Cherry-picking as the future of the transatlantic alliance

A French general of the first world war famously attempted to inspire his troops with the defiant message: ‘My right gives way, my left yields, everything’s fine – I shall attack!’ General Foch may be comforted in his cold grave by the posthumous endorsement of distinguished commentators from ‘Old Europe’, Michael Naumann and Patrice De Beer.

Writing as members of the French and German elites in the midst of the bitterest intra-European disputes in memory, they might be expected to recognise the tangible signs of a disintegrating geopolitics. After all, in face of the crisis over Iraq, ‘European unity’ has been exposed for what it is: a chimera. But instead of reaching for the higher ground of understanding the wreckage around them, these avatars of the European dream resort to its lowest common denominator.

However, bashing the Americans won’t get ‘Old Europe’ very far. But its representatives are correct on one thing: its relationship with the United States is indeed in trouble. Moreover, to understand its changing nature – and how the US in particular should respond – it is important to stand back from the critical events of recent weeks, and place them in a broader context.

Two views of the world

Throughout the 1990s, mutual exchanges of pleasantries and vague rhetoric of a ‘Europe whole and free’ obscured the fact that the transatlantic relationship was increasingly in crisis, with a vocal portion of the European political elite viewing the United States as part of the problem in international politics, rather than as part of the solution to global problems.

During this period, genuine policy differences between the US and its European allies emerged over a wide variety of issues: from trade, the death penalty, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to the Kyoto (climate change) agreement, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and the US abrogation of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty.

This list, far from complete, should make it clear to the most complacent of analysts that the drift in the transatlantic relationship is about far more than carping, ineffectual Europeans glowering about American dominance from the safety of a Parisian café.

It is centred on fundamental philosophical and structural differences held by people with a very different view of how the world should be ordered from that of the average American; it should be evaluated far more seriously than has been the case in Washington.

Those Europeans pushing for the creation of a more centralised, federal, coherent European Union (EU) political construct do so by increasingly defining themselves through their differences from Americans. European Gaullists see the emergence of a European pole of power as an effective foil to overweening American global dominance.

Such a reality makes a lie of American Wilsonian pretensions to advance universal values. Paradoxically, these universalist pretensions are all too often seen by Europeans of many political stripes as another, more subtle form of self-centred American unilateralism.

Europe’s fanciful resurgence

The causes of the Gaullist revival of a European ambition to occupy an independent pole of global power are structural and thus likely to endure. With the end of the cold war, it was to be expected that America and Europe would drift apart; without the unifying growl of the Soviet bear to subsume the reality that America and several European states had distinct international interests, there were bound to be divergences.

The US has emerged as the sole superpower in the post-cold-war era, while the European states, with the partial exception of France and the UK, are at best regional powers. This structural difference, unlikely to change even in the medium to long term, does much to explain the practical policy differences increasingly emerging on both sides of the Atlantic.

Not only has America gone from strength to strength in the new era, but Europe also has conspicuously failed to emerge as a coherent power in its own right. This sense of a resurgent and increasingly unfettered America, coupled with an introverted, increasingly marginalised Europe, does much to explain not only the differences in policy between the two poles, but also the increased virulence many Europeans feel toward American policies with which they disagree.

Europe’s divisions on display

These fundamental differences between America and Europe are constantly replayed in the political realm. Contrary to any number of soothing and misleading commission communiqués, the Europeans are light years away from developing a common foreign and security policy (CFSP). One has only to look at the seminal issue of war and peace today – what to do about Saddam Hussein’s Iraq – to see a complete lack of coordination at the European level.

Military weakness, economic stagnation, and above all political disunity – this is the reality that confronts American decision-makers today when looking at Europe. Despite positive spins and Gaullist hopes, Europe is not likely to challenge American primacy in the long run. This is not due to any general, continental love of Washington or its policies. Rather, it is the result of European weakness, stagnation, and division.

The last few weeks have presented vivid evidence of the latter: first, with competing statements from the Franco–German axis and the leaders of eight EU member and applicant states (including Britain) over attitudes to US policy on Iraq; secondly, with an emergency summit of EU leaders on 17 February which managed, just, to paper over the cracks which these statements had opened up, at least in terms of public relations; and thirdly, the opposition of three members of Nato (France, Germany and Belgium) to begin military planning to protect Turkey in the event of war with Iraq.

