International Politics, 2004, 41, (119126) r 2004 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1384-5748/04 $25.00 www.palgrave-journals.

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US-European relations: from lapsed alliance to new partnership?

Francois Heisbourg
Director, Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique, 27 rue Damesme, 75013 Paris, France. E-mail: f.heisbourg@frstrategie.org

Major changes in the international system in the context of the war on terror have irrevocably changed the character of the transatlantic relationship in general and NATOs war fighting role in particular. There will be no return to the multilateralism of old therefore; however, this does not mean that a new partnership cannot be established between the United States and Europe in the future. International Politics (2004) 41, 119126. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800065 Keywords: transatlantic; Europe; NATO

Introduction
In strategic terms, the Atlantic Alliance belongs to the past, along with the overall network of permanent defence alliances between the US and its European and AsianPacific allies established after World War II. This demise is the result of fundamental and lasting changes in the international system, and is not simply or primarily the consequence of the Bush administrations assertiveness. This death of NATO however, does not preclude the possibility under certain conditions of a new strategic partnership between North America and the European Union developing. The fundamental changes in the international system are the direct, albeit delayed consequence of the end of the Cold War combined with the resulting emergence of a new range of security threats. This transformation can be summarized by four propositions. First, the United States is the sole superpower, and as such can be expected to resist the emergence of any peer competitor in the longer term actively (whether a challenge presents itself in the form of an ascendant China, or the EU positioning itself as a rival). The protection of this domination has been formalized as a policy objective in the National Security Strategy for the US published by the White House in September 2002. It is important to recognize though, that this superpower status does not make it an all-powerful hegemon, the limitations of its military power and capability being clearly highlighted in Iraq.

