VII. Conclusion

Independent Task Force Report
The Future of Transatlantic Relations

February 1999

Council on Foreign Relations

 

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 implemen-tation on the part of Europe and the United States over many years. There is no time to waste.