For the past half century, the policy
making elite in Washington has come to the
same conclusion about America’s relations
with Europe: every effort at closer European
integration is to be welcomed, if tepidly. The
assumption has been that a unified Europe
would inevitably prove more pro-free
market, more Atlanticist, and more pro-
American. Today, however, following the
Transatlantic rift over the Iraq war and the
public diplomacy calamity that has ensued for the United States, such simplistic
analysis does not begin to explain the schism at the heart of the post-Cold War
Transatlantic relationship.
The United States should stop
merely reacting to fundamental changes
in Europe, voicing platitudes from the
sidelines, and adopt a more proactive approach.
Washington should develop a series
of strategic, diplomatic, and
analytical principles, with political, economic,
and military dimensions, to
guide its policies toward the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization and the European
Union and its plans for reviving the
Transatlantic relationship. In formulating
these principles, the United States
should follow the conservative precepts
of the great 18th century British statesman
Edmund Burke and see the world
as it is, not as some might hope it to be.
The first principle should be recognition
of the continuing strategic centrality
of Europe. Whatever the global
issue - be it tracking down al Qaeda, the
Doha trade round, Iran’s efforts to develop
weapons of mass destruction, the
Arab-Israeli conflict or Iraq - the United
States simply cannot act effectively without
the support of at least some European
powers. The United States remains
first among equals. But the world is neither
genuinely unipolar nor multipolar,
which makes it vital for America to continue
to court allies.
Both now and well into the future
there is and will be only one place to find
those allies. Europe is the sole area of the
world where political, diplomatic, military,
and economic power can be generated
in sufficient strength to support
American policies effectively. The cluster
of international powers in Europe - led
by the United Kingdom, France, Germany,
Italy, Spain, and Poland - has no
parallel.
The leading European nations, however,
rarely agree on most of today’s key
issues of foreign and security policy. As a
result, the United States must engage European
states on an issue-by-issue, caseby-
case basis to maximize its diplomatic
effectiveness, gaining the greatest number
of allies for the largest number of
missions.
The second principle that should
drive American policy centers on the importance
of national choice and sovereignty.
American interests are best served
when European states act flexibly according
to their separate interests, rather
than collectively according to some
utopian ideal. Although the day may be
far off, a European Union implementing
a genuinely supranational common foreign
and security policy could clearly
hamstring American efforts to form political,
military or economic coalitions
with individual member countries.
To illustrate the point, one need only
look at the EU common commercial
policy, under which the European Commission
conducts international negotiations
on behalf of the European Union,
even though the member states have not
reached a consensus on the very principle
of free trade. The consequence is that
the European Union formulates trade
policy on the basis of the lowest common
denominator. It can proceed only
as fast as its most protectionist member
allows. This adherence to supranationalism
keeps largely free-trading nations
with more open economies - such as the
UK, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland,
the Netherlands and Estonia - from following
their sovereign interests and developing
closer and mutually beneficial
trading ties with the United States.
This one-size-fits-all approach does
not suit the modern political realities of
the continent. European countries have
politically diverse opinions on all aspects
of international life: free trade, NATO,
relations with the United States and how
to organize their own economies. Ireland,
for example, is a strongly free trading
country, has extensive ties to the
United States and favors a large degree of
economic liberalization. France, by contrast,
is more protectionist, more statist
in organizing its economy, and more competitive
in its attitude toward America.
“The leading European
nations rarely agree
on most of today’s
key issues of foreign
and security policy”
Germany falls between the two on
free trade and relations with the United
States, but favors some liberalization of
its economy to retain its corporatist
model. Strategically, Ireland is neutral;
France is inherently hostile to NATO,
while Germany is more pro-NATO than
France is but values UN involvement in
crises above that of the alliance. This real
European diversity ought to be reflected
in each state’s control over its foreign
and security policy. A more centralized
Europe simply does not reflect the political
reality on the ground.
The third principle in reforming
Transatlantic relations is acceptance that
the U.S.-UK special relationship must
remain a cornerstone of U.S. strategic
thinking. The UK is likely to remain
America’s paramount ally for the foreseeable
future. That is why it is in America’s
fundamental national interest to
help the UK maintain its sovereignty and
the flexibility to continue playing this
pivotal role.
