Austria and Cablegate

Even our neighbour Austria plays its role in Cablegate. More than 1,600 cables were send from the U.S. Embassy in Vienna to Washington. Usually Austrians would be proud of so much attention by the United States and the Media would quickly recognise that in proportion to the world population, the attention of the U.S. Gouverment is larger than it is to their unloved neighbour Germany. Topics were their antipathy of a Turkish entry into the E.U, Austrian countries and dirty money among other things. But it is another topic which bothered the Austrians the most.

The tabloid “Kronenzeitung” hit the mark with the headline:”USA lästern über Österreich” (click here for the”Kronenzeitung”), the U.S. backbites Austria. They accused chancellor Walter Faymann of having no interest at all in foreign affairs and that he is very business oriented. Darabos, who is known to be quite unhappy to be the minister of defence (which is a useless position for a country that is reluctant to let any soldiers out of the country and has no borders to defend) is said to have no interest in security and foreign policy at all. The diplomats conclude that there is “a gap between Austria's self-proclaimed vision of itself in the world, and its increasingly limited performance."(click here for the comments)

This is nothing new for most Austrians. Campaigns are mostly centred around immigration and questioning the membership in the E.U..In the last election for the mayorship in Vienna, traditionally a position for the left wing party SPÖ, the far right party FPÖ managed to gain most of the votes. For most Austrians this was an embarrassing outcome and reminds one of the days when the E.U even imposed sanctions upon Austria because the right wing party. So the Cables did not reveal anything new but show ne U.S. perception of Austria as an rather inward oriented country.