Transatlantic Relations and Peace in Europe
Transatlantic relations and peace in Europe
DAVID S. YOST*
What are the foundations of political order and peace in Europe? Various Euro- pean observers have argued that US leadership and protection have pacified and stabilized the region by constraining rivalry for primacy among the leading powers in NATO Europe. In 1992 Manfred Wörner, the former German minis- ter of defence then serving as NATO’s secretary-general, said, ‘If the United States disengages, I foresee a certain temptation for Western European nations to revert to past patterns of power politics.’1 Wörner’s apprehension has rarely been examined in depth. Besides being speculative and scenario-dependent, the topic appears distasteful and repellent. However, as a mental exercise, a Gedankenexperiment, it deserves attention. As a ¼ starting point, this article critically examines a recent novel that explores what might happen in Europe without NATO and US security commitments. It then reviews various theories regarding the origins of peace among the member states of the European Union. It points out that, thanks in large part to the Atlantic alliance and US security policies, the European integration movement has advanced under comparatively propitious international circumstances. The EU’s ability to deal with major external security challenges and maintain its political cohesion without US military support is therefore debatable. Notwithstanding the EU’s achievements and other peace-promoting develop- ments in Europe, the challenges and uncertainties that would face Europe without NATO argue that the alliance remains an essential underpinning of political order in Europe. Indeed, NATO continues to serve as an indispensable basis for pursuing constructive policies throughout the Euro-Atlantic region, notably in relations with Russia and Ukraine. Moreover, the alliance can serve as a key element in the
* The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not represent those of the Department of the Navy or any US government agency. Special thanks are owed to those who commented on earlier drafts of this article, though they naturally bear no responsibility for the views expressed: Jim Bergeron, Robert Chatterton Dickson, Pieter Cobelens, Thérèse Delpech, James de Waal, Michael Durnan, Pierre Hassner, Karl-Heinz Kamp, Sorin Lungu, Alexander Moens, Uwe Nerlich, Peter Pavilionis, Joseph Pilat, Douglas Porch, Michael Quinlan, Bruno Racine, Tjarck Roessler, Michael Rühle, Diego Ruiz Palmer, Paul Schulte, Robert Silano, Justin Vaïsse and Gabriele Wight. 1 Wörner, cited in Alan Riding, ‘At East–West crossroads, western Europe hesitates’, New York Times, 25 March 1992, p. A6.
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campaigns against terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. To revitalize the alliance, however, it is imperative that the Europeans improve their military capabilities and acquire the means necessary for a more balanced transatlantic partnership in maintaining international security. In this way the European allies can maintain their influence and ensure that NATO and Euro- pean political–military contributions remain highly valued by the United States.
The novelist’s scenario A recently retired flag-rank armaments engineer, an ingénieur général de l’arme- ment who served in London, Washington and Brussels and who directed the French defence ministry’s Centre des Hautes Etudes de l’Armement, Alain Crémieux has written an absorbing and thought-provoking novel. The title, Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront, might be translated as ‘When the Yanks go home’.2 While the novel is not representative of the mainstream of contemporary French opinion, it provides an intriguing point of departure for thinking about the foundations of political order in Europe. Crémieux’s exercise in essai-fiction géopolitique (the name for this literary genre suggested on the book’s cover) explores a possible near-term future. Some dys- topian novels—such as 1984 and Brave New World—have conveyed impressions about prospective international political orders, but in the distant future.3 Crémieux’s novel has the exceptional quality of concocting an international political scenario in the immediate future, with many details and characters (including French president Jacques Chirac and British prime minister Tony Blair) drawn from the current political scene. Published in March 2000, the novel consists of fictional diary entries beginning in May 2000. The diary entries offer a window on the unfolding dark events. The story gains verisimilitude through the wealth of details, several of them plausible, notably about risks of strategic-scale terrorism. Beyond this narrative value, the novel raises funda- mental questions about the role of the United States and transatlantic security commitments in maintaining peace in Europe. While some leaders of major powers are familiar, the diarist reports some changes. Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, is succeeded in the fall of 2000 by a leader with the remarkable name of Faust. George W. Bush drops out of the US presidential race and another Republican, Howard Cabot Lodge, wins the November 2000 election. Terrorists strike major blows against the United States on 1 January 2001. They even hit the Pentagon, and ‘commentators are astonished that the capital
2 Alain Crémieux, Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront: Le journal imaginaire du nouveau millénaire (Boofzheim, France: ACM Edition, 2000). 193pp. FFr100. ISBN 2–84087–108–4. 3 George Orwell considered The Last Man in Europe as a title, but chose to switch the final digits of the year in which he finished writing the book—1948. Michael Shelden, Orwell: the authorized biography (London: Heinemann, 1991), p. 473. When Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931, he forecast circumstances in what he termed ‘the sixth or seventh century A.F. (After Ford)’. Huxley, Brave New World revisited (New York: Bantam, 1960), p. 1.
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of the United States was not better protected against aerial attack.’4 The Thousand Soldiers of God, a home-grown and heavily armed religious sect obsessed with numerological interpretations of the Bible, operated from remote locations in West- ern states and struck on what they considered the first day of the new millennium. President Lodge announces on 2 March 2001 that the United States has since 1945 been too preoccupied with external affairs, to the neglect of its internal order. As a result, Lodge declares, America will disengage from most foreign security commitments, and will maintain close relations with only eight countries: Canada, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Lodge orders all US forces deployed overseas to return home, except for those at Guantanamo Bay and possibly the United Kingdom. This means the end of NATO. ‘The epoch when one could call the Americans to the rescue when Europe did not succeed in resolving its problems in Bosnia or Kosovo is over. If something goes wrong tomorrow, somewhere between the Atlantic and the Urals, we Europeans will have to deal with it ourselves.’5 Numerous tensions arise quickly.6 Greek–Turkish disputes involve not only Cyprus, but also Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia. Ethnic Hungarian minorities draw Budapest into confrontations with Romania and Slovakia. Germany, Lithuania, Poland and Russia quarrel about Kaliningrad, with crowds in front of the German Embassy in Warsaw shouting ‘slogans worthy of the 1930s’.7 Spain demands that London settle the Gibraltar question, but Madrid itself faces terri- torial demands from Morocco and internal order challenges from Basques and Catalans. Serbia annexes the Serb portion of Bosnia, with ‘ethnic cleansing’ operations reminiscent of the early 1990s, but no effective opposition. The creation of a Greater Serbia provokes the establishment of a Greater Croatia and tensions with Albania and Hungary. Northern Italy sees independence riots and ethnic minority disputes with Slovenia, while Sicily seeks ‘semi-independence’. Russian and Turkish forces clash in the Black Sea. Walloons in Belgium, the ‘Rattachistes’, demand the return of Wallonia to the ‘mother-country’—France. Coalitions comparable to those in past centuries begin to form. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland conclude a mutual defence pact. France and England renew the Entente Cordiale. France, Italy and Spain form an alliance with Bosnia, perhaps to protect the rump state from complete annihilation. Lisbon chooses to renew its ancient alliance with London, to the annoyance of Madrid. Austria, Germany and Switzerland sign the Treaty of Vaduz, with mutual defence commitments. This treaty leads to francophone secession movements in Switzerland and anti-German sentiments in France.
4 Crémieux, Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront, p. 42. 5 Ibid., p. 75. 6 The relationship between the US disengagement and the sudden outbreak of minority and border conflicts is implicit. The narrative implies that the end of the NATO-centred security order prompts various groups, movements and governments to try