A creaking partnershipJun 3rd 2004
From The Economist print edition
Though the Americans and Europeans are getting together four times this month, they still find it hard to get onTHE commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings, on Sunday June 6th, will have an elegiac tone, and not just because of the memory of the soldiers who died that day. There is a growing sense in both the United States and Europe that the western alliance that was born out of the second world war, and triumphed in the cold war, is failing to recover from the cruel strains of the past three years.
June was supposed to be hatchet-burying time on both sides of the Atlantic. During the month, the paths of the western leaders will cross no fewer than four times. First, on June 6th, George Bush visits France for the commemoration ceremonies. The G8 summit of the world's richest countries takes place in America from the 8th to the 10th. An American-European Union meeting in Ireland will follow on June 25th-26th, and a NATO summit in Istanbul two days later.
Each episode in this elaborate dance has been designed to advance transatlantic comity a step. In Normandy, Mr Bush will reach out to the Europeans who opposed his invasion of Iraq, and suggest to them that bygones be bygones. At the G8 meeting, the Europeans are supposed to respond by signing up to Mr Bush's proposed initiative to encourage democracy and reform in the Middle East, a measure that Condoleezza Rice, America's national-security adviser, has called the president's main diplomatic effort this year.
At the Irish meeting, or so the Americans hoped, the Europeans would agree to some sort of common agenda for stabilising Iraq. To top it off, the NATO summit is to discuss expanding military ties with certain Middle Eastern countries and—or so the Americans also hoped—consider some sort of collective role in Iraq, perhaps taking over certain of the coalition's military operations there. The most optimistic Americans even hoped that more European troops might soon be sent to Iraq.
That was America's hope and at one time it even looked plausible. Both sides seemed ready for rapprochement. The Bush administration's travails in Iraq have cast doubts on the neo-conservative notion that American security is best served when the United States frees itself of entangling alliances and goes it alone. European leaders are no less alarmed at the dangers of a profound and persistent rift. The handover of “sovereignty” in Iraq seemed a good omen, with UN Security Council members preparing to vote on a resolution to bless the new Iraqi government that takes over on July 1st.
Yet, in practice, the chances of wider co-operation in Iraq depend on security improving enough to make European involvement possible. That is not happening. Instead, America's setbacks in Iraq have emboldened those Europeans who opposed the war, and damaged the political leaders who stuck by Mr Bush.
The ambitious hopes for June had dimmed even before the first prepared statement was delivered. For a start, America and Britain are not getting a free pass on the new UN resolution. France is disputing the details and no one expects the measure, when it is accepted, to pave the way for troops from those European countries that have so far held back.
No kiss and make up Michel Barnier, France's foreign minister, has said that France will not send troops to Iraq now or in the future. Indeed, America is struggling to persuade those Europeans that already have troops on the ground—such as Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Romania—to stay the course, rather than follow the Spanish example and pull out. The Czech defence minister said this week that Czech military policemen are likely to be withdrawn at the beginning of next year. The British, as ever, are the exception, with Tony Blair openly preparing to commit more soldiers.
In both Italy and Poland, opposition parties are making great play of their anti-war credentials. One EU official comments that, in former times, European leaders would have been fighting to get close to the American president at such events as the D-Day commemoration, but “not many of them will want to do that now.” Mr Bush may still hope that June 6th will provide him with useful photos for his re-election campaign to challenge John Kerry's claim that he has unnecessarily endangered American security by offending important allies. But there is a risk that any gains will be outweighed by what promise to be noisy anti-Bush demonstrations when the president visits Rome on June 4th on his way to Normandy.
In April, Colin Powell, America's secretary of state, asked NATO to consider “a new collective role” in Iraq: perhaps leading the coalition's operations in south-central Iraq. The idea was rejected by Gerhard Schröder, Germany's chancellor, who has said that he would oppose any use of NATO troops in Iraq (although 16 of the organisation's 26 members have soldiers there, they contribute them as individuals, not as part of NATO). The Bush administration has admitted that the 135,000 American troops will have to stay there for the foreseeable future.
Modesty in all things NATO will not come to its summit entirely empty-handed, but will offer limited military partnerships to some Middle Eastern countries as part of the so-called Istanbul co-operative initiative. This will be a first sign that the organisation is preparing to play a part in a region that the Bush administration describes as the main source of strategic danger to the western alliance.