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Second, the mission makes the coalition to use the blunt formula publicized by Donald Rumsfeld at NATO shortly after the 9/11 attacks; in other words, the existence and unity of multilateral alliances is no longer dependent simply on longstanding bilateral agreements. The 20th century understandings between old friends confronted and united by a recognized common threat no longer hold good in the context of an ever-increasing variety of perceived threats. What counts now is mission performance, being prepared to take action against whomever or whatever is the perceived threat of the day. This is the direct result of the replacement of the permanent, existential, threat from the Soviet Union by a discontinuous and shifting set of threats and challenges and the willingness or the ability to participate in the accomplishment of any given mission, whether big or small, which will tend to vary greatly according to the overlap or opposition of interests. The participants involved in Iraq are not identical to those involved in Africa contingencies or in the war against terrorism with a global reach. Third, the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by states of concern, a widely recognized and accepted threat, has now been compounded by the threat of proliferation of such weapons of mass destruction into the hands of non-state terrorist groups. To face this prospective hyper terrorism, deterrence is largely irrelevant, ex-post repression is insufficient as a policy and the Atlantic Alliance as a locus for counter-terrorism action is inadequate. Finally, Europe has ceased to be an area of major strategic concern for the United States. Despite the removal of the Soviet threat at the end of the 1980s, with its Schwerpunkt in Central Europe, this marginalisation of Europe in American strategic calculations only became fully visible after the break-up of the former Yugoslavia and the end of the ensuing wars in the Balkans an episode that kept Europe and NATO in the limelight during the years 1991 2000. That Europe is an area of strategic calm is obviously a positive development but not with regard to US policy towards NATO and the EU, as it serves to reinforce the US tendency not to place any significant strategic value on unity for unitys sake. This trend is occurring at the same time as the EU expands to 25, enlarging the Kantian Paradise as Robert Kagan (2003) describes it but without having put into place the capabilities necessary to protect it. The effect of these trends has been in a number of instances magnified and aggravated by the ideological make up of the present US administration and some of the key personalities involved an aspect that applies equally to some of its counterparts in Europe, both old and new. As a result, the loosening of alliance ties and sense of the expendability of Atlantic and European unity set against the affirmation of military prevention have resulted in transatlantic relations in particular, taking on an unnecessarily harsh and acrimonious character. We have witnessed alliance splitting by all and sundry, the loss of
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old friendships, along with the abuse of preventive action to justify the bonapartist invasion of Iraq. However, the basic underlying changes are probably more important in the long run than the current acute manifestations of these ideological divisions. The essential corollary is that the United States has no fundamental reason to return to the multilateralist system that prevailed, with varying degrees of intensity from 19411 until 2001. In particular, the permanent alliances of the Cold War have ceased to have a strategic raison detre of the sort they had in World War II and during the Cold War. In those decades, the coalition made the mission: victory during the Cold War depended on holding the ring (Winston Churchills phrase applied to the need to preserve the unity of the anti-Axis coalition in the turning-point year of 1943). This is simply no longer required and Robert Kagan definitely has a point when he reminds readers that Americas embrace of multilateralism was often instrumental. That particular set of instrumental reasons has now disappeared. This corollary does not imply that the US has no strategic alternative vis-a`vis its current assertive unilateralism other than to return to the status quo ante. Having a range of strategic options is one of the benefits of being a superpower. The pre-1941 US had strongly contrasted phases of engagement and disengagement, from the extreme of co-belligerence (against the Central Powers of World War I) or imperial expansion (the war of 1898) to absolute strategic economic isolationism during the 1930s. After the current bonapartist phase, it is possible that the US may rediscover the virtues of a jeffersonian policy of taking heed of the views of its friends (the opposite as if were of the Donald Rumsfeld school of diplomacy). However, the US has another basic option, that of retreating into homeland sanctuarization: if the military, budgetary and political costs of remodelling the Middle-East prove to be unsustainably high, the US body politic could, quite rationally, emphasize its territorial protection at the expense of overseas commitments. This would not necessarily translate as 1930s isolationism, but could look rather like a concert of nations style of US involvement in international affairs, as in the early 1900s or in the 1920s: aloof, but not absent nor hostile. Such an option should not be considered as implausible even in the light of globalization. On the strategic level, it can no doubt be argued that the 9/11 assailants worked from within the homeland. But, this flaw needs to be set in contrast to the possibly even greater flaws of a forward-based posture, notably in the Middle-East. The Europeans need to bear in mind such possibilities, not least because shifts in US postures tend to occur both suddenly and radically. The swings of the pendulum can be wide and quick. A further consequence, flowing from the above, involves the future of NATO. If NATO is dead as a permanent defence alliance, that does not mean that it has ceased to play other important roles. In examining prospects for the
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USEuropean strategic partnership, it is important to be clear as to what NATO has ceased to be, what NATO is (or can be) and what NATO cannot be. NATO is no longer a war machine. The Kosovo air campaign not only caused deep reactions in the US against war by committee, but also demonstrated the extreme difficulties caused by the competition between the national US chain of command and the NATO chain of command. This problem was aggravated by the fact that each chain of command was headed by a US general officer (Chief of the Joint Chief Robert Shelton, SACEUR Wesley Clark) both of whom regarded the other as a subordinate (EUCOM theatre commander General Clark) or force contributor (General Shelton). Given that the post-Cold War European Command (EUCOM) represents less than 8% of the US force structure, there is no doubt as to what will happen in the future: operations entailing the use of lethal force any significant US force component will be run by a US chain of command answering directly to Washington, not to NATO. NATO is a formidable lever for facilitating the transition to security sector reform in the post-communist countries aspiring to membership. Although this is now a wasting asset (with the Alliance expanding from 16 members in 1998 to 26 in 2004), it still appeals to the remaining aspiring countries, most notably Ukraine and the Balkan States (Croatia, Albania, and Macedonia in particular). Furthermore, NATO remains an essential provider of interoperability, standardization and operating procedures between the armed forces of its members, at least to the Europeans themselves as well as with the US Forces via EUCOM. There is no easy European substitute for NATOs role in this respect. This is an instrumental role, but possibly the most important in this particular period of history. The creation of a NATO Response Force and of the Atlantic Command Transformation may help (if they are not politically mismanaged) and provide a new lease of life for this function. NATO naturally continues to serve as a focus for EuropeanNorth American security dialogue and cooperation. On issues such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or the military aspects of the fight against terrorism, this is not unimportant. Finally, NATO functions pretty much as a UN regional organization, participating in peace-keeping and peace-support operations in the Balkans (SFOR, KFOR) or elsewhere (ISAF in Kabul). This is also highly significant. However, these tasks correspond to only a fraction of the overall transatlantic relationship and do not necessarily relate to the strategically most important part of it. Real-world security challenges such as the Iraq crisis (or, just over the horizon, Iran) are not dealt with primarily in NATO councils or consultations; strategic relations with key players such as China or Russia are not handled in a transatlantic framework by either the US or the EU and its members; the non-directly military dimension of the fight against terrorism is
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not primarily a NATO role; and strategically important policies such as those involving the future of Africa or the Middle-East peace process are non-NATO as well. Yet, all of these issues have a potentially strong transatlantic dimension or consequences (and of course, this enumeration does not cover issues such as the future of free trade, the role of the WTO or of the financial system, the dollarEuro relationship), which are of prime importance to the US and Europe and to their mutual relations. In other words, NATO does not have the breadth and the depth to be the fulcrum of the USEuropean strategic relationship, even if it will continue to be an important part thereof.

