GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

Throughout the Cold War period, Europe was an area where the United States enjoyed consensus across the political aisle. While we argued over many aspects of U.S. foreign policy, there were few issues where the breadth and depth of agreement from the left to the right was clearer. The rationale for U.S. engagement was evident: Washington and its allies in Western Europe were in an Atlantic Alliance to confront the greatest threat to Western security posed by the Soviet Union and communism.

The collapse of communism in Europe in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union two years later led to the first debate over a new rationale for U.S. engagement in Europe and the role of the continent in our foreign policy more generally. As part of a broader strategy in the 1990s to extend stability to the eastern half of the continent and lock in a new post-Cold War peace order embracing new democracies form the Baltic to the Black Sea, a new consensus was built to use NATO to end the wars in the Balkans and to enlarge it in order to anchor Central and Eastern Europe while reaching out to Russia. Already then Washington was faced with questions about the purpose of a U.S.-European strategic alliance in an age where the old Russian threat was absent. As Europe faded as a strategic problem, would it be possible to craft a new relationship in which Europe would become America's key partner in meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century? The debate over whether the United States should seek to reorient the Alliance to be more global and more equal first emerged as a key issue among think tankers in the mid-1990s. By the end of the decade it was debated within the highest councils of the Clinton administration as well as on Capitol Hill.

It was the terrorist attacks of September 11, however, that pushed this debate from the realm of theory to the real world as it underscored how the threats facing the West had moved from the heart of Europe to the greater Middle East. It also revealed the fragmentation of the past U.S. consensus on how to think about Europe's role in U.S. foreign policy. Today one can find three distinctly different views on this key question.

The first view rejects the notion that a unified Europe could or should become a close strategic partner of the United States in facing threats beyond the continent. A strong unified Europe, it argues, will inevitably be built on an anti-American foundation and thus produce an actor skeptical and probably hostile to U.S. interests beyond Europe. Rather than build up Europe to expand its global role, the United States should seek to prevent such a development. This school argues that Washington should rethink its traditional support for European integration. I remember the first time I met John Bolton on a panel debating ESDP. At the time I was a senior State Department official and Bolton was a senior scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

I represented the Clinton administration's view that ESDP was in America's strategic interest because we wanted a strong Europe that could act as a partner but that we had to work to make sure it was pro-Atlanticist. In contrast, Bolton argued that ESDP was a potential threat to the United States because it would inevitably produce a hostile actor under French leadership. The United States, he continued, should pursue a policy of divide and conquer to thwart it. Astonished, I turned to Bolton and said, "I had heard that people like you existed but have actually never met one in person." At the time, that view was completely outside of what I considered to be mainstream American thinking. Today John Bolton is Undersecretary of State, and one can find his view openly argued in some conservative journals.

A second, less hostile and more representative conservative view is represented by Robert Kagan in his by now famous article "Power and Weakness." Kagan's argument boils down to the following: Europe's healing of itself has removed the continent as a major source of threat and U.S. strategic preoccupation. This is a tremendous historic accomplishment the United States must welcome. Europe's attempt to further build its unity is the way to keep Europe peaceful and secure. It is, however, naïve to assume that the United States and Europe will be close strategic partners in the future, because they are drifting apart for many reasons. Historical experience, the asymmetry in power, and the gap between Hobbesian and Kantian worldviews create a strategic mismatch that will become increasingly difficult to bridge.

In contrast to the first view, this school does not believe that the United States and Europe will be enemies or strategic competitors. On the contrary, they argue that there is no reason why we cannot have close and good relations--especially in the areas of commerce, tourism, etc. Moreover, both sides should certainly search for common ground in the realm of foreign policy. We should not, however, expect to be close strategic partners as in the past. Above all, U.S. policy cannot be premised on a reliance on Europe's close strategic support. This is not, Kagan would argue, something to lose sleep over and get all worked up about. It is the natural adjustment of this relationship to a new era.

A third school, to which I belong, rejects the thesis that the United States and Europe are drifting apart or becoming strategically incompatible, insists that the United States desperately needs strategic partners given the problems we face, and maintains that Europe is our natural coalition partner. It asserts that it is possible to create a new strategic partnership if both sides make the same political investment in a common response to the new threats we face as we did vis-à-vis the USSR a half-century ago.

Having largely finished the job of building a new peace structure in Europe, this school argues, the next logical evolution in the U.S.-European relationship is to recast it to meet the greatest threats to both of our interests-all of which now emanate from beyond the continent and many of which are clearly articulated in the greater Middle East. When Bob Kagan and I end up on panels arguing our respective views, he refers to this argument as Ron's "I have a dream!" speech. The implication is clear. It is highly desirable in theory but unrealistic in practice. I argue, in turn, the same about his view.

Where does the Bush administration stand on this issue? Which view is in the ascendancy in today's Washington? The interesting thing about the Bush administration is that all three views coexist, not always peacefully, within its ranks. This is one reason why the administration has such a hard time speaking with a single consistent voice when it comes to policy on Europe. Even senior administration officials remain unsure as to what the president himself truly believes or thinks on these issues.

As for Washington as a whole, the first school remains, in my view, a fringe view among right-wing Republicans, albeit one that is vocal and stronger than it was in the past. The second view is more widespread and influential among conservatives. It has provided much of the intellectual justification for U.S. unilateralism. After all, if the strategic gap across the Atlantic is that big and still growing, who in their right mind would want to pursue an alliance with Europe? The third school is the largest numerically and embraces the old liberal internationalist wing of the Republican Party as well as much of the Democratic Party. But it is clearly not as dominant as it once was.

What about actual U.S. policy? I will conclude with one observation. While much of the language emanating from administration officials seems to reflect the first or second schools, and much of the media and intellectual debate are dominated by the second school, in reality there is a slow but clear evolution in the actual conduct of policy direction of the third school. That is the direction in which the real world is driving us. There is a consensus crystallizing in this country that the greatest threats we will face in the years ahead are likely to emanate from the greater Middle East, that those threats will affect both the United States and Europe, and that if there is a new strategic project for both sides to embrace, it is to reorient our great relationship to address it.

Will we succeed? I do not know. I am, however, convinced that the United States and Europe will be forced to address these problems together, if for no other reason that the problems of the greater Middle East will pull both of us in. The open question is whether we are smart enough to get our strategic act together before they erupt or whether we will end up being pulled in willy-nilly on a disorganized and ad hoc basis, making up policy as we go along. We will all be much better off if it is the former and not the latter scenario.

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Dr. Ronald Asmus is a member of the AICGS Transatlantic Relations Study Group and a German Marshall Fund Fellow.

This commentary appeared in the December 11, 2003 issue of The AICGS Advisor thanks to German Program for Transatlantic Encounters (ERP) at the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labor