President George W. Bush
will shortly embark upon what could well be the most important
European trip of his presidency. Between February 20 and 24,
the President will hold summit talks with leaders of NATO and the
European Union (EU) and will meet with British Prime Minister Tony
Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Bush's European tour comes amid continuing divisions within Europe
regarding U.S. policy in Iraq and transatlantic tensions over a
host of issues, including the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, the
lifting of the EU arms embargo on China, and the Arab- Israeli
conflict.
The second Bush
Administration has rightly made strengthening the transatlantic
alliance a key foreign policy priority, recognizing that coalition
building in Europe is absolutely critical to advancing
long-term American interests on the world stage. The United States
must continue to engage all of the major players in Europe,
including those with which it disagrees.
While pursuing a policy of
engagement with the European Union, however, President Bush should
avoid making statements that could be perceived as a U.S.
endorsement of the EU Constitution and Franco-German plans for a
unified foreign policy. Such statements would only strengthen the
hand of America's opponents in Europe and weaken the position
of those who are fighting to maintain the sovereignty of the
nation-state, clearly threatened by the constitution's blueprint
for a federal Europe. Supporters of the constitution in Paris,
Brussels, and Berlin, who include many of President Bush's
fiercest international critics, would be delighted if the
world's only superpower began to sing their tune.
The Bush Administration
should adopt a purely interest-based position regarding the future
direction of Europe, emphasizing that U.S. goals in Europe
include preserving the NATO alliance, maintaining the Anglo-U.S.
special relationship, and supporting a multi-speed Europe based on
the principle of each individual state having greater choice about
its level of integration with Brussels.
The President's European
trip will also serve as a valuable opportunity to lay down the
gauntlet and challenge those European nations that opposed regime
change in Baghdad, including France and Germany, to play a
constructive role in building a democratic Iraq. President Bush
should call on Europe's big three-Paris, Berlin, and London-to
adopt a more aggressive stance in negotiations with Tehran while
acknowledging that U.S. interests in the Middle East are best
served by working closely with the European capitals. The President
should also reiterate Washington's willingness to play a major role
in advancing the peace process between the Israelis and
Palestinians.
Key
Goals of President Bush's
European Trip
The goals of President
Bush's visit to Europe should be to:
-
Demonstrate
a renewed U.S.
commitment to strengthening the transatlantic
alliance,
-
Strengthen
U.S.-European
cooperation in the war against terrorism,
-
Develop greater coordination of
U.S.-European efforts to prevent the emergence of a
nuclear-armed Iran,
-
Seek guarantees
of additional
European support for U.S.-led efforts to advance freedom and
democracy in Iraq,
-
Reiterate that the White House will
play a lead role alongside Great Britain and other EU
countries in advancing the Middle East peace
process,
-
Reaffirm Washington's opposition to
the EU's plans to lift its arms embargo on China, and
-
Underscore
U.S. concerns over
German and French efforts to marginalize NATO.
Importance
of Europe to U.S. Interests
Whatever the global
issue-whether tracking down al-Qaeda, the Doha free 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.
However, neither is the world one in which a concert of powers
dominates. Whatever the issue, the U.S. remains the first among
equals. The structural reality makes America's courting of
allies vital, for the world is neither genuinely unipolar nor
multipolar.
Europe is the only part 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 U.S. must make a
massive public diplomacy effort in Europe if it is to retain
the ability to engage European countries consistently as allies.
The President's upcoming trip, as well as Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice's and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's
recent meetings in Europe, certainly represent an outstretched
American hand to the continent, serving as a genuine effort to
end the transatlantic tension brought on by the war in
Iraq.
However, in order to
remedy a problem, its true dimensions must be clearly examined.
