Let's just be friends, OK?
AMHERST, MA, USA This column was sent by email, not air or surface mail.
I'm pointing this out because the supposedly parlous state of Trans-Atlantic relations may strike some readers as strangely out of date. Wasn't it a few weeks ago that the papers were full of stories about how Europe and the United States were destined for an ugly divorce? And since nothing appeared to come out of all that posturing and scribbling, isn't it time to move on and find something fresh to beat to death?
Well, from where I sit, the issue of Europe's strategic relationship with the United States is more important than that. It deserves some serious digging and thinking, in this case a trip across the Atlantic, where the other party in this apparently rocky affair lives.
The first thing Europeans should know about the strains in the relationship with America is this: Most Americans couldn't care less. Sure, a few eggheads at the Council on Foreign Relations and the New York Times spend their days worrying about whether our friends on the continent think President George W. Bush is a dimwit wretch with a taste for killing trees and retarded convicts. But this is not, to put it mildly, what people on this side of the pond are talking about.
In reality, it's exactly as most Europeans suspect or fear: Most Americans don't give a hoot what happens in Europe, just as long as our boys don't have to go over and sort the place out again. And in case you've wondered why Bush didn't seem concerned by the hysterics his mere presence caused in Europe, it's partly because he knows that tens of millions of Americans are as anti-European as any European is reflexively anti-American. Just as Jacques Chirac knows that cocking a snoot at the vulgar American "hyperpower" is an easy vote-getter in France, Bush understands that getting booed in Brussels plays well in Peoria. The only difference is that Bush, like most Americans, is more refined and mature than Chirac and (apparently) most French voters, and therefore doesn't feel it necessary to so loudly voice his disdain.
Personally, I think Bush should stop being so polite, and come out and say openly what I'm pretty sure he believes; that the special relationship between the better bits of the Old World and the New is in need of a serious rethink. The first area of required rethinking involves the perceived gap in values that many Europeans have recently trumpeted and Team Bush has downplayed. The short answer is that the Europeans are right, or at least in part. Americans and Europeans and their respective political systems are divided on numerous matters of morality and taste, even when placed against some other countries around the world.
At the same time, these countries are quickly moving to adopt American political and social norms; the average Californian may have more in common with the average citizen in Taiwan or Argentina than the average subject of Liechtenstein. And despite the rapid Americanization of Europe France included this trend shows no sign of abating, especially as Europe's demographic decline and economic mediocrity further dilute its relevance and familiarity to most Americans.
None of this would be terribly important if it weren't for the fact that the U.S. and most of Europe remain pledged to a relationship that requires a fairly high degree of intimacy and fidelity. I am speaking, of course, of NATO, the grand alliance in which Europeans and Americans are sworn to defend one another from military threats, common or otherwise.
As everyone knows, the one threat that could reliably unite this coalition the Soviet Union has been gone for more than a decade, leaving behind only the vaguest of dangers (post-Soviet Russia) and social work masquerading as dealing with strategic threats (the Balkans). Meanwhile, Washington and Brussels have divergent views on a range of key strategic matters, including missile defense, the perceived threat posed by China and North Korea, and many others.
The U.S. military establishment and power elite are terrified by the notion that America one day may "withdraw" from Europe, for both good reasons (remember Munich) and bad (institutional inertia). But I think there is no reason to stifle an open debate on the utility of maintaining the kind of "entangling alliance" that George Washington, in his farewell address, warned the young country to avoid at all cost.
Certainly, if the core states of the EU are determined to create a stand-alone European defense force, then by all means they should be free to do so. The fact that the United States remains in effective control of Europe's security, and spends so much money on Europe's behalf, is a glaring anachronism one which stunts the continent's political and strategic maturity.
An unwinding of this entangling alliance would have little impact on commerce and other economic relations, especially as international trade increasingly falls under the authority of the WTO and other multilateral regimes. You don't need a military alliance to trade with a country or federation, or otherwise enjoy peaceful and agreeable relations.
And if things ever go really wrong again, you know where to find us.
Former BBJ Editor Erik D'Amato can be contacted at erik@bbj.hu.
Editor's note: Marek Matraszek will return next week.
