The New Europe

Gregory F. Treverton

From Foreign Affairs, America and the World 1991/92

Article preview: first 500 of 7,075 words total.

Summary:  Assesses (1) progress in the evolution of a European security identity, with particular reference to the EC's handling of the Yugoslav crisis (2) how US foreign policy should adjust itself thereto. "The starting point for American policy should be an end to ambivalence over the Europeans building some defense co-operation of their own", and the USA should recognize that "NATO will not continue to serve as the cornerstone for an American political role in Europe".

Gregory F. Treverton is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the forthcoming America, Germany and the Future of Europe.

What is "Europe?" The answer remains to be seen, but "smaller than it seemed last year" is one quick response, given what is happening on the edges?the disintegration of the Soviet Union and open warring in Yugoslavia. In Europe?s center the future becomes less of a guessing game. Indeed the treaties on European monetary and political union (EMU and EPU) signed December 1991 at the Maastricht summit mark a stunning success in light of the "Europessimism" of the mid-1980s. A new federation, anchored by a single currency and a central bank, is thus mandated for the end of the decade.

But Europe remains a far cry from the "Europe whole and free," as President Bush liked to put it. In particular the eastward reach of the 12-nation European Community will be limited by the bloc?s west European preoccupations, and the EC itself will be strained by the reaching.

By the same token, no one on either side of the Atlantic has much idea how to reshape the American connection to Europe after the vanishing of the Soviet threat?or whether a reshaping is really necessary. Five years ago, or even three, warfare in Yugoslavia would have rushed to the top of the American foreign policy agenda. This time though, Washington, its gaze fixed on the Middle East, first stayed aloof and then left the crisis to the EC.

While it is clear that Americans cling to NATO as the only serious trans-Atlantic security connection and as the most explicit American engagement in Europe, it has become equally apparent that NATO is mismatched with Europe?s future security problems: more eruptions like that in Yugoslavia, not a Soviet invasion across the central German plain. And it is just as apparent that NATO in its current form will not serve as the basis for anything like America?s political role in Europe over the past forty years.

II

Initially the EC?S single market program?"1992" for short?had given precedence to deepening collaboration among the 12 members rather than taking on new ones, but the November 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall upset that presumption. Instead, with East Germany added on, the Community widened immediately, then came under pressure to stretch further into Europe?s east. German unification came to a Europe that was prosperous but still in the middle of the 1992 program. Two key steps, monetary union and political union, still lay ahead; the former would provide for a single currency and central bank, while the latter, slightly misnamed, would enhance supranational European decision-making powers and begin to forge common foreign and security policies. With these crucial steps yet unresolved, fears grew among the architects of the New Europe that their singular focus on EC integration would be lost. A united Germany, it was feared, was bound to become self-absorbed.

There was never any reason to doubt that German unification would be a resounding success in the long run; the question was how long? The process has been more expensive than western Germans had hoped ...

End of preview: first 500 of 7,075 words total.