There is little doubt that the U.S.-European diplomatic
controversy over Iraq and its aftermath have been a public
diplomacy disaster of the first magnitude. While governmental
support for U.S. policy in Iraq is still strong in many European
countries, public hostility toward American foreign policy remains
extremely high. The recently published Transatlantic Trends
2004poll of public opinion in nine major European Union member
states[1] should make disturbing reading
for the State Department: 76 percent of those surveyed
disapproved of President Bush's international policies, and 75
percent were opposed to the war in Iraq. Most worrying of all, 58
percent of European respondents held the view that strong U.S.
leadership in the world is "undesirable."
If Europe is the most
likely place for America to find allies well into the new
century,[2] the U.S. must launch a
significant public diplomacy campaign on the continent to make
such a long-term strategy possible. Indeed, it must become the main
focus of global efforts at public diplomacy, as nowhere else in the
world will safeguarding American goodwill make such a
practical difference. The U.S. must recognize that much of Europe
is alienated from the American worldview, whether the subject is
trade, Iraq, or the wider war on terrorism. It may take a
generation to fully rejuvenate the transatlantic alliance, and the
U.S. must not underestimate the scale of the problem if this new
strategy is to work. Unless the public diplomacy tool is used in
Europe, the U.S. may have precious few allies with which to work in
the future.
Europe
Remains Divided
While America has much
work to do to sell its message in Europe, U.S. policymakers should
remain wary of the temptation to deal with the Brussels bureaucracy
as opposed to national capitals. The notion that Europe has
one voice or is united in outlook is a myth.
Despite rhetoric from the
European Commission, the great European powers rarely agree on
the majority of the great global issues of the day. Europe is a
union of nation-states, deeply divided by history, language, and
culture, and it maintains a healthy division of outlook regarding
major foreign policy issues. There are serious disagreements
over American global power, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the
Kyoto protocol, how to wage the war on terrorism successfully, and
NATO's role in the new era. Any attempt to force consensus in
Europe, which the EU Constitution will undoubtedly do, will be
inherently undemocratic, counterproductive, and
artificial.
The EU's one-size-fits-all
approach does not fit the modern political realities on the
continent. European countries have politically diverse
opinions on all aspects of international life. For
example, Ireland strongly supports free trade, has extensive
ties to the U.S. through its history of immigration to the New
World and its presence as a destination for U.S. foreign direct
investment, and is an advocate of economic
liberalization.
By contrast, France is
often protectionist, unapologetically statist in organizing its
economy, and frequently adversarial toward America. Germany
falls between the two on issues of free trade and relations with
the United States and is more pro-NATO than France, but values U.N.
involvement in crises above that of the alliance and is for
some liberalization of its economy in order to retain its
corporatist model. This real European diversity will continue to be
reflected politically in each state's control over its foreign and
security policy, because a more centralized Europe simply does not
reflect the political reality on the ground.
When examining the
question of Iraq, the fundamental issue of the past few years,
one sees a complete lack of coordination at the European level.
Currently, there are 12 EU member states with troops in Iraq,
compared with 13 EU members that have refused to support the
U.S.-led coalition. The U.K. strongly supported the U.S.; the
Schroeder government in Germany was against any use of force
whether sanctioned by the U.N. or not; and France initially held a
wary middle position, favoring intervention only if the U.N.
(i.e., Paris) retained a veto over American actions. It is hard to
imagine the three major European powers staking out starker foreign
policy positions.
The basic reason for this
is obvious: National interests still dominate the making of foreign
policy at the most critical moments, even for states
ostensibly committed to some vague form of supranationalism. For
the European powers, Iraq has never been primarily about Iraq. The
geopolitical ramifications of what happens in Baghdad have
always been peripheral to European concerns about the war.
Iraq has been fundamentally about two things for European states:
their specific attitude toward post-Cold War American power
and jockeying for power within common European
institutions.
Europe remains torn
asunder by conflicting points of view on these two critical points.
One camp, championed by France, distrusts American power and
strives to dominate a centralized EU in such a way as to become a
rival to America as a pole of power. The other camp, led by Britain
and the Central and Eastern states ("New Europe"), sees American
power as something to be engaged and traditionally views a more
decentralized Brussels as best for the constituent members of the
union.
