Financial Times
December 4, 2011
It used to be that when American policymakers looked across the Atlantic they would quote Henry Kissinger: “Who do I call if I want to call Europe?” Nowadays the answer is obvious – Angela Merkel. The problem is that she doesn’t always pick up. And when she does, Barack Obama’s advice is not always welcome.
Whether or not Ms Merkel and her colleagues manage to pull Europe back from disaster in the next few days, the euro crisis has offered the US a sobering lesson in the changing ways of the world. To put it bluntly, American advice comes at a deep discount nowadays – even if, ironically, Washington’s strictures have been bang on target about fixing the eurozone morass.
A few weeks ago Tim Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, was treated to a chorus of hisses when he urged Europe to get its act together. Mr Obama was treated more politely at the G20 meeting in Cannes last month. But there is no disguising America’s waning leverage. Short of bigger and bolder emergency moves by the Federal Reserve to boost dollar liquidity, there is little Washington can do to affect what happens across the pond.
By contrast, it is on continual tenterhooks about the disastrous things Europe could do to America. In recent months it has been hard to have a conversation in Washington that does not begin or end with the observation: “That depends on what happens in Europe.” Such worry has secreted an unaccustomed passivity into the Washington outlook. Instead of Godot, America is waiting endlessly for Euro.
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