Whatever Happened to the Transatlantic Relationship?
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Le Banquet,
n°21,
2004/2.
Domaine international -
thème États-Unis.
Par Michael Cox
America in Europe's Eyes: From the Cold War to the War on Terror
In an age of the image the importance we attach to great events can be most readily measured by the lasting impact they have
upon our visual consciousness. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the killing fields in Bosnia, the slaughter in Rwanda; their significance,
separately and collectively, have been most effectively conveyed to us through dramatic pictures not well-crafted words. As
journalists will tell you, one photograph is worth more than a thousand words. The point is well taken, particularly in relation
to one of the most important events of recent years, the terrorist attack on America on September 11th . Words, of course,
are essential, but at the end of the day it is the image or images of those planes ploughing into the World Trade Center in
New York that most successfully conveyed the truly sensational character of what happened in (and to) the United States on
that clear blue autumnal morning. Fred Halliday has characterized the attacks as ones that shook the world, and he is surely right to do so. A senior Bush official was overstating it somewhat - but not much - when he remarked that September 11th was a ‘day' that
‘changed' the history of the American ‘nation' forever. Donald Rumsfeld made much the same point when he reminded those who
might have hoped otherwise, that while terrorism was not like fascism or communism, the war against it would not last for
days, weeks, or even months, but for many years to come; and as if to make the point clearer than the truth, went on to insist
that the long struggle which lay ahead was likely to be just as protracted and ‘every bit as momentous' as those which the
US had been engaged in before against German fascism and international communism. Naturally, comparisons with other great transitional conflicts in the past can be more misleading than useful, as Paul Schroeder
amongst others has reminded us. Nonetheless, the fact that such analogies have been drawn, speaks volumes about the significance which has already been attached
to what happened on that Tuesday morning in September 2001.
But how important was September 11th? Opinions remain divided. At first, some analysts warned against exaggeration. The attack, they argued, would not change the structure of the international system. Nor would it alter the dynamics of globalization.
Nor, according to some sceptics like Francis Fukuyama, would it make much of a difference either to the underlying tectonic
shifts that were currently shaping the world from the bottom up. Some in the field of International Relations were also unimpressed by the impact which September 11 might have, other than
making many academics instant ‘experts' on terrorism, Islam and religion. 93 Certainly, they argued, when compared, say, to the great shifts brought about by two world wars and the Cold War, September
11th - practically and theoretically speaking - looked to be but small beer. It might have killed a large number of people
and caused the Middle East to have become a less stable place. But we should not assume the world would be turned upside down
as a result.
This view, understandable perhaps in the immediate aftermath of September 11th, is not one that commands much support a few
years on. Indeed, the more time that has elapsed since the event itself, the more defining September 11th appears to have
become, especially for the United States itself. Indeed, after having lived though nearly ten years when national security
had become relatively unimportant - according to one senior official, the US went on ‘an extended beach party' - it has now come to overwhelm American public discourse, to the extent of shaping voter preference, limiting citizen rights,
and redefining the very structure of government. As Condoleeza Rice pointed out in her famous testimony of 8 April 2004, since
September 11th the United States in general, and the organization of national security in particular, has gone through a reformation
almost (if not quite) as important as that which occurred in the early days of the Cold War. Nor is this all. The United States in the meantime has fought and won one war in Afghanistan, another in Iraq, reformulated
its grand strategy, ‘found' an enemy around which to construct a foreign policy for the long term, become involved in some
serious abuses of human rights, killed a very large number of terrorists, suffered an enormous loss of popularity abroad,
and been propelled outwards into ever greater commitments. This is quite a transformation. After all, when Bush became President
he was talking of intervening less abroad, particularly in those places where the US was deemed not to have a vital interest.
Now American forces are more active in more countries than at any time since the end of the Second World War. The much overstated
fear that the US under Bush would withdraw into itself and reduce its presence in the world has been dealt a severe, and one
must suspect a permanent blow, by what happened on September 11th.
Which brings us then to the subject of this paper: the impact of more recent upheavals on that most hardy of regimes known
as the transatlantic relationship. Few doubted they would have some impact. However, none could have predicted the impact would be quite so great, so great
in fact that it appears to have thrust the debate about it from the intellectual margins to where it had previously been consigned
to the very centre of modern international concerns. Certainly, there has been no dearth of animated discussion since September 11th. Indeed, to judge from the several official
communiques, the many conferences and the numerous workshops - not to mention the controversy occasioned by Robert Kagan's
well-publicized effort to explain why Europe as Venus and the United States as Mars were heading for separation - some might
conclude that there has been much too much. 100 But troubled times generate intense discussion, and no discussion over the past few years has been as intense, or divisive,
as that which has focused on what some at least see as the failing health of that once previously healthy specimen known as
the Transatlantic relationship.
