Exective Summary

Independent Task Force Report
The Future of Transatlantic Relations

February 1999

Council on Foreign Relations

 

This report addresses the current state and the future prospects for the transatlantic relationship. The broad challenge the U.S.-European partnership faces in the period ahead is threefold: to persuade others around the world in post-Cold War conditions to abide by internationally accepted norms and patterns of behavior and the rules of the international institutions that embody them; to deal skillfully with the emerging new power centers, of which China and India are the most prominent; and to meet the current serious threats to Western interests, especially in the Middle East, when these threats often seem to ordinary citizens more remote, abstract, and complex than during the Cold War. This daunting effort will clearly require transatlantic policies that involve a delicate and flexible combination of incentives and disincentives applied to these other countries in a highly discriminating manner in widely differing circumstances. Designing and sustaining such policies will be no easy task for Western governments with compelling domestic preoccupations in the full glare of the media spotlight.

Transatlantic relations are on an even keel. Although Suez demonstrated in 1956 that sudden policy differences could fundamentally disrupt the alliance almost overnight, and while the Asian and global economic crises and the chaos in Russia continue to worry the United States and Europe deeply, there are currently no serious disputes across the Atlantic and none on the horizon. Indeed, the transatlantic partnership can be proud that in recent years it has ejected Iraq from Kuwait; stopped the killing in Bosnia; projected stability and democracy eastward through the enlargement of NATO to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary; intensified a parallel stabilizing enlargement process within the European Union (EU); made extraordinary progress in Northern Ireland; managed security relations with Russia, at least this far, without a serious blowup; and—despite the current global economic dislocations—together produced a new burst of transatlantic mergers, acquisitions, and investments and led the struggle to open up further the international trading system.

With U.S. vital interests connected to Europe relatively safe for the foreseeable future, Washington’s security preoccupations are turning more and more toward those regions where vital American interests are threatened—most particularly in the greater Middle East and, to a lesser and more potential degree, in the Asia-Pacific region. In these crucial areas, the state of transatlantic cooperation is far less bright than on the continent. In the greater Middle East, the two sides of the Atlantic differ on the tactics for dealing with virtually every issue in the region: the Israel-Palestinian peace process; Western interaction with Iran; how best to slow proliferation of weapons of mass destruction into the area; the role of force in defending transatlantic interests in the region; and increasingly, even how best to deal with Saddam Hussein over the longer term. As for Western security challenges in Asia, including managing the rise of Chinese power, instability on the Korean peninsula, and the growing importance of India, the Europeans are virtually absent in any strategic sense. These issues regarding transatlantic collaboration outside of Europe could again raise traditional burden-sharing problems across the Atlantic.

The United States and Europe are the only conceivable global partners for each other in seeking to shape the international system in positive ways into the next century. Without America, Europe will tend to retreat into a continental fortress mentality or into sustained passivity as threats from beyond the continent progressively build and then intrude into the interests and daily lives of the allies. Without Europe, the United States will likely alternate between brief and usually ineffective spasms of unilateralism interspersed with occasional temptations to withdraw substantially from messy international life. A growing transatlantic partnership consistent with the regional and global challenges of the next century will increasingly protect the vital and important interests of both the United States and Europe, and thus the basic welfare of their citizens. As Henry Kissinger has put it, “On both sides of the Atlantic, the next phase of our foreign policy will require restoration of some of the dedication, attitudes and convictions of common destiny that brought us to this point—though, of course, under totally new conditions.” This will entail deliberate and sustained statesmanship as well as innumerable acts of detailed and coordinated policy implementation on the part of Europe and the United States over many years. There is no time to waste. prescriptions

A crucial point to emphasize at the outset of this report is that notable opportunities presently exist for the U.S.-European relationship to help mold the international environment of the coming period. The two sides of the Atlantic continue to share enduring vital interests and face a common set of challenges both in Europe and beyond. These challenges are so many and diverse that neither the United States nor the allies can adequately address these regional and global concerns alone, especially in light of growing domestic constraints on the implementation of foreign policy. Thus, promoting shared interests and managing common threats to the West in the years ahead will necessitate not only continued cooperation but an intensified transatlantic partnership.