Since joining the then European
Community in 1973, Britain has had an
uneasy and sometimes tumultuous relationship
with its European partners.
During this period, the European Union
has evolved from a largely economic
grouping of nation states into an inward-
looking political entity, with evergreater
political centralization. The
British have found their national sovereignty
gradually eroded by EU laws and
regulations.
“The U.S. and the UK
have a unique longstanding
tradition of
working intimately
with one another”
Despite efforts by British Prime
Minister Tony Blair to play a leading role
in Europe, the British public has grown
increasingly disillusioned with EU membership
in the past few years. In a recent
ICM poll, commissioned by the New
Frontiers Foundation, 59 percent of
Britons agreed with the suggestion that
the UK “should take back powers from
the EU and develop a new global trade
and defense alliance with America, some
in Europe, and other countries across the
world.” Just 30 percent of respondents
said that Britain “should join the euro
and Constitution and aim for a political
union in Europe.” (The results of this
poll, however, may be somewhat skewed,
as respondents were not offered the
choice of maintaining Britain’s current
relationship with the European Union,
which many would undoubtedly favor.)
The UK’s future direction in Europe
will directly impact the United States.
Economically, it is hard to imagine how
two countries could be closer. Between
1995 and 2003, 64 percent of total U.S.
direct investment in the European Union
went to the UK, while 62 percent of EU
investment in the United States originated
in Britain. The United States and
the UK easily remain the largest foreign
direct investors in each other’s economies.
These extraordinarily close financial
ties between the world’s largest
and fourth largest economies would
alone make the UK a primary U.S. national
security interest.
Militarily, along with France and the
United States, the UK is one of only
three NATO powers capable of sustaining
a global military presence in terms of
both transport capacity and logistics. It
is unfortunate that Britain is embarking
on major cuts in its armed forces as part
of a modernization program.While supposedly
improving Britain’s niche military
capabilities, the cuts are likely to
leave the British military severely overstretched.
Nevertheless, these three powers are
the only Atlantic allies that can participate
in the entire military spectrum,
from high-end, technologically intricate
major war fighting through low-end
peacekeeping. It is also helpful that both
France and the UK are the only European
countries with a genuine geopolitical
grasp of military realities (partly due
to their colonial histories) and a political
tolerance for casualties. This state of affairs
is not expected to change - it is
highly unlikely that any other NATO
power will obtain a significant global
reach in the medium term.
Perhaps the single greatest asset to
the United States from its relationship
with Britain, however, is the UK’s proven
political slant toward America. The two
countries have a unique, long-standing
tradition of working intimately with one
another, as demonstrated in World Wars
I and II, the Cold War, Afghanistan, Iraq,
and the fight against al Qaeda. This ingrained
affinity - the product of a common
cultural heritage, a common
commitment to free markets and free
elections, and common geopolitical
views - is without parallel in the world. It
explains why the UK is currently so vital
to U.S. coalition building and is likely to
continue to be.
Fourthly, the United States must follow
Burke’s advice and see Europe as it
is, not as some Europeans might wish it.
Europe collectively is far weaker than its
federalist adherents proclaim. Simply
put, it is considerably less than the sum
of its parts. In the wake of the Iraq war,
the European Union looks economically
sclerotic, militarily weak and politically
disunited.
Economically, the Franco-German-
Italian core of the euro zone has
structurally high unemployment. Staggeringly,
according to the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development,
between 1970 and 2000 the 12
countries now in the euro area did not
create any net private sector jobs. The
demographic problems created by Europe’s
falling birthrate and aging population
- linked to its over-generous social
safety net - make the preservation of its
way of life highly dubious in the
medium-term without radical reform.
Unless Europe as a whole deals with this
massive problem, it will be consigned to
the status of an elderly theme park.
Militarily, the collective picture is
grim. Despite a market that is slightly
larger than that of the United States, European
defense spending is two-thirds
that of the United States and produces
only 20 percent of America’s deployable
fighting strength. Even the current level
of spending and capability is in peril. In
the words of leading American defense
expert Richard Perle, Europe’s armed
forces have already “atrophied to the
point of virtual irrelevance.”
