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DGAP November 14, 2003

The United States and Europe: Different Geopolitical Visions?

David P. Calleo

It seems obvious that transatlantic and European relations have

deteriorated seriously over the past few months in a fashion that

hints there are big geopolitical shifts to follow.

Not only did France and Germany refuse to sanction US invasion

of Iraq; they were joined in the Security Council by Russia and

China and supported tacitly or openly by great many others.

At the same time, deep fissures appeared in the E.U. itself.

Britain joined the United States in Iraq, while Italy, Spain and

Poland ostentatiously distanced themselves from their French and

German partners in the E.U.

Since the nexus between European integration and the transatlantic

alliance has been the foundation of the postwar order, these signs

of transatlantic alienation cause rifts within the E.U.

This all suggests we may be moving into quite a different world.

DGAP Speech, November 14, 2003

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Naturally, we all want to know how to react to these changes.

Perhaps the first step is to understand better why they came about.

Let me try to say something useful about at least the transatlantic

differences.

The key moment in the fixing or definition of the current

transatlantic geopolitical differences was not 9/11 but the end of

the Cold War, an event that produced quite contrary reactions on

the American and European sides of the Atlantic.

In the U.S., a large and noisy segment of our political elites grew

busy redefining the nations identity as the dominating center of a

unipolar world, in effect as the worlds hegemon.

Meanwhile, the Maastricht Treaty signaled the determination of

European elites to make post-Cold War Europe more unified and

autonomous, in effect to replace the old bipolar system with a new

Pan European order, and thereby implicitly to lay the foundations

for a more plural world order.


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Since that time, American unipolarity and the vision of a strong

and cohesive Europe have been increasingly ill at ease with one

another.

The further each proceeds, the more it seems likely to clash with

the other.

This growing antagonism is a major change from the Cold War

years. During those years, Europe was, of course, preoccupied

with the Soviet threat, but also with the economic, cultural and

geopolitical challenges coming from the United States.

The dfi amricain was a regular goad to more European

integration.

But European integration and American hegemony coexisted

comfortably enough, despite obvious tensions and occasional flare-

ups.

Indeed, in many respects the two were symbiotic.


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The Soviet threat kept European states in an Atlantic Alliance

dominated by the U.S., but the Soviet threat also limited the

American sway over Europe.

Western Europe was, after all, the Cold Wars great prize.

Some of the major West European countries had large indigenous

communist parties.

Successive American administrations were periodically worried

about losing Western Europe to Eurocommunism or

Finlandization.

Locked into its Cold War rivalry with the Soviets, the U.S. could

not afford to alienate European governments or European publics.

Americans thus needed the Europeans just as the Europeans

needed the Americans.

The real balance was therefore tripolarrather than bipolar.

Europeans, you might say, were free riders not only on the

American power that contained Russia, but also on the Soviet

power that balanced the U.S.


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With the Soviet threat gone, the continuing American challenge to

Europe has stood in bold relief.

This American challenge has taken form in a variety of post-Soviet

models.

These may be classified as political and military, on the one hand,

and as economic, on the other.

Political and military models are most closely associated with the

two Bush administrations.

Economic models were Clintons specialty.

All models have shared one fundamental assumption: that the post-

Soviet world is fated to be unipolar.

Let me sketch briefly each administrations model, and then

consider what the past decade indicates about the prospects for a

unipolar world order.


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BUSH I

Events during the presidency of George H. W. Bush contributed

greatly to the vision of a unipolar future.

The U.S. led a successful Western coalition in the first Gulf War

against Saddam Hussein. The Soviet Union retreated from Europe

and then collapsed at home.

These events opened the American political imagination to a

unipolar future.

Europes geopolitical perspectives were evolving differently.

The difference appears early on in the distinct approaches to

settling the problems of German reunification.

Accounts by American participants in the Two Plus Four

negotiations of 1990, for example, emphasize the differences

between the Americans and Germans, on the one hand, and the

British and French, on the other.


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The accounts celebrate German-American friendship triumphing

over not only Soviet but also British and French opposition.

The U.S. preoccupation was that a unified Germany should remain

within NATO.

The corresponding fear was that the Soviets would woo the

Germans from the Alliance by offering unification in return.

British and French opposition to unification would, the American

negotiators feared, greatly increase the chance of Soviet success in

luring the Germans into neutrality.

Behind the American preoccupation with keeping Germany in

NATO was the expectation that a grateful, unified Germany would

be Americas European partner in leadership for the new post-

Soviet world order.

