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Europe’s Best Interest:
Staying Close to Number One
Christoph Bertram*
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Europe lacks, above all, the political determination
to play a strategic role in world politics. Only as an
ally, not as a counterweight, can it have any influence
on U.S.US strategy. If Europe proves to be a reliable
friend, despite growing signs of American unilateralism,
it will have a voice in the internal U.S.debate on strategy.
After all, common interests will remain strong.
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Earlier in the year, a shrewd Canadian diplomat
at one of the many meetings on European-American
relations posed a question which has since rankled
in my mind and has become even more pertinent
since: “Do you Europeans want to be allies or
a counterweight to the US?“ The Europeans present
answered with what has been their credo for
the past forty years or so, namely that a strong
transatlantic partnership requires a confident
and strong Europe; counterweight-Europe was
thus essential for alliance-Europe.
This, however, increasingly lacks conviction.
At best, it is a long-term vision, at worst
an alibi. Perhaps one day, the nations of the
European Union will have grown so close together
that they have become a single strategic actor
on the international scene, with coherent policies
and both the will and the means to implement
them. But in the long in-between years until
that lucky day, the states that make up the
European Union will have to accept that they
lack what it takes to be a counterweight. They
will have to decide whether they want to be
allies or not. And since not being allied to
the strongest country in the world is not very
wise, they will have to be good allies.
What
Europe Lacks
For
proud Europeans, this may sound like a call
for submission. Does not the European Union
even before its new round of enlargement count
more citizens than the United States, have a
higher GNP, is a trade power second to none
with the Euro a financial heavy-weight now equalling
the Dollar?? The answer to all these questions
is „yes“. But while these are major and impressive
achievements which qualify the Union as a superpower
in economic and financial terms, they do not
- at least not yet - translate into strategic
power.
At first glance, this is puzzling. Economic
and financial matters play a much greater role
in international affairs today than they did
during the Cold War years. The European Union
has the largest market in the world, it can
bloc the work of the World Trade Organisation,
it is the largest donor of development assistance,
and without its consent no struggling economy
will be rescued from financial crisis. In these
domains, the Union and its members are America’s
indispensable partner, were the mighty US unwilling
to take their interest into account it would
hurt its own interests. Significantly, it is
here that America is a committed multilateralist
– it needs Europe’s consent and Europe’s resources.
There are three reasons, however, why this
considerable political and economic weight which
Europe undoubtedly has does not translate into
strategic power: the lack of military clout,
a highly inefficient way of decision-making,
and the absence of any real ambition to play
a strategic role.
Of
the three, the lack of military might is the
most mentioned and the least important. For
one, the member states of the European Union
are not exactly military dwarfs. Together
they have more men under arms than the US
and spend more money on defence than any country
other than America – half a billion dollars
per day compared to the US daily billion.
The problem here is not that they spend too
little but that they spend it in the most
inefficient and wasteful way: for 15 separate
national defence establishments, for soldiers
they cannot deploy and a military infrastructure
with little or no relevance to the new military
tasks. The advances made by the much acclaimed
European Security and Defence Policy have
been significant in institutions but modest
in substance, with national defence bureaucracies
fighting a determined and largely successful
rearguard action to prevent real role specialisation
among Europe’s armies, not to mention any
serious pooling of her considerable military
resources. For another, individual European
states such as Britain do enjoy a degree of
strategic respect despite military capabilities
dwarfed by those of the United States. It
is clearly not so much the size of the armed
forces a nation or a group of nations can
field but the willingness and ability to use
them which conveys this respect. A European
Union willing and able to make decisive use
of even a much smaller force than its members
now dispose of together would indeed be regarded
as a serious international player.
_____________________________________________________________
There are three reasons
why the considerable political and economic
weight which Europe undoubtedly has does not
translate into strategic power: the lack of
military clout, a highly inefficient way of
decision-making, and the absence of any real
ambition to play a strategic role. Of the three,
the lack of military might is the most mentioned
and the least important. _____________________________________________________________
This
points to the major deficiency of the Union:
its decision-making process is notoriously slow
when it comes to policy areas where member states
maintain control. Significantly, it is in the
areas where the Commission can act as a supranational
authority – in competition and, to a regrettably
lesser extent, common commercial policy – that
the Union has the greatest international impact
and is recognized as a real player. In foreign
and security matters, however, the Council,
not the Commission, is in the driving seat.
That means in essence that the government of
each individual state reserves the right to
agree not only on the decision in principle
but also on each step of the implementation.
While this may do when it comes to dealing with
structural issues, multilateral fora or supporting
a lengthy peace-process, it is a recipe for
wavering and half-heartedness in an acute crisis.
