Divided on a wide range of issues, the 32-members of the Euro-Atlantic community need more than ever to assert their shared security aims, says Simon Serfaty. He argues that Europe must not wait for America to take the lead
Since the Cold War, and 9/11 especially, the United States and NATO, along with the states of Europe and their Union, have attempted in a series of separate documents to define a new strategic course. These have included NATO’s Strategic Concept in 1999 (informally amended with the Comprehensive Political Guidance of 2006), the US National Security Strategy (NSS) of 2002 (revised in 2006), and the European Security Strategy (ESS) of December 2003.
Whatever the merits of these documents when first adopted, they are mostly outdated and must be revised – prior to the changes that will be instituted by the Lisbon treaty, signed shortly after the EU’s 50th anniversary, and with the arrival of a new US administration on the eve of NATO’s 60th anniversary. Predictably, these revision processes will unfold autonomously, but the ultimate aim should be to move gradually toward an “ever closer” Euro-Atlantic strategy – encompassing the EU, the United States and the EU, and NATO with the EU and the United States – that can accommodate the security needs and preferences of 32 national sponsors, not counting yet the next two NATO members (Croatia and Albania) but including the 21 European states that are members of both the EU and NATO.
The moment to launch such a process is especially propitious. After the sharp clashes that divided the NATO alliance and the European Union over the broader strategic meaning of September 11, 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Europe’s new political leaders are often pragmatists who can work well together and with their main partner across the Atlantic. French president Nicolas Sarkozy is to make the European Defence and Security Policy (ESDP) an important objective of his country’s EU presidency during the second half of this year and in the context of a sharply improved bilateral relationship with the United States, including France’s final return to NATO. And all the remaining US presidential contenders insist on the need for closer relations with the European allies, including in Senator John McCain’s words a willingness to be persuaded no less than an eagerness to persuade. “When we believe international action is needed … we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them,” he told a meeting in California of the World Affairs Council in March.
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MATTERS OF OPINION |
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Most Americans regret Iraq involvement
Nearly six out of 10 Americans think that sending US troops tp Iras was “ a mistake”; 54% think that history will judge the US invasion and its subsequent involvement in Iraq to be a failure.
The findings – the result of a Gallup poll in February 2008 – show how feelings have evolved since an earlier survey by Gallup in March 2003, which found that 76% of Americans thought the US was right to go to war with Iraq.
The shift in US public opinion, from a minority to a majority believing that intervention was a mistake, occurred in 2005. In that year, most Americans started agreeing with the statement “the Bush administration deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s)". More than half of the US population continues to support that view. Nevertheless, two thirds (67%) of Americans believe that, in the long run, Iraq will be better off than it was before the US and British invasion.
http://www.gallupworldpoll.com/
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Without a doubt, America and the states of Europe faced one of their most difficult and demanding crises ever over the US decision to use force in Iraq. While differences among the allies were real and substantive, the crisis also grew out of a serious collapse of diplomacy across the Atlantic − especially between the United States and France − and within Europe where the problem was especially between Britain, France and Germany, as well as with new NATO members like Poland that were on the brink of becoming EU members too.
In the United States, the lack of allied support for an issue deemed to be existential raised widespread questions about NATO’s relevance. The alternative to NATO was therefore said to be a so-called “coalition of the willing” before it was shown that such a limited coalition was insufficiently capable for, and even pertinent to, post-war “missions” of reconstruction and stabilisation.
As conditions in Iraq deteriorated after 2003, the crisis is cause for regret. A more cohesive alliance prior to the war, or an early post-war enlargement of the initial wartime coalition, could have helped avoid the mistakes and setbacks that followed. But whatever case is made about past events, the threat of a humiliating retreat of the coalition and of the US forces has been receding, and conditions for an orderly withdrawal at some uncertain date in the near future are emerging, irrespective of the outcome of the US presidential election. Beyond Iraq, therefore, there are major points on which the United States and the states of Europe, as well as the institutions to which they belong, either do or can agree – at least from the top down, if not yet from the bottom up.