Yet we face a very real paradox. On the one hand, most of the headline news about the relationship since September 11th has
veered between the deeply pessimistic and the almost catastrophic. Thus one writer has spoken of a near-death experience for
the alliance, another of a relationship at risk, and yet a third of a past we would never see again. On the other hand, much of what has been said about the relationship by the policy professionals would seem to imply that
bad as things might have got, we should neither exaggerate the extent of the rift nor assume the relationship was about to
go under. In fact, there remains now, as there has been throughout, an almost instinctive inclination amongst many experts
to argue that whatever has happened, the underlying forces supporting the edifice of transatlanticism were more powerful than
those trying to bring it down. 104 It was not all ‘doom and gloom' therefore. The situation might be critical. Yet we should not be overly alarmed. As a high level report released by the Council of Foreign
Relations in 2004 noted, the Transatlantic relationship had gone through one of the great traumas of recent times; but this
was no reason, its authors concluded, to think that things could not be repaired. A combination of sensitive diplomacy on
the one hand and good will on the other, would, it was surmised, bring the damaged ship back home to port.
Several influential academics appeared to agree, in fact they seemed every bit as keen as policy insiders to prove that much
of this talk of a relationship in free-fall was mere adhocry. It was true. The relationship had gone through a most sticky patch, the most serious in the history of the Alliance. But this was no reason to despair. NATO after all was still 'in business' and getting bigger - and as it did so drew in a
clutch of newer states more highly committed to the transatlantic relationship than some of the older ones. The economic ties between the two continents also remained sound. And Europeans and Americans appeared to agree on some very
important core values. Thus the two parts of the Transatlantic jigsaw puzzle would continue to fit together. The battered
hulk of multilateralism might have been badly holed. But it would not sink, and would not do so for the very simple reason
that Europe and the United States constituted now, as they had done in the past, a genuine security community who also happened
to share the same basic interests of fighting terrorism, maintaining an open world economy and spreading the benefits of democracy
and good governance to other countries. Nor was there any reason to think the two were about to clash because of any power
shift taking place within the wider international system. For these various reasons (there were no doubt others) we should
beware the pessimists with their overblown rhetoric. As Thomas Risse has argued, though we had been through an extremely rough passage, there was no reason to think that the
‘transatlantic community' as we had ‘known it over the past fifty years' would go under. The ‘inevitable alliance', as another analyst defined it, would thus endure. We had been through many difficult times in
the past. 112 We were going through another one now. But this did not mean the relationship was about to wither away.
It is this argument I wish to challenge here, not because it is wrong in its entirety - though as Dana Allen has observed
the jury is still out - but because it smacks of a dangerous form of intellectual complacency based on the untested, and highly problematic assumption,
that the future is more likely to look like the past than anything else. It is this to which I take strongest exception. Indeed,
I want to argue that far from the past being a very good guide to the future, it has, in its own way, become something of
a mill-stone round our necks. In fact, those who tell us ‘to remember our history' (the implication being that we have been through and got over several crises before) are not only doing history a disservice
- historians after all do not just deal in continuities - but are seriously underestimating the extraordinary combination
of novel problems facing the Transatlantic relationship today. Nor are these problems merely a function of Bush and Iraq as
some seem to suggest. Indeed, I want to challenge another form of complacency: that which assumes that the world (and along
with it the European-American relationship) is bound to return to something like normal once we have gotten over Iraq and
Bush departs office. No doubt both have made an enormous difference. That much is obvious. But it would be foolish to think that the resolution of one, or the political departure of another,
will solve everything, if indeed it will solve anything at all. Indeed, even after Bush and Iraq have been consigned into
that proverbial dustbin of history - and neither is guaranteed for some time - the Transatlantic relationship will still be
facing some very stern challenges .
Finally, I want to contest a third myth made popular by the enormously influential Robert Kagan: namely, that the crisis is
a reflection of growing American power on the one hand and European powerlessness on the other. This, I suggest, is not only
too narrow a base upon which to erect a sturdy thesis. It also happens to be seriously one-sided. Hard power is not an insignificant
coefficient. However, what Kagan misses - as in fact do most other American accounts - are two other factors with enormous
consequences for the long term: namely America's decreasing leverage over Europe (something obscured by the formal expansion
of NATO) and Europe's increasing self-confidence (a reality missed in the US because so much of the coverage is negative).
It is these twin realities, as much as much as American male insouciance about a feminized Europe, that point to more testing
times ahead.
To make good these bold claims, it is essential to look back in order to project forward. I have thus organized what follows
into three main sections. The first deals with the period following the end of the Cold War and that almost forgotten era
known as the post-Cold War period. As we shall see, this was a most complex transitional moment, during which all seemed well
at one remove, even though serious problems were beginning to undermine previous Transatlantic certainties at another. Next, we look at the period coinciding with Bush's election and the decision to go to war with Afghanistan. Here we see the
extent to which a set of problems carried over from an earlier era began to have far more serious consequences in another.