However, this main theme of the report—that the United States should draw Europe over time much further into a global strategic partnership to help shape the international system in the new era—does not appear to be a sustained and effective priority of the Clinton administration. To create such a partnership would require more vigorous and active presidential and congressional leadership than has often been seen in recent years. Although this report contains over 40 policy recommendations on various political, security, and economic aspects of the transatlantic relationship, the following prescriptions are critical. They seek to strengthen the collaboration between the two sides of the Atlantic on issues central to promoting a secure and stable Europe and to build on these achievements to enable the United States and the allies to tackle cooperatively the myriad challenges likely to confront the international system in the period ahead. Thus, they represent the heart of a revitalized effort to be carried out every day by governments on both sides of the Atlantic to create a global U.S.-European partnership:

• The EU and allied governments should play a more active private and more visible public part in attempting to manage with the United States the regional and global implications of the Asian economic crises. This includes a comprehensive reform of international financial architecture.

• The greatest threat to vital transatlantic interests in Europe is the weak internal security surrounding Russia’s nuclear weapons and material as well as its chemical and biological arsenal. While the United States is not doing enough to address this danger, the allies are doing almost nothing. This should urgently change; the Europeans should spend much more money on the problem.

• Despite the current enormous difficulties inside Russia, the West should continue to do what it responsibly can to promote economic reform within the country, if the Russian government takes the necessary steps, and increase greatly its support for democratic institution building in Russia.

• NATO should put an end to all military conflict in the Balkans and keep it that way.

• After the entry of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary into NATO in 1999, there should be an informal pause for at least three to five years before any new candidates are invited to join the alliance.

• The United States and the European Union should begin to negotiate step by step a genuinely open trade and investment area—a true single transatlantic market—with real deadlines.

• Both the United States and Europe should work harder to help ensure Turkey’s Western orientation.

• NATO should conceptually broaden its new Strategic Concept to deal with threats to shared Western interests beyond Europe, especially in the Middle East: to protect Gulf oil, to slow the entry of weapons of mass destruction and missile delivery systems into that region, and to undertake the long-term joint military planning necessary to prepare for these contingencies.

• Western Europe should substantially accelerate its military modernization and power projection capability in order to have the option of joining the United States effectively in defending Western vital interests in the greater Middle East with force, if that should become necessary. This includes intensified U.S.-European work on theater ballistic missile defenses, stand-off forces, and defense industry cooperation across the Atlantic.

• The United States should maintain the clear lead in mediating negotiations between Israel and its neighbors. The EU’s role should nevertheless grow over time. Europeans have a right to expect that Washington confront directly and strongly either one, or both, of the parties when their policies are thwarting the peace process.

• The United States and Europe should accelerate efforts to reinvigorate the Gulf War coalition and resume the use of sustained force against Iraq if Saddam Hussein continues to take provocative action. At the same time, the U.N. Security Council should maintain the economic sanctions on Baghdad into the foreseeable future and rigorously enforce those sanctions so as to try to deny Iraq materials that could be utilized for its WMD and ballistic missile programs.

• With respect to Iran, the United States and Europe need to forge a new strategy and opening toward Iran based on a specific set of agreed criteria regarding Tehran’s external behavior. The allies should become much more engaged in the effort to slow Iran’s acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.

• The EU and individual European governments that are now animated regarding Asia almost entirely by commercial objectives should increasingly bring the region—in particular the rise of Chinese power, Japan, the Korean peninsula, and India— into their strategic calculations and international security perspectives. This will require a concerted American effort to involve the allies much more in developing analyses and policy options regarding Asia.

• Cooperative efforts to combat international terrorism, environmen-tal degradation, organized crime, and narcotics trafficking should be strengthened within the transatlantic community.