● All acknowledge that the current strategic environment is radically different not only from the pre-1989 situation, but also from post 9/11 conditions when the primacy of American power prevailed, the will to use it seemed open-ended, and the unipolar moment appeared likely to last for some time. These are all perceptions that have now faded.
● All agree that the threats and the risks that define the new security environment combine military, political, economic, social, environmental, and human issues: The institutions of the Euro-Atlantic community and their members are neither prepared nor equipped to address many of these issues, whether in terms of capabilities and know-how, or on grounds of organisation and policies.
● All states also agree, though with different degrees of intensity and for different reasons, that most of their security concerns could be faced better – meaning more efficiently and more expeditiously – if addressed together rather than by each of them individually.
● As a result, they all recognise the need for a major overhaul of national and institutional capabilities, including military capabilities for the exercise of hard power, non-military capabilities for the use of soft power, and shared capabilities for combined reliance on both hard and soft power.
As the boundaries of Euro-Atlantic agreement have been extended, relative to post-Cold War and post-9/11 conditions, but also relative to the conditions of transatlantic relations during the Cold War, three paradoxical conclusions have become increasingly self-evident, irrespective of the motivations that may lie behind the decisions of the leading EU and NATO members:
First, there can be a distinctive “European” way only to the extent that it is framed, at least initially, as a cooperative Euro-Atlantic design. Second, and conversely, there can be a cohesive “Atlanticist” way only to the extent that it acknowledges specific European preferences and needs, even if these prove to be distinct from US preferences and needs. And third, there can be an effective “Euro-Atlantic” way only to the extent that there is better coordination between the two institutions that best define it, NATO and the EU – each with the other but neither against or in spite of each other.
In other words, neither side of the Atlantic nor any one NATO or EU power can get too far ahead of the other in putting forward a security vision of its own. Quite the reverse, as the United States, Canada, and the 30 states of Europe that belong currently to the EU or NATO, or both, form a community of overlapping interests and compatible values that belies the narrow emphasis of the ESS on Europe’s immediate neighbourhood and the apparent emphasis of the NSS on America and on regions outside Europe. It even belies NATO’s affinity for Cold War structures and procedures both in Europe and beyond.
In relation to this 32-state community, the notion of exclusive “neighbourhoods” for either side of the Atlantic is too limiting. In a globalised world, everywhere “over there” can intrude anywhere “over here” – thereby forcing upon the Euro-Atlantic countries a presence and an involvement that are both global and multi-dimensional. Compared to the intimacy found within such a community, the idea of a “global” alliance that would be enlarged beyond the geographic limits set by the 1949 Washington Treaty remains at best premature, and is even potentially self-defeating.
In short, the misleading and fundamentally flawed debate over Iraq – me Tarzan, you Jane – is over because it has now been shown decisively that the Euro-Atlantic alliance is not divided over the facts of American power and European weakness within NATO, but is instead united by the realities of America’s and Europe’s respective power and weaknesses around the world.
In practice, this means that unlike the conditions that prevailed when the Bush administration drafted its first National Security Strategy in 2002, one year before the European Security Strategy, and even unlike the second NSS in 2006, one year before the military surge in Iraq, a changing European Union and a changed US administration may be able to develop new documents that can depend on a series of major points on which Europe and the United States, and the EU and NATO, have been converging, even if they still fail to agree fully.
● Traditional threats in the form of massive territorial invasion by large military forces have receded; especially in Europe, but traditional state-centred or state-inspired threats that aim at asserting commanding influence through the use of non-military means remain and can demand the sort of collective response mandated by Article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty, but now extended beyond the confined geographic area envisaged in 1949.
● Expectations that the emerging new poles of power might settle quickly as “strategic partners” (Russia) or “stakeholders” (China) have dampened on both sides of the Atlantic. Similarly, the need to respond to the rise of new regional poles like Iran with global influence and to the emergence of new pivots of instability with global significance like Pakistan, has been confirmed. A collective understanding of what such responses might be, and how they can be enforced, has become more urgent.
● While 9/11 was not as much of a turning point for Europe as it was for the United States, it is increasingly agreed that international terrorism is a non-traditional threat whose global reach and potential access to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) makes it fundamentally different from the sort of local terrorism that Europe has known and endured in the past.