Indeed, when the relationship was put to the test, it almost failed it completely. Finally, we come to the Iraq war when an
already fractured alliance was nearly undermined in what must now rank as the most extended crisis in the history of the Transatlantic
relationship. Of course, as the soothsayers have been quick to point out, there has, of late, been a serious and concerted
effort to reconstruct the relationship, so that it can, in Tony Blair's words, meet the challenges of a ‘changing world'. But we should not get overly excited. In fact, we should beware any unnecessary euphoria. No doubt the ‘West' in one form
or another will survive. Reforms might even help it to do so. But it will not be the same ‘West' we knew before. A few years ago, liberal theorists could (following Karl Deutsch) talk with some confidence about the continued vitality
of a security community that had not only survived the end of the Cold War but managed to flourish under conditions of globalization.
They would, I think, be foolish to do so any longer.
Transatlantia revisited - the Cold War and after
Historically, the Transatlantic relationship was born of three necessities: the need to manage Soviet power during the Cold
War; the imperative of creating a framework within which the European powers could work out their own differences within a
set of structures underwritten by a powerful arbiter from across the ocean; and last, but by no means least, of protecting
American interests on the continent. Naturally, the relationship, as it evolved, had both its crises and critics. However,
neither, in the end, did a great deal of damage. Indeed, all that they seemed to prove was that the relationship was rock
solid. Moreover, if this was, as one writer put it, less a relationship and more a marriage entered into willingly - even
by the weaker of the two parties - then there was no reason why it should not go on for a very long time. It may have left Europe dependent upon American largesse and Americans strategically entrapped. However, it provided both
with levels of security they had not experienced before; it did so in ways that were broadly acceptable to most Europeans
and the majority of Americans; and it generated a level of prosperity and unity which made Western Europe deeply - perhaps
fatally - attractive to the communist countries of Eastern Europe. 123
Inevitably, the end of the Cold War changed the context within which Europeans and Americans now had to operate. It also called
into question one of the most fundamental premises of the transatlantic relationship itself: namely, that it was required
in order to maintain the balance of power in Europe. The corollary of this was that it would be unable to survive the disappearance
of the threat that had called it into being in the first place. This of course was one of the constant refrains of structural
realists like Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer. Without the discipline imposed by the blocks in Europe, the future - they
believed - was bound to be a good deal less predictable than it had been before. Indeed, according to Mearsheimer the future
would very much look like a deeply shambolic past with growing nationalist tensions in Europe accompanied by deeper divisions
across the Atlantic itself making the world as a whole a far less stable place. Others were equally pessimistic and concluded,
in classic realist fashion, that if the relationship had been held together by the existence of an existential ‘other', then
absent a serious external challenge, the two sides were bound to drift apart.
As it turned out, some of the more Spenglerian prognoses about the decline of the West sans a clear and present danger proved to be quite false. In fact some of their prognoses appeared to be so wide of the mark that
it became increasingly fashionable in the 1990s to reject their arguments altogether. Indeed, when Europe as a whole did not
return to the past, Germany did not become a threat, and the Transatlantic relationship held, many not only celebrated the
fact (reasonably), but saw in all this confirmation, once again, of the failings of a now redundant realist way of looking
at the world in general. How in fact could one take their warnings seriously? After all, instead of entering into more competitive
times, the core Atlantic powers appeared to be drawing much closer together. And far from returning to the past, they looked
to be facing the future with a great deal of confidence.
All this was helped of course by an active US diplomacy. Indeed, another significant feature of the Transatlantic relationship
in the 1990s was not how much, but how little, US policy towards Europe actually seemed to change. As one analyst has observed,
whilst the end of the Cold War might have led to a major rethink in US foreign policy in nearly every other area, there was
to be no substantial alteration in its attitude towards Europe. Nor did the US position in Europe seem to suffer much either. If anything, its hegemony was more secure at the end of the
1990s than it had been at the beginning. Nor did this seem to generate very much resistance. 126 In fact, the other more remarkable feature of the period was the extent to which those who had previously been some of America's
more severe critics during the Cold War, now became some of its most consistent supporters from afar. Moreover, if some of
them complained at all, it was not because the US was using its power too frequently abroad, but was perhaps not employing
it often enough. Even Clinton had more than his fair share of European admirers. His (admittedly uneven) support for humanitarian
causes on the one hand, and European integration on the one other, made him an especially attractive American leader; and
it was not so surprising therefore that when he finally did leave office, there was a feeling that he had not just been ‘a
good friend' of Europe's, but a key figure who had managed to maintain good relations between an America that was perhaps
no longer so much in touch with Europe, and a Europe that was beginning to lose its ideological affinity with the United States.
Herein lay the problem. For even in the era of good feeling, serious differences were beginning to undercut Transatlantic
trust. First, there was the big clash over what to do about Bosnia. Having initially left the former Yugoslavia to the Europeans
- we have ‘no dog' in this particular fight chimed Secretary of State Baker - the Americans gradually felt compelled to get
involved; and as they did so, were to become increasingly impatient with European dithering, so much so that by the time of
the Dayton accord, their collective view about their friends across the pond veered between the less than flattering (at best)
and the almost unprintable (at worst). Either way, it left many in the Washington foreign policy elite with the very firm
impression that when push came to shove, on key security questions, the Europeans simply could not be taken seriously.
