Europe, the Necessary Partner

William Wallace

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2001

Article preview: first 500 of 6,248 words total.

Summary:  In many areas, transatlantic cooperation is stronger than ever before. Yet the common perception is of an increasingly fraught relationship, as evidenced by the well-known disputes over beef, bananas, and burden sharing. Assumptions are diverging over security risks and cultural values. Each side criticizes the other's unwieldy policymaking process without admitting its own shortcomings, while leaders pander to domestic interests and prejudices without educating voters on international issues. Europe nonetheless remains indispensable to a multilateral U.S. foreign policy. The Bush administration must acknowledge the European Union as a true partner, in political and military matters as well as in economics. America cannot expect its allies to share the burdens of global leadership without allowing them their say in the issues at stake.

William Wallace is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Liberal Democrat Spokesman on Defense in the House of Lords.

COMMON BONDS

For all the Republican rhetoric about a more "Americanist" approach to foreign policy, the United States needs partners in global diplomacy. Unilateral decisions carry costs. Even if they are successfully imposed on foreign states, they build up resistance to cooperation in other areas where U.S. interests are at stake. Multilateral leadership requires negotiation and compromise with partners who respect American leadership and whose contributions American policymakers respect.

America's most dependable partners are the democracies in Europe, collectively organized through the European Union (EU) and NATO. With economic and political reform in Japan still blocked, and with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations weakened by the 1997 financial crisis and incomplete democratization, Europe remains the indispensable partner without which American global leadership becomes unilateral.

Transatlantic relations in the last decade have centered on redefining the U.S.-European partnership for the post-Cold War world. The most striking characteristic of the relationship today, however, is continuity rather than change. The gloomy predictions of American realists -- that Europe without the two controlling superpowers would dissolve into anarchy -- have proven entirely mistaken. NATO not only has survived but has developed new tasks and attracted new members. The EU has expanded its mandate and its membership and is now negotiating with 12 more applicant states.

Transatlantic relations are embedded in a dense network of multilateral links, including annual meetings of the Group of Eight major industrialized nations, semiannual consultations among top officials, and shared membership in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The transatlantic relationship's central organization, NATO, holds biennial summits, frequent meetings of foreign and defense ministers, and regular consultations among permanent national delegations based in Brussels. The partnership is supplemented by extensive cooperation among U.S. and European law enforcement agencies for combatting money laundering, drug trafficking, and illegal-refugee smuggling.

Most of the time, this multilateral dialogue works well, driven by the mutual interest of all participants in maintaining free flows of goods, services, and information. For all the advances in transatlantic cooperation, however, the common perception is of an increasingly fraught relationship. Those policymakers who recognize the overriding imperatives of shared interests in an open economy and a stable international order struggle against a tide of hostile comment in the media and in national legislatures. Five reasons can explain this gap between perception and reality.

First, having struck an implicit bargain in the late 1940s that underpinned their relations in the postwar era, Americans and Europeans now define burden sharing and partnership differently.

Second, an American overemphasis on political and military issues, and in particular a search for new potential enemies, has met a European overemphasis on economics. Hence perceptions of threats have diverged sharply.

Third, a widening disjuncture over values has opened. European elites criticize aspects of American society, and American elites vigorously reject such criticism. Assertions of American exceptionalism particularly irritate Europeans.

Fourth, policymaking on both sides has become more unwieldy. Divided centers of authority and multiple veto-wielders complicate multilateral cooperation. Yet there is a mutual ...

End of preview: first 500 of 6,248 words total.