● The challenge of terrorism with a global reach reinforces other threats like WMD diversification and proliferation, failed states, organised crime and access to energy, climate change, pandemics, and more – all threats that originate mostly outside the Euro-Atlantic area but which the area is unlikely to escape, and might even be among the first victims.
● Few if any of these threats can be addressed exclusively with military capabilities, and most of them require a complex mixture of military and civilian capabilities along with a combination of institutional tools, both national and multilateral. Military capabilities will rarely be sufficient, but they will often be necessary, including a rapid reaction potential to assume an expeditionary and sustainable role, and capacities with enough flexibility and adaptability to cover a broad range of missions.
● For the EU to act like a power in the world, a more cohesive and robust approach to security and defence is therefore needed. For NATO to complete the missions mandated by its members, capacities for a more effective approach to reconstruction and stabilisation issues are necessary.
● The new and irreversible facts of globalisation – meaning the abolition of time and space – deny all states or even regions their past luxuries of indifference and isolation. In a globalised world, economic growth, immigration, and free trade play a significant role for the management of traditional and emerging security issues.
“Qui fait quoi?” asked the then French president Jacques Chirac in 2000 as part of the EU’s so-called “finality” debate. For the 32 states that populate the EU and NATO gain converging and compatible views of their total security environment, meeting all these challenges and building up all the required capabilities cannot be the task of any one state alone, or of any one institution. The logic of unity prevails over that of cleavage: There will be no coherent response to Chirac’s question unless the separate strategic dialogues among these states and within the institutions to which they belong are gradually intertwined into an ever closer Euro-Atlantic strategy embraced by all EU and NATO members. Although all states may not feel equally vulnerable to the new security environment, all can at least acknowledge an indivisible exposure to the consequences of failure.
Without a strategy, action remains at the mercy of unpredictable events. As no one is mandated to do anything, everyone can claim the ability to not do as much as it can, if anything. In the end, in the midst of rising anger among allies who question their partners’ contributions, and since no one can do everything, nothing gets done. A strategic consensus between the United States and the EU, and between the EU and NATO, would reinforce their members’ commitment to providing each institution with the needed capacity for action on behalf of shared goals. And by making it possible for each institution to rely on the capabilities of the other, it would also reinforce the efficacy of action through either or with both of them, maximising effort and resources, reconciling procedures and substance, and pooling all available security, political, and economic strengths. Yet notwithstanding the convergences noted above, several major differences remain.
In the United States, calls for democracy have been moderated. They are now more reminiscent of the declaratory pledge made by the 1947 Truman Doctrine to help countries threatened by communism than to President Bush’s pronouncements on liberty found in his second term inaugural speech in January 2005. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls this “American realism”, Senator John McCain labels it as “realistic idealism,” and Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both seem satisfied with the word realism. Whatever it is, the US interest in “help[ing] create a world of democratic states” remains, as it should, but a renewed emphasis on “transformational diplomacy” restores the old-fashioned imperatives of stability and order, and better suits the EU’s concern with good governance, civil society, social and political reform, rule of law.
The problem of failing states as a threat to peace is, in this context, now well recognised in the security strategies of both the United States and Europe. Afghanistan is representative of the problem but is hardly an aberration, as shown in Bosnia, which is still far from an effectively functioning state, not to speak of East Timor, Haiti, or Somalia and Iraq. Now an independent Kosovo is taking centre stage for such issues, and tomorrow it might be Palestine or Pakistan. A first great task of a Euro-Atlantic security strategy is to generate a more effective approach to stabilisation and reconstruction with an integrated approach that makes effective use both of NATO and the EU, and of individual national capabilities.
Second, although the need for military power coupled with the use of non-military power is increasingly, it grudgingly acknowledged in Europe, the specific terms of that balance are still strongly debated with the United States but also within Europe. When it comes to the use of force, three questions define the boundaries of permissible differences between the EU and NATO, and between their members. What degree of autonomy can and should the EU have relative to NATO; what degree of autonomy can and should NATO have relative to the EU; and what degree of autonomy can and should the United States have relative to NATO (and any European power within the EU)?