Europeans, while increasingly shy of Iraq, say that they will give more money to NATO's operation in Afghanistan, where the international peacekeeping force is under NATO command. Europeans are also hoping to get the go-ahead to take over peacekeeping in Bosnia from NATO and to turn it into the EU's biggest ever peacekeeping operation. Still, compared with Mr Powell's original request, NATO's (and Europe's) involvement in Middle Eastern security remains modest indeed.
The final version of America's “Greater Middle East Initiative” may be no less modest. This, originally, was an attempt to institutionalise Mr Bush's call, made at a conservative think-tank in Washington last year, for democratic transformation in the Middle East. When al-Hayat, an Arabic newspaper published in London, leaked the first working paper in February, Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, denounced the plan as “delusional”. The EU's foreign affairs commissioner, Chris Patten, concurred politely: “We would not want to give the impression we are parachuting our ideas into the region.”
Last week, a revised version, due to be adopted at the G8 summit, showed marked changes. Out go the main proposals for encouraging political change, such as an Arab version of the National Endowment for Democracy, which makes grants to pro-democracy groups. A Middle East Forum, modelled on the Helsinki accords that held up basic standards of human rights to Soviet-controlled states during the cold war stays in, but whereas the communists committed themselves to the accords by signing them, the new agreement is to be signed by America and Europe alone. Participation by the Arab states will be voluntary.
The new draft makes explicit that “change cannot be imposed from outside”. References to “democracy” and “reform” have been replaced by regime-friendlier terms such as “modernisation” and “development”. Symbolically, the name of the initiative has been changed from “Greater Middle East” to “Broader Middle East and North Africa”. Afghanistan and Pakistan have been excluded, and the initiative has ended up more like a traditional development project in the Arab world than an attempt to use democratisation as an instrument in the war on terror. The two bits of the plan that remain mostly unchanged are a literacy programme and a $500m micro-finance scheme to channel loans to small businesses and individuals.
All that said, the initiative still matters. It is a first step in turning Mr Bush's wordy rhetoric about democracy and the Middle East into some form of reality. And it demonstrates increasing belief in the “soft power” that the administration scorned only a year ago.
At some point in the merry round of summits, there is also likely to be an American-European declaration on non-proliferation and on combating terrorism. The point will be to underline the two sides' shared analyses of the major security threats facing the world. Yet for all the hints that America may be tending towards giving “soft power” its due, there are still important divergences on how best to deal with these common threats.
The Europeans believe that an effort to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be at the front of any effort to win the “war on terror”. They remain despairing about what they regard as the Bush administration's willingness to indulge Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister. Mr Bush's endorsement of Mr Sharon's recent plan to pull out of Gaza while cementing control over much of the West Bank irritated European leaders. It showed, the Europeans believe, an abrupt reversal of American policy, taken without consulting European allies.
There are other marked differences over less high-profile bits of the Middle Eastern agenda. While America recently imposed trade sanctions on Syria, the EU is moving in the opposite direction, putting the finishing touches to a trade and co-operation agreement. The same contrast between an American policy based on confrontation and a European policy based on “constructive engagement” has long been observable in relations with Iran.
How others see us The alliance's open disagreements over Iraq and the Middle East have been pretty well aired. What may be more alarming is the underlying deterioration in relations that is reflected in popular attitudes on either side of the Atlantic. A survey by the Pew Research Centre released in March showed a sharp reversal in European attitudes to the United States over the past two years. Whereas 63% of French people had a positive attitude to America in the summer of 2002, this had shrunk to 37% by March 2004. In Germany, a 61% positive rating had fallen to 38%. And all this was before the news broke of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
The poor opinion appears mutual, at least so far as France is concerned. In the same poll, the 79% of Americans who reported a favourable view of France in 2002 had shrunk to 33% by March 2004. Ratings for Germany have held up relatively well: 83% of Americans had a good view of Germany in 2002, and 50% still reported positively this year—a lovefest compared with German attitudes to America. More Americans regard the European Union favourably than negatively: 39% are reported positive, 26% negative, with (unsurprisingly) large numbers of don't-knows.
Europeans entertain a series of entrenched and tiresome stereotypes: they tend to believe that the American government is run by religious, gun-toting zealots; that big business and the “Israel lobby” controls the agenda of the American government; that Mr Bush's policies are dictated by the oil industry. The popularity of such views has turned Michael Moore, a polemical American film-maker, into a hero in much of Europe. Mr Moore's film, “Fahrenheit 9/11” recently carried off the top prize at the Cannes film festival and the film-maker himself received a 19-minute standing ovation. His book “Stupid White Men” sold 1.1m copies in Germany alone. Conspiracy theories about America get a ready audience in much of Europe. The Pew survey showed that 60% of Germans and 58% of French believed that the war on terrorism was being fought “to control Middle East oil”, higher figures than for Pakistan, where 54% supported the idea.