“Iraq is about the
attitudes of Europeans
toward post-Cold War
American power”
Politically, Europeans remain deeply
divided on seminal issues of war and
peace, as demonstrated by the fundamental
differences between Britain and
France and Germany over Iraq. The
basic reason is that national interests still
dominate foreign policy-making at the
most critical moments, even for states
ostensibly committed to common foreign
and security policies. For the European
powers, Iraq has never been
primarily about Iraq. It is about the attitudes
of Europeans toward post-Cold
War American power and their jockeying
for place within common European
institutions.
One camp, championed by France, is
distrustful of American power and
strives to create a centralized European
Union as a rival pole of power to America.
The other camp, led by Britain and
including the Scandinavian, Baltic and
Central and Eastern European states,
seeks to engage American power and favors
a more decentralized Union.
This very disparate political, economic,
and military picture of Europe is
one reason why the EU constitution -
the latest attempt to impose greater central
control over the European process -
is unlikely to be ratified. There is no
doubt that the framers of the European
project started with over-lofty goals, to
the extent of making false comparisons
with the drafting of the U.S. constitution
in Philadelphia in 1787.
“Washington should
favor a multi-speed
Europe, with each state
having more choice about
its level of integration”
According to the Laeken Declaration
of December 2001, which launched the
process of replacing the Union’s existing
treaties, the new European document
would clarify the division of competencies
among the EU institutions, the
member states and the people, making
the Union more efficient and open. The
institutions were to be brought closer to
Europe’s citizens in an effort to lessen
the Union’s “democratic deficit.” This
was to be a two-way process, with some
powers returned to the member states
and the people and some new competencies
bestowed on Brussels. It is now
clear that these high hopes bear little resemblance
to the finished product.
In fact, the document is riven with
contradictions, many of which will have
to be worked out over time by the European
Court of Justice, with the goal of
“ever-closer union” as its mandate. This
can readily be seen as an effort at further
centralization by the back door, a process
wholly out of line with the notion of a
diverse Europe. Tellingly, the constitution
does little to provide citizens with a
sense of control over the process of European
government or the evolution of
the Union.
These egregious flaws explain why
the constitution will probably not be ratified.
In that case, American policy makers
will have to recognize that the EU
drive toward ever-closer union has at last
decisively sputtered, and that engaging
Europeans at the state level will generally
be far more effective than engaging the
European Union.
Given these broad principles, the
United States should advance the following
policies toward Europe. First,Washington
should favor a multi-speed
Europe, with each state having greater
choice about its level of integration. If, as
is likely, the constitution fails to be ratified,
France has called for the creation of
a more integrated, confederal European
core dominated by France and Germany,
with Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg as
probable members.
The United States should support
this French initiative if it leads to a genuinely
multi-speed Europe. The French
cannot be the only ones to redefine their
role. There must be at least three speeds
to a reconstituted European Union: the
inner core, a group of states that wish to
remain roughly as integrated as they are
now, and an outer core that wants looser
ties with Brussels. This latter group
ought to regain the right to join trading
blocs with non-EU countries. This will
require a trade opt-out, just as a new
confederal opt-in will be necessary for
the inner core.
Such a reconstituted process must be
negotiated all at once, so that a newly defined
inner core, led by France, cannot
stop other states from also altering their
relationship with the European Union. If
such a policy is adopted, individual European
states will be free to decide their
own destinies.
Second, the United States must
launch a massive public diplomacy campaign
in Europe if it is to retain the ability
to engage European countries as
allies. There is little doubt that the conflicts
over the war in Iraq and its aftermath
have been a diplomatic disaster of
the first magnitude for Washington.
While many European governments still
support U.S. policy in Iraq, the general
public remains extremely hostile to
American foreign policy. The recently
published Gallup Transatlantic Trends
2004 poll of opinion in nine major EU
countries found that 58 percent of European
respondents believed that strong
U.S. leadership in the world was “undesirable.”
If Europe is the most likely place for
America to find allies well into the new
century, it must become the main focus
of U.S. global efforts at public diplomacy.