European
governments are aware of this deficiency. There
are hopes that perhaps the Convention currently
drafting a European constitution might offer
solutions to the problem. Various proposals
are being considered – from having the EU President
elected for a number of years instead of the
present six months, to elevating the position
of the High Representative for the Common Foreign
and Security Policy, currently held by the Spaniard
Xavier Solana, to that of a formal “EU Foreign
Minister”, anchored both in the Council Secretariat
and in the Commission, and to taking decisions
in this field by qualified majority vote in
the Council of Ministers. All have considerable
merit and a wise Convention will opt for all
or most of them.
Yet
none of these measures, once accepted, will
remove what is – and perhaps must be – the veto
each member can cast when it comes to follow
up by force what has been announced as policy
– the central prerequisite of strategic power.
For the foreseeable future, no national government
in the EU will delegate to a non-national body
the decision of using military force, even of
committing members to a foreign policy towards
parts of the world in which the use of force
might become advisable. While the institutional
innovations emanating from the Convention will
facilitate the Union’s international presence
they will not, as in the case of competition
and commercial policy, lead to the necessary
streamlining of decision-making.
The Union, therefore, is unlikely to develop
an efficient method for looking after its international
strategic interests. This is the more striking
because already the interests of its members
are increasingly aligned, often even identical.
A decade ago, the beginning of the Balkan Wars
exposed a disunited Europe; today there is total
consensus. The same can be said for relations
with the United States or Russia, for interests
in the Middle East or Africa: while the foreign
policies of bigger member states still differ
on procedure and style, they are quite similar
on substance. In addition, all members, big
and small, have come to realize that it is only
when they operate under the European flag that
they can hope to have much influence in the
world; going it alone reduces the chance of
success. Yet they have so far been unable to
create the mechanism which could turn the alignment
of interests and the value of joint action into
operational reality.
A more effective mechanism must and will one
day be introduced. But even then the Union will
never be able to emulate the unity of decision
practised by a traditional power. In contrast
to the formation of the United States of America,
European integration is not about turning former
colonies into an “ever closer union” but highly
developed and proud states. These states have
lost much of the sovereignty to act on their
own but they are unlikely to provide their Union
with the sovereignty of acting for them in the
way states used to. Ironically, as individual
states they had more power than their combined
power in the Union.
This is something to regret but also to welcome.
After all, the European Union is the only “power”
in history whose geographical extension has
not caused fears or the formation of counter-alliances.
From the original six member states of 1952,
it has progressed to 15 today and will soon
count 25. Instead of being resented by those
still outside, it is being regarded as the most
attractive club to join. If it were ever to
become a traditional strategic power, it would
face the resistance experienced by other, earlier
empires.
The
Union will never to become a traditional strategic
power. It will probably be able one day to muster
its own defence. It will also muster what is
necessary to project stability beyond its borders
through non-military means – and in the wider
Europe is remarkably successful in this respect
– as well as provide military forces for peace–keeping
and even limited peace-making in crisis regions.
But it will not be able to generate the unitary
determination to undertake aggressive military
action or, as the US is now contemplating, military
pre-emption against a possible enemy.
True, the latter may exceed what is required
of a serious international actor anyway; after
all, few other powers in the world dispose of
such a wide range of instruments as that enjoyed
by the European Union to shape their international
environment. But here the third European deficit
in terms of exerting power and influence beyond
the EU territory comes in: a lack of ambition.
European governments and political elites may
pass all sorts of resolutions, write voluminous
communiqués of how to treat the ills of the
wider world and even donate considerable amounts
of public money to deserving causes. But below
the surface of caring lies a great reluctance
to feel responsible.
_____________________________________________________________
The European Union is the only “power” in history
whose geographical extension has not caused
fears or the formation of counter-alliances.
Instead of being resented by those still outside,
it is being regarded as the most attractive
club to join. _____________________________________________________________
This as a general European phenomenon, familiar
to small and larger states alike, displayed by
Germany and France and Britain and Spain and Italy
no less than by Denmark, the Netherlands or Greece.
It may be excused but cannot be explained by the
challenges of EU enlargement. No doubt the historic
process of bringing in the new democracies of
the rest of Europe into the Union and helping
to stabilize the wider region has to focus most
of the energies and resources of member states
on their immediate environment. Yet surprisingly
the fact that the enlarged Union will soon -
with the inclusion of Cyprus - extend its borders
to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East,
that it will border on Syria, Iraq and Iran should
Turkey join has not produced the ambition to address
the strategic consequences that go with this extension.
