragile. Not only has Obama signaled that he does not care too much for Britain, but he has frequently been interpreted as snubbing Brown—both by the British media and by Brown himself. Cameron would at least start with a clean sheet, although he would be unlikely to become particularly intimate with Obama, who has a record of disdain for European leaders. The main problem facing a British leader in dealings with the White House is that Obama is the first president since World War II who is not an Atlanticist.

Reginald Dale is director of the Transatlantic Media Network and a senior fellow with the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Critical Questions is produced by the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).

There can be little arguing that the influence of London on U.S. policy has taken a nosedive under President Barack Obama, who is much more interested in new, emerging nations than in old colonial ones. The same applies to all the other major European governments, including those in Paris and Berlin. It is equally true that few Americans have heard of the phrase “the special relationship,” which emerged from the World War II alliance that defeated Nazi Germany on its Western front. For decades, however, the phrase has bandied about by the British media, usually in stories triumphantly stating that it has been severely damaged or no longer exists.

The British media almost invariably overlook the multilayered nature of Anglo-American relations and focus narrowly on how well or badly the current occupants of the White House and Number 10 Downing Street happen to get along with each other. That strand of the relationship reflects the news of the day, the latest ebb and flow of foreign and security policies, and changes in personal chemistry between the two countries’ leaders.

It is also a gift that never stops giving for the British media: a dependable source of unending “snubs” to British leaders by U.S. presidents. Some are real, such as Obama’s famous offering to Prime Minister Gordon Brown of a box of DVDs of “best American movies” – the kind available at Walmart for $29.99 – that did not work in England. In the absence of such obvious slights, Fleet Street sometimes falls back on making them up.

This superficial perspective on the relationship, however, ignores its more profound elements: a compound mixture of historical, cultural, linguistic, and political ties that is relatively unaffected by ups and downs in intergovernmental relations. Many Americans are Anglophiles and admire the way British troops are more likely than those of any other countries to be found fighting alongside U.S. forces – although one might generalize that Republicans tend to be more Anglophile than Democrats.

Even in today’s globalized “multipolar” world, British and Americans are almost certain to agree on what is right or wrong on the international scene, and usually want to do something about it. Anglo-Saxons are more interested in action than theory. They also share similar senses of humor and tend to trust one another in a way that does not always extend to other nationalities. These are important building blocks of a relationship founded on a long history of shared interests and common values.

Needless to say, the cultural and historic aspects of the relationship were ignored by media reports on the findings of the Parliamentary Committee, which delighted journalists by using the word “poodle” in one of its comments. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair was mockingly described as “Bush’s poodle” during the early stages of the Iraq War. Thus The Telegraph, in a report entitled “Special Relationship” with U.S. is Over, MPs Claim, swallowed the bait in its second sentence:

Instead of seeing a significant partnership, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Commons said that many people, at home and abroad, saw Britain as the “poodle” of American interests.

That is somewhat dishonest, as the Committee specifically used the poodle word to refer to the years around 2003, even though it got its grammar wrong. “The perception that the British Government was a subservient ‘poodle’ to the U.S. administration leading up to the period of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath is widespread both among the British public and overseas,” the Committee’s report said. “This perception, whatever its relation to reality, is deeply damaging to the reputation and interests of the UK.”

The Committee clearly didn’t mean “leading up to the period of the invasion,” but “in the period leading up to the invasion.” No matter. Members of Parliament must have known that the media would jump on the reference, reminding everyone of the faults of Blair, from whom Brown is happy to distance himself as he conducts a difficult re-election campaign. The Committee is chaired by an MP from Brown’s (and formerly Blair’s) Labour Party.

The “poodle” remark was also picked up by the Associated Press – although much lower in its report. The AP story began with the unchallengeable statement: “the ‘special relationship’ is not so special any more,” basing its lead on the Committee’s recommendation that the phrase be dropped from current usage and be used only in a historical sense in future.

