Feature
- America in the World Today: A European View
- Karl Kaiser, right, is pictured here with Kathy Molony, director of the Fellows Program (left), and Weatherhead Center Associate Donna Hicks. Karl is the Ralph I. Straus Visiting Professor at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs in a joint appointment with the John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University. He is a professor emeritus of Bonn University, a former director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, Bonn/Berlin, and a longtime associate of the Weatherhead Center where he worked first from 1963 to 1968. This text reproduces the slightly revised address to the American Philosophical Society on April 27, 2006 at its “Annual General Meeting Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge.” Photo: Martha Stewart
Any European, especially a German, who reviews America's role in the world with a sense of history, will do so with a feeling of attachment, respect, or gratitude. In my case it is all three. World War II ended for me as a ten-year old amidst enormous chaos, but I did not truly realize that I had been liberated until later, when the horrors of the Nazi regime became known to me and I understood that the Nazis had been defeated by America and its allies at terrific human and material cost. I experienced American soldiers as humane and helpful, from the first one who checked personally (despite the risk) before he tossed a grenade in our cellar where we civilians waited for the battle (then raging above our heads) to end, to the soldiers who later became our friends and allies, without whom the Soviets would have conquered Berlin (not to mention the rest of Germany and Western Europe). My shock when seeing the pictures of Abu Ghraib was therefore profound, and like many Europeans I asked “What has happened to our America?”
I am a member of the species, “Homo Atlanticus”; I enjoyed part of my education in the United States and continue to maintain close personal networks with Americans, having interacted with America throughout my professional life. Many thousands of Europeans in leading positions in all sectors of society, individuals who benefited from enlightening policies and welcoming openness of this country, today form the backbone of America's densest external relationship in terms of common values, intellectual interactions, personal relations, and economic integration. Whatever political disagreements may arise between the two sides of the Atlantic, this network forms a tremendously strong basis for cooperation on the global problems they both share.
There have been three watersheds in this relationship since the end of World War II. The first occurred from 1947 to 1949, when in response to the Soviet challenge the core elements of U.S. strategy under President Harry S. Truman were to build up the West with the Marshall Plan and NATO, support European unification, and help to reintegrate Germany and Japan. During this period, multilateral regimes and institutions expanded and, under U.S. guidance, the world economy prospered.
The second watershed occurred when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989-90. The cold war, which could also have ended with a bloodbath, was terminated peacefully. Within the span of one single year Germany was unified, a “Europe whole and free” was re-created, and new international structures were established. It was a period of brilliant diplomacy, multilateral approaches, and creative compromise on extraordinarily complex problems. No doubt, President George H.W. Bush was helped by the particular statesmen with whom he cooperated, notably a courageous Gorbachev, but Bush's personal leadership drove and guided this process. In European eyes the United States had reconfirmed herself as the powerful and diplomatic leader of the West.
The third defining moment occurred when terrorists' planes struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. A wave of solidarity and empathy swept through Europe and, indeed, the world. It was the perfect moment for American leadership to forge a new alliance and common strategy in order to deal with the mounting threat and root causes of jihadist extremism, to revive anti-proliferation policy, to reform international law and institutions, and so, in short, to redesign the post–cold war world order in order to deal with the new global challenges. Sadly, this chance was lost.
Despite some hopeful new departures immediately after 9/11, such as the Bush administration's success in enlisting support from the UN Security Council and a wide-ranging group of countries including Russia and China, problems that had plagued U.S. relations with Europe after the election of George W. Bush reasserted themselves and, in fact, took a turn for the worse.
It is important to remember that although some problems in U.S.-European relations had already arisen under President Clinton, they became more pronounced and dogmatic when George W. Bush was elected president. Europe and the world came to perceive unilateralism as the dominant element of the newly elected administration. Whereas the Clinton administration had only been unable to fulfill America's commitment to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty—a commitment that had been made in exchange for the extension of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons—the Bush administration rejected the entire principle of arms control. As an American official in charge of arms control let it be understood, international regimes of this kind were useless and would unnecessarily restrict the freedom of maneuver of a United States that was powerful enough on its own to deal with problems as they arose.
While Europe was undergoing elaborate and costly policy changes to lower emissions, the world's greatest greenhouse gas emitter flatly rejected the Kyoto Protocol to amend the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), without providing any alternative proposal. President Bush also energetically resisted the International Criminal Court—even though President Clinton had signed on to the statute—by staging a worldwide effort to induce parties to the statute to conclude agreements not to release American citizens to the court. For Europeans this act was particularly disappointing because the country that once led post–World War II efforts to civilize international politics through international law now claimed to be impervious to international law.
The war in Afghanistan enjoyed widespread support by the European allies who had activated the assistance clause of Article V for the first time in NATO history. By rejecting Europe's offer, the United States in turn lost its chance to reform NATO. At that time, the United States would have gotten whatever it asked for. Secretary Rumsfeld's approach of using NATO as a toolbox for “coalitions of the willing” undermines the very essence of an alliance. On this vital point Europeans are of one opinion. Admittedly, in his second term President Bush has restated America's support of the idea of NATO as a central venue for discussion and coordination of strategy, but after all that has happened during recent years such a statement cannot have the same impact it would have had in 2001.
The Iraq war and the ensuing strains between the United States and Europe were preceded by several transatlantic disagreements that later accentuated the crisis of 2003 and still linger. First, Europeans had great problems with the concept of a “war on terror,” to be sure, because they underestimated the traumatic impact of 9/11 on the American psyche, but primarily because the concept overemphasizes the military dimensions and neglects the social, economic, and cultural root causes of jihadist extremism. Moreover, the rules of war tend to suffocate the norms of democracy and civil liberties.