Fostering goodwill toward America
will make a greater practical
difference in Europe than anywhere else
in the world. It may take a generation to
rejuvenate the Transatlantic alliance, and
America must not underestimate the
scale of the problem if this new strategy
is to work. Unless public diplomacy is
used effectively in Europe, America may
have no allies in future.
Third, the United States should help
establish a Global Free Trade Alliance
(GFTA), opening the door to genuine
free trade with qualified European nations
in the outer core. A GFTA would be
an economic coalition of the willing, determined
to liberalize trade among its
members, augmenting already existing
bilateral, regional, and multilateral free
trade negotiations. It would not be a
treaty, but a legislative initiative offering
free trade between the United States and
other nations with a demonstrable commitment
to free trade and investment,
minimal regulation, and property rights.
Congress would offer GFTA members
access to the U.S. market, with no tariffs,
quotas, or other trade barriers, on the
single condition that they offer the same
access to the United States and other
members of the group.
“The U.S. should help
establish a Global Free
Trade Alliance with
qualified European
nations”
The GFTA would associate the
United States and genuine free-trading
European nations with other dynamic
economies around the world, such as
Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand and
Singapore. The GFTA would have no
standing secretariat, and institutional
cooperation would be limited to formal
meetings of the member countries’ trade
ministers, staffs and technical experts.
Further decisions on trading initiatives -
such as codifying uniform standards on
subsidies and capital flows - would be
made on a consensual basis to further
minimize barriers within the alliance.
The GFTA can change the way people
and countries think about free trade.
Further global trade liberalization will
no longer require wrangling over “concessions.”
Instead, free trade will be seen
for what it is, a policy that gives countries
a massive economic advantage. As
the benefits of the alliance become apparent,
the GFTA would serve as a practical
advertisement for global free trade.
Such an organization would be extremely
attractive to the outer European
core, tired of the overly statist strictures
of protectionist Brussels.
“The present unequal
division of labor
in NATO sets
an awful precedent
for the future
of the alliance”
Fourth, the United States should
continue to press for NATO reform, particularly
through increased use of the
Combined Joint Task Force Mechanism
(CJTF), endorsed by NATO governments
in April 1999. Until recently, the alliance
could only take on a mission if all its
members agreed to do so. Under CJTF
procedures, NATO member states do not
have to participate actively in a mission
if they do not feel their vital interests are
at stake, but their absence does not stop
other members going ahead. As Iraq illustrates,
there are almost always some
allies who will go along with any specific
American policy initiative.
The new modus operandi would
work both ways. Sometimes the United
States would act together with those allies
that wanted to join it; sometimes European
countries would act without the
United States. In fact, the first de facto
use of the new procedure involved European
efforts to head off civil conflict in
Macedonia. The United States wisely
noted that Macedonia was, to put it
mildly, not a primary national interest.
For Italy, however, with the Adriatic as
its Rio Grande, upheaval in Macedonia
would have had serious consequences,
destabilizing a near-by region and causing
an unwanted flow of refugees. By allowing
a group of European states to use
common NATO facilities - such as logistics,
lift and intelligence capabilities,
most of which were American in origin -
while refraining from putting U.S. boots
on the ground, Washington followed a
sensible middle course that averted a crisis
in the alliance.
Beyond the sacrosanct Article V
commitment, which holds that an attack
on one alliance member is an assault on
all, the future of NATO consists of just
these sorts of “coalitions of the willing”
acting out of area. Such operations are
likely to become the norm in an era of a
politically fragmented Europe. The
United States should call for full NATO
consultation on almost every major
politico-military issue of the day. If full
NATO support is not forthcoming,
Washington should doggedly pursue the
diplomatic dance, rather than treating
such a rebuff as the end of the process,
as many strict multilateralists
would counsel.
If action by a subset of the alliance
proved impossible, owing to the general
blocking of such an initiative, the United
States should form a coalition of willing
countries around the globe outside
NATO. Only after exhausting these options
should America act alone, if fundamental
national interests were at stake.