In The Guardian, Ewen MacAskill reported from Washington: “there is a major problem with the Commons committee calling on British politicians and diplomats to drop the phrase ‘special relationship:’ it is about five decades too late.” But once again, he was referring to relations between the leaders of the two countries rather than between the countries themselves.

Of course, the country-to-country links will progressively diminish as more non-Caucasians (most notably Obama himself) make up the U.S. population, memories of World War II fade ever further and the history taught in American schools emphasizes native cultures and anti-colonialism. Hollywood contributes its bit, with heavy doses of treacherous and/or idiotic English villains. But in the cultural and historical sense, the relationship is still likely to remain special for a while longer.

A Washington Perspective: The Fraying Bonds of the Special Relationship submitted to UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee by Reginald Dale and Heather Conley

Now the tables have been turned and the outrage is in Europe, adding another irritant to transatlantic relations that are already at their worst since the bitter clashes over the Iraq War in 2003/04. The heads of government of Britain, France, and Germany, as well as the president of the European Commission, all denounced the U.S. government for effectively rigging the bid to ensure Boeing won the contract after all. Northrop Grumman dropped out of the competition last week, taking EADS with it and leaving Boeing as the sole surviving competitor.

Throughout Europe, the media reported the widespread European view that U.S. changes in specifications for the new tanker aircraft were a form of “protectionism” that had enabled Boeing to win unfairly. The earlier victory by EADS and Northrop Grumman in 2008 was annulled after Boeing, backed by a wave of chauvinist anger in the U.S. Congress, claimed it was unduly penalized by the initial specifications.

But many European commentators were quick to point to the hypocrisy of the political reaction in Europe, where the manipulation of defense and other contracts is also an art form – particularly in France, where President Nicolas Sarkozy recently stated that all cars sold in France should be made in France. (To be fair, the EADS/Northrop aircraft was to have been built in Mobile, Alabama).

U.S. reporting on the reversal of fortune for the European company was limited, but objective. Under the heading European Nations Allege U.S. Protectionism in Tanker Deal, Edward Cody reported from Paris March 17:

A wave of indignation has swept the major industrial nations of Europe over the Pentagon’s handling of a $40 billion contract to buy new aerial refueling tankers, with political and economic leaders accusing the Obama administration of protectionism…The commercial defeat for European Aeronautic Defense and Space (EADS), the parent company of Airbus, came as tensions were already high between Europe and the United States over disputed proposals for new international financial regulations, with Europeans generally pushing for tighter controls and the Obama administration resisting in the name of free markets and free trade.

Cody could have added other disputes that have recently raised temperatures on either side of the Atlantic: last month’s rejection by the European Parliament of an arrangement for the United States to monitor international financial transfers in pursuit of terrorists; France’s decision to sell four state-of-the-art naval assault ships to Moscow, the biggest ever sale by a NATO country to Russia; and the general resentment among European leaders that they are disdained by President Barack Obama.

In a report by Christopher Drew, The New York Times focuses on the commercial relief that the deal would bring to Boeing, providing the company with “some welcome certainty about its future as a major builder of military aircraft.”

The NYT story notes the European objections and points out that the decision by Northrop and EADS to quit the race “undermines President Obama’s efforts to increase competition for military contracts.” It continues:

Military analysts said that Pentagon officials would try to keep Boeing from pushing up its price for the tankers in the final negotiations.

But Jacques S. Gansler, who was the Pentagon’s top acquisition official in the Clinton administration, said that even if the military could hold down the price now, Boeing could be able to raise it in the future if there was no competitive pressure.

As soon as the Pentagon makes the first changes in the planes or the number it is ordering, he said, that “will give Boeing justification to say, ‘O.K., but it will cost you more.’”

Analysts say Boeing’s victory also suggests it has rebuilt its political influence since the Air Force’s first attempt to replace its aging tankers collapsed in 2004 amid corruption charges involving a proposed leasing deal with Boeing.