Having secured Germanys continuing adherence to NATO in the

Two Plus Four negotiations in 1990, by 1991 the Bush

administration began elaborating plans for the Alliances

expansion.


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As laid out in a series of speeches by Secretary of State James

Baker, what had been bipolar in the Cold War was now to be

unipolar.

With the Soviets out of the way, NATO, led by the US, was to

grow Pan-European, and be the structure around which Europes

new strategic order would be built.

Bakers views had limited appeal among Europeans, Germans

included.

Instead of a Pan-European NATO, they began thinking of a new

Pan-European order built around the European Community.

The critical partnership was not to be between Germany and the

U.S., but between Germany and France.

This different perspective emerges clearly in French accounts of

the Two Plus Four negotiations, and of the diplomacy of German

unification generally.


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Mitterrand, for example, claims that he was not opposed to

unification, believing it was the clear will of the German people

and could not be stopped.

Rather, he was concerned that a big Germany would resurrect the

German Problem of the past unless a proper European framework

was built to contain it.

This meant deepening the European Community to enable it to

become the dominant structure in the new European system.

The deepening was spelled out at Maastricht.

Monetary Union was to be the first grand project to be succeeded

by common foreign and security policy and common defense,

along with a major constitutional overhaul.

At the same time as the E.U. was to be deepened, it was also to

widen.

A place had to be found for the liberated states of the old Soviet

empire not least because otherwise the E.U. risked being

preempted by NATO.


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Mitterrand first tried to meet this need by proposing a European

Confederation, a broad and loose grouping to incorporate

immediately the former Soviet states, including Russia itself.

This was attacked by the Americans, who were not included, and

rejected by the East Europeans, who were looking for membership

in the E.U. and were expecting lavish economic benefits to follow.

This issue was settled in theory at the Copenhagen Summit in

December 1993, when the E.U. pledged to enlarge as soon as East

European countries progressed sufficiently toward meeting the

Unions acquis communautaire, the prerequisites for participating

as full members.

In summary, by the end of the first Bush administration, two quite

different blueprints for post-Soviet Europe were already in

competition.

Conflict between the two models was already evident.

So were the internal tensions of each.


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NATO, for example, was a military alliance, initially built around

opposition to the Soviet Union.

But the new Russia was unlikely to go on fulfilling the role of the

Wests unifying enemy.

Instead, Europeans were likely to see good relations with Russia as

critically important for their own future well being.

The Gulf War suggested that the Alliance could find a new raison

dtre in global peacekeeping.

But it was not clear that European states shared a sufficient identity

of geopolitical interests with the U.S. to sustain a common alliance

for global governance.

Saddam Hussein was a sufficiently unattractive and clumsy enemy

to permit a coalition to form in the first Gulf War.

But no sooner was Saddam chased out of Kuwait than the coalition

began to unravel.

NATO soon became entangled in disputes over the E.U.s

ambitions for an autonomous military arm of its own.


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Meanwhile, of course, the E.U. was itself increasingly tied up in

the tensions between its twin geopolitical goals widening to the

East while deepening in the West.

CLINTON

Bush Is defeat in the election of November 1992 led to a certain

period of dtente between the Atlantic and European plans for

Europes future.

Clinton was of the Vietnam generation and diffident about using

military force.

While the signals were mixed, Clinton himself seemed to invite the

E.U. states to move forward with their own plans for common

foreign policy and defense.

But before the E.U. states could proceed very far toward military

integration, they were embroiled in the ethnic conflicts that broke

out during the disintegration of Yugoslavia.


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Clintons U.S. resisted getting involved. This was to be Europes

Hour. But France and Germany found it difficult to reach a

common policy.

In any event, Germany refused to join any military intervention.

And Britains willingness was conditioned, as usual, by reluctance

to proceed very far under European rather than NATO auspices.

Trammeled by a series of unworkable UN mandates and by their

own divisions, the European forces in Yugoslavia were able

neither to impose a settlement nor to negotiate one.

They tended to blame the U.S. for encouraging the Muslims in

Bosnia to hold out for better terms.

Finally, in exasperation, the French demanded that American

troops be sent in.

Only then, it was agreed, would the Americans stop blocking a

settlement.


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The Americans established military dominance and imposed the

Dayton Agreement in an atmosphere rife with American

triumphalism and transatlantic recrimination.

Dayton marked a change in the American mood.

The U.S. had become the indispensable nation.

Clinton dropped his earlier diffidence and became a vigorous

proponent of NATO enlargement.

By 1997, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary were invited to

join the alliance.

Negotiations were on track to admit half a dozen more.