The EU
Constitution and the End of Momentum for Ever-Closer
Union
Even on the critical
question of the future course of the EU-with Germany for deepening
integration and widening membership, the U.K. for
widening membership but not much deepening, and the French
stressing the deepening of EU institutions- one finds a cacophony
of voices rather than everyone singing from the same
hymnal.
This very disparate
political, economic, and military picture of Europe explains
why the EU Constitution-the most recent attempt to impose
greater control over the European process-is unlikely to be
ratified. According to the Laeken Declaration, which launched the
process of writing a new constitution to replace existing
treaties, the document would (1) clarify the division of
competencies among the EU, the states, and the people, making the
EU more efficient and open; (2) be transparent in order to be more
explicable as citizens are brought closer to European
institutions in an effort to lessen the democratic deficit;
and (3) be a two-way process, with some powers returned to the
states and the people while other new competencies would be
bestowed upon Brussels.[3] It is now clear that these high
hopes bear little resemblance to the finished
document.
At over 300 pages, written
so only a lawyer can understand it and with absolutely no powers
being returned to the states or the people, the constitution
has failed by the Laeken Declaration's own description. It has
become just another opaque attempt at further EU centralization,
including the first formal charter of the primacy of EU law over
national law and the creation of common rules on asylum and
immigration by majority vote.
While national vetoes
remain over direct taxation, foreign and defense policy, and
financing of the EU budget, the constitution commits the EU members
to the progressive framing of a common defense policy. In fact, the
document is rife with such contradictions. Many of these
discrepancies are to be worked out over time by the European Court
of Justice, which is mandated to interpret the law with the goal of
"ever-closer union." This can readily be seen as an effort at
centralization by the back door, a process wholly out of line with
the notion of a diverse Europe. Tellingly, the constitution
does nothing to provide citizens with any sense of control over the
process of European government or the evolution of the EU.[4]
These egregious flaws
explain why the constitution is unlikely to be ratified.
Theoretically, any state can nullify the constitution by voting
"no" in a referendum, and this is highly likely. In Britain,
traditionally very skeptical of EU centralization, a large majority
of voters are opposed to ratification. Neutralist Ireland has fears
about closer EU defense cooperation and voted "no" in a recent
referendum on the Nice Treaty. Voters in the Netherlands,
furious at German and French flouting of the economic Stability and
Growth Pact, might also vote against the constitution. In Poland,
an extremely unpopular pro-EU government could well lose such a
vote. The skeptical Danes, who voted against the original version
of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, could again vote "no" for both
defense and economic reasons.
Even the French,
traditional champions of all efforts at further integration, might
vote against the constitution. The Maastricht Treaty, which
established the process that led to the European common
currency, was undoubtedly a move toward greater centralization of
the European project, yet the French passed the referendum by a
margin of less than 1 percent because many saw it as being skewed
toward Germany's advantage. Frustrated by the constitution's very
lack of ambition, the French might also vote against the
constitution.
One or several of these
political outcomes is almost certain. If so, American policymakers
need to recognize that the EU drive toward ever-closer union has at
last decisively sputtered and that engaging the Europeans at the
national level will generally be far more effective than engaging
the EU.
If a major European
country rejects the constitution, the EU will be forced to
adopt a multi-speed Europe, in which some countries opt for
ever-closer union, while traditional U.S. allies such as Britain
form an outer core of EU members with looser political ties to
Brussels.
Seeing
Europe As It Would Be:
The Euro-Federalist Fantasy
However, for the sake of
argument, what if a more centralized Europe becomes a reality? How
would a politically unified Europe affect the United
States?
It is frightening to
imagine what would happen to American interests if the
supranational imperative extended further into the foreign and
security policy realm. For example, if a Common European Foreign
and Security Policy had genuinely functioned in 2003, however
badly, then Belgium, France, or Greece (all states with strongly
anti-American publics) could have vetoed efforts by the U.K.,
Poland, and Italy to aid America in Iraq. Taken to its extreme,
such an outcome could require consensus among all EU states to
support a foreign policy objective.[5]
Those who wish to preserve
America's ability to pursue coalition building must therefore
strenuously oppose efforts to increase the level of EU
foreign policy integration. Such an institution in a divided
EU would perpetually prevent many European states from working
closely with the U.S. to solve global problems.
