Transatlantic Relations in the Context of the New Global order

Transatlantic Relations in the Context of the New Global order

Professor David Calleo gives an American view on what unites and what divides the transatlantic partners in the current global security context.

It has become commonplace to observe how the United States and Europe are drifting apart. Deprived of the great common enemy of the Cold War, each side of the Atlantic is developing its own distinct perspective on the nature of the post-Cold War world, and on its own prospects within that world. These distinct perspectives are not easily compatible. Increasingly transatlantic friction seems the natural result.

At first, the atrocities of September 11th appeared to reverse this trend as a great wave of sympathy and solidarity arose from all over Europe. But America’s reaction -its unilateralism combined with its global “war on terrorism” -has reinvigorated European misgivings. According to the former French Foreign Minister, Hubert Vedrine, current American policy is, at best, “simplistic.” The French may be more outspoken but the same view is widespread in most other European governments. Across, Europe, intellectuals of the left and the right echo the same dismay.

Initially, many Europeans had different expectations of what the war on terrorism would bring. America’s “unilateralism,” they hoped, would soon yield to the exigencies of coalition diplomacy. In Afghanistan, however, Europeans were mostly marginalized, as the Americans completely dominated the planning and execution of the military campaign. European forces, mostly British, were admitted only as a matter of courtesy. The Europeans were thus split, with the British, as usual, trying to bridge the gap between Europe and the United States. This has led to obvious tensions between Britain’s role as America’s special ally and Britain’s role as co-partner with France in building an autonomous European defense force.

Britain’s role in European security

Early in the 1990’s, it grew obvious, in Yugoslavia and elsewhere, that Europe’s collective military weakness left it unable to look after it own immediate security interests. Plans proliferated within the European Union for common European security policies and defense forces able to act together, either with or without the Americans. Since Britain does have a first-class military capability, it is difficult to imagine a viable European defense force in which the British do not play a prominent role. This makes collective European defense quite different from other dimensions of the European Union, where the Franco-German couple generally take the lead. Because of Germany’s particular weaknesses in the defense field, which are only slowly being remedied, Germany still does not play its usual leading role.

This makes Britain France’s essential partner in creating a European military force. In itself, this might be a good thing. But Britain’s recurring second thoughts about an independent European defense force greatly complicate the project. From this European perspective, Britain’s fresh preoccupation with its special relationship with the U.S. is unwelcome. Insofar as Britain’s dalliance frustrates European aspirations, transatlantic disaffection also deepens. Americans grow contemptuous at Europe’s inability to present serious military forces; Europeans grow frustrated at their own divisions and dependency. At the heart of European frustration is the growing sense that American strategic perspectives are no long in harmony with their own, and therefore that dependency on the U.S. is not only ignoble but unwise.

EU/US tensions over the Middle East

For many Europeans, American policy toward Israel and Palestine, and indeed the Middle East as a whole, seem to furnish a clear illustration of the dangers of too much dependency on the U.S. American s feel that American support for the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon has been far too uncritical and unrestrained and are aghast at the tactics adopted by the Israeli Defense Forces against the Palestinian civilian population. Europeans, while hardly enthusiastic about Arab terrorism, feel that Israel’s unmeasured retaliation greatly increases the likelihood not only that terrorism will be prolonged not only in the Middle East but will also spread to Europe and the United States. Given Europe’s geographical proximity to the Arab world and the large number of Arabs living in European states, Europeans feel themselves much more vulnerable than Americans.

Not only do Europeans resent their exclusion from setting basic Western policy for the Middle East, they also feel threatened by the course being set by the Americans and Israelis. Many Europeans share similar disquiet about American policy toward Russia. On the one hand, they fear that Putin’s Russia is being lured into a new “special relation” with the U.S. – which marginalizes Europe on its own continent. On the other hand, they fear that extended NATO enlargement, together with U.S. military deployments in

Central Asia will ultimately produce an angry Russian reaction against the West in general. Again, geographical proximity makes alienating Russia extremely costly for Europe’s own long-term security and prosperity.

Different perspectives towards the Middle East and Russia reflect a more general division – a different view of the world’s evolving geopolitical structure. For the past decade, American governing elites have been inspired by the vision of a unipolar world, according to which the United States is and will remain the world’s only superpower for any foreseeable future. This was a natural enough reaction to the Soviet collapse. America’s remarkable economic prosperity in the 1990’s fed still further this “triumphalist” American vision.