Most European media highlighted the condemnations of the U.S. government’s conduct by Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, to which German Chancellor Angela Merkel and EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso added their concerns this week. A headline in the Financial Times March 17 reads U.S. Faces United Front on Aircraft Tender. But while many leaders said they intended to pursue the affair with the United States, few in the media believe it would do much good.

In Germany the international version Spiegel Online reports the bitter complaints by European politicians, but adds that German commentators sensed more than a whiff of hypocrisy from European governments.

Garrelt Duin of the center-left Social Democratic Party told the tabloid Bild: “This is a sleight of hand on the part of the Yanks… The Americans only talk about free competition when it is to their advantage. You can’t simply change the rules of the game just because you don’t like the winner.”

But, Spiegel adds:

Editorialists at most German newspapers on Wednesday, regardless where they fall on the political spectrum, called the politicians’ bluff. When it comes to defense contracts, they write, Europe is every bit as bad as the U.S. in terms of serving its own interests.

According to the center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine, for example:

The defense industry is far from being a normal business… But for Europeans to insinuate that everything about the Americans’ defense bidding processes is particularly terrible, is hypocritical and nothing more than a political ritual.

The Financial Times Deutschland agrees that Europe is equally guilty of protecting its defense industries: “Europeans shouldn’t be pointing their fingers at Washington. Instead they should be asking all participants what kind of economic and political damage their protectionist games are causing.”

German business daily Handelsblatt concludes:

One thing is certain: The common transatlantic defense market is little more than an illusion. In fact, Europe doesn’t even really have an open defense market. The planned European defense procurement agency EDA is little more than a paper tiger. The Germans, Brits, and French guard their domestic defense industries very closely, hindering public bidding processes and mergers. But it’s an expensive luxury in these times of tight budgets.

That’s all true. It’s just unfortunate that each time government leaders swear to abjure protectionism (as they did, for example, at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh in September) and then indulge in it, they risk making it worse. The argument that everybody does it is as unacceptable in defending protectionism as it is to justify any human weakness.

Unfortunately, however, President Barack Obama is unlikely to “go for Eumerica.” Although Sommer is quite right that Europe and America should combine their forces to weather the global storms ahead, there is little chance of that happening while Obama remains in the White House. Obama is the first U.S. president since World War II who is not a traditional Atlanticist – indeed he proclaimed himself “the first Pacific president” in Tokyo in November – and he has no instinctive feel or affection for Europe.

While Obama has promised to show a new respect for the rest of the world, Europe has been largely excluded from this apologetic posture. In fact, Obama has constantly shown disdain toward European leaders (ranging from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to the King of Norway) and his relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel is stiff and cold.

Sommer writes that “Obama’s decision not to attend the U.S.-European Union summit meeting in May is as understandable as the palpable sense of European politicians of having been rudely snubbed.” He is correct that Obama’s decision was understandable. It was actually more than that – an overdue and necessary signal to the European Union that it is does enjoy the global clout to which it aspires.

But this was by no means Obama’s first snub. In addition to the slights to European leaders mentioned above, he downgraded the last EU-U.S. summit in Washington last autumn by moving the meeting from the White House to Blair House (the official presidential guesthouse across the street) and by only attending part of the proceedings. Vice President Joe Biden stood in for him at the main event – the lunch.

Obama subsequently shocked European leaders by muscling aside the European Union at December’s Copenhagen climate summit and stitching up a deal with China and other leading emerging nations – a deal that the EU strongly disliked.

The point is that, while Obama may be snubbing European leaders, the U.S.-EU summits have no content worthy of presidential attention and are examples of the famous EU preference for process over substance in international affairs. There is no reason why the president of the United States should want to meet the odd assortment of EU leaders that attends them. Especially now that the Union has 27 members, Washington is more interested in talking to the main member states, Britain, France, and Germany.