This general inclination to leave the strategic
problems out there to others is probably the consequence
of having lived with American leadership for so
long and so well. For half a century Europe’s
political class has become accustomed to the fact
that the main initiatives and decisions are taken
by the United States; European governments have
practised a habit of praising or criticising
them, welcoming or resenting them, and in the
end to go along. When you know that someone else
is coping with your problems, there is less incentive
to develop the mentality and the capability to
do so yourself. Europeans have been good and critical
backseat drivers: they are aware they cannot get
out of the car; they know the rules of traffic,
they understand the mechanics of the motor – but
they have never driven the car itself. The truth is they are not particularly keen
to do so. For Europe’s political class to leave
initiative, decision and implementation largely
to the United States has been a sensible arrangement
during the Cold War years. It has remained a convenient
arrangement since then. After all, even when the
United States acted unilaterally in the wider
world, it usually served the interests of its
allies as well, and if it did not do so fully,
the difference was insufficient to outweigh the
disadvantages of opposing or obstructing America’s
efforts. In return for the US looking after the
conflicts in the wider world, the Europeans could
concentrate on building up their Union, enlarging
it and securing its flanks in the Balkans.
_____________________________________________________________
For half a century Europe’s political class
has become accustomed to
the fact that the main initiatives and decisions
are taken by the
United States; European governments have
practised a habit of praising
or criticising them, welcoming or resenting
them, and in the end to go
along.
_____________________________________________________________
In sum, therefore, the Union is no counterweight
to the power of its mighty ally, because
it has neither ambition nor the mechanism
to play such a role. This does not mean
that the Union is powerless. But this power
will have to be employed within the alliance
with the United States, and Europe can only
hope to have any influence on US strategy
if it is not totally opposed to America’s
objectives and actions.
That was convenient to European governments and
acceptable to European publics during the Cold
War and the decade that followed it. More encouraging,
the latter part of the 1990’s suggested not only
a strengthening commitment on both parts of the
Atlantic to the common alliance and its evolution,
it also witnessed a growing compatibility of interests
between Europe and the United States. In the Balkans,
the US finally accepted the need to play a constructive
role instead of frustrating European initiatives.
In the Middle East, the Clinton Administration
was actively and imaginatively seeking a solution
to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Europeans
and Americans pursued very similar policies towards
Jeltsin’s Russia. They stood together in Kosovo,
Nato’s first and first successful war ever; they
created and gave life to the new World Trade Organisation.
While there were differences - Clinton’s America
was opposed to the project of an International
Criminal Court and unimpressed by the Kyoto Protocol
- and the growing gap in military capabilities
suggested growing difficulties in joint military
operations, the common ground was never in doubt.
This was to change fundamentally with the
Administration of President George W. Bush. Somehow,
Americans seemed to wake up to the fact that there
were really Number One. Their new leadership was
determined to make aggressive use of this power
to pursue, if need be unilaterally and with the
certainty that the Europeans had no other choice
than that of going along, what were seen as America’s
primary interests. When September 11 shocked America
and the world and the President asked for help
from US allies in the “war against terror”, Europeans
hoped this would put a more co-operative stamp
on US foreign policy. They soon found out that
they were wrong – instead of changing the course
of the Bush Administration, it confirmed the new
team in its views and provided them with the domestic
support to pursue them even more forcefully.
European publics only really woke up to this
once the Administration revealed its strategy
of forcing a change of regime in Iraq. But long
before the signs had been ominous: Nato, once
America’s coalition of choice, became one among
many – “the mission defines the coalition”, as
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld likes to put it. The
new national security doctrine, formally unveiled
in September 2002 but outlined earlier in the
year by President Bush himself, dismisses the
concepts of strategy that for decades formed the
transatlantic consensus: deterrence, containment,
arms control and international law. Instead, the
United States faced with the threat of international
terrorism and weapons proliferation reserves the
right to use force however and whenever it sees
itself threatened, including the first use of
nuclear weapons, unencumbered by international
covenants. And it advocates openly the removal
of dictatorial and suppressive regimes particularly
those possessing weapons of mass destruction,
in Iraq and elsewhere, to promote democracy around
the globe, if need be by force.
On
World Order – A World Apart
This concept of international
order in the 21st century could not be
further away from the one strongly held by America’s
European allies. Based on the successful experience
of détente when multilateral contact across the
once Iron Curtain facilitated regime change all
over Eastern Europe, as well as on European integration,
the other and most successful experience of multilateralism,
Europeans are convinced that this order can only
be built on inclusiveness, on common and binding
rules and institutions, and on international law.
The West whose unity on basic notions of security
and order were once the cornerstone of the European-American
relationship, is now deeply divided, more so than
at any time in its history. It is a division less
about the new threats than about the new world order
that can best deal with them.