The two sides also differed increasingly about regional priorities and how to deal with major regional problems. For the Europeans
the priority in the main remained more than ever the European project: for the Americans the stage that interested them most
was the world as a whole. Moreover, when the Europeans did get engaged in wider issues, the tools they tended to employ were
more diplomatic and economic - a reflection no doubt of their military weakness - while the Americans by and large still remained
more inclined to resolve problems using their hard power advantage. Indeed, while the United States still continued to look
at the world in more traditional terms of threats, allies and capabilities, the Europeans in general viewed it as a set of
security dilemmas whose causes, once properly understood, could then be dealt with using much subtler means. In most areas
this did not make an enormous difference. However, in one case it did: over how to deal with the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Here the gap between the two grew exponentially as the decade wore on; and though momentarily united by the Oslo accord, as
it fell by the wayside, the United States and Europe began to find themselves almost in the position of supporting opposed
and warring factions in a conflict without apparent end. 130
There was, in turn, the equally problematic rift caused by intervention in Kosovo. Here of course there was more unity than
division at first. However, as the NATO campaign intensified it became increasingly clear that a number of European countries
- some with historic ties to Belgrade and some not - were more inclined to limit the war while the US was keen to win it by
the shortest military route possible. Once again, the lesson drawn in Washington was not an especially positive one, either
about Europeans in particular or NATO in general. Indeed, as we knew then (and found out more later) the Pentagon in particular
drew the important conclusion that having used NATO in one war, they might not be prepared to do so again, especially if it
involved fighting alongside allies who not only had limited technical means but whose leaders had to adapt to a public opinion
that was far from supportive of fighting an engagement that had not been sanctioned by the UN.
Finally, though the Europeans in the immediate post-Cold War era had a far more positive view of the United States than they
were to have later, there was no escaping the fact that by the end of the decade there were growing worries on the continent
about an American inclination to deal with problems in ways that often showed little sensitivity to allies, and even less
to that entity known as the ‘international community'. US air strikes against Iraq, further sorties against Afghanistan, and
the attack on Sudan in 1998, may not have provoked mass street demonstrations in London, Paris, or Rome. Nonetheless, they
left a bad taste in some European mouths and a feeling that although the United States would try to be multilateral when it
could be, it was more and more inclined to act without reference or permission from its friends across the Atlantic.
A drift of sorts was thus well underway long before the Bush team took over. The two sides hardly constituted rivals, let alone enemies in the making. Indeed, in an era when the world economy was booming
and Transatlantic economic ties were deepening, to have even talked of such things would have sounded faintly odd to say the
least. Nonetheless, the strong bonds that had once united the two in an earlier age of Cold War confrontation were clearly
coming under some strain. Nor did there seem to be any self-correcting mechanism. Within the United States moreover a new
mood amongst a successor generation who had not experienced the Cold War close up seemed to be in the ascendant. This did
not lead those who expressed it to seek unnecessary quarrels; what it did it did do, though, was to make some wonder how seriously
one ought to be taking the Europeans any longer. On the right in particular, there was a growing and detectable impatience
with a Europe that not only appeared incapable of acting with purpose or vigour, but then had the temerity to think rather
differently about the how the world ought to be shaped. This feeling, which combined suspicion and contempt in equal measure,
was made all the worse of course by a powerful undercurrent of American hubris that tended to increase rather than decrease
as the decade unfolded. This assumed (without proving) that whilst the American free market model generated jobs, growth and
wealth, the European model with its raft of bureaucratic controls and labour regulations produced nothing but stagnation.
Hence there was nothing to be learned from Europe, and until Europe changed its ways, it could be largely ignored while the
United States continued to surge ahead - proving if proof were ever needed, that having shaped and dominated the international
relations of one century it was about to do the same in the next.
Terrors in Transatlantia I: September 11 and Afghanistan
The extent to which this vision shaped the outlook of the new Bush administration is a matter of some dispute. After all,
in his pre-election statements, Bush talked in quite measured terms of a ‘humble' America doing less rather than more in a
world where every complex emergency threatened to drag the United States into unnecessary and costly commitment. However,
as more recent evidence has shown, the new team was far more radical than its quietist rhetoric suggested. Assuming that the United States was in a position of almost unrivalled power, it drew the not illogical conclusion that it
could be altogether more self-interested (and less sensitive) when it came to dealing with others than its predecessor had
appeared to be. Certainly, it would not be business as usual; and as if to make the point clearer than the truth, managed
within a few months of assuming office of rethinking its policy towards Iraq (the planing for whose change began in earnest),
its relationship with China (which now moved from the category of partner to that of rival), and the much hated Kyoto protocol
whose limited role in trying to control global warming was now challenged on the grounds of both science and sheer economic
self-interest. Nor was this all. Within only a short space of time, the Bush administration had also formally rejected, or
politically called into question, a whole raft of international agreements ranging from arms control and land mines, through
to biological weapons and nuclear weapons testing. The International Criminal Court in particular came in for some particularly
fierce attacks.