From Alliance to Partnership

In strategic terms, there will be no satisfaction gained in attempting to revert to the 19412001 multilateral model. In other words, what should be aimed for is neither a return to permanent alliance, nor an overburdening of NATO with tasks that it is incapable of handling, politically or bureaucratically. The objective should be the establishment of something simultaneously more broadly based and less constraining, in effect a partnership. The European motivation would be to maintain civilized, friendly relations with the United States agreeing to disagree on occasion, but not making life deliberately difficult for American partners. The American motivation for entering into such an association would be to facilitate European support of, and, as the case may be, participation in US-led global policies and generally to increase the possibility that such support would be forthcoming. However, to achieve a working partnership a number of limits need to be recognized and several conditions will have to be met: (1) In the short run, a calming down period needs to occur. The wounds inflicted during the Iraq crisis remain open and raw: a cooling off period is required. The CSIS-inspired Joint Declaration Renewing the Transatlantic Partnership (May 14, 2003) signed by prominent former American officials was a substantive and helpful effort. But it came too early, given the climate. The same goes for equally distinguished initial European responses thereto. (2) Similarly, it will not be terribly helpful if proposals are made, which simply assume that America and Europe share values and interests (something repeatedly affirmed in the European former statesmens response) to the CSIS Joint Declaration. This mantra-like repetition may well be true, but if it were self-evident, then one would have to explain why the current crisis is so deep and severe (or one would have to argue that it is neither deep nor severe, in which case solemn declarations are hardly called for). Part of the problem is precisely that interests and values are not as widely shared as they were during the Cold War. When they are shared (free trade and investment flows,
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democracy, rule and law), they are less specifically USEuropean than they used to be, now that much of Asia and Latin America has joined the ranks of democratic or democratizing and economically liberal states. (3) A partnership is not possible if one side considers the other as being the essential problem, rather than as part of the solution. Thus, French or Russian calls for a multipolar world of the sort put forward during the Iraq war are not conducive to the establishment of a partnership, since they are directed at creating a countervailing force to the US: multipolarity can be advanced only at the expense of partnership. Conversely, Europeans (including the UK and France) are united in their promotion of a rule-based international system, in which multilateralism is not simply a means but also an end. Multilateralism is not directed against the US and therefore it does not challenge the essentials of the transatlantic partnership. However, there will be no partnership if the US deliberately and systematically tries to prevent others from working towards a multilateral, rule-based, international system. Washingtons attempts to sabotage the establishment of an International Criminal Court are not encouraging in this respect. (4) In the post-alliance world, a partnership cannot be sustained if the Europeans do not display a substantially greater amount of strategic seriousness in defining and conducting foreign and security policy: European views and interests will hardly be taken into account by Washington if they simply come in a reactive form (i.e. reacting to an American proposal). Thus, in the case of the acquisition by Iran of the means to produce weapons-grade uranium in violation of NPT commitments, it is essential for the Europeans to chart and conduct policy collectively, in close consultation with the Americans, and not simply react to US initiatives. Even more importantly, a post-alliance Europe can only be taken seriously as a partner, if it itself, is serious in meeting the challenges and threats of the post-9/11 world, whether in the realm of hard power or soft power. This implies some necessary internal European reforms, outlined below. But there are two areas of external initiative that the Europeans need to consider: (a) In the field of soft power, it is not enough for Europe to point out to its considerable contribution to international security through official development aid that stands close to three times the US level. The Americans do spend less than the Europeans, albeit not by a ratio of 3:1 : aid by the US philanthropic sector reduces the gap significantly. The US gives a much greater focus to the security consequences of their assistance as well. The US has consistently supported the existing peace treaties in the Middle-East through massive aid to Egypt, Israel and Jordan with a combined total of around $3 billion a year. In addition, the US has greatly enhanced global stability by endowing the Cooperative Threat Reduction
