V-E Day Anniversary in the Czech Republic

Albion Professor Levine's Presentation at an international Conference, "The Future of the Transatlantic Alliance in the Evolving Post Cold-War World," May 5, 2005
 

The Future of the Transatlantic Alliance in the Evolving Post Cold-War World

In April and May 1945, General George S. Patton and the U.S. Third Army crossed into Czechoslovakia. Pilsen was liberated just days before the armistice. As the Hollywood movie Patton portrayed, Patton foresaw the forthcoming Cold war division of Europe. He had raced across the center of the continent, with his armor averaging an amazing 30 miles a day, in part, to limit the territory that would fall to Soviet control. Patton’s advance beyond the agreed-to demarcation line was halted by orders from above, from the commander of allied forces Dwight Eisenhower.

Patton had foreseen the bipolar division of the world that would define U.S.-European relations for the next half century. But with the end of the Cold War, that major dividing line is now passé, and the United States and Europe are in the process of redefining the transatlantic relationship for new times, for an altered geopolitical landscape where countries must confront new dangers, not the dangers of old.

There is a fashionable tendency to argue that the transatlantic alliance has come to an end. New tensions between European nations and the United States have emerged not just over the Iraq war but also over the failure of the United States to sign the Kyoto treaty and give its full approval to various human rights treaties. A new sense of the economic competition also seems to divide the United States and a strengthened European Union.

But the differences that seemingly divide the United States from its allies should not be overstated. Despite the differences and short-run problems, the United States and Europe share strategic interests and a common heritage.

In this brief paper I shall explain the emergence of the new sources of tension in European-U.S. relations and point to where differences are real and should be expected. I will then point to how these differences are often misunderstood and overstated. A more “political” understanding of United States policy will point to the domestic roots of United States actions (or, in some cases, inactions) that otherwise seems incomprehensible to observers in Europe. When such domestic sources of U.S. foreign policy are understand, differences between the United States and Europe become more accepted as the normal “bumps” in the relationship of good friends who have somewhat different political systems.

The real differences between friends can then be explained and accepted. The United States is not, as critics would have us to believe, a superpower so infatuated with its own might that it is deaf to the pleas of others, even its European friends.

The Unipolar Moment: Political Realism and the “Bumps” in the Road Ahead

The end of the Cold War has allowed new tensions to emerge in the transatlantic alliance to emerge as there was no longer the necessity for total unity in the face of a possible Soviet threat to Europe. Indeed, the world entered a “unipolar moment” with only one true strategic superpower.

As the school of “realism” in international relations argues, the “unipolar moment” is highly unstable. Other countries are uncomfortable with the hegemony enjoyed by the United States. When it comes to major decisions like the invasion of Iraq, other countries, including France and Germany, will demand their own voice; they cannot be expected to meekly accept a course of action dictated by the United States. Nor will nations be comfortable with the risk taking that occurs when a hegemonic actor feels no great sense of limitation in a unipolar world.

The maturation of the European Union, too, is another factor that has increased the potential for U.S.-European differences. The United States saw the early stages of European integration as a means of taming Germany and integrating it into the West, a means of building a stronger bulwark against communism. A Common Market divided over the status of Great Britain also posed little challenge. European integration centered on the “low politics” economic sphere posed little challenge to the transatlantic alliance in the “high politics” of national defense and security policy where NATO, not the EU, dominated.

But, in recent years, a reinvigorated Europe has begun to take steps to formulate a common foreign policy. The EU has finally established a European emergency reaction force, however small. Efforts to create the post of European foreign minister and articulate a common European position on security and world trade issues are indicators of a new, independent activism in Europe, whatever the fate of Europe’s proposed constitution.

In short, in the unipolar moment, Europe has felt the need to reestablish some of the balance of power that has been lost. European nations are not simply asserting their own interests; they also seek to temper the possible risks of intemperate U.S. unilateral action. Europe wants to assure that its concerns as a friend and partner are respected.

The altered geopolitical realities of the post-Col War have also led officials in the United States to reexamine its past commitments to Europe. In the United States, “budget hawks” and military modernizers question the need for bearing the expense of stationing large numbers of troops in Europe. Facing new enemies in the post-Cold War era, decision makers in the U.S. are considering force restructuring and redeployment, including the possibility of reducing strength at traditional European bases in order to increase the capacity of bases in Italy, the periphery of Europe, and Turkey, areas that are closer to the new post-Cold War trouble spots.

The Domestic Political Roots of American-European Differences: Why the Bumps in the Road Occur

As the post-Cold War world continues to evolved, we should expect that “bumps” or problems in the transatlantic alliance will emerge. At times, these problems will be driven by differences in strategic responsibilities and interests, as is the case with the controversy over the EU’s move to lift trade sanctions against China. As John Mearsheimer argues, the United States has no choice but to respond to its own concerns, and to its Asian allies’ concerns, regarding China’s growing power and emerging claims as a incipient regional hegemon. European nations, less engaged militarily in Asia, are freer to respond to their national economic interests in the pursuit of better trade relations with Asia’s growing economic giant.