Contesting America’s global vision

The American vision, however, is not universally welcomed. Europe, Russia and China all contest it in one way or another. Europeans saw the end of the Cold War as a great victory for themselves. The collapse of the Soviet military threat meant that Western Europe was no longer heavily dependent on the U.S. Europe was restored to its old space – from the Atlantic to the Urals. The states of the European Union soon made clear a powerful collective ambition to master this new Pan-European home. Hence the grand projects packaged together with the Maastricht Treaty – E.U. enlargement, Monetary Union, Common Foreign and Security Policy, Common Defense and NATO reform.

Russia, too, was dealt a new geopolitical hand. Seemingly the great loser from the end of the Cold War, Russia had cast off a hopeless political-economic system and gained a fresh chance to create a more successful modern version of itself. And the new Russia also regained the diplomatic maneuverability denied to it throughout the entire Soviet period. In due course, Russia might expect to become a member of the European family and thereby greatly augment its economic and geopolitical position.

China also emerged from the Cold War with strong prospects. Its economic growth since 1978 has been remarkable. By the mid-1990’s, respectable economists saw the possibility that China might overtake the American GDP as early as 2015. As with Europe and Russia, China’s aspirations pointed to a plural rather than unipolar geopolitical dispensation. In short, the 1990s began to manifest a fundamental divide between American and Eurasian geopolitical imaginations, between American unipolarity and Eurasian pluralism.

America versus the Rest?

In the worst case, the United States will confront the ambitions of the three Eurasian powers with the vision of its own prolonged omnipotence. As a result, the American superpower may well find itself opposing all the other great powers of the world.

Consciously or otherwise, Europeans are very much aware of this new geopolitical conflict between themselves and the Americans. One instinct is to avoid any tragic confrontation by appeasing and thereby managing the “rogue superpower.” This seems clearly the approach of the British, and Tony Blair in particular. But no one in Europe thinks seriously about contending with the Americans for military predominance in the world.

At the moment, European ambitions barely extend to being able to keep order in their own territory, without large-scale aid and direction from the Americans. But, by themselves, even the British hope to see serious expansion of Europe’s own capabilities. This may be rationalized as Europe’s contribution to America’s efforts to bring order to the world. It is also the obvious way for Europe to guarantee its own security while being able to pick and choose among America’s global projects.

Europeans also still hope that as the United States grows more embroiled in the Middle East and in Asia generally, it will grow more sensitive to its own limits, and more appreciative of strong allies able to keep order in their own spheres. The United States may thus come to appease the ambitions not only of Europe but also of Russia and China. American “leadership” will be devoted not to thwarting the ambitions of all rivals but perhaps to create a concert of Eurasian powers. This would seem a more promising formula for managing the global system than a militant determination to keep it unipolar.

China’s rise as a super power

Before long, however, any Eurasian concert will face what in all likelihood will be the great issue of the new century – the radical discontinuities of population and wealth that characterize the present global system. Even if China may soon have the aggregate income of a superpower, with substantially greater military and technological resources than at present, its citizens will still be very poor in world terms. Even if China’s GDP does exceed the American by 2015, its income per capita will remain one-fifth that of the U.S. The overall growth, however, will be huge. Achieving parity with the U.S. means that the new growth in China’s economy from 1995 to 2015 will be equal to the size of the entire American economy in 1995.

If China’s tremendous growth is achieved at the expense of others, the consequences will be extremely unpleasant for the losers. But even if the growth is entirely new, such an addition to the size of the world economy is bound to pose severe problems of scarce resources and environmental degradation. In short, the pluralist vision of the future does not offer any simple solutions. It brings to mind those terrible conflicts of competing great-power interests that typified the early 20th century.

It may be argued that a concert system is the only way that such fundamental global problems may be confronted with any prospect of success. Only through a concert are the major powers of the world likely to accept their collective responsibility for dealing with inevitable clashes of interest over redistribution and environmental degradation. Given the nature of today’s weapons of mass destruction, if concert diplomacy fails, the prospects for the future of the planet are not bright.

In any event, attempting to preserve a unipolar system does not seem a viable alternative. No one country has the strength or indeed the moral imagination and leadership to impose successful solutions for all these problems. Instead, such solutions can only be found in a cooperative system that promotes a general spirit of responsibility among all the major powers. It may be hoped that the European Union will provide a model for the kinds of cooperative structures that might be gradually constructed across Eurasia and the Atlantic.

David P. Calleo is University Pr ofessor, Dean Acheson Professor and Director of European Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Among his books are: Rethinking Europe’s Future (2001); The Bankrupting of America: How the Federal Deficit is Impoverishing the Nation (1992); Beyond American Hegemony: The Future of the Western Alliance (1987); The Imperious Economy (1982); The German Problem Reconsidered (1978)

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