COMMENTARY
The West will never be a unified actor
Autumn 2008
While I can sign up to most of the assumptions behind Karl-Heinz Kamp’s analysis, I still disagree with his hopeful conclusion that the West can become a “unified strategic actor.” I think there’s hardly one chance in a hundred that will happen! Apart from a short honeymoon with the new US administration, the prospects for Atlantic relations are poor.
On the question of US decline, I think the US will probably lose its post-Cold War position of supremacy and instead become a primus inter pares, with China its most serious competitor. Be this as it may, I take issue with Kamp’s premise that cultural dominance can be translated into policy gains. Even if a US way of life is mimicked in much of the world, this does not make national foreign policies more pro-American. There are plenty of examples from Latin America, Europe and Canada of past intransigence vis-à-vis the US which endorse my view. State interests, not cultural affinities, determine foreign policy.
Even so, America will surely continue to be the salient great power as far as Europe is concerned. This is likely to be true under the next US president as much as before. So how will Atlantic relations develop? Basically, Europe will always be the reactive party in the relationship, at least in terms of high politics. It will also have a much shorter geographical reach and its orientation will remain more multilateralist. What will be decisive for the substance of Atlantic relations, however, will be external events. I believe there are four main (and not unlikely) scenarios that would have profound ramifications for relations in the West.
First, a terrorist attack against the US or its closest allies, or an overt US-Iranian conflict, would push the US in a unilateralist direction as Washington would quickly lose patience with the push-me-pull-you of multilateralism. This would both harm US relations with the more multilateralist Europeans and also create divisions in Europe.
Next, a conflict along the Russian perimeter in Georgia, Transdniestr or Belarus, or in Kosovo, would again split the US from Europe and also divide Europe internally. Europeans have different interests and legacies in their relations with Russia which prevent them forming a united front.
A possible US conflict with China in the Taiwan straits would also harm Atlantic relations, since the Europeans – from an American viewpoint – would keep a disappointingly low profile. While being economically crucial, China is of modest geo-political importance to Europe.
Lastly, continued military setbacks in Afghanistan (not to mention defeat) will surely strain Atlantic relations by further underlining the issue of uneven burden-sharing.
The best prospects for Atlantic relations arise if none of these scenarios occur. This would allow the 2009 honeymoon to be extended, perhaps long enough to last over the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December. That would give top decision-makers on both sides of the Atlantic (and elsewhere) the time and energy to devote to the environmental and other issues of climate change, which is potentially a unifying topic. Europe could then seize an historically unique opportunity to take a global lead on a subject of high politics. If the EU could pull the foot-dragging US along with them, it would indeed represent an accomplishment for Atlantic cooperation. This rosy prognosis, however, requires almost as much wishful thinking as Karl-Heinz Kamp’s conclusion.
Realistically, one must expect the divisive external environment to prevail. And a politically-split West is the very opposite of a “unified strategic actor.” Even if the Western economy remains the world’s biggest, and a Western way of life dominates the globe, the countries of the West – the US, Europe and the rest – cannot act together, let alone strategically. Different geo-political circumstances and diverse historical legacies prevent this unity from happening; it’s a lesson the EU can teach. At best, I believe the West will be able to compromise and, at times, raise their lowest common denominator.