The net result of all this of course was to make many commentators wonder about the direction in which the United States was
now heading. A very different kind of administration, it seemed, had taken over in the United States, one that was no longer
committed, even in theory, to the basics of multilateralism. On the eve of 9:11, the Transatlantic relationship looked to
be in real trouble. Some even began to wonder whether the two continents were, at last, heading for that long-predicted divorce?
Viewed within this larger context, the attack of September 11 seemed to represent less of a threat to the transatlantic relationship
and more of an opportunity for Europeans to rebuild bridges to their senior, but straying, partner across the Atlantic. This
in part explains the speed with which NATO invoked Article 5 only a day after the attack. It would also help explain the unbelievable enthusiasm that many European countries now showed when it came to volunteering
their own troops for action on the ground in Afghanistan. Indeed, as the Afghanistan campaign unfolded, the United States
faced the somewhat bizarre situation in which the European members of NATO were actually offering more troops and equipment
than the Pentagon wanted to use. It was all rather overwhelming. One should not be too cynical perhaps. Europeans were genuine in their support for their
wounded ally. They also had as much to lose from international terrorism as the United States. After all, a number of them
(Britain and Spain in particular) had already experienced the scourge of terrorism, and were in no doubt where they stood
on the issue and why. Nonetheless, a larger game was clearly being played out, one of whose many objectives was to steer the
American ship of state back onto the multilateral course from which it had been deviating badly before 9:11.
The outcome of all this frantic effort, as we now know, was not to secure the relationship so much as increase European concerns
about the US while raising further questions about America's attitude towards NATO as a fighting (as opposed to a political)
organization. Certainly, by the beginning of 2002, relations once again appeared to have taken a turn for the worse, in spite
of some valiant efforts by officials on both sides to deny that there was a problem. Naturally, NATO played down these difficulties,
all the time stressing the alliance's contribution to the war. But it was very much the case of the dog that did not bark,
or at least was not allowed to bark by the United States. As Paul Wolfowitz made clear at the first high-level briefing provided
by Washington to NATO defence ministers in the autumn of 2001, the US was not much interested in using NATO structures; nor
was it planning to rely heavily on European forces either. Such words of indifference did little to assuage the Europeans
who not only felt slighted, but suspected that American insouciance reflected a deeper impatience towards Europe in general
and the idea of constraining alliances in particular. America's European allies found the new Rumsfeld doctrine of missions
determining the coalition, rather than the other way round, to be particularly disturbing. For not only did this constitute a major conceptual break; it also had the potential to undermine the rationale for an established
alliance like NATO. As one seasoned observer pointed out, whereas the old threat of communism had managed to bring friends
together, it looked like the new war on terrorism was driving them apart. NATO looked like it was rapidly becoming one of
the first, and most important, ‘victims of 9/11'.
Instead of the situation improving in the early days of 2002, they effectively got worse. In February, for example, the EU's
Commissioner for Foreign Affairs went public and attacked the US for treating the Europeans as if they were mere ‘sycophants'
rather than real friends. Americans responded in turn by denigrating the Europeans. One analyst even went so far as to talk of a European 'hysteria',
adding for good measure that what lay at the heart of European complaints was not the direction now being taken by American
foreign policy but Europe's inability to come terms with the fact that Europe was fast losing its special position as a privileged
partner of the United States. Others adopted a tougher line still and launched a series of powerful attacks on their so-called friends - the British excepted
- who found it all too easy to criticize the United States for taking decisive action while they proposed nothing in the way
of a serious alternative. Even the language which the two started to use about (and against) the other seemed to denote something more than the normal
spat that had punctuated the relationship in the past. Certain Americans could hardly disguise their contempt for a bunch of whinging Europeans who possessed little in the way
of meaningful firepower. Wolfowitz was its understated best when he labelled all European attacks on the US as being ‘simplistic'.
Others were even tougher about those ingrates across the Atlantic. Indeed, underlying what some Americans had to say was something
else: a sense of moral outrage about a continent which in their eyes the United States had ‘saved' on at least three occasions
in the twentieth century, many of whose people now had the temerity to suggest that the biggest problem facing the world in
the early twenty first century was not so much international terrorism as an America grown drunk on its own power.