Indeed, the most prominent
casualty of a united European foreign policy would be the
Anglo-U.S. special relationship, forcibly consigned to the
scrap heap of history. America's closest ally would be unable to
operate an independent foreign policy and stand alongside the
United States where and when it chose to do so. The consequences
for American foreign policy would be hugely damaging. Yet, with
efforts at ever-closer integration increasingly running into
difficulty, there is another diplomatic path for the United States
to take.
It is important that the
President be aware of this reality, which will be very different
from the one doubtlessly presented by the unelected bureaucrats in
Brussels. A Europe in which states react flexibly according to
their unique interests, rather than collectively according to some
utopian ideal, best suits American interests.
As a result, the U.S. must
engage European states on an issue-by-issue, case-by-case basis to
maximize its diplomatic effectiveness, gaining the greatest number
of allies for the largest number of missions. The U.S. should use
the widest possible range of diplomatic, political, and
military tools to advance its general interests in Europe,
remembering that the continent is vital but generally
fragmented on matters relating to foreign and security
policy.
Key
Areas of Transatlantic Tension
The Iranian Nuclear
Issue. The brewing Iranian
nuclear crisis is a practical consequence of the poisoned
transatlantic relationship and is a primary instance of an
almost complete lack of coordination between the United States
and Europe. The EU-3 (U.K., France, Germany), currently negotiating
with the mullahs, are doing a pretty good impersonation of Neville
Chamberlain, having wholly divorced diplomacy from any idea of
the power that must back it up if it is to prove successful.
For example, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was unwise to
publicly take the threat of force off the table when dealing with
Tehran. If sticks are not to be used, what appears to be a
negotiation is actually little more than a form of diplomatic
surrender.[6]
On the other hand, the
Bush Administration has completely ceded the diplomatic role to its
European counterparts. Without direct American involvement in
negotiations, the European negotiations simply have no chance
of stopping Iran from acquiring a full nuclear fuel cycle. This
failure will leave the U.S. with only grave choices. To do
nothing would likely mean the end of the Non-Proliferation Treaty
and could spur a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
The Islamic Republic of
Iran is about to acquire nuclear weapons. President Mohammad
Khatami has clearly stated that Iran will never give up enrichment.
The West has engaged in dueling competitive efforts at futility.
This is too important an issue for Europeans to continue living in
a post-historical sandbox while America ignores the fact that Rome
is burning.
There are no easy answers
where Iran is concerned. Even if theUnited States could
somehow foment regime change in Tehran, the fact remains that
Iranians, whether fundamentalist mullahs or student democrats, all
want the bomb. This is not an issue of democracy, but of Persian
nationalism. Israel will not be reassured if a democratic Iran,
still pledged by majority vote to drive the Israelis into the sea,
acquires weapons of mass destruction.
Whatever does happen, it
is vital that the EU-3 and the United States reach a common
diplomatic position regarding the Iranian nuclear crisis. The Bush
Administration must become more actively engaged in the
European-led negotiations with Tehran in an effort to force
compliance while maintaining the option to use military force as a
last resort. The EU must be prepared to support the use of U.N.
Security Council and European sanctions against Tehran if it fails
to:
-
Ratify immediately and
strictly adhere to the Additional Protocol;
-
Commit to full cooperation
and transparency with the International Atomic Energy Agency to
resolve all remaining issues;
-
Terminate permanently its
pursuit of a full nuclear fuel cycle, including all programs to
enrich uranium and produce uranium hexa- flouride and its
precursors and all programs to extract plutonium;
-
Terminate permanently its
pursuit of a heavy-water reactor; and
-
Agree to an intrusive
inspections regime (using real-time monitoring equipment) at the
Bushehr reactor and associated spent fuel storage
pond.
