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Volume 41/No. 1/Spring 1999
The formation of a European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) constitutes the single most important event in European and transatlantic politics since the Soviet Union’s demise. There is a strong case that the euro is likely to succeed, and that its success will push the European Union (EU) towards rounding out its commercial and financial power with more effective and autonomous collective diplomatic and military capabilities. As the EU grows into a better-organised and assertive economic and financial superpower, it seems improbable that the old dependent relationships — whereby the US takes charge of most European security problems — will remain acceptable to either Europeans or Americans. To succeed with the euro, moreover, the EU will need to change its internal character significantly, as well as the nature of its expansion to the former communist states of East and Central Europe.
David P. Calleo is Dean Acheson Professor and Director of European Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC.
For much of the 1990s, the US and the EU have been trying to define a new transatlantic bargain that balances Europe’s desire for a broader and more independent political role with its continued reliance on US and NATO military capabilities. The goal is a European security and defence identity that allows the EU to conduct military missions with command structures, forces and assets that are normally assigned to NATO. Four practical steps are necessary. First, the Western European Union (WEU) should be abolished and its functions divided between the EU and NATO. Second, European militaries must enhance their capability for projecting and sustaining power. Third, NATO’s military structure should be adapted to incorporate French participation, even without the full reintegration of France into NATO. Finally, these steps are unlikely to lead very far unless the Americans and Europeans can establish better patterns for managing inevitable transatlantic disagreements over crises like Bosnia or Iraq.
Kori Shake is a Senior Research Professor at the Institute for National Strategic Studies in Washington DC. Amaya Bloch-Lainé is a Research Associate at FED (Fondation pour les Etudes de Défense) in Paris. Charles Grant is the Director of the Centre for European Reform in London.
The EU decision to put Turkey’s application for full membership on indefinite hold underscores the urgent need to develop alternative visions for their future relationship. The assumption that Turkey will eventually become a full member can no longer be maintained. A new relationship should be built on the mutual recognition that Turkey and the EU have durable joint interests that require a close relationship, but also durable differences — which would make full Turkish membership of the EU deeply problematic for both parties. The answer lies in finding a more flexible position for Turkey: inside the EU for some purposes and outside it for others. Such a solution could be a model for how the EU should relate to several other close neighbours.
Barry Buzan is Professor of International Studies at the University of Westminster, and Director of the project group on European security at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (COPRI). Thomas Diez is a Research Fellow at COPRI.
By conducting long-range missile tests and raising new worries that it is pursuing nuclear weapons, Pyongyang has put the 1994 Agreed Framework in jeopardy. Seoul, Washington and Tokyo should not give into North Korean blackmail, but they could offer aid to Pyongyang on the condition that it defuse the missile and nuclear crises while also carrying out an ambitious conventional arms-control agreement patterned after the 1992 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty. Under one variant, both sides would make cuts of up to 50% in heavy weaponry. From a military standpoint, such an accord would be stabilising and desirable for combined US–South Korean forces.
Pedro Almeida, a US Army officer, is a Master’s Degree student at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, New York. Michael O’Hanlon is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, and a Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC.
Most discussions of East Asian security focus on three issues: the threat of nuclear proliferation in North Korea; the region’s US-based security architecture; and coping with China’s rising power in the region. A fourth issue, often overlooked, skirts the other three categories but has implications for each: the new China–South Korea détente. The dramatic transformation of this relationship in the 1990s is the most successful case of ‘engaging China’ in East Asia. This case sheds light on the likely effectiveness of American and South Korean efforts to engage North Korea. As the Agreed Framework threatens to unravel and another potential crisis looms over the Peninsula, the China–South Korea axis constitutes — on balance — a stabilising factor.
Victor D. Cha is Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington DC. During 1998–99, he is the Edward Teller National Fellow, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University, CA, and a recipient of the Fulbright Senior Scholar Award for Korea.
The ability of the US and other advanced democracies to use force has been reduced by the evolution of civil–military relations since Vietnam. Profound changes in such societies have greatly reduced their ability to tolerate combat casualties — or to inflict them on enemy civilians. Technological change was supposed to favour civilian control over military operations through better telecommunications. But mass-media applications of the same technology have given visibility to military commanders, increasing their power. Because they often use their power to discourage combat actions proposed by diplomats and political appointees, there is a reversal of roles: military officers advocate diplomatic solutions, forcing civilians to advocate combat actions even though they lack the necessary expertise. The outcome of all these changes is illustrated by the December 1998 Operation Desert Fox air attack on Iraq: maximum mass-media publicity; minimum casualties; and ambiguous results.
Edward N. Luttwak is Senior Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington DC.
Despite savage killings in Algeria and intermittent attacks on government officials and foreigners in Egypt, the Islamist advance has come to a halt in both countries. Revolutionary Islamists no longer represent a real threat to the survival of the secular authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. Brutal as their methods have been, militant Islamists could not match the counter-violence unleashed by these regimes. The regimes’ military successes have not, however, led to peace, and their campaigns have yet to crush Islamist insurgency. Authoritarian policies from Cairo and Algiers have marginalised and alienated the militant Islamist opposition, pushing it towards the politics of terror. In the absence of substantive political and economic reforms, low-intensity conflict is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
Fawaz A. Gerges is the Christian A. Johnson Chair in International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Sarah Lawrence College, New York.
Victory on the battlefield, however overwhelming, cannot by itself decide the issue of a war. Unless military victory is to be followed by conquest and prolonged occupation, the victor’s terms have to be accepted and implemented by the defeated government, or by one that is not only prepared to do so but can make them acceptable to its people. Making those terms acceptable depends largely on the Thucydidean concept of ‘honour’, a concept as relevant to the modern world as it was for classical antiquity.
Michael Howard is Emeritus Professor of History at Oxford and Yale Universities, and President of the IISS.