The last two years have seen a rapprochement across the Atlantic. The elevation
of new personnel – such as Condoleezza Rice to the State Department and Angela
Merkel as German Chancellor – has helped to remove some of the bitterness that
the Iraq confrontation had left behind. On the substance of issues such as Iran,
Israel-Palestine, or the lifting of the EU’s arms embargo on China, both sides
have sought to work towards compromise rather than confrontation. But this new
personal warmth should not be allowed to conceal a major weakness in the
relationship between Europe and the United States: the inefficiency of
Transatlantic institutions.
The new NATO of 26 members is a useful and important organization – integrating
former Soviet states into the West, keeping the peace in Kosovo and Afghanistan,
promoting interoperability among allied forces and so on. But it is not the
place where Americans or Europeans want to talk about big strategic questions.
Meanwhile the scope and intensity of the EU-U.S. relationship has grown, even in
the sphere of security. For example, it is the EU rather than NATO that now
polices Bosnia, sends troops to the Congo for the July elections and deals with
counter-terrorism policies such as extradition procedures, phone records and
container security.
However, the current institutions of the EU-U.S. relationship do not allow for
high-level strategic discussions on important subjects such as democracy in the
Middle East, the growth of authoritarianism in Russia or the rise of China. As a
result American and European leaders often fail to comprehend each others’
positions, thereby increasing the likelihood of confrontation. Take the messy
flap over the EU’s arms embargo on China: after promising in December 2004 that
it was going to lift its embargo, the European Union then reversed itself in the
face of American pressure and declared in March 2005 that it would not. These
rows across the Atlantic were foreseeable for well over a year before they
happened, but nobody on the EU or U.S. side did any substantive forward-planning
to defuse them.
The EU's special brand of "political correctness" grants Luxembourg the
same status as France in foreign policy
Every year there is an EU-U.S. summit consisting of, on the European side, the
president of the European Commission, the High Representative for foreign policy
(currently Javier Solana) and the head of state or government of the country
holding the EU’s rotating presidency; and on the U.S. side the President, Vice-
President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Commerce, National Security Adviser
and occasionally other senior officials. But they are often disappointing
events. The summit in 2004, for example, lasted just three hours and, although
it issued declarations on economic ties, HIVAIDS, Iraq, Sudan and weapons of
mass destruction, it did not discuss any of the bigger issues. (With neutral
Ireland in the chair, and none of the EU’s “big three” countries – Britain,
France and Germany – represented, that was not entirely surprising.)
At a lower level, several groups of senior officials attempt to manage the
EU-U.S. relationship, the Europeans being represented by the Commission, the
Council [of Ministers, whose secretary-general is the High Representative] and
the presidency, and the Americans by the State Department and the National
Security Council. But because these groups are not preparing for a real
decisionmaking forum, other American departments such as Commerce, Treasury and
Defense are not represented, and senior State Department officials are often
reluctant to participate.
When it comes to cooperation on intelligence, the U.S. agencies have a number of
bilateral relationships with their counterparts in EU countries, but they feed
nothing to the EU’s Situation Center (‘SitCen’), its intelligence-coordinating
body in the Council of Ministers. For example, according to one EU official, the
organization has been given “nothing on Hezbollah that we had not already read
in
The Washington Post.”
A deeper problem lurking behind these inadequate Transatlantic institutions is
purely European. The sad truth is that European leaders seldom discuss Iraq or
China in a strategic way even among themselves. In addition, the EU’s special
brand of “political correctness” – which insists on granting Luxembourg the same
status as France in foreign policy – stops the EU from becoming a credible
international partner.
So the Europeans should use the current debate over Transatlantic institutions
as a trigger not to tinker with NATO but to put their own house in order. They
should try to build on the fairly successful example of informal, smaller forums
such as the Contact Group which dealt with the Balkans in the 1990s (involving
the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy); or the “EU
Three” group (Britain, France and Germany, plus Solana) that has negotiated with
Iran for the past two years.
Europeans need to recognize that the larger member states have more to say on
many of the big issues. Austria, for example, has strong views on the Balkans
but not on Kashmir, Congo or Algeria. This is not to say that the big countries
necessarily have the best analysis or prescriptions: the uncritical attitude of
the French, German and Italian governments towards Russia in recent years has at
times been embarrassing. Smaller countries should be involved when they have
something to contribute, just as Poland and Lithuania worked with Solana on
Ukraine in defusing the crisis there in late 2004.
The same principle should apply to Transatlantic relations. At the highest
level, there should be an annual gathering in a quiet retreat, for walks in the
woods and fireside chats. No more than five European leaders (probably those of
Britain, France, Germany and the Commission, plus Solana) should take part in
this gathering with the U.S. president and four of his most senior colleagues.
The purpose would be free and frank discussion, with no more than one official
per politician allowed, and no press conference.
Then for strategic discussions on specific problems, “contact groups” should be
established. These should consist of the relevant EU foreign ministers and
Solana, together with the U.S. Secretary of State and perhaps other Americans.
On North Africa, for example, the EU’s Mediterranean countries should take part;
on Russia, many of the East European states should be involved.
At a lower level, U.S. departments other than State need to take part in the
groups of senior EU and U.S. officials. There are too few people in Washington
who think about or know about the European Union. Furthermore, the CIA should
send a senior representative to the SitCen, feeding in intelligence when
appropriate (the CIA already does this with the UK’s Joint Intelligence
Committee).
The American services are understandably reluctant to share anything with a
multilateral bureaucracy. But if they want to influence EU foreign policy, they
should think of following the Israeli example. In March 2005 Israeli
intelligence briefed the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee on
Hezbollah and its apparent links to terrorism. As a result, the European
Parliament passed a motion calling for tough measures against Hezbollah.
The Bush team has perhaps moved beyond the Clinton administration's
insistence that Transatlantic links be conducted bilaterally or through NATO
Many small countries will bristle at the idea of forums dominated by big
countries. But they might be reconciled in two ways. First, the contact groups
would not be decision-making bodies. They could make suggestions, but any EU
decisions would require the contact group to convince the Council of Ministers.
Second, Solana could have a senior deputy whose purpose would be to listen to
the views of small states, feed them to the contact groups, and report back to
them. In the enlarged EU, various sorts of sub-groups are inevitable, on an
informal basis. Think, for example, of the regular meetings of the Baltic and
Nordic countries, or the French, German and Spanish summit with Putin in March
2005. These meetings will happen whether people like them or not.
Our proposals recognize that a viable Transatlantic relationship depends on a
more coherent EU foreign policy. When the Europeans are split, Transatlantic
talks on any given issue are harder to manage. When George W. Bush and
Condoleezza Rice visited the EU in February 2005, and praised it, they seemed to
have abandoned their earlier indifference, and perhaps moved beyond the Clinton
administration’s insistence that Transatlantic links be conducted bilaterally or
through NATO. This apparent openness to a different kind of EU-U.S.
institutional relationship may stem as much from NATO’s waning salience as the
allure of a strong EU. But it still presents the Europeans with an opportunity
to recast the relationship – if they are mature enough to seize it.
Charles Grant (L) is the director, and Mark Leonard (R) the
director of foreign policy, at the Centre for European Reform in London.
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