The Future of Transatlantic Relations: I

I. Introduction

Independent Task Force Report
The Future of Transatlantic Relations

February 1999

This report addresses the current state and the future prospects for the transatlantic relationship. 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 next century’s world. 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, protecting shared interests and managing common threats to the West in the years ahead will necessitate not only continued cooperation but a broader and more comprehensive transatlantic partnership than in the past.

The prescriptions contained in this report seek to intensify such a partnership. Some reinforce current administration policy, especially with respect to European security and political economy. Some policy suggestions go against administration policies, particularly outside Europe. The entire thrust of these ambitious prescriptions, however, requires more vigorous and active presidential and congressional leadership than has often been seen in recent years. The most important departure from present U.S. policy is the report’s emphasis on drawing Europe concretely over time much further into a global strategic partnership with the United States to help shape the international system in the new era.

Harmony across the Atlantic is not a goal in itself, but rather an instrument to improve the security and well-being of societies on both sides of the Atlantic and of the world. Other nations have begun to play important regional roles, but only U.S.-European collaboration has a proven track record for positive global leadership over a sustained period. Moreover, this transatlantic leadership is particularly crucial in an era characterized, as the Asian and global economic crises have vividly demonstrated, by increasing international interdependence. This latter trend has also shown the growing importance of matters of political economy in the international system at the expense of the quite reasonable commanding Cold War emphasis on military security necessitated by the reality of Soviet military power. As the mid-December 1998 attack on Iraq by the United States and Britain demonstrates, the threatened and actual use of force still has a legitimate place in transatlantic policies, but that role is substantially smaller and more complicated to implement than in the past.

The current broad challenge that the U.S.-European partnership faces in the period ahead is 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 (P.R.C.) 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.

During the Soviet era, both sides of the Atlantic were naturally focused almost entirely on threat assessment. To continue with that approach to international relations in the period ahead would ignore the powerful trends around the globe toward democracy and market economies that promise to continue to enlarge the core of democratic nations. (Bureaucracies tend to concentrate on caution and avoiding current catastrophes; statesmen construct to shape the future.) This is not to say that there are no serious dangers to Western interests as we approach the next century. As this report stresses, there are such threats and in the greater Middle East they are getting substantially worse. However, that disturbing part of the picture should not distort the fact that Western values and institutions are increasingly attractive the world over and can become progressively more so.

As this report goes to press in early 1999, 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 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 Asian and 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.

To be sure, this is not a picture of perfect harmony and effective cooperation. Tactical disagreements on one subject or another come on to the primary transatlantic agenda from time to time; are managed, deferred, forgotten, or overtaken by events or changes in policy; and then go off the major operational list—often to appear again later. This has applied in recent years to the Middle East peace process, Western interaction with Turkey, relations with Iran and to a lesser degree Iraq, several disputatious bilateral trade issues, and so forth. But given that at the beginning of this decade some experts were predicting that the U.S.-European alliance would go to the grave along with the Cold War, this fundamental positive equilibrium in relations between the United States and Europe at present can be rightly seen as a major accomplishment by transatlantic governments.

Why has this been so? After all, only a few years ago the numbing cliche was frequently repeated that the glue holding the alliance together would dissolve with the demise of the Soviet Union, as would transatlantic policy collaboration. The argument went that without the Red Army menacing the center of the continent, Western Europe and the United States would fall into an endless series of policy conflicts and that this destructive process would gradually erode the very center of transatlantic cooperation. There are several reasons why this has not happened and why the doomsayers have been wrong.

First, American and European vital and important interests are largely identical and—equally acute—are so perceived by govern-ments, dominant elites, and publics. Both sides of the Atlantic recognize that they have vital or important interests in slowing the spread of weapons of mass destruction; avoiding the emergence of a hostile hegemon in Europe; moving steadily toward a Europe that is whole, free, prosperous, and at peace; maintaining the secure supply of imported energy at reasonable prices; further opening up the transatlantic and global economic systems; and preventing the catastrophic collapse of international financial, trade, and ecological regimes.

In no instances do the United States and Europe have conflicting vital or important external interests. This congruency gives transatlantic governments every practical reason to search for ways to cooperate to exploit opportunities to advance these interests and to work together to meet serious threats to them. Although there will, of course, be frequent tactical disagreements across the Atlantic regarding how best to do this, the alliance agrees on these fundamentals that have nothing to do with deterring the Soviet Army in the center of a divided Germany. In addition, the two sides of the Atlantic share history, cultural affinity, and moral values that make the transatlantic partnership unique in the world.

With this as background and introduction, two broad prospective questions make up the bulk of this prescriptive report on the future of U.S.-European relations. Within Europe, how can the largely positive trends on the continent be maintained and through which transatlantic policies? And what improvements can be made in U.S.-European strategic cooperation outside Europe?

It is this latter question that clouds otherwise good prospects for the transatlantic relationship in the next decade. For none of the global U.S. vital interests enumerated above are presently threatened in Europe, except for the dangers associated with the safety and security of the Russian nuclear arsenal. This is entirely good news. After 70 years of the Nazi and then the Soviet military threat to Europe, because of the end of the Cold War and of the U.S.S.R. itself, American vital interests related to Europe are not presently in any serious danger, except with respect to Russian “loose nukes.”

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 question is how long the Americans will accept that European security is a joint U.S.-European endeavor with Washington in the lead, while protecting transatlantic vital interests beyond the continent falls disproportionately to the United States. This is especially relevant on this side of the Atlantic because the task of defending Western interests in the world in the next decade and thereafter will exceed American economic means and national political will. Therefore, the United States needs active partners. This report examines whether the present unbalanced division of labor between the United States and Europe can be sustained and whether it will adequately protect vital and important Western interests in the greater Middle East and in the Asia-Pacific region for the next ten years and beyond. “Doubtful” is the essential and troubling answer to these questions. And at best increased European involvement with the United States in meeting global security challenges is likely to be slow and incremental.