Second, the policy of preemption, promulgated in the aftermath of 9/11, attempted to address a real and serious issue: when responsible governments must react to terrorists who have weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and threaten to attack. Europeans, like much of the international community, consider a unilateral and limitless extension of the right to preemption to be an erosion of the prohibition of the use of force as the central tenet of international law. They prefer a carefully considered multilateral approach to interpreting legitimate defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter in dealing with the new challenge of terrorism and WMD. The fact that the United States categorizes its action in Iraq as preemptive in response to an imminent threat, which is based on largely false intelligence, further undermines the validity of such a posture in the eyes of the Europeans.
Third, the Europeans have never had a problem with democracy as a goal of U.S. foreign policy. They have always shared that goal and, in fact, jointly applied it successfully with the United States in their policies vis-à-vis the communist world, resulting ultimately in a peaceful victory of democracy in Eastern Europe. Disagreement arose around the manner in which democracy was to be implemented. If regime change becomes an acceptable reason to attack and occupy another country, however nasty its politics might be, it would violate central rules of world order and international law and lead to anarchy; others could emulate this policy and attack the (many) tyrannies of the world, and perhaps feel justified in attacking a country whenever disagreements exist. Moreover, Europeans generally adhere to the view that democracy cannot be brought about by “fire and sword,” but should emerge from the forces within a country that the international community can and should support. Certain preliminary stages necessary to the development of democracy—such as establishing laws or emancipating women”may be more important than introducing premature elections that can make matters worse by sweeping radicals into power.
The disagreements over going to war in Iraq have produced the greatest crisis in the history of U.S.-European relations since World War II. Earlier quandaries, like the Suez Canal crisis of 1956, French President Charles de Gaulle's 1963 withdrawal from NATO, European Union integration, or disagreements over nuclear weapons, had always been constrained in their destructive impact by the imperatives of the cold war, which induced the parties to return to a cooperative posture. In the case of the Iraq war, for the first time old allies resisted and actively opposed the United States in going to war, while the United States in turn mounted a counter coalition. The resulting deep division among the members of the European Union, at the very moment of its enlargement towards the new democracies in the East, deepened the scope of the crisis.
Large majorities in the populations of all European countries opposed the war, including those countries whose governments sent troops to join the invasion or occupation. In 2003 alternatives to going to war were available that could have dealt with whatever dangers still emanated from the Iraqi regime (which we now know were few). The revelations that are now public about the internal decision-making in Washington over going to war have confirmed the views of those Europeans (e.g., German Chancellor Schröder and later French President Chirac), especially since Vice President Cheney's August 2002 speech to the veterans acknowledged that the Bush administration had long been firmly bent on going to war in Iraq.
The dramatic drop in European and worldwide public support for the United States is unprecedented in scope and has been greatly advanced by the events of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the treatment of Guantanamo detainees, the rulings on acceptable uses of torture, the rendition of prisoners, and the absence of political consequences for leaders responsible for these acts. Though many Europeans are, of course, aware of their own historic failures and disasters, they feel that these developments violate the very principles America has always stood for, as expressed in its Constitution and postwar foreign policy. Moreover, these incidents contradict the proclaimed main goal of the Bush administration: to spread democracy and fight tyranny. When European media or politicians make such points, America's friends in Europe have no alternative to embarrassed silence.
Despite these developments, America and Europe have no choice but to cooperate. I am convinced they will do so for several reasons. First, as the core of the democratic world they developed a particularly close relationship based on common values and traditions, elite interactions, and habits of cooperation that remain operative despite transatlantic disagreements on specific policies.
Second, this closeness is highly manifest in an often-overlooked area: the economy. Despite political strains and all the hype about Asia, the American and European economies have become more integrated. As Dan Hamilton and Joseph Quinlin1 suggest, Robert Kagan's2 caricature of “Americans from Mars” and “Europeans from Venus” overlooks the fact that Mercury, the god of commerce, trumps both. The United States and Europe, regardless of all political disagreements, are the most important partners to each other in terms of direct investment and transatlantic production and service, which drive integration even more than trade. The transatlantic economy leads globalization, and it is here that the jobs are and the profits are made.
Third, virtually all of the challenges of our age—whether proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, jihadist extremism, dialogue with Islam, or adapting to globalization—require common or coordinated approaches of the governments of the transatlantic countries that are locked into interdependent relationships (not to mention all open and vulnerable societies that are committed to the same values). Not even the only superpower of the world can effectively deal with these problems alone. At a more concrete level, this means preventing a nuclear Iran, supporting stability in Iraq, and promoting progress between Israelis and Palestinians, all of which are problems the United States and Europe must address jointly, though their roles may differ on specific aspects.
Despite the failed referenda on the Constitutional Treaty, the European Union will continue to progress, though more slowly than in the past, and hopefully toward an urgently needed greater capacity to act jointly and forcefully in world politics. But it will not become a “United States of Europe” in the foreseeable future. There will be, therefore, problems of world order that require America's indispensable resources in order to induce the world powers of the future, such as China and India, to become constructive members of the international community.
Europe needs and wants a strong America, a democratic America that leads by example, engages its allies in analyzing shared problems and implements joint strategies, and once again inspires and heads—as it did in the 1940s—the efforts to adapt our multilateral institutions and rules to the realities of a globalized and interdependent world, which is now plagued by jihadist extremism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and growing protectionism.
1. Daniel S. Hamilton and Joseph P. Quinlan, eds. Deep Integration. How Transatlantic Markets are Leading Globalization. Washington, DC: Center for Transatlantic Relations, Johns Hopkins University, 2005.
2. Robert Kagan. Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.