The foreign policy positions on Iraq of the three major EU powers vividly illustrate the depth of Europe’s divisions. At present, the UK stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the US; Germany’s militant pacifists are against any type of military involvement, be it sanctioned by the United Nations (UN) or not; and France mixes strident advocacy of more time for the weapons inspectors with wary appeals to the ultimate authority of UN Security Council deliberations. It is hard to imagine starker and more disparate foreign policy approaches being staked out by the putative shapers of a united Europe.

The American answer: cherry-picking

Europe thus combines grandiose ambition with an utter failure to create the circumstances where it can be realised. The task for the US thus becomes ever clearer. American policy-makers need to separate rhetoric from reality in Europe, and understand that the very lack of European unity that hamstrings European Gaullist efforts to challenge the United States presents America with a unique opportunity.

If Europe is more about diversity than uniformity, if the concept of a unified ‘Europe’ does not really exist, then a general American transatlantic foreign policy based on ‘cherry-picking’ – engaging coalitions of willing European allies on a case-by-case basis – becomes entirely possible.

Such a stance is palpably in America’s interests, as it provides a method of managing transatlantic drift while remaining engaged with a continent that will rarely be wholly for, or wholly against, specific American foreign policy initiatives.

For such an approach to work, it is essential to view Europe as less than a monolithic entity. The different approaches the Bush administration took with the Kyoto global warming treaty and missile defence are instructive. By condemning out of hand the Kyoto agreement and offering no positive policy alternatives, the Bush administration found itself in a public relations disaster in its early days. By failing to engage the Europeans, the White House unwittingly succeeded in uniting them.

Coalitions of the willing

The US has been here before, after all. After the decision on Kyoto caused widespread protest in European capitals, and refusing to believe reports that ‘Europe’ was implacably opposed to American desires to abrogate the ABM treaty, the White House sent its representatives to the capitals of Europe, where they found the ‘European’ stance on missile defence far more fragmented than it had appeared at first glance.

Intensive diplomatic efforts led Spain, Italy, the UK, Poland, Hungary, and ultimately Russia to embrace, or at least tolerate, the new administration’s initiative. By searching out potential European allies at the national level, Washington engaged in successful cherry-picking and avoided the kind of diplomatic and public relations disaster that had occurred over Kyoto.

Ironically, this realist policy actually calls for more diplomatic and political engagement with Europe at a national level, even if Brussels is generally taken less seriously. As the Kyoto episode made abundantly clear, in order for cherry-picking to work, the US must find divisions in ‘European’ opinion based on differing conceptions of national interest.

America has constantly to note differences within Europe in order to exploit them to form a ‘coalition of the willing’ on any given policy initiative. Europe, such as it presently exists, suits general American interests. Its member states are capable of assisting the US when their interests coincide with America’s; yet it is too feeble to easily block America over fundamental issues of national security. Cherry-picking as a general strategy ensures the endurance of this favourable status quo.

After fifty years: time for a new realism

Politically, America must stop giving generally sympathetic countries such as the UK and Poland such bad geopolitical advice. By pushing the UK into ‘Europe’, the US hoped to make the project more pro-American, more pro-free market, and pro-transatlantic alliance. After 50 years, it is time to look the results squarely in the eye: the EU is simply no more pro-American, pro-free market, or pro-transatlantic alliance than it was at the time of its inception.

Only a Europe that widens, rather than deepens – a Europe à la carte where efforts at increased centralisation and homogenisation are kept to a minimum – suits both American national interests and the interests of individual citizens on the continent. Any hint of further significant centralisation – the UK joining the euro, CFSP becoming a reality, the closer harmonisation of tax or fiscal policy across the continent – must be seen by America for what it is: a Gaullist effort to construct a pole in opposition to the United States. That will be the point at which the transatlantic tie genuinely begins to break.

Such an outcome is, however, entirely avoidable. A strategy of creating coalitions of the willing will preserve a status quo where the transatlantic relationship, despite fraying a bit at the edges, continues to provide common goods to both sides of the Atlantic. Such an overall policy acknowledges an awkward current truth of the transatlantic relationship: the United States wants Europe neither to be too successful nor to fail. As such, the Europe of today suits America’s long-term strategic interests.

A realist cherry-picking strategy will continue to allow the United States to behave multilaterally where possible and unilaterally where necessary. It will confound the impulses of both unilateralist neoconservatives and strictly multilateralist Wilsonians in the military arena. Through it, the US will make the appearance of a Gaullist, centralised European rival far less likely, while distributing enough shared benefits that the overall transatlantic relationship will continue to provide Europeans, as well as Americans, with more benefits than problems.