VI. New Threats to Transatlantic Interests

Independent Task Force Report
The Future of Transatlantic Relations

February 1999

Council on Foreign Relations

 

Transnational challenges, which range from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as discussed in this report to terrorism to environmental problems to crime and drugs have been receiving more transatlantic attention in the past decade. Because these new threats cross territorial borders, they also blur the line between domestic and foreign policies.

The spread of weapons of mass destruction is likely to be an ever more serious problem for the West during the next decade. International terrorism is back in the news and higher on the U.S.-European agenda after the attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; it would be surprising if these are the last such attacks on American facilities and citizens abroad. Cyberterrorism probably also has a real future in our increasingly interdependent and democratic societies. Environmental degradation is a rising preoccupation among governments and ordinary people on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly regarding the issue of global warming as demonstrated during the December 1997 Conference on Climate Change held in Kyoto, Japan. One can expect more and more problems for the transatlantic community as well from international organized crime, narcotics trafficking, and migration and refugee flows. Finally, greater international travel makes the United States and Europe more vulnerable than before to the spread of infectious diseases.

 

Prescriptions

• The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, international terrorism, environmental degradation, organized crime and narcotics trafficking, destabilizing migration, and the spread of infectious diseases all represent new challenges during the next decade for the U.S.-European relationship. Some progress has been made but there are still important consultative, analytical, and policy gaps to be filled, most urgently concerning WMD proliferation and global warming. Both these issues need to be much higher on the transatlantic agenda than heretofore.