Stefan Fröhlich,
Professor for International Politics, Department of Political Science, University Erlangen
Paper presented to the Conference “Europe faces outward”
WoodrowWilsonCenter European Alumni Association
Barcelona, September 13, 2008
Europe and the US
1. Get the expectations right
As the US transitions from the Bush to a new administration, we are likely to experience yet another transatlantic crisis – this time one of rising expectations unfulfilled. There seems to be great hope in Europethat a Democratic government (which almost everybody expects to replace the current Republican one) would turn the US into a more pliable, chastened and multilateral global actor solving common international problems on terms much more comfortable to Europeans. TheUS, on the other hand, will at least try to hold back from new engagements wherever possible, and expect a more helpful and self-assertive Europe that will take more responsibility and run risks to solve these problems. As a matter of fact, with economic and domestic problems being what most Americans seem to concern in this election, it is likely that especially an Obama administration, will hold back and ask Europeans for far more global commitment (Iraq and Afghanistan will be the most prominent examples to serve these expectations).
This should not lead us to think that the US will restrain from its global commitment and somehow turn isolationist. The main characteristic principles driving US foreign policy will prevail under any government. Both candidates agree on most foreign policy issues and the major problems of the day. Obama and McCain believe that homeland security is paramount; that WMD and terrorism are the greatest threats to the US; that more needs to be done in Afghanistan; that unilateralism and pre-emptive strikes are acceptable and may be necessary; that military force plays a great role in the fight against terrorisms and that therefore the US needs even more spending on defence; that it must reduce its dependence on foreign oil; and that its European allies, by and large, do not enough for global security. Their specific proposals vary slightly in emphasis, but are not dissimilar. Nor are they substantially different from Bush’s policies. The subjects that most obviously divide the candidates are Iraq, trade, and - to a certain extent - regimes like Iran, Syria or North Korea. Though Obama and McCain appear poles apart on Iraq – one seeming to promise rapid withdrawal come what may, the other committed to stay for as long as necessary – the true difference is narrower, and getting more so. The same is also true for trade. Obama appears to have sold out to protectionist sentiment in the Democratic Party, whereas McCain is a staunch and consistent free-trader. However, for general election purposes, Obama will need to cool the anti-trade rhetoric a little. McCain is unlikely to bend on the matter but must know that in 2008 unwavering support for liberal trade is no election winner. Last not least, there is the case of Iran (and other unfriendly regimes). Obama says he would take any opportunity to engage Iran in direct talks that is without any preconditions; McCain on the other hand refuses to sit down with enemies. But does anybody believe Obama would meet anybody, friend or foe, without extensive talks among lower-level officials first. Conversely, McCain’s refusal would be nothing more practice than a reluctance to do so publicly. Every government that takes this line pursues back-channel negotiations (the same, by the way, applies to Russia).
Taken all these issues together, trade and climate change, maybe Iran and missile defence, might make a difference in the context of transatlantic relations: A Democratic President would certainly be more open to any changes in the US climate change position in the European direction; in this case however, states and businesses have taken the initiative, not the federal government. Here, Congress is likely to prevent any significant future commitments. In the trade issue, a Republican government it seems would rather serve European and global interests. Irrespective of the outcome of the election, the US will be less active in negotiating and enacting trade deals. McCain would be badly hampered if Congress does not renew his authority to negotiate international trade agreements.
However one clear message for future transatlantic relations is that, regardless who will become the new president there will be not really a new US policy. Having said this, it is also important to understand that on the European side, not much will change either. The newly drafted Treaty of Lisbon will not make the EU a stronger global partner for the US. CFSP/ESDP will remain under control of the MS and the newly established top posts of EU president and EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy with their mostly coordinating functions might be able to slightly streamline decision-making. Thus, efforts at broad NATO and EU cooperation in creating effective military forces and power projection capabilities and the necessary political instruments so far have rather token value. Despite steady improvement in the sharing of intelligence on terrorism and in cooperation on anti-terrorism efforts and at military exercise, planning and technical level systematic and coherent force transformation planning will be constrained by cost, a lack of consistent national efforts, and the inability to achieve true standardization and interoperability. The UK will remain Europe’s only power capable of serious power projection. Germany will continue its decline through sheer under-funding and lack of coherent direction. France is also spending more and will make some force improvements, but its modernization efforts have no clear mission (despite its latest initiatives in the Mediterranean), or mission capabilities, and it is slowly losing the expertise it built up previously in Africa. In this context a major focus will be on the possible and expected contribution by the New Member States in the EU to the development of NATO and ESDP.[i]
In other words, the EU for the foreseeable future will not turn into one of the three “empires” competing for relative dominance in the world as is assumed in a widely received recent analysis (Parag Khanna, The Second World, Empires and Influence in the New Global Order, New York 2008). It is also rather doubtfulthatCharles Kupchan’ s analysis, who sees Europe’s rising power and expanding global ambitions as the main reason for the current transatlantic crisis (which in turn is part of a long-term erosion and breakdown of the Western alliance), is getting it right. Nevertheless, the new US government will and should uphold pressure for more European global engagement by taking the EU president and the “foreign minister” seriously and testing their real capacities.