In any case, Obama does not regard Europe as a priority. He does not see the world in terms of the “transatlantic community of values and interests” to which Sommer refers. On the contrary, he is seeking to reshape the world by bypassing Europe and unilaterally seeking new U.S. relations with countries he sees as the main future players, such as China, Russia, Brazil, India – even the Philippines and Indonesia. Despite recent valiant efforts by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to resurrect North Atlantic values, Obama is more interested in the developing world than the developed and he does not consider himself the leader of the West, just of America.

Anyone who thinks today’s EU leaders are “federalists” clearly knows next to nothing about Europe’s postwar history or current politics. There was also a mysterious reference to “bullying skeptical small countries,” without any explanation of how the “federalists” had done this or which countries had been bullied. The broader point, however, is that federalism has been struggling to survive in the EU for some years now, and it is not embraced by most EU leaders – just think, for example of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who would face a political firing squad if he even mentioned the word.

The editorial proceeds to muddle up the list of candidates for the two jobs, and then says that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel “resolved that the new president would be a low-profile figure from a small country.” Yes, but that was what all the small countries wanted too, believing that a powerful leader would be bound to come from a dominant big country. The Post misses the irony that the least “federalist” country, Britain, was the one that proposed the best-known, supposedly heavy-hitting candidate, former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Next, the Post says that “most Europeans aren’t ready to have their national governments supplanted in key matters of domestic and foreign policy – which is why the treaty’s more ambitious predecessor (the European Constitution) was voted down in three referendums.” Actually, it was voted down in only two referendums, in France and the Netherlands, in May and June 2005. The first part of Post’s sentence betrays a more general failure to understand the EU.

It has been estimated that up to 60 percent of EU countries’ domestic policy decisions are already made in Brussels, but this does not really mean “supplanting” national governments, because national governments comprise the EU’s most powerful decision-making body, the Council of Ministers. Appointing more powerful players for the new leadership positions would not have “supplanted” national governments either, as the Post seems to suggest. National governments will maintain control over foreign and security policies, regardless of who enjoys the fancy new titles.

If these weren’t enough mistakes and misconceptions for a four-paragraph editorial, the Post insists on referring to Lady Ashton as Ms. Ashton, which is incorrect. Americans may not like British titles, but that’s no reason for stripping them from their holders. “Lady Ashton” is the name by which she is known, which she chooses to use, and which has been legally conferred on her by the proper British authorities. If the Post were to be consistent in this practice it would refer to Prince Charles as Mr. Windsor – or does it give special treatment to royalty and those with hereditary titles?

Time magazine rescues the reputation of the U.S. media by coming up with one of the year’s best headlines, describing the two new leaders as the Bland Leading the Bland. The magazine’s coverage is pretty standard fare, but at least it doesn’t make the same kind of mistakes as The Washington Post. Among the points made by Time:

• The duo may yet become household names, but today, most Europeans will be scratching their heads at the decision by the EU’s 27 leaders to anoint Van Rompuy and Ashton to the organization’s top two jobs.
• The choice prompted accusations that the EU had gone for the lowest common denominator. Van Rompuy was “bland” and Aston “unremarkable,” said Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a German Member of the European Parliament who heads the Green group in that body. “EU leaders have continued the job of weakening the EU institutions,” he said. “Europe is sinking to a low.”
• Ashton roundly rejected claims that she had been catapulted from obscurity to meet the EU’s demands for a token, center-left woman. “Am I an ego on legs? No, I’m not,” she said. “Judge me on what I do, and I think you’ll be proud of me.”
• The choice of Van Rompuy and Ashton was seen as exposing the gap between the EU’s ambition and its grandiose rhetoric. “They might both be very capable, but neither has any sort of international profile or experience,” says Marco Incerti, Head of Communications at the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS), a Brussels-based think tank. “At the moment, it looks like two nobodies. But this is what comes of trying to please everyone when you choose these jobs.”