To some extent, these questions are not new. They were first raised, though in a highly different institutional and geopolitical context, over the failed Anglo-French intervention in Suez more than half a century ago. Ever since, European allies have often questioned what they see as an American tendency to misrepresent the diplomatic procedures for providing information about a decision, and to ignore the institutional processes that ensure genuine consultation beforehand. During the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy turned to the allies only after a careful internal review of the options he faced, so they were informed rather than consulted. That the Bush administration returned to the 1962 crisis to justify its approach to Iraq is not surprising: under what they saw as similarly existential conditions, the president and his advisors found the threat to be so high and so unpredictable as to be “imminent”. As Secretary of State Colin Powell, hardly the allies’ bête noire, put it at the time, the United States “tries to persuade others why this is the correct position. When it does not work, then we will take the position we believe is correct.”
Situations in the future when Americans and Europeans differ over the need for action are likely. To that extent, for the United States to keep “the place of pre-emption in national strategy” unchanged, as NSS-II did relative to the earlier document, is likely if not certain to remain a distinctive feature of the US approach in contrast to that of Europe notwithstanding a new US administration’s likely efforts to move away from open discussion of the idea, and even if the rather vague reference in the ESS to “preemptive engagement [that] can void serious problems in the future” finds its way into the next ESS document. In practice, whether the distinction between “prevention” and “pre-emption” proves to be an operational one or a much deeper philosophical difference over the legitimacy and relevance of military force in the 21st century, is a question that will be tested over whether to deny Iran its acquisition of nuclear weapons, and how to deter their use.
It is still argued in Europe that no international order can be “effective” without full reliance on multilateralism. In contrast, the built-in US allergy to relinquishing, even on paper, sovereign decision-making to the collective will of an institution, especially the United Nations, is unlikely to be cured any time soon. Yet Europe’s commitment to multilateralism for the sake of global legitimacy is also open to question. A 99% multilateralist will become a 100% unilateralist under the right circumstances. What makes circumstances “right” has much more to do with leadership rather than with what any document might say. That was the difference that stood in the way of the misleading analogy between the Cuban missile crisis and the Iraq war. There was not enough of Kennedy in George W. Bush, just as there was not enough of de Gaulle in Chirac.
Critics of broad security blueprints argue that these documents are not easy to write, for no other reason than that the consensus to which they aspire is a pre-requisite for the will to write them – hence the fear of a failure that would be especially damaging at a time when no further damage is affordable. Sceptics also point to the fact that such documents are anyway not conducive to action; who, among the emerging new political leaders on either side of the Atlantic remembers the 1999 NATO Strategic Concept, or is familiar with the EU Security Strategy, both of which often preceded their own election to office?
Yet the appeal of these documents, and the need for periodic updates, lies not only in what they say about what their state sponsors want to do about the world and its problems. It also lies in the need for the EU, the US and NATO to assert their shared will to act in common on the basis of compatible values, overlapping interests, and common goals. This shared need may go a long way toward re-casting an alliance that has seemed to be astray in recent years. In short, a new security consensus is needed at this time not only because of changes in national leadership, though these count, or because of present and future institutional reforms in the EU and NATO respectively, much as these too matter. A new consensus is needed because the strategies under which both NATO and the EU operate have in recent years been losing much of their relevance.
That fortuitous conditions would give the lead to Europe just as the United States gains new presidential leadership for the next four to eight years, and that similarly fortuitous conditions would give Europe’s lead to France as its takes over the EU presidency is not without appeal. “Nineteen seventy-three,” declared Henry Kissinger in late April of that year, “is the year of Europe” − a time, he insisted, for the allies to join in “a fresh act of creation … equal to that undertaken by the post-war generation of leaders.” Now, in 2008, we are on the eve of a new era that awaits the decisions that will define Europe and its relations with the United States after George W. Bush. In this, the 35th anniversary of “the year of Europe,” the time has come for the states of Europe and their Union to respond to this long-standing call and move the transatlantic partnership toward a shared Euro-Atlantic security strategy for the 21st century.