Anyway, what should be clear is that: yes, there is a long list of pressing current issues dominating the transatlantic agenda. However, we must also look beyond these issues to identify the underlying trends shaping politics across the Atlantic in these days. Though the “political storms that swirled so violently across the Atlantic over the Iraq crisis” (John Ikenberry)have since calmed, and new leaders will have taken office on both sides by 2009, questions remain about the longer-term significance and impact of this upheaval on transatlantic relations. The real questions in the contemporary debate are how serious the US-EU discord is and what are its sources?
Looking more deeply into the structure and foundation of the Western order and into how the recent conflict exposes the operating logic and trajectory of that order, there is only one realistic scenario for the future relationship and that is onethat lies between the very optimistic vision that the transatlantic relationship will survive anyway because the West shares a history of freedom,[ii] and the pessimistic outlook telling the transatlantic world to drift apart. This scenario is closely interlinked with the “coalitions of the willing” concept and holds that future transatlantic relations will remain intact, but certainly also be less institutionalized (though the opposite would be necessary) and more ad hoc in character. Both sides start to accept that the relationship has definitely changed over the last one and a half decades and also realize their common vulnerability in today’s world and renegotiate their political and strategic relationship (new bargain, strategic consensus, agree that we may disagree).
2. Structural shifts in transatlantic relations
As a matter of fact, there is a divergence of values across the Atlantic in these days. However, disputes on several issues are not only the result of the mismanagement of allied relations by the current US administration at a time when the Europeans were more committed to multilateral solutions. The structural shifts in the relationship as they have occurred and further developed ever since the end of the Cold War certainly contribute much more to the alleged transatlantic rift than Europe’s alienation by the Bush administration. The spectacular change in America’s international posture, the emergence of unchallenged US supremacy (militarily, economically and even culturally), the celebrated “unipolar moment” has caused latent discontent, even frustration among European allies/friends who had/have to deal with this dominance, yet did/do neither cope with the ideas of the neo-conservative revolution nor the rigid market conservatism in the US. It also contributed to the gradual shift of the EU from an economic power to an influential and instrumental actor far beyond the continent on the other hand. Though it took Europeans quite a while until they started realizing that the power they exercised in their neighbourhood (enlargement) was largely derived from the fact of the EU’s very existence rather than from an active foreign policy, the EU today at least has accepted that there are areas of concern in it’s vicinity that require a much more active policy (especially where it is no longer possible to wait for the Americans) and where it has to develop at least some kind of a strategic vision, either complementing or qualifying US power.[iii]
In other words, the weakening of the bond has been inevitable as the end of the Cold War reduced Europe’s reliance on the US for security, and there can be no doubt about the lasting impact of the evolving of this new kind of power on the transatlantic relationship, a power that cannot be measured in terms of military budgets but rather in terms of its long term transformative power. The Balkan wars further obscured the transformation of the transatlantic security alliance. It made the US think that the Europeans would continue to look to the US to make decisions, and in the end would follow the US world leadership.