Thus as the Afghan war drew to what turned out to be an inconclusive end, it was evident that not all was well within the
NATO camp. Naturally, the embattled Lord Robertson did his best to hold the line, rather unconvincingly arguing that the gloom
merchants had got it all wrong. As he told what must have been a rather naïve (or polite) American audience at the beginning
of 2002, NATO was just as relevant in the war against terrorism as it had been in the battle for Kosovo. A few months later, the United States ambassador to NATO was repeating more or less the same thing. 147 But the spin did not carry weight. Indeed, the more the officials span, the more the critics began to conclude that something
really was amiss. As one noted US journalist commented after having returned from an extensive discussion on transatlantic
relations in the UK, all the delegates might have sat around the same table using the same language, but the gap dividing
the Europeans and the Americans about how to deal with the problem was plain for all to see. As another observer put it, this time after attending a meeting of the Trilateral Commission in New York, the Americans who
were there were seemingly unable to appreciate the extent to which their world outlook was not shared in Europe: the Europeans
meanwhile did not seem to understand the profound changes that had taken place in the United States as a result of 9:11. Certainly,
as 2001 gave way to 2002 the Atlantic was beginning to look less and less like that proverbial bridge much loved by the British
and more and more like that divide more favoured by the French.
Terrors in Transatlantia II: Iraq and after
Long before Iraq therefore the relationship was in trouble. It is just possible that if the war on terror had remained confined
to dealing with well defined threats and targets, then the already shaky edifice of transatlanticism might have recovered
its equilibrium. But it was not given time to do so - and for fairly well known reasons. First, in January 2002, Bush identified
an ‘axis' of three evil states, including amongst them Iraq, a state which according to the President did not just oppress
its own people but also supported terror and either had, or was enthusiastic to acquire, its own weapons of mass destruction
- weapons that might easily fall into the hands of terrorists. Then, in June, he announced a new national security doctrine
which argued that in an era of terrorism not only was deterrence not enough, but that containment of certain regimes was not
enough either. This was followed up in August by a keynote speech of Rumsfeld's that really marked the beginning of the political
campaign at home to convince the American public of the need to take pre-emptive military action against Saddam Hussein. Finally,
in September, the administration published its new National Security Strategy document - the same month in which Bush went
before the UN General Assembly calling upon the nations of the world to enforce the Security Council's (various) resolutions
on Iraq, ominously warning that if Iraq were ever to ‘supply' weapons of mass destruction to its ‘terrorist allies, then the
attacks of September 11 would be but a prelude to far greater horrors'.
For what precise reason or set of reasons the Bush administration decided to go to war against Iraq still remains a hotly
contested topic: what is not in doubt however is the impact which this decision and the war itself had upon an already bruised
transatlantic relationship. Certainly, having widened the war on terrorism in the way in which it did, and then justifying the move in terms of a new
set of imperial principles that in the eyes of most observers seemed to represent a major departure in US strategic thinking,
it was inevitable that many Europeans - encouraged by what was being said by critics on the other side of the Atlantic - would feel queezy at best and downright horrified at worst by what Washington was now proposing (and would in March 2003
go on) to do: namely, make war against a regime whose capabilities were declining, whose possession of weapons of mass destruction
was in some doubt, and whose connection to the kind of terrorists who had knocked down the Twin Towers was tenuous to say
the least. The fact that the war was then announced without a second UN resolution, and indeed against the majority of the
UN membership, only raised further doubts about the wisdom of using military action, especially as the most likely outcome
(according to most European intelligence sources at the time) would be to increase global support for al-Qaeda rather than
diminish it.
From this perspective, what requires explanation is not the fact that so many Europeans opposed the war, but that so many
governments on the continent did not. No doubt some, like the former communist states, felt they had no alternative given
their security dependency on the United States; others went along (one suspects) less because they reflected public opinion
- certainly not the case in Spain or Italy - but rather because of a sense of conservative solidarity with the Bush administration.
Certainly, the fact that several governments did sign up, bears powerful testimony to America's continuing ability to garner
support from even some notably reluctant quarters. A few governments however were true believers. Blair in particular (though
not the British foreign policy establishment as a whole) seemed to have few doubts. Indeed, he was to play a quite critical
and complex role throughout, in the early stages by helping mobilize European support for the war, and then later by trying
to mediate between the Europeans and the Americans. Yet, in spite of his best efforts, nothing could overcome the divide between the United States on the one hand and France
and Germany on the other. Nor could he do much to siphon off the real and genuine bitterness between the two opposing camps,
caused in the first instance by the famous or infamous UN decision not to back the war through another Security Council resolution
- something for which the French have yet be forgiven in Washington - and then by a refusal on the part of France and Germany
to lend their support to any actions undertaken by the coalition of the willing in Iraq.
Of course, as the dust of war began to settle after Saddam's defeat, many hoped (and a few assumed) that the transatlantic
relationship would gradually be repaired. After all, if the crisis was Iraq specific, as some seemed to think, then once the
war was over there was every possibility that things might soon get back on to an even keel. Indeed, most Europeans took it as read that such would be the cost and difficulty in rebuilding Iraq, that the Americans
would have no choice but to repair the relationship if only to help them manage their new acquisition in the Middle East.