Fifth, the United States must continue
to encourage European members
of NATO to modernize the alliance by
developing a rapid reaction force -
quickly deployable, highly lethal, and expeditionary
- so as not to erode the sharing
of risks that is so vital to the continued
functioning of the organization.
The present unequal division of
labor between the United States and its
European allies - with the United States
fighting the wars and the Europeans
keeping the peace - sets an awful precedent
for the future of the alliance. France
and Britain apart, Europe’s paltry military
spending means that the continent’s
only hope of making a viable contribution
to allied security is to modernize
and pool resources, in an effort to play
niche roles in an overall American-led
defense strategy.
There is also a vast and growing
technological discrepancy, with the
United States spending nearly four times
more than its European allies on defense
research and development. Barely ten
percent of Western Europe’s 5,000 attack
aircraft, for example, are capable of precision
bombing, and Europe has almost
no independent “lift” capacity to transport
an army at will. If the United States
continues to be the “mercenary” of the
alliance while the Europeans are the “social
workers,” this functional disparity
will lead to constant differences in political
views and imperil the viability of the
alliance
Sixth, the United States should realign
and update its European base
structure to meet the challenges of the
21st century. President George W. Bush
has called for the removal of up to
70,000 U.S. troops from Europe and Asia
over ten years, in a sweeping reorganization
that would better prepare the armed
forces to handle post-September 11
crises. Two armored divisions would return
to the United States from Germany
and be replaced by one light-armored
brigade. The plan calls for more troops
to be deployed farther south and east in
Europe, nearer the arc of instability (the
Caucasus, Iraq, Iran, the Middle East,
and North Africa), where future crises
are most likely to originate.
This re-deployment is more consistent
with the realities of today’s threats
and will help to remedy NATO’s current
inability to deploy troops quickly. By
making more American troops ready for
rapid deployment, the United States will
help to revitalize the alliance and increase
its relevance to today’s problems.
“The United States
simply cannot
act effectively in
the world without
at least some
European allies”
The restructuring will also increase
America’s geostrategic flexibility. The
United States is currently too dependent
on a few vital NATO countries. Developing
a presence in other European nations
will spread the strategic risk and decrease
America’s dependence on any one
NATO ally. Turkey, for example, will no
longer be one of the few critical pressure
points in mounting a military campaign
in the Middle East, as it was during
preparations for the war in Iraq. American
bases in Bulgaria and Romania
would shift some of the burden away
from this hard-pressed ally, allowing
Ankara to emphasize military action as
regional in nature, not solely as a makeor-
break U.S.-Turkish matter.
It is also important to emphasize
that any removal of American forces
from Germany is not a reaction to
Berlin’s opposition to the war in Iraq. It
is imperative to reaffirm that Washington
values its traditional European alliances,
especially with Germany, and
that the restructuring efforts will benefit
all of Europe by adjusting NATO’s force
structure to reflect the fact that the
world has entered a different era.
Only by grounding American policy
prescriptions in a new view of Europe
will it prove possible to escape from the
reactive nature of current American efforts
to deal with the bewildering continent.
By following Burke’s adage, it
becomes clear that “Europe” is less than
its admirers claim and more than its detractors
admit. European countries remain
the foundation of all coalitions that
America can assemble well into the future,
with the UK playing a critical role.
It is also true that the United States
simply cannot act effectively in the world
without at least some European allies,
whatever the issue. Furthermore, Europe
is not the monolith bloc to which EU integrationists
aspire. On the contrary, it
shows amazing diversity, whether the issues
are economic, military, or political.
Europe is ultimately a hodgepodge, and
this perfectly suits American interests.
Simply put, America will be able to
engage European governments most
successfully in a Europe in which national
sovereignty remains paramount in
foreign and security policy and states act
flexibly rather than collectively. This
flexibility, whether in international institutions
or in ad hoc coalitions of the
willing, is the future of the Transatlantic
relationship, for it fits the objective realities
of the state of the continent. Such a
Europe is worth conserving.
John Hulsman (Above left) is Senior Research
Fellow in European Affairs and Nile Gardiner (Above right)
is Fellow in Anglo-American Security Policy at the Douglas and
Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage
Foundation in Washington.
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