A SEPARATE EUROPE LOOKS THE BETTER BET
by John O'Sullivan
Gulf News
February 27, 2005

President Bush's tour of Europe has been full of smiles. Those smiles from both Bush and the European leaders he was meeting were carefully planned in advance.

The trip was designed to restore harmonious relations between Europe and the United States following their differences over the Iraq war.

Yet it almost went wrong before it began. Exactly one week before Bush's arrival, Gerhard Schroeder, the German chancellor, sent a speech to a Western security conference in Munich that amounted to a sudden snatching away of the "welcome" mat.

He dismissed Nato as an out-of-date organisation, suggested that transatlantic relations should be managed henceforth through the European Union, and called for a committee of "wise men" to ponder and propose some such new model of US-European allied cooperation.

Schroeder was right on one point: there is a need for institutional rethinking of Cold War structures. But his specific proposals were designed to achieve aims very different from that of improving transatlantic relations.

On top of that, Schroeder was proposing to replace an organisation in which the United States is the leader, namely Nato, with a US-EU partnership between two supposed equals and a partnership in which Washington would no longer have direct access to all the nation-states making up "Europe".

In other words he rejected US leadership of the Atlantic alliance. Schroeder's speech accordingly caused a bubbling little row in Munich.

It was resented by the Americans. It caused disquiet among those Europeans who prefer American leadership to Franco-German dominance. And it was quietly welcomed in Paris.

It is hard to overstate the significance of this speech. Until a few years ago, Germany was seen by Washington as the "swing" country in Europe.

The British were reliably pro-American and Atlanticist; the French were reliably opposed; but as long as the Germans remained on the Atlanticist side, all would be well with the transatlantic alliance.

Now the German chancellor was serving notice that Berlin had switched firmly to the French side and wanted the EU to be a "counterweight" to American power.

No one took comfort from the official assurances that Schroeder was merely thinking aloud. Heads of government do not think aloud unless they want their thoughts to signal a new direction in policy.

So President Bush used speeches and media interviews to signal his polite disagreement with the German Chancellor and, by extension, with the Franco-German axis in Europe.

He explicitly rejected Schroeder's claim that Nato was declining in importance, saying it remained "vital". He opposed the idea that Europe should develop its own European defence organisation separate from Nato.

Clear gulf in policy

He attacked the Franco-German dogma that the EU should become a "counterweight" to American power. And he stressed that the West could achieve almost anything in world politics provided it remained united.

So a clear gulf in policy existed between President Bush and his French and German counterparts as he spoke in Brussels last Monday.

Only in the most exceptional cases, however, do summits and presidential trips end in public failure. They are arranged in advance down to the smallest detail by advance committees of so-called sherpas to ensure success.

So each side made modest concessions to the other. Nato's European members agreed to send military and police training missions to Iraq.

Bush reiterated several times that he had no plans to invade Iran. There were expressions of high regard all round. The media reported an improvement in relations.

But the underlying dispute over the shape of the Atlantic alliance remained.

The United States supports the traditional model: an alliance in which the United States is the leader of middling and smaller powers acting together in world politics.

France and Germany, on the other hand, want the EU to develop into a single superpower with its own foreign policy and armed forces. Such an "equal partner" would inevitably develop as a rival to the United States in world politics.

And the West would gradually separate into two powers both superpowers but neither enjoying the overwhelming dominance of today's West.

Until very recently Washington has largely ignored this threat. How could an EU that spent an average of only 1.5 per cent of its gross domestic product on defence be a rival?

But Europe was never going to invade the United States. It could nonetheless damage US interests in lesser but still serious ways.

I can cite two examples:

1. A French "Green" politician, Noel Mamere, led a recent news broadcast with this statement: "The good thing about the European Constitution is that with it the United Kingdom will not be able to support the United States in a future war."

2. The new head of the European Defence Agency, Nick Witney, who is responsible for co-ordinating European defence procurement, said: "In matters of technology I think Europe is engaged in competition with America."

In other words an EU formed on Franco-German lines would prevent America's closest allies in Europe from cooperating with the United States in major crises and redirect defence spending away from joint Euro-American projects towards wholly European ones.

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair is generally seen in world politics as the personal friend and political ally of Bush.

On a range of issues such as the development of a European defence force, however, the British under Tony Blair have quietly moved away from the United States towards the Franco-German position.

Franco-German vision

Blair keeps saying he does not want to choose between Europe and America. But when Paris and Berlin force him to do so, he always chooses Europe with the single exception of Iraq.

That will continue as long as the Franco-German vision of Europe is the dominant one or indeed the only one available.

And that will only change if the United States throws its full diplomatic weight behind a different model of Europe and the Atlantic alliance.

One can sum up that choice very simply: either the EU develops a defence dimension or Nato develops a trade and economics dimension.

If the former, then Europe and America will eventually go their separate ways. If the latter, then the Euro-Atlantic community will become the next major player in world politics.

At the moment a separate Europe looks the better bet. But there were signs in the president's speeches with their heartfelt and almost desperate emphasis on keeping Nato as the main Atlantic institution that he realises what is at stake.

If he decides to fight for a united West under US leadership, however, then he will have the "Mother of All Battles" on his hands. And there will quickly be an end to all the smiles.

John O'Sullivan, former adviser to Lady Thatcher, is currently editor of "The National Interest" and a member of Benador Associates.