This was one of the reasons no doubt why even Kagan began to strike a less belligerent note; and after having asserted in
2002 that the gulf between the two sides was probably too deep to overcome, two years on was suggesting that America now confronted
a ‘crisis of legitimacy', and that the only means of overcoming this was by seeking accommodation with those alienated Europeans.
In fact, he even owned up to something he had never said before: namely, that the Europeans had not just objected to the war
because of their weakness (his original line of analysis) but more obviously because the US went to war without their support
and approval. This was quite a shift. He also agreed that some way had to be found to draw the Europeans back into the fold,
and the obvious way of doing this he concluded was not by reminding them of how benign the United States happened to be, but
of actually allowing them more of a say in the way in which the hegemon shaped world affairs. Indeed, there was every reason
for the US to cede some power he agreed - not because of any sentimental attachment to the transatlantic relationship but
to ensure domestic support for any future US action. In fact, precisely because the American people might be unlikely to ‘support
both military actions and the burdens of postwar occupations in the face of constant charges of illegitimacy' by the Europeans,
the United States had every reason to meet their erstwhile allies half way.
The new line adopted by Kagan was also paralleled by a concerted effort by sections of the Bush team to build what looked
like real bridges back to alienated allies. Indeed, as the splendid little war in Iraq gave way to a less than splendid peace,
there was a marked alteration in US official rhetoric. This took many forms but expressed itself most obviously in a fairly
concerted effort by the administration to get ‘transatlantic relations back on track'. Even Bush himself began to celebrate
the virtues of ‘effective multilateralism', while others started to talk with great enthusiasm of Europe being America's ‘natural
partner' in an increasingly disturbed world. 158 Certainly, by the beginning of 2004, it almost sounded as if there had never been a crisis in the first place!
This in turn was accompanied by what some saw as an important bureaucratic shift, with Powell and the State Department at
last coming out from behind the very large shadow earlier cast by the powerful Rumsfeld and his team of supporters within
the Pentagon. It certainly looked as if Rumsfeld was talking much less in public as time went by, while the highly respected
Colin Powell looked to be saying a whole lot more. Indeed, having been seriously sidelined by the Pentagon for so long, it now appeared as if the once marginal Powell was making
something of a comeback, and in a key article published in Foreign Affairs in early 2004, advanced a powerful case for traditional allies. What he said contained a series of reassuring arguments.
The first, which must have been music to many a European ear, was that pre-emptive action taken against potentially dangerous
rogue states, would only be used ‘under certain limited circumstances'. In other words, Europeans should not assume that Iraq
was a model for the future. Nor should they believe that some strategic corner had been turned: in fact, far from being philosophically
inclined towards unilateralism as some in Europe seemed to think, the Bush strategy he argued presupposed good and lasting
relations with the UN and NATO. ‘Partnership' he noted was ‘the watchword of U.S. strategy' in what he tellingly referred
to as the ‘age of cooperation'. This he concluded had been the real message contained in the much criticized (and much misunderstood)
National Security Strategy document of September 2002: and this would be the guiding principle in the days ahead. Indeed,
without ‘cooperative relations among the world's major powers' he concluded there was little or no chance of defeating terrorism.
This apparent turn in US foreign policy continued into the summer of 2004, reaching an emotional height of sorts in June,
beginning with the commemoration of the D-Day landings on 6th June - a perfect moment to stress what united rather than divided
allies - followed in quick succession by the G8 summit in Georgia, the EU-US Summit in Dublin, and the NATO meeting in Turkey.
For the moment at least it really did look as if all had been forgotten as the major powers sat down to work out the modalities
of how to bring order and stability to a fast deteriorating situation in Iraq. Politics also played its part. Indeed, as Bush
contemplated the next presidential election, he found himself under attack from those who made the electorally damaging point
that far from increasing America's influence in the world, he had actually managed to reduce it, and had done so by unnecessarily
alienating old allies. As one of Senator Kerry's senior foreign policy advisers put it, the issue concerning Iraq was not
whether the United States needed to employ force, but rather that it chose to do so in such a way as to minimize international
support for its action. As James Rubin observed, if Bush had only waited a few months ‘it would have been Iraqi non-compliance'
and not spurious claims about an Iraqi threat that would have ‘triggered the war'. This, he argued, would not only have made
it easier to wage the war without mass resistance to it being mobilized in Europe: it would have meant that ‘many more countries
would have been willing to contribute substantial troops and substantial reconstruction assistance if such international legitimacy
had been obtained'.
All's well that ends well?
