Rebuilding the Atlantic Alliance

Ronald D. Asmus

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003

Summary:  Despite the myriad setbacks of recent months, the U.S.-European alliance is not doomed. But repairing it will require a strategic overhaul no less bold than that which followed the end of the Cold War. The key to today's transatlantic divide is not power but purpose. To revive and revamp the alliance, therefore, the United States and the European Union must forge a new grand strategy capable of meeting the great challenges of the era: expanding the Euro-Atlantic community and stabilizing the greater Middle East.

Ronald D. Asmus is a Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and a Senior Adjunct Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Opening NATO's Door: How the Alliance Remade Itself for a New Era and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs from 1997 to 2000.

A GREAT DIVIDE

One of the most striking consequences of the Bush administration's foreign policy tenure has been the collapse of the Atlantic alliance. Long considered America's most important alliance and a benchmark by which a president's foreign policy skill is measured, the U.S.-European relationship has been shaken to its foundations over a series of disputes that culminated in the U.S.-led war in Iraq. To be sure, there have been rows across the Atlantic before: American opposition to the seizure of the Suez Canal by French, British, and Israeli troops in the 1950s; France's withdrawal from NATO's integrated military command in the 1960s; the battle over Euromissiles in the early 1980s; and the deep acrimony over how to stop war in the Balkans a decade ago. Still, the current rift has been unprecedented in its scope, intensity, and, at times, pettiness.

Several factors make the recent collapse in transatlantic cooperation surprising. The crisis came on the heels of the alliance's renaissance in the 1990s. Following deep initial differences over Bosnia at the start of the decade, the United States and Europe came together to stem the bloodshed in the Balkans in 1995 and again in 1999. Led by Washington, NATO expanded to include central and eastern Europe as part of a broader effort to secure a new post-Cold War peace. This initiative was also accompanied by the creation of a new NATO partnership with Russia. As a result, Europe today is more democratic, peaceful, and secure than ever. For the first time in a century, Washington need not worry about a major war on the continent -- a testimony to the success in locking in a post-Cold War peace over the last decade.

Moreover, although the Bush administration got off on the wrong foot with Europe during its first year in office over issues such as its spurning of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and the International Criminal Court, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, unleashed a powerful wave of support for the United States in Europe. Tragedy had handed Washington an opportunity to start afresh and reinvigorate this relationship. For the first time ever, NATO invoked the defense clause enshrined in Article V of its charter, and U.S. allies offered to join the fight in Afghanistan. But the opportunity was then squandered. Instead, the decision to make Iraq the next target in the war on terrorism -- and the manner in which the administration chose to topple Saddam Hussein -- led to a spectacular political train wreck across the Atlantic.

Somewhere between Kabul and Baghdad, then, the United States and Europe lost each other. It was not only Paris and Berlin that parted ways with Washington; so did Ankara, a long-standing and loyal ally. And despite President George W. Bush's close friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow too failed to come on board. True, thanks to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a number of old and new allies across Europe did stand by Washington. But many of them did so less because they believed in the administration's approach than because of their enduring commitment to the alliance. In the court of European intellectual and public opinion, Bush lost his case. The administration's behavior helped unleash the largest wave of anti-Americanism in decades.

Toppling Saddam's regime was a legitimate and necessary goal. His removal will make Iraq, the region, and the world a better place, the current chaos a?icting parts of the reconstruction effort notwithstanding. But rarely in American diplomacy has the right goal been pursued so poorly (although, to be fair, Europe also spectacularly botched the crisis). The extraordinary success of the U.S. military campaign should not overshadow the fact that the political and diplomatic effort to build a broad international coalition was a debacle. Whereas U.S. military prowess may be at an all-time high, Washington's political and moral authority has hit a new low.

A decade ago, the transatlantic relationship was at a similar make-or-break point. Then, too, many commentators proclaimed the alliance's imminent demise. Writing in these pages ("Building a New NATO," September/October 1993), Richard L. Kugler, F. Stephen Larrabee, and I argued that the alliance had to resolve its crisis by recasting itself to meet the challenges of a new era -- stopping war in the Balkans, stabilizing central and eastern Europe, and reaching out to Russia -- as part of a broader strategy to secure peace in post-Cold War Europe. It had to go out of area or go out of business. Rejected by many at the time as too radical, these ideas subsequently helped create the intellectual foundation for the transatlantic success of the 1990s. Overcoming the current transatlantic rift will require an equally bold rethink. After September 11 and Iraq, the United States and Europe must again heed the wake-up call and coalesce around a new purpose and a new grand strategy, one fit to meet a different set of challenges beyond Europe. If they fail to do so, the greatest alliance in modern history will become increasingly irrelevant.

THE NEW CHALLENGES