Even high-level European officials can, when off-duty, get pretty steamed up about America. One senior man at the EU, who regularly deals with top officials in Washington, recently remarked at a Brussels party that the “fucking ideologues” in the Bush administration had got their come-uppance. He placed them in the same ideological world as Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right leader in France. Staring deeply into his wine glass, the official complained that his interlocutors in Washington displayed an attitude of “total contempt” for visitors from the EU.
But economically, things are benign Fortunately, whatever their private feelings about each other, both sides know that they have to do business together. And, as a new study by Dan Hamilton and Joseph Quinlan of the Centre for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University illustrates, transatlantic economic ties are flourishing as never before. The authors note that “Corporate America pumped $87 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) into Europe in 2003 (see chart below). That represented a jump of 30.5% from 2002.” Meanwhile Europeans accounted for 65% of FDI into America last year.
Despite all the attention that the rise of China and India attracts in the United States, the truth is that these emerging markets are still dwarfed in importance by the mutual economic ties between Europe and the United States. Over the past decade American firms have invested ten times as much in the Netherlands as in China. Last year, American investment in Ireland alone (population 4m) was $4.7 billion, more than two-and-a-half times greater than American investment in China (population 1.3 billion). The amount of money flowing in the opposite direction is also huge. European firms employed roughly two-thirds of the 6.4m American employees of foreign firms in 2001. Ironically, given widespread European antipathy to the Texan conservatism of George Bush, Texas is the American state which receives most European investment.
These numbers present a much more optimistic picture of ties between America and Europe than the politicised vitriol that flows over Iraq and other issues. They also suggest that the politicians' speeches about common western values—which in the current climate it is tempting to dismiss—have some basis in reality. The reason why Americans and Europeans are more comfortable doing business with each other than with anywhere else in the world is that they do have a great deal in common. Their societies are relatively rich. Their consumers buy similar products and have similar aspirations. Their businessmen are comfortable with each other's legal and political environments.
It would be too much to conclude that the depth of these economic ties makes a further deterioration in transatlantic relations impossible. Some serious analysts even speculate that the transatlantic relationship could yet evolve from partnership to strategic rivalry. Certainly there are influential voices within the European Union who see the organisation's future as driven by an effort to develop a “counter-balance” to American power. Opinion polls in Europe show strong support for such a development.
The closeness of business and economic ties may place some limits on the extent to which European countries push opposition to the United States. But the real limiting factor is that there is so far little evidence that European countries are prepared to do what is necessary to evolve into a genuine alternative power block. Proposals to promote a common European foreign policy through a new European constitution are timid and show little real desire to impose a single line on the EU at the expense of national sovereignty. And while the European public may express a desire for the EU to become a serious global player, there is nugatory support for the increased defence spending that would be necessary to make this happen. Fully-fledged transatlantic strategic rivalry is still a long way off.
And after the election? In the meantime the transatlantic partnership is in trouble. The quadruple summits, with their modest potential, are unlikely to improve things much. They are much more likely to usher in five months of wait and see—until after America's presidential election in November.
It can be argued that any result would be an improvement on the present. If Mr Kerry wins, Europeans will be delighted. The Democratic candidate has said that he will put ties with traditional allies—meaning Europe above all—front and centre of his foreign policy (Mr Bush said much the same when he came to office). Just as important, Mr Kerry will not bear the baggage of the past four years.
But even if Mr Bush wins, things might improve somewhat. The problems in Iraq have lessened the influence of the neo-conservatives in his administration. Since they are also the main Euro-sceptics, their reduced influence would open up a chance for better relations. For different reasons, Donald Rumsfeld, another obstacle to closer ties, may not serve a second term as secretary of defence. It was far from certain that he would stay anyway, even before the horrors at Abu Ghraib.
All this might make a second Bush administration less hostile terrain for Europeans, though it is also likely that Colin Powell and Richard Armitage will retire too, so Europeans will be losing friends as well as critics in the administration. If nothing else, Europeans will know more or less what to expect a second time around.
They would much prefer Mr Kerry. But could there be a post-honeymoon breakdown if the Democrat wins? The hard differences between America and Europe over the uses of force, the importance of international treaties and so on will not vanish overnight. In addition, Mr Kerry has made going to the Europeans for money and troops his main solution to the problem of instability in Iraq. But what happens if he goes to the Europeans and is rejected? The danger of disappointed expectations remains real.