Differences in strategic responsibilities also help to explain why the United States has been slow to agree on international restrictions on the use of land mines, a seemingly incomprehensible position to its critics. The United States must ensure the protection of its troops stationed in Korea and other exposed positions in the world. Land mines can be a useful—maybe even a necessary--defensive instrument. Nations with fewer global responsibilities have less need to see the “logic” of land mines. Hence, despite the objection of critics that even “smart” land mines kill and maim, U.S. presidents, Democrats and Republican alike, have acted on the prerogative of using “smart” land mines that are automatically defused with time. Similarly, the U.S. “commander in chief” has been —and must be—cautious in moving toward the approval of international treaties that might expose American troops to possibly politicized tribunals on charges of criminal actions overseas.

The differences between Europe and the United States on foreign policy are too often attributed to “American exceptionalism,” that America is different from the world in the exaggerated emphasis given to individual liberty and the free market and hence the reluctance to approve treaties that extend the sphere of government. Yet, the U.S. does approve international treaties. The United States joined the world in the Montreal protocol banning the use of CFC-based aerosols as the deleterious impact of CFC’s on the ozone layer was incontrovertible. The United States is less willing to absorb the economic costs of joining Kyoto when the scientific evidence as to global warming and the appropriateness of the proposed remedies is still a question of some scientific debate (Snow & Brown 2001, p. 348).

It is not simply that the U.S. sees joining Kyoto as a “drag” on its economy. More importantly, as Andrew Moravcsik has argued, it is the structure of the American political system that keeps the United States out of Kyoto and various other international treaties even when a majority of American public endorses such commitments. The United States constitution requires supermajority approval for ratification of a treaty by the Senate—a condition that is quite difficult to reach. Furthermore, 60 votes (in the 100-member Senate) are need to break a filibuster and move a bill to a vote, another threshold that is not easily reached. The failure of the U.S. to approve participation in Kyoto and various human rights treaties is not an expression of indifference, arrogance, and ill will. It is more simply the consequence a nonparliamentary, antimajoritarian political structure that allows a strong minority to stop the actions of a majority on controversial issues.

Domestic political structures act to constrain U.S. action. The U.S.’s failure to join in Kyoto and other international commitments is a reflection of that structure, not of a hostility or of a mindset that has no regard at all for opinion in Europe.

Shared Interests. a Shared Heritage, and a Shared Enemy

While the differences between Europe and the United States are real, common values will continue to be a force for unity. The impact of these shared traditions was even evident when the German Green Party and its foreign minister Joschka Fischer, dissented from the policy of Prime Minister Gerhard Schröder, and voiced the necessity of continuing to limit strategic exports to China. The Greens, tough critics of the U.S. on the war in Iraq, share a human rights orientation with the U.S. that has helped to mend the rift that first appeared when the EU seemed to be intent on quickly lifting the arms embargo.

Continuing conversation between the U.S. and Europe as a result of the embargo imbroglio also led to the rediscovery of shared values (including continuing human rights concerns, not just revulsion at the suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests) and shared security concerns. China’s more statements regarding a possible invasion of Taiwan and in its fervent opposition to a possible U.N. Security Council seat for Japan only served to remind Europe of the gulf that still separates China from Europe. Shared sentiments and interests have led to the possibility of a compromise on the question of the embargo. Compromise is evidence of the continuing working relationship of the transatlantic alliance.

European integration has not progressed all that far in the area of military action and defense forces. The size of the EU joint reaction force remains quite minimal, especially when compared to the immense capacity of U.S. and NATO forces. The resolution of the Bosnia and Kosovo crises and the initial delivery of aid to the stricken Asia Tsunami nations all demonstrate the continuing importance of U.S. capacity as Europe and the U.S. work together in resolving difficult crises and meeting peacekeeping and other joint goals.

Globalization has yielded new enemies for both the U.S. and Europe. As the attacks of 9/11 demonstrate only too well, advances in telecommunications has led to resentments around the world where "super-empowered individuals" (to use the words of Thomas Friedman) pose a threat to Western institutions and way of life. Europe will not be immune from such attacks. The transatlantic alliance will find much of common interest that it will continue to defend in the face of new enemies.

What are the implications of these observations? Simply put, the United States and Europe are not drifting away from one another. Differences are real and can be expected. But if observers of foreign policy focus solely on the bumps in the road, they will miss the big picture, that the United States and Europe are still traveling the same road. The United States and Europe share common purposes, purposes that can often only be reached by continued transatlantic action in an evolving partnership.

SOURCES:

Zbigniew Brzezinski and John J. Mearsheimer, “Clash of the Titans,” an exchange of views between Mearsheimer and former Jimmy Carter NSA Zbigniew Brzezinski, Foreign Policy (Jan./Feb 2005), available at www.foreignpolicy.com/story/files/story2740.php.

John J. Mearsheimer, "Liberal Talk, Realist Thinking,” an excerpt from The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001 ed.), The University of Chicago Magazine, February 2002, available at http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0202/features/index.htm.

John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. NY: W.W. Norton, 2003. T The “Conclusion” to the 2001 edition is available at: www.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall01/002025excerpt2.htm.

Andrew Moravcsik. “The Paradox of U.S. Human Rights Policy,” in Michael Ignatieff, ed. American Exceptionalism and Human Rights. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Excerpts from the book are available at: www.princeton.edu/~amoravcs/library/paradox.doc.

Donald M. Snow and Eugene Brown, United State Foreign Policy: Politics beyond the Water’s Edge. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000.

Levine's report and photos of V-E Commemoration Activities in Pilsen, Czech Republic