The New York Times also does a workmanlike, though not perfect, job in analyzing the appointments, although the emphasis of its lead paragraph is wrong. This says, “with the European Union’s top new jobs going to two low-key bridge-builders, the bloc appears to have set its sights on smoothing over internal divisions before trying to construct a bigger global role.”

It would have been more accurate to point out that EU leaders like Sarkozy and Merkel don’t want to be outshone on the world stage by powerful new EU players speaking on their behalf.

The appointment of the two less than stellar politicians “leaves the Union without the high-profile leadership for which many had yearned,” The New York Times report says. But it gives no explanation of who the “many” yearners were. They were certainly not the majority of Europeans or of European leaders – perhaps they were the hordes of “federalists” identified by The Washington Post.

An expert quoted by the NYT also speaks of this mysterious yearning or craving, largely confined to a group of elite policy makers and experts:

“In some ways, the EU craving for star-quality leaders was like trying to cover the lack of substance with appearances,” said Adam Jasser in an analysis for demosEUROPA, a research institution based in Warsaw. “Whether Europe will be treated seriously or not by the outside world depends on its ability to speak with one voice and get its priorities sorted out.”

Apart from the strange cravings, however, the quote gets to the heart of the matter. The fundamental issue is not who represents the EU, but whether EU governments can agree on common foreign policies.

Oh yes, and the NYT also calls her Ms. Ashton. Do today’s Americans still have chips on their shoulders dating back to the mid-1770s?

The Post and the NYT should review the titles sections of their stylebooks – and the Post should employ at least one person with a vague idea of how the EU functions.

American disdain is doubtless accentuated by the obscurity of the politicians appointed to the two posts at an EU dinner Thursday night in Brussels – Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy, who becomes president of the Council, and Lady Catherine Ashton of the UK, currently EU Trade Commissioner, who is to be foreign policy czar. Neither has much foreign policy experience, and both are little-known even inside Europe.

The New York Times hits the nail on the head, reporting that “the selection of such low-profile figures seemed to highlight Europe’s problems instead of its readiness to take a more united and forceful place in world affairs” and that “the leaders of Europe’s most powerful countries, France and Germany, did not want to be overshadowed. Nor apparently did their foreign ministers.”

The desire of major EU states to retain their national influence in foreign policy was among the reasons why former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was rejected for the presidential post, although he had many other strikes against him, including his prominent support of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The U.S. media’s obsession with celebrity, however, ensures that the defeated Blair’s candidacy remains more compelling to some than those of the two winners. CNN’s piece briefly names Van Rompuy and Ashton, but the bulk of the article is dedicated to Blair.

The Wall Street Journal describes Van Rompuy as “an accidental holder of his current office,” and names Blair no fewer than eight times, together with a dejected close-up photo. “The choices of two politicians largely unknown outside their home countries suggest the long-held ambitions of some to give the bloc a bigger presence on the world stage had been scaled back,” it says in reference to the eight-year-long struggle to reshape the EU institutions that began in 2001.

Overall, The Wall Street Journal article portrays the European Union, the world’s largest economy, as a weak organization that has just chosen two meek and feeble leaders – a humble approach the two winners themselves appeared to confirm. One of Ashton’s first comments was that she planned to conduct “quiet diplomacy,” while Van Rompuy promised to be “discreet” in his new job.

These modest ambitions were reflected in editorial decisions at the three traditional U.S. network news shows. Neither NBC Nightly News, ABC World News, nor CBS Evening News mentioned the EU appointments Thursday night. And three of the most prominent daily newspapers have little to no front-page coverage of the event Friday. The Wall Street Journal features a 16 word teaser while The New York Times and The Washington Post have no reference on their front pages, but leave plenty of room for Oprah.

The Washington Post does quite a good job of putting the story in context, but completely ignores Ashton, apart from a single mention at the top, even though many Brussels experts believe her job will turn out to be more important than that of Van Rompuy.