Meanwhile, a new Secretary of Defense, the former Republican

Governor of Maine, William Cohen, was using the Partnership for

Peace to insert American bases deep into Central Asia.

With Democratic Peace Theory as the ideological cover, the new

Pan European order was to be formed around an American-

directed NATO.

Americans began openly opposing a European Pillar in NATO.


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This triumphalist resurrection of the old Bush policy was strongly

confirmed by the American-led intervention in Kosovo in 1999.

In effect, Clintons geopolitical aims in Europe seemed to have

come full circle.

He had returned to the Bush model of the Two Plus Four talks a

NATO-run Pan-Europe.

Europeans grew increasingly uneasy.

When the British proposed an apparently serious initiative for

common European defense at St. Mlo in December 1998, the

French joined in enthusiastically and the Germans went along in

principle.

The French had already begun transforming their military, as the

British had done earlier. The Germans followed slowly.

But while these Balkan interventions and diplomatic maneuverings

were certainly significant, arguably they were not the first priority

of either American or European policy.


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The big continental states were preoccupied with achieving their

Economic and Monetary Union.

Similarly, Clintons guiding vision was, from the start, more geo-

economic than military.

It was, nevertheless, unipolar.

Clintons aim was to make the U.S. the worlds economic

superpower the global champion of advanced industries and services

of all sorts.

In this sphere Europe is Americas great potential rival.

Clintons project seemed to go well for America.

The U.S. enjoyed a great economic boom.

Our economy grew much more rapidly than Europes economies.

Europeans, pursuing their monetary union, gave priority to

economic security over economic growth.

o Security against inflation and against destabilizing

changes in exchange rates at least within Europes

inner core.


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In short, each side of the Atlantic pursued distinct priorities and, by

and large, succeeded in achieving them.

One major problem with Clintons super economy, however, was

that it never cured Americas current account deficit.

And by the end of the decade Americas hyper-investment led to

the usual consequences. Clintons boom turned into a classic bubble and

burst.

Clintons large current-account deficit nevertheless remains

despite a sharp depreciation of the dollar. And it seems unlikely to

diminish significantly, now that we have returned to heavy defense

spending, tax cuts and very large fiscal deficits.

A continuing large current account deficit means a continuing need

for foreign credit.

Ominously, today that credit comes less and less in the form of

investments in our real economy, but increasingly from selling short-

term Treasury instruments to Chinese and Japanese central banks.


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By now, foreigners are estimated to hold roughly one third of all

U.S. Treasury instruments.

Thus it is the Japanese, and above all the Chinese, supporting the

dollar to hang on to their trade surpluses, who underwrite American

prosperity and military power.

This seems a rather fragile economic foundation for a unipolar

superpower.

Absorbing more than we produce is not, of course, a new habit for

our economy.

The U.S. has run a sizeable external deficit throughout most of the

postwar era and a very large current account deficit since the 1980s.

We have never had serious trouble financing it.

But in the past we had two great advantages: the Cold War and the

dollar.

The Cold War meant that we could claim, with some justice, that

financing our external deficit was a form of burden sharing.


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Today, conditions are radically changed: the Cold War is over and

the world economy now has the euro, the dollar has lost its monopoly.

There is no longer unipolar international money.

For the time being, the presence of the euro is unlikely to prevent

us from running large deficits, but doing so will cost us more.

Playing the role of unipolar superpower will grow more and more

onerous.

Our economy, it turns out, is not an autonomous and inexhaustible

source of self-generating wealth.

Our continuing prosperity requires the active support of others.

The need for that support seems more and more likely to impose

limits on what we can borrow, what we can spend and what we

can do particularly what we can do by ourselves.

BUSH II


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Since 9/11, the American global project has, as we all know, taken a

different form.

The Bush administration has defined it in military terms.

Americas military power is thought to be so great that it really

doesnt need allies.

In particular not allies whose various inhibitions about using force

hamstring its power.

Well, Americas military is the most powerful in the world.

But does that justify a unipolar geopolitical stance?

Military superiority is frequently vulnerable to what might be called

the Law of Asymmetrical Deterrence.

In the Cold War, for example, despite the huge nuclear arsenals of the

superpowers, anyone else with a second-strike capability could

have a reasonable deterrent with only a few hundred missiles.

Nothing has changed in that realm since the Soviet collapse except

that there are a few more nuclear powers.


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Nuclear deterrence still seems a cheap way for the weak to counter

the strong.

This seems true of weapons of mass destruction in general.

Not only are they relatively cheap equalizers, but the presence of a

superpower, actively exercising its military superiority, is a great

inducement for others to acquire these equalizing weapons.