Additionally, the U.S. and
Europe should press the Iranians to renounce support for
international terrorism and give firm guarantees that they
will dramatically improve their country's human rights situation.
In return, the United States and the EU should develop a range of
incentive measures holding out the possibility of Iran's returning
to the international fold instead of remaining a pariah on the
world stage.
The Doha Free Trade
Round. The EU's Common
Agricultural Policy, which consumes roughly half of its entire
budget, is easily the biggest obstacle to bringing the Doha
trade round to a successful conclusion. This 50 billion-euro
protection racket dwarfs America's egregious efforts to protect its
own agricultural market. After several decades, the world will
simply not allow any more excuses for French farmers' not competing
in the global marketplace and instead being cosseted by
economically sclerotic, social democratic nanny states.
Neither the EU nor the
U.S. can implement further agricultural liberalization without the
other trading region agreeing to synchronized cuts. Without an
agricultural deal, there is no overall deal for the Doha Round,
initially packaged as "the development round" of global trade
talks. According to the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
the World Trade Organization (WTO) has calculated a global welfare
gain of up to $620 billion if all barriers to commodity trade are
removed. Forty percent of this would benefit developing
countries.[7] Without such a deal, the train
wreck ahead could be the end of the WTO as an effective
international institution.
Even worse, the general
multilateral trading system that has brought such prosperity to the
world since 1945 could be coming to an end. In the rest of the
world, regional and bilateral deals and trading coalitions of the
willing may become the norm, excluding an increasingly isolated EU.
It is time for France to prove that it cares more about advancing
the economic prospects of the developing world than French farmers
playing boule. Only the EU and the U.S. can make Doha
succeed. It is time to get to work on this most underrated of
transatlantic issues.
NATO Reform.
The startling
suggestion made this week by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder
regarding the need to supplant NATO with a new transatlantic
security institution should cause major concern in Washington.
Schroeder stated, without any details, that NATO had ceased to be
"the primary venue where transatlantic partners discuss and
coordinate the most important strategic issues of the day,"[8] only to be flatly
contradicted by both U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Dutch NATO
Secretary-General.
This is not the first time
Schroeder has got it wrong. He was wrong on Iraq and is wrong on
NATO too. The problem lies primarily among NATO countries, not in
the institution. Such reforms as are necessary have already begun.
The U.S. should continue to press for NATO reform, centered around
the concept of increasing the alliance's flexibility through
the increased use of the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF)
mechanism.
In April 1999, the NATO
governments ratified the CJTF mechanism, which adds a needed
dimension of flexibility to the alliance.[9] Until recently,
alliance members had only two decision-making options: either
agree en masse to take on a mission or have one or more
members block the consensus required for a mission to proceed.
Through the CJTF mechanism, NATO member states do not have to
participate actively in a specific mission if they feel that their
vital interests are not involved, but their opting out of a mission
would not stop other NATO members from intervening.
Beyond the sacrosanct
Article V commitment, which holds that an attack on one alliance
member is an assault on all members,[10] the future of
NATO consists 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 CJTF strategy is critical to developing a
modus operandi for engaging allies in the new era.
A CJTF, in which a subset
of the alliance forms a coalition of the willing to carry out a
specific mission using common NATO resources, should be the
second preference. If this also proved impossible due to
general opposition, a coalition of the willing outside of NATO,
composed of states around the globe committed to a specific
initiative based on shared immediate interests, would be the third
best option. Only after exhausting these three options, if
fundamental national interests were at stake, should America act
alone.
By championing initiatives
such as the CJTF, the U.S. can fashion NATO as a toolbox that can
further American interests around the globe by constructing ad hoc
coalitions of the willing, both within and without NATO, that can
bolster U.S. diplomatic, political, and military efforts in
specific cases.
