Last year, while she was still working as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and chair of international security at West Point – and shortly before she went to the State Department as deputy head of policy planning – Kori Schake wrote a pamphlet for the Center for European Reform entitled The US Elections and Europe: The coming crisis of high expectations.
In it, she argued that in order to avoid such a crisis, and to capitalise on the change of leadership in the US,
Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic need to adjust their sights. Any changes that the new American president introduces on issues that matter to Europe – Iran or climate change – will be evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Europeans and Americans will need to find a way to talk about Iraq in terms that resonate with both sides and do not belittle the continuing US involvement. The US feels alone in bearing the burden of Iraq, and Americans tend to gloss over the political price their European allies paid for supporting the war.
Europeans will also need to find ways of reminding the US of their comparative value as allies. Americans are likely to enter into one of their periodic fits of searching for better allies than the Europeans.
As Europe waits breathlessly for Obama’s set-piece speech in Berlin, this sounds like sage advice (particularly given the gentle dressing down that the Germans can apparently expect on troop commitments in Afghanistan). But there’s another reason to read Kori’s pamphlet, too: she’s now one of the key foreign policy advisers to John McCain.