3. Transatlantic differences
Following from these structural shifts, there are at least three strategic threats in the “hard security” realm which the USand the EU agree are important (proliferation, terrorism and militant Islam, failing states and their potential for armed conflicts), from which however, not least because of different socio-political, religious and cultural foundations, they have drawn different conclusions in the aftermath of 9/11. As the relevant Security Strategies reveal, Americans and Europeans have not so much different opinions on what they perceive as common threats (geo-strategic conflicts)but rather on how to answer to these threats. This has a great deal to do with their different histories and respective geographical outreach; while, historically, security threats and trade interests compelled Americans to think globally, Europeans so far have thought in regional terms. As a consequence, both sides have not only developed different policy preferences, but also different political-military (defence capabilities) and economic means to shape and manage international politics: “unilaterally” vs. “multilaterally”; using force (“hard power”) vs. using diplomacy (“soft power”); “pre-emptive strikes” vs. “preventive diplomacy”; “using international organizations” vs. “coalitions of the willing”; “exit”- vs. “process-orientedness” etc. Last not least and again related to the other issues, Americans and Europeans often espouse different positions on many global issues for political-cultural reasons, partly also because of an additional critical question faced by Europe and that is the institutional finality of the EU (cultural-systemic conflicts). Many transatlantic conflicts still arise from ongoing leadership frictions within the EU as well as from serious questions of identity for Europeans - reflected in different levels of shared sovereignties, multi-level structures, and political steps that have moved the EU forward and backward – on the one hand, and a lack of understanding of and patience for these EU functional mechanisms.
Americans and Europeans certainly must find common ways to deal with these threats (especially outside Europe) including targeted development assistance, focused human rights initiatives, and plans to revitalize institutional mechanisms for dealing with global issues. For Washington existing international security mechanisms, including the UN and NATO, are ill equipped to deal with most of these security threats. Europeans, on the other hand, because of the progressive erosion of the nation state, insist that resorting to military force is legitimate only if sanctioned by the UN Security Council.[iv] The question is how well U.S and the EU can cooperate on them within and outside these institutions. In this context an analysis of the UN Charter’s lasting relevance in light of the Bush doctrine of pre-emption is as necessary as a discussion on the need for US-EU cooperation on many “Greater Middle East” issues that have nothing to do with power projection (as they have been mentioned but so far not systematically addressed in the “Broader Middle East Initiative” of 2004).
4. A new Transatlantic Agenda
What could/should a future transatlantic agenda against this background look like? No doubt, the new geopolitical realities such as the inexorable rise of China and India, Russia’s irritability, the ascension of fundamentalism, Iran’s nuclear ambitions or globalization are almost automatically calling for joint responses and a common global strategic outlook by the Euro-Atlantic community. Even if Europeans do not tend to emphasize these threats and challenges in the same way as the US it does not change the fact that there is a shared vulnerability, which will keep the transatlantic relationship together. Even if Europeans are not interested in radical militant Islam, they have to face the fact that militant Islam is interested in Europe. And though Bush’s so-called military “surge” may have somehow improved the overall security situation in Iraq, the US can not reclaim control of events in Iraq, even less so in the Middle East. The problem remains as it has been since the invasion: military force can work only as an adjunct to a political strategy. In other words, external pressure as a constant variable in shaping any foreign policy automatically forces the Euro-Atlantic community to react very much in the same direction - and if there is a dissent from time to time and Europeans have difficulties to reach accommodation the “coalitions of the willing” concept could serve as a complementary full-back option.
The interesting point in this context is that while in the US changes in foreign policy are very much driven by what one could call the power variable and a risk-taking propensity - thus making it very pro-active in nature, the EU’s foreign policy approach is rather reactive and driven by “fear” and a constant evaluation of its options in terms of gains and losses. In the American case that means that there is a huge potential (in terms of capabilities) and also prevailing optimism to shape global politics on the one hand (exit-oriented), but also, on the other hand, an inherent danger of an overstretch which at one point can all too easily translate into an abrupt policy change when the former approach had failed repeatedly or catastrophically. In the European case there has been a tendency to suggest, that Europe can continue to profit from the status as the “soft” or “civilian” counterpart to the “hard” United States, but also the lack of an intrinsic justification for European integration in general and consideration of its international responsibilities and the means to master them in particular.
Anyway, faced with protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, a crisis with Iran, a emerging rivals in Asia and tremendous tasks at home (budget deficit, reform of the pension system), Washington is looking for “partners” while Europeans, by contrast, seem to have given up their traditionally reluctant in favour of a more (self-) assertive role in global politics in many ways, seeking for co-equal leadership. By sharing tasks and decision-making responsibilities within a common NATO-EU frame, the US will certainly have to relinquish some decision-making authority, while the EU/European Member States must improve their capabilities. The ever increasing problems of failing states, proliferation, energy security, radical militant Islam can only be handled in a multilateral effort; there is no way, not even for the US, to face these challenges as an individual nation-state. That is why the US and the EU security strategies, despite all differences, as well as the new “Broader Middle East” initiative also bear some positive signals indicating that positions are merging into a new and hopefully more productive cooperation for the future.