_____________________________________________________________
Quitting the alliance would deprive Europe of
its most important
instrument of influence – a voice in the US
debate
_____________________________________________________________
And yet the difference is one America’s allies
will have to bear, in their own interest. To cancel
the alliance with America is not a serious option
for serious European governments. For one, it
would mean the collapse of their own efforts for
a more united foreign and security policy: forced
to choose between an imperfect European security
union and the alliance with the US, many, probably
most EU members will side with the latter, a trend
which will be further reinforced by the admittance
of new members into the Western organisations
from the former Soviet empire who want to join
Nato precisely because of the US link and would
not want to join an EU that distances itself from
America.
For another, quitting the alliance would deprive
Europe of its most important instrument of influence
- a voice in the US debate . Whatever grand visions
the Bush Administration announces, reality will
impose itself, as it has always done. Moreover,
America is too lively, engaged and open a society
to always and finally endorse the line of its
government, and recent polls indicate that there
are considerable reservations over its more ideological
leanings. The pendulum will swing back again
at some stage. The future direction of America’s
approach to the world and to Europe is not cast
in concrete by the decisions now taken by the
Bush Administration, it remains to be formed,
confirmed or changed through controversial discussion.
The extraordinary, possibly unique feature of
the American debate is that the political class
of the most powerful country in the world not
only does not mind others taking part in its
discussions but actively invites them. In Europe,
national publics are still some distance away
from accepting as legitimate and natural the participation
of other EU citizens in their domestic discourse.
Americans, to the advantage of their European
allies, have no such problems at least as long
as Europeans make clear that they are and want
to remain allies.
Anything else makes no sense for Europe, not
today and not tomorrow. In a distant future the
Union may have developed the mentality, the mechanism
and the means to become an effective international
player and consequently will have a much greater
weight in the relationship. But even then it is
still likely to share more interests than differences
with the United States. After all, for neither
Europe nor America is there another partner equally
committed to the same values and political traditions.
If these two agree on what the basic rules and
institutions of international order should be,
there is a real chance of establishing a fair
and stable international order. If they do not,
they will both fail.
The problem, of course, is how
to manage the relationship in the meantime when the
US is at the peak of its power and the Europeans groping
towards greater unity, vulnerable in their pride and
convinced of their vision of international order.
Yet if there is no long-term alternative to the alliance
with the United States, there is no short-term one
either. The European Union cannot go it alone; if
it were to try it would be neither effective nor cohesive,
and it would loose the chance of taking part and influencing
the American debate.
_____________________________________________________________
While Europe and America are drifting apart, they
do so in a container: common interests will push
them back together, even if it may take some time.
_____________________________________________________________
The best approach to the problem is for Europeans
to become smart allies. In order to have any influence
on the American debate and America’s policy, their
commitment to the alliance and their solidarity
must be as clear as their willingness to listen
and consider US arguments must be evident. Alliance
does not mean submission, and there is room for
differing positions argued out in respect for the
interests of the other partner; if Europeans disagree
with America’s Iraq policies, they must at least
take the Iraqi challenge seriously and be credible
in the alternatives they propose. At the same time,
they must learn what they have neglected for so
long, namely to unite their policies through efficient
EU institutions without appearing to gang up against
the United States. The more they succeed in combining
unity in Europe with transatlantic solidarity, the
greater their ability to shape the transatlantic
future.This will, no doubt, become more difficult.
The Bush Administration is more assertive than any
of its predecessors and its view of world order
runs counter to deep-rooted European instincts.
If it is true, however, that Europeans cannot risk
transatlantic divorce, their governments will have
to do their best to manage the marriage and, at
the same time, maintain support for it at home.
The latter will require much more attention by political
leaders than it has received so far. Neither the
temptation to gain domestic support by criticising
the United States nor that of overselling the progress
of European foreign and security policy has always
been resisted, leaving public opinion with the false
impression that Europe can provide an alternative
to the alliance with the US. Yet whatever formal
declarations of solidarity with America governments
may issue, their credibility will be undermined
by public demonstrations to the contrary. What influence
governments may hope to gain with America and her
public through signs of support will then be lost.
Managing the in-between will thus demand considerable
statesmanship from America’s allies. Two considerations
should help them stay the course when temptation
beckons: For one, the maintenance of the alliance
with the US is now and for the foreseeable future
in the national interest of each of their countries.
For another, while Europe and America are drifting
apart, they do so in a container: common interests
will push them back together, even if it may take
some time.
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Christoph Bertram
*1937;
Direktor der Stiftung Wissenschaft und
Politik (SWP), Berlin; christoph.bertram@swp-berlin.org
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