The EU Chinese Arms
Embargo. The European Union's
likely lifting of the Chinese arms embargo will probably cause
considerable tension in the transatlantic relationship. For the
possible reward of a couple of hundred million dollars in arms
sales, the EU is prepared to increase arms sales to China, put
enhanced cooperation over issues of military technology with the
U.S. at risk, and bite the outstretched hand that the Bush
Administration is extending to the continent. It is a
breathtakingly shortsighted policy. The President must privately
make America's grave concerns about lifting the embargo abundantly
clear to his European interlocutors.
The EU-particularly its
major arms exporters France, Italy, and the U.K.-has clearly been
increasingly wooing China for commercial as well as geopolitical
reasons. The EU is now China's largest trading partner: In 2004,
trade between the two amounted to almost $210 billion-an increase
of 35 percent over 2003.[11] Nor is there any doubt that
lifting the embargo is a major goal of Chinese foreign policy.
China is particularly interested in obtaining increased high
technology (information technology adapted for military command and
control, sensing, and precision strike) from Europe that could help
improve Chinese battlefield management.
Even the remotest
possibility that new arms sales could fundamentally alter the
strategic balance in the Taiwan Strait will be met in Washington
with real alarm. In the medium term, the U.S. quite possibly
could find itself fighting against a better-armed Beijing in the
Taiwan Strait. China's arms buildup vis-à-vis Taiwan has
only increased, with hundreds of ballistic missiles now pointing at
Taipei.
Nor do EU protestations
that it has the matter well in hand ring true. A toughened "code of
conduct" designed to stop any EU country from selling
weapons that might upset the regional balance of power would be
interpreted by individual EU countries in a non-binding, voluntary
manner.
There is a whiff of
geopolitics beneath French commercial concerns. On a visit to
Beijing in October 2004, President Chirac declared that France and
China shared "a common vision of the world-a multipolar world."[12] Indeed, for France ever to
fulfill the Gaullist fantasy of balancing the United States on the
global stage, much closer relations with China are an obvious
prerequisite. Such a coalition is no longer unthinkable.[13]
While in Europe, President
Bush should push for an unambiguous transatlantic agreement on
forgoing sales that could tilt the strategic balance in the
Taiwan Strait, down to listing high-tech weapons systems that would
be precluded by such an agreement. Further, EU states, Japan,
and the United States should agree to consult before approving any
transfer of military technology to China.[14]
Failing this, the U.S.
Congress (which was right to pass overwhelmingly a resolution
declaring that lifting the embargo would be inconsistent with
transatlantic defense cooperation) should curtail technology
cooperation with European allies by denying export licensing
exceptions because it would be impossible to guarantee that such
technologies would not leak to the Chinese. In addition,
European companies determined to have flouted the code of conduct
should be subject to U.S. sanctions.
Defense cooperation
projects between the U.S. and its European allies could be worth
billions of dollars, but Europe needs to understand the depth of
America's concern. This issue has the potential to unravel much of
the current momentum toward resurrecting transatlantic relations.
The President must make the Europeans see that their
irresponsible actions could have grave commercial and
geopolitical consequences.
Key
Recommendations for U.S. Policy Toward Europe
To address the foregoing
concerns effectively, several actions need to be taken.
Specifically:
-
A Multi-Speed
Europe. The Bush
Administration should support the concept of a multi-speed
Europe, based on the principle of each individual state having
greater choice about its level of integration with Brussels. U.S.
policymakers should make important long-term strategic decisions on
Europe based on the likelihood that the EU constitution will
be rejected in Britain and several other EU members.
-
Iran. While maintaining the
option to use military force to disarm a nuclear-armed Iran,
the United States should also make a greater effort to coordinate
diplomatic pressure on Tehran with EU members. At the same time,
the EU must make a commitment to support U.N. Security Council and
European sanctions if the Iranians refuse to comply.
-
NATO. The United States must
strongly oppose any effort in Europe to undermine the position of
NATO as the central plank of transatlantic military
cooperation. At the same time, Washington should call for reform of
NATO to make it an effective organization for facing the challenges
of the 21st century, including global terrorism and political
instability in parts of Europe and the Middle East. The development
of a NATO rapid reaction force should also be a major priority for
both the U.S. and Europe.