Particularly since Americas current unipolar strategic doctrine aims

to preempt any rising power that might threaten its predominance

in any major part of the world.

In effect, Americas unipolar doctrine puts it not only in conflict with

the Afghanistans, Iraqs, Syrias and Irans of this world but points

toward conflict with China, Russia, and even Europe itself.

A classic example, it might seem, of how an excess of hyperactive

strength leads, paradoxically, to greater insecurity all around, and

not least for the leading power.

If this asymmetrical deterrence is true at the high end of military

weaponry, it seems even more true at the low end.


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The U.S. has led the world in applying advanced technology to

conventional warfare.

As a result, our military appears ideally suited to destroy the

organized armies of other states.

But once we have destroyed the opposing military, and with it the

brain and nervous system of the rogue state, what then?

We move from our elegant video-game warfare into nation-

building a stage where the shock & awe of our transformed

military is not of much use.

But if we are proficient only at destroying states and not rebuilding

them, what good does our military power do us?

Trading rogue states for failed states seems a poor exchange above

all, if the aim is to protect ourselves against terrorism.

For it is especially in failed states that terrorist networks flourish.

Todays terrorism is often global in reach and has to be fought all

over the world.


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But fighting it is more a police than a military function, and surely not

a unipolar task.

It requires legitimacy as well as raw military power.

Legitimacy is not something that can be commanded from others.

It has to be earned and cultivated by diplomacy that grapples

successfully with the worlds shared problems.

Well, to cut to the obvious question: What does this recent history

suggest about the prospects for a close transatlantic alliance in the

future?

Probably the most striking change from Bush I to Bush II has been

the abrupt deterioration in Americas relations with Germany.

The first Bush administration put great stock in being able to build

a special relationship with unified Germany.

This partnership in leadership was clearly meant to limit the

Franco-German relationship and Germanys enthusiasm for a more

autonomous Europe generally.

The second Bush administration has seen that expectation deflated.


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Some of those intimately connected with German policy in Bush I

now play critical roles in making the foreign policy of Bush II.

Their disappointment perhaps helps to explain their bitterness

against Old Europe.

That reaction seems even more bitter against the French, who seem

to have seduced the Germans away from the bright future offered

them as Americas special regional partner.

At the very least, it seems clear that American diplomacy has badly

misread its European partners.

Arguably, Americas misreading of Europe goes back to the time

of German reunification and the Soviet collapse.

American diplomacy not only disliked the European aspirations

embodied in Maastricht, it failed to realize the profound appeal of

those aspirations to Germany as well as to France.

That Germany and France have stood by each other in the Iraq

crisis indicates less the perfidiousness of the one or the


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treacherousness of the other than the deep commitment of both to a

shared European future.

This suggests an ineluctable geopolitical logic drawing France and

Germany together into the European Union a logic the U.S.

would be wiser to appease than to resist.

Certainly, the mutual dedication of France and Germany to their

European project is a continuity over several decades that no

sensible American foreign policy should take lightly.

Franco-German dedication to their European project is at least as

deeply rooted in the past as Americas own predilection for

unipolar hegemony.

Arguably, it is also a good deal more reasonable.

A Europe that is European seems a more plausible project than a

world that is American.

Our experience since the Soviet demise ought to lead us back to a

home truth sensible Americans have always really known: The

United States cannot run the world by itself.


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Indeed, we cannot even protect ourselves alone.

We lack not only the power, the political imagination and skill, we

also lack the money.

In short, we need serious allies. In particular the U.S. needs

Europe.

In todays geopolitical dispensation, the U.S. cannot have Europe

as an ally unless it recognizes Europes own ambition to be master

in its own house.

Until the U.S. comes to terms with Europe, not only with a few

tasks to share but with a basic understanding about our respective

rights and duties in the world, there will be no stable new world

order.

The alternative, I fear, is that we shall end up defeating each other.

It seems time for reasonable people on both sides to lead their

countries back from the precipice.


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Not only to recognize that Europe and America need each other,

indeed are vital parts of each other.

But also recognize that there are other great powers rising in the

world, and that if we do not make reasonable room for them, we

shall destroy one another.

That is why mutually recognizing and accepting a plural world is

the indispensable first step in building a genuine concert of great

powers old and new to confront rationally the great problems

that clearly lie ahead.

Europe, of course, has a great role to play in forming such a

concert.

It is, after all, what Europe has done for itself over the past half

century perhaps the greatest accomplishment of creative

statesmanship in modern times.

Obviously, America has a leading role to play in extending that

European accomplishment throughout the globe.


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