Europe awaits the arrival of President Bush.
The visit — his first to Europe since the attacks of September 11 — will be
judged both on substance and style. Many of our allies will focus on his address
to the German Parliament on Wednesday, hoping for insight into what role the
president envisions for Europe in meeting the many global challenges facing both
sides of the Atlantic. Do the president and his administration view the
Europeans as essential or irrelevant? Striking as this dichotomy may seem, there
is evidence that both views are held by different actors within this
administration. The Europeans want to know which view the president
embraces.
The concern in Europe is that, rather
than sharing his vision of a revitalized trans-Atlantic partnership, the
president will focus solely on the recent, encouraging progress made concerning
Russia's integration into the West. He will herald the recent nuclear arms
treaty with Russia as the true end of the old era of U.S.-Russia relations, and
tout the upcoming NATO-Russia summit, where he and other heads of state will
formally launch the NATO-Russia Council, as the beginning of a new era. Europe
will interpret such a focus as a depressing indication that the administration
has yet to sort out its policy toward ostensibly its closest allies. For those
who believe the Europeans have much to offer the United States, such a scenario
would mark a huge missed opportunity.
Three
tensions currently strain trans-Atlantic relations. First, the gap in military
capabilities across the Atlantic has become a chasm. On Sept. 12, NATO invoked
Article 5 for the first time in its history, but the ensuing war in Afghanistan
was fought not by the alliance, but by the United States and a few key allies.
One reason for this was the Bush administration's view that the military
advantage our European allies would bring to the battlefield was not significant
enough to outweigh the cost to military efficiency of including them in battle
plans. Increasing U.S. defense spending will only serve to reinforce this gulf.
Clearly, this technological divide is not new. However, during the Cold War, the
United States believed its European allies in NATO were essential to any
conventional defense of continental Europe from a Soviet attack. In May 2002,
the Bush administration sees the existential threats to the United States coming
from global terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and it does not see the
Europeans as providing any vital military contribution in meeting these new
threats. This metamorphosis has been under way since the fall of the Berlin Wall
and can no longer be overlooked.
Second, our
European allies complain about the willingness, if not preference, of the Bush
administration to use unilateral means to reach a chosen end. Whether it is
unsigning the treaty creating the International Criminal Court or plotting to
overthrow Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration seems to disregard the views,
preferences, or support of its allies as a factor in its policy decisions.
Because the United States is the one remaining superpower, this singular
position and the resources that go along with it mean it can, in many cases,
undertake successful action on its own. Any of these actions, however, carry
deep consequences for European security and thus our allies across the Atlantic
find it irritating at best and reckless at worst to find the United States
implementing policies with which they fundamentally
disagree.
Third, the Bush administration and
its European counterparts have to sort out whether they want to share
responsibilities or work out a division of labor. In the case of Kosovo, the two
sides shared responsibilities. They fought the war together — albeit with the
United States shouldering the heavier burden — and undertook jointly the
post-war tasks of peacekeeping and reconstruction — albeit with the Europeans in
the lead. The competing model favors a division of labor, playing to each side's
strengths, under which the United States fights the wars and Europe keeps the
peace. This model appears to have support within the halls of the Department of
Defense.
The United States and Europe now face
the challenge of managing these tensions. Mr. Bush has a unique opportunity to
meet this challenge during his trip. Certainly, he will be met by demonstrators
and those who are deeply critical of U.S. policy. But the majority of Europeans
still look to the United States for global leadership and expect from Mr. Bush a
vision of a peaceful, democratic, prosperous future that includes a central role
for them. The United States may well not always want to go it alone and, in
truth, will not in every instance have the capabilities to go it alone. The
partners most likely to share our world view and thus share the burden are the
Europeans. When united, the two sides of the Atlantic can have an impact on
world politics that is substantial and
unmatched.
The president has an opportunity
this week to harness that potential. That should be at the top of his
agenda.
•
Karen Donfried is director of the foreign policy program at the German
Marshall Fund of the United States.