-
The China Arms
Embargo. The Bush
Administration must urge European governments, including that
of the British Prime Minister, to reconsider their support for
lifting the EU arms embargo on China. The White House should make
it clear that this issue is of fundamental importance to the U.S.
and has the potential to cause a major transatlantic rift at a time
when the U.S. and Europe need to work constructively together
in facing major challenges in Asia and the Middle
East.
-
The Anglo-U.S. Special
Relationship. The U.S.-British alliance
must remain pivotal to long-term U.S. strategic thinking. The U.K.
is likely to remain America's paramount ally in the 21st century,
and it is in America's fundamental national interest to help
the U.K. maintain both its sovereignty in Europe and its
flexibility to continue playing this critically important
role.
Conclusion
A Europe in which national
sovereignty remains paramount regarding foreign and security
policy, in which states act flexibly rather than collectively
wherever possible, will enable America to engage the continent most
successfully. This flexibility, whether in international
institutions or in ad hoc coalitions of the willing, is the future
of the transatlantic relationship because it fits the
objective realities of the continent. Such a Europe is well worth
engaging.
The President should take
to Europe the same central message that he delivered in his
powerful State of the Union address:
Our aim is to build and
preserve a community of free and independent nations, with
governments that answer to their citizens, and reflect their own
cultures.[15]
John C. Hulsman,
Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow in European
Affairs and Nile Gardiner,
Ph.D., is Fellow in Anglo-American Security Policy in the
Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy
Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis
Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage
Foundation.
[1]The
poll, commissioned by the German Marshall Fund of the United States
and Campagnia di San Paolo of Italy, surveyed public opinion in the
U.K., France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Portugal,
Slovakia, and Spain. Transatlantic Trends 2004, "Transatlantic
Trends Overview," at www.transatlantictrends.org (September
27, 2004).
[2]Significantly,
this view is supported in the Transatlantic Trends 2004 poll of
American public opinion, which reported that 54 percent of
Americans see Europe as most important to "American vital interests
today." Just 29 percent of Americans surveyed believed that Asia
was more important to the United States than Europe.
[3]European
Union, "The Laeken Declaration," EUROPA, December 15, 2001, at
europa.eu.int/futurum/documents/offtext/ doc151201_en.htm
(September 17, 2004).
[4]"The
Right Verdict on the Constitution," The Economist, June 26,
2004, p. 14.
[5]See
John C. Hulsman, Ph.D., and Nile Gardiner, Ph.D., "A Conservative
Vision for U.S. Policy Toward Europe," Heritage Foundation
Backgrounder No. 1803, October 4, 2004, at
www.heritage.org/Research/Europe/bg1803.cfm.
[7]Ministry
of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, "International Trade Policy," May
26, 2004, at www.um.dk/en/menu/ForeignPolicy/
InternationalTradePolicy (February 17, 2005).
[8]Daniel
Dombey and Peter Spiegel, "Schroeder's Suggestion for Review of
NATO Shocks Defense Ministers," Financial Times, February
14, 2005.
[9]See
John C. Hulsman, Ph.D., "Getting Real: An Unromantic Look at the
NATO Alliance," National Interest, No. 75 (Spring
2004).
[10]North
Atlantic Treaty Organization, "The North Atlantic Treaty," April 4,
1949, at www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/treaty.htm
(September 17, 2004).
[11]Charlemagne,
"The Reds in the West," The Economist, January 13, 2005, p.
50.
[13]Daniel
Dombey and Peter Spiegel, "The EU's Bar on Selling Military
Equipment to Beijing Lacks Credibility But Washington Believes
Any Change Would Be Irresponsible," Financial Times,
February 10, 2005.
[14]This
is effectively argued in Hans Binnendijk, "A Trans-Atlantic Storm
over Arms for China," International Herald Tribune, February
9, 2005.
[15]George
W. Bush, "State of the Union Address," February 2, 2005, at
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/02/print/
20050202-11.html (February 17, 2005).