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Programme with some $8 billion over the last 10 years (effectively denuclearizing Ukraine, Byelorussia and Kazakhstan and helping prevent nuclear materials from leaking out of Russia). In comparison, during the 1990s, the EU countries spent about h1 billion a year in and around the IsraeliPalestinian area and less than $ 800 millions on non-proliferation in the former Soviet Union. Similarly, one of the largest US recipients of aid is Colombia, which engaged in a fierce struggle with the narco guerrillas. I am not citing Camp David aid or Plan Colombia as models: simply as examples of an attempt to bring together security and economic assistance. Thus, without necessarily emulating specific US spending patterns and habits, the EU should audit the security implications of its ODA expenditure: in other words, we need to remember that security is unlikely to exist in the absence of development, and development cannot be sustained without security. (b) In terms of hard security, with the US otherwise engaged, the Europeans will neither preserve their Kantian paradise nor be capable of acting as serious partners of the US without significant changes in defence expenditures and in force structure. The EU 15 have more soldiers (1.6M) than the US (1.4M), more tanks (9,250 vs 8,020), more artillery pieces (11,900 vs 6,900), and a large array of combat aircraft (3,200 vs 5,000). However, Europe only spends some 40% of what the US does on defence (some $150 billion and stagnating in 2002 vs $350 billion and rising), and less than 20% of what the US does on military R&D ($10 billion vs more than $50 billion). Furthermore, EU efforts are balkanized between 15 and soon 25 national force structures. In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the Europeans field only a very small fraction of US capabilities in terms of strategic mobility, command and control systems (so called C4ISTAR), and intelligent munitions, that is, the capabilities that count in modern, post-Cold War warfare. In reality, Europe is increasingly unable to work competently, whether with the Americans or without them. Hence, it will be difficult to keep the US interested in the service provider role of NATO as a producer of interoperability and of military transformation if the Europeans allow themselves to fall further behind. In this context, increased EU-wide military R&D funding, using a Galileo-style co-funding between the EU (European Commission) and the member states (European Armaments Agency), integrated command structures (notably in air transport for strategic mobility), not to mention a serious EU homeland security programme (we cannot afford to wait for a 9/11), are of the essence here preferably as full EU-wide ventures, or failing that, as open cooperations renforcees. The ultimate paradox is indeed that such a USEuropean partnership will not thrive if the Europeans continue to act as if the US
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were in charge of the security of our Kantian paradise. A weak Europe is a recipe for a non-partnership with the US. Finally, a word on institutions: if NATO can only bear a limited proportion of the transatlantic traffic, and since the regular EUUS summits provide little continuity while also not reflecting the broad spectrum of the transatlantic relationship, something must clearly be changed in institutional terms. My own preference would be for providing the USEU summits with a permanent secretariat, entrusted with the substantive preparation of the meetings along with the monitoring of the implementation of decisions made. On the EU side, this task could be fulfilled by the EU Foreign Minister foreseen in the draft constitution. Such a necessary step (or others like it) will not be sufficient. The substance mentioned earlier is obviously of the essence: the institution plays the role of a cap-stone. Notes
1 With the adoption of the Atlantic Declaration in August 1941.

References
Daalder, I.H. and Lindsay, J.M. (2003) America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Howorth, J. (2003) Foreign and Defence Policy Cooperation, in J. Peterson and M.A. Pollack (eds.) Europe, America, Bush: Transatlantic Relations in the Twenty-First Century, London: Routledge. Kagan, R. (2003) Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, New York, Alfred A. Knopf. Musu, C. and Wallace, W. (2003) The Middle East: Focus of discord? in J. Peterson and M.A. Pollack (eds.), Europe, America, Bush: Transatlantic Relations in the Twenty-First Century, London: Routledge. Peterson, J. and Pollack, M.A. (2003) Europe, America, Bush: Transatlantic Relations in the Twenty-First Century, London: Routledge. Serfaty, S. (ed.) Joint Declaration Renewing the transatlantic Relationship, CSIS, Washington DC, 14 May 2003.

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