Thus as the dust began to settle, the language surrounding the relationship began to take on a quite different tone, much
to the relief of official on either side. No doubt this surprised a few people, though not others who had always assumed that
reality on the one hand, and shared interests on the other, were bound to bring the two continents closer together - once
they had gotten over Iraq. Indeed, if the optimists were to be believed, we were once again at that point where we had been so often in the past following
other great Transatlantic disputes. There almost seemed to be a pattern of sorts. First, the two sides would fall out, as
they had done so often before. The protesting masses would take to the streets. The French would then reflect in their Gaullist
way about the overbearing character of American power. The Americans in turn would accuse any and every European critic of
being anti-American. And then it would all fade away, indicating to the old hands at least, that necessity, if nothing else,
would always bring these two members of the same family back under same roof. So it had always been; and so it was now. As another analyst of the American scene pointed out as the warm words began to flow back and forth across the Atlantic during
2004, the pessimists had had a field day for a while: now it was the turn of the Atlanticists to prove them wrong and show
why the relationship remained a sound one.
It is difficult to disagree with facts, and it is especially difficult to disagree with the obvious fact that an enormous
amount of time has been put in building those proverbial bridges back across the Atlantic. Yet in spite of these strenuous efforts, there was no hiding the tensions that still lay just below the surface. Clearly,
the scars caused by Iraq would take a very long time to heal, if indeed they could be healed at all. Naturally, there were
those who felt there was still everything to play for; that even now a new bargain between the two could be struck that would
set the relationship on a much firmer footing. But as events unfolded, even in these sunnier times it was quite apparent that the relationship was far from being a happy
or a relaxed one. Indeed, in spite of all the fine talk about a ‘new vision' for a re-imagined relationship, it was notable
how little repair work was actually being done on the ground. If anything, the tide still seemed to be running against the United States, most obviously in Spain whose new government
removed its troops from Iraq after having voted out a pro-American government in March, in Germany which had already made
clear its refusal to support a NATO effort in Iraq, and France who were adamant that they at least would not be pulling any
American chestnuts out of the Iraqi fire. Indeed, when urged by the Americans to get involved in Iraq, the European NATO response
was that it was now so bogged down in what many saw as a failing operation in Afghanistan, that it would be quite impossible
for it to do so. NATO might do some training, but talk of any serious involvement would be little more symbolic, a situation that led at least two Americans to ask (yet again) that if NATO could not get engaged, then what exactly was
NATO for?
Of course, one could argue - and many continue to do so - that Europe and the United States were still united by values and
shared interests. This is true. But even here the story was a complex one; in fact, if we look at some key indicators it becomes
increasingly clear that the two may not be so united after all. Most obviously, they are not at one when it comes to defining
the root causes of the terrorist threat; they are seriously divided too when it comes to Israel; and they do not agree either
about how to deal with so-called rogue regimes. Nor do they necessarily view each other in quite the benign way as suggested
by the optimists. Thus a number of Americans have some very grave doubts about the possible long-term implications of the
European project, and many Europeans of course have even graver doubts about American hegemony. Indeed, if recent polls are
to be believed, the level of suspicion of the United States in Europe has never been so high. Americans and Europeans may
not even share identical values. In fact, if the end of the Cold War has exposed anything, it is the extent to which most
Europeans seem prepared to embrace the challenges of post-modernity (including living without a God and a well-defined notion
of sovereignty) while the bulk of Americans are not. This divide moreover appears to have become more marked since September 11th. Indeed, if anything has widened the gap over
the last few years it is that America has been transformed by the original atrocity and most countries in Europe have not.
Heisbourg might have been exaggerating somewhat when he asserted that it was still ‘business as usual' for most Europeans.
But there was a major grain of truth in this. As Garton Ash has cleverly observed, September 11th was ‘yet another defining
moment at which Europe' declined ‘to be defined'.
This leads us then to the Atlantic Alliance, the keystone upon which the transatlantic relationship has traditionally rested.
In one sense, the optimists are right. NATO will survive, and will do so by continuing to be a useful vehicle performing all
sorts of necessary roles from peace-keeping through to keeping a US foot in the European camp. Indeed, according to some,
so functionally useful has NATO become, that even if it did not exist, it would almost have to be invented. Nonetheless, this
cannot obscure a simple but unfortunate fact of modern strategic life: the organization has become more or less irrelevant
when it comes to dealing with the most urgent security issues of our day.
error:An error occurred
SDX message
|
| Source |
org.apache.cocoon.components.treeprocessor.sitemap.PipelineNode |
| Exception |
org.apache.cocoon.ProcessingException |
| Message |
Failed to execute pipeline. |
| Details |
org.apache.cocoon.ProcessingException: Failed to execute pipeline.: org.apache.cocoon.ResourceNotFoundException: Resource
not found file:/usr/local/tomcat/webapps/sdx/lbq/http:/www.revue-lebanquet.com/hits.xsp2sdxX?id=o_0000377: java.io.FileNotFoundException:
/usr/local/tomcat/webapps/sdx/lbq/http:/www.revue-lebanquet.com/hits.xsp2sdxX?id=o_0000377 (No such file or directory) |
| extra info |
|
| java.io.FileNotFoundException: /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/sdx/lbq/http:/www.revue-lebanquet.com/hits.xsp2sdxX?id=o_0000377
(No such file or directory)
|
| |
