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American Politics Abroad Blog: Last thoughts from Spain

By Michelle Martínez, Gavel Media Senior Staff, on December 12, 2009 5:29 PM

By Michelle Martinez, Contributing Writer -

As my time in Spain nears its end, I open CNN right before sitting down to write my last column on American Politics Abroad. As I go about this part of my daily routine, I was intrigued to find that the headline of the day was actually “How is Obama being viewed in Europe?” I obviously set about to read it, and see if they’d discovered anything beyond what I had perceived in the past three or so months. Interestingly enough, this political analyst and myself had pretty much come to the same conclusions as to American politics in the Obama-age in the European stratosphere.

He does include, however, one major topic I haven’t tackled up until this point: Afghanistan. Overall, it seems like Europeans are generally unsupportive of both the United States’ wars, but the Afghani portion of it has taken a relatively predominant role in their disapproval. In spite of this dissatisfaction, many of the Spaniards I spoke to were quick to recognize the relative hypocrisy when it comes to their own government’s policy. Initially, the Zapatero administration condemned any involvement in America’s wars, but ever since Obama came to office, Zapatero himself has offered Spanish soldiers for the cause, in hopes of improving the relationship between the two states.

One of the main Spanish newspapers, El País, labels Obama’s policy towards Afghanistan one of the “cracks” in his overall plan, yet at the same time calls it more “realistic” than that of his predecessor. Overall, the Obama administration’s foreign policies tend to be far better regarded than those of Bush for one main reason: its attempt at a more multilateral effort. This isn’t just the case with the war in Afghanistan, but also with global climate change. As was mentioned in my first piece, one of the largest sources of resentment from Europeans towards the United States in the past ten or so years was the Bush administration’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which to most Europeans epitomized the Bush era’s largely unilateral approach.  Now, they have an American president who doesn’t just recognize the need for climate change, but is engaging in multilateral efforts in hopes to resolve them, as exemplified by his involvement in the Copenhagen climate summit.

After these three and a half months, I’ve noticed that even though Obama is in the foreground of most matters pertaining to American politics abroad, they still know a relatively substantial amount of our laws and domestic policies, when compared to our scarce knowledge of their own. At times this knowledge is based on disapproval, such as most of the United States not allowing same-sex marriage and our current health care system, both of which greatly differ from the Spanish system. In other instances, their knowledge of our politics relates to their desire to emulate our own, such as is the case with our criminal justice system (which according to my roommate has “less lacunas than theirs”) and women’s rights, especially in the workforce.

Throughout this semester in Spain, as cliché as it may sound, I’ve learned a substantial amount about my own country’s politics even while all my courses dealt with more local subjects. The perspectives that Spaniards, and other Europeans, provided regarding our system, policy, politicians, and other matters associated to American politics, gave me a more extensive perspective on those things we usually only read about or only consider our own opinions for.