The Washington Post online edition sloppily features a November 19 photo of Van Rompuy, who it says is “believed to be one of the candidates,” alongside a November 20 report on his winning the job.

Desperately seeking entertaining angles about Van Rompuy, some of the U.S. media settle on his penchant for writing Japanese-style haikus, often quite well. A blog published by The Wall Street Journal showcases some of Van Rompuy’s poetry, and reports that imitators have sprung up elsewhere in the media. CNN also mentions his love of haikus.

A sample from the balding Van Rompuy:

Hair blows in the wind
After years there is still wind
Sadly no more hair

The Los Angeles Times pokes fun at Van Rompuy’s poetry, including the hair-loss haiku, after likening him to an absent-minded professor and calling him a Harry Potter lookalike in a previous article, EU’s Angst Over Choosing a President Hasn’t Helped its Image. To be fair, this article makes fun of other candidates, too, depicting them as sad and pathetic. The reporter says that “despite self-congratulatory pep rallies in Brussels, [the EU] still isn’t ready for prime time,” a statement with which some Europeans might take issue.

In the more recent article, the Los Angeles Times makes the inaccurate statement that that Van Rompuy and Ashton will “represent the continent,” confusing Europe with the European Union. Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and most West Balkan states are not EU members, nor are Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Turkey, which has at least a toe-hold in Europe – not to mention Russia. The same reporter also propagates the hackneyed myth of Henry Kissinger’s desire for a single telephone number on which “to call Europe,” debunked in a previous post on this blog.

Sarah Bellotti contributed to this blog.

This is perhaps surprising, given that the Wall’s fall is one of the most dramatically symbolic moments in human history – embodying in the most graphic possible manner the victory of light over darkness, freedom over oppression, and the dawn of unity for a war worn continent.

But while such an obvious interpretation was clear to those who joyously celebrated the opening of the floodgates dividing East and West Berlin in November, 1989, today’s observers find much to carp about in the two decades that have followed, as well as many unanswered questions about the actual event.

In a report from Paris in The New York Times, The Legacy of 1989 Is Still Up for Debate, Steven Erlanger pays tribute to the historic legacy for Europe of the Wall’s fall, but adds, “1989 also created new divisions and fierce nationalisms that hobble the European Union today, between East and West, France and Germany, Europe and Russia.”

Some of the intensity of those divisions is evident in the tug of war, in both Europe and the United States, over whether the achievements of 1989 owe more to the resolute anti-Communism of President Ronald Reagan or its inverse, the white-glove embrace of the East by many in Western Europe, Erlanger writes.

It is a tribute to 1989, not unlike the French Revolution 200 years before it, that its meaning is hotly contested. Different groups in different countries see the anniversary differently, usually from their own ideological points of view.

Erlanger cites the verdict of Robert Kagan, a historian with the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, that conservatives won the debate in the United States. “The standard narrative is Reagan,” Kagan says. This is not the case in Europe. According to Kagan, “if 90 percent of Americans say it was the U.S. being firm, 99 percent of Europeans think it was they being soft – that the wall fell through Ostpolitik and West German TV.”

In The Washington Post, columnist Anne Applebaum writes from Berlin that Central Europe’s success since the Wall fell deserves more attention. In November, 1989, nobody knew what the future held for Europe, she states correctly. Now she is bothered by the tone of the commemorations.

Too many of them treat too much of the past two decades as a foregone conclusion, focusing on what didn’t happen rather than what did. Too many have taken the achievements for granted. Too many of us forget that there are few historical precedents for the past two decades.

On the other hand, Slavoj Zizek, an op-ed contributor to the New York Times, remarks that anti-Communism is now resurgent in the region, and dismisses the nostalgia for Communist times apparent in some quarters today.

Far from expressing an actual wish to return to the gray Socialist reality, [this nostalgia] is more a form of mourning, of gently getting rid of the past. As for the rise of the rightist populism, it is not an Eastern European specialty, but a common feature of all countries caught in the vortex of globalization.

Much more interesting is the recent resurgence of anti-Communism from Hungary to Slovenia. During the autumn of 2006, large protests against the ruling Socialist Party paralyzed Hungary for weeks. Protesters linked the country’s economic crisis to its rule by successors of the Communist party.

They denied the very legitimacy of the government, although it came to power through democratic elections. When the police went in to restore civil order, comparisons were drawn with the Soviet Army crushing the 1956 anti-Communist rebellion.

In the Financial Times, however, Klaus Zimmermann tries to extract ideology from recent developments altogether and belittles Eastern Germany’s Communist heritage as the reason why the region has been so slow to change since the Wall’s fall.

The most interesting – and overlooked – insight of east Germany’s transformation is that its difficulty in catching up with the west ultimately proves to be not so much a reflection of its communist past than of its rural, low-density population structure. Simply put, economic value increases with population density. The more companies swap ideas and the closer they cooperate, the better it is for productivity – and incomes.

This holds true not just in Germany, but across the board. Companies locate headquarters in densely populated areas because they offer a better habitat for decision-making in disciplines ranging from sales and marketing to research and development and overall strategy. It is in these regions that highly skilled service-sector jobs, such as software developers, finance managers, advertising specialists, business consultants and trade facilitators, are created.

This analysis suggests the real distinction is not so much between “east” and “west” as between low-density and high-density regions, no matter where they are in Germany.

Not many who have known the region before and after 1989 are likely to fall for this simplistic armchair depiction of the complex cultural, social, historical and economic map of Europe.

Many journalists understandably look for distinctive, if sometimes opposing, angles. Deborah Seward of the Associated Press describes a Franco-German role reversal over the past 20 years in an analysis from Paris:

Throughout the Cold War, Germany was the steadfast trans-Atlantic ally – and France the perpetual skeptic. Paris snubbed NATO, booted allied soldiers off its soil and sought a privileged relationship with Moscow. Then one night the Berlin Wall fell – and 20 years later, the roles subtly have shifted. French President Nicolas Sarkozy is seeking to be a NATO stalwart, winning two commands by returning to the alliance earlier this year. At the same time, German Chancellor Angela Merkel – while reaching out to the United States – is pursuing closer ties with Russia that have left Washington unsettled.

Writing for Le Figaro, Yves Thréard nevertheless hopes that while the history of the Wall’s fall is still being written – and rewritten – today’s French and German leaders will understand that they won’t break down any of the world’s other walls unless they work together. That may be too much to hope for.

In the hand-wringing department, Pierre Rousselin uses a blog post for Le Figaro to deplore the absence of President Barack Obama at the anniversary celebrations in Berlin on November 9. Any other U.S. president would have been there, he writes.

The absence of Barack Obama from the group of leaders of countries that have made our history is an eloquent confirmation of his lukewarm approach to a continent that is no longer a priority for the United States.

In a blog for The Daily Telegraph of the UK, Nile Gardiner, a conservative Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator, berates U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for writing Reagan out of the history of the Wall’s fall.

It’s bad enough that President Obama could not be bothered to attend the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But Hillary Clinton’s refusal to even acknowledge the role played by Ronald Reagan in the Wall’s demise as well as the downfall of Communism was highly insulting towards one of the greatest figures of our time, and reeked of petty and partisan mean-spiritedness.

The secretary of state’s remarks in Berlin completely erased from history the huge contribution played not only by President Reagan but also by the United States in confronting the Soviet Empire. In her speech she applauded half of Europe, but could not bring herself to thank those Americans who bravely served their country and in many cases laid down their lives in defeating Communism, under Reagan’s leadership.

Perhaps by the time of the 50th anniversary we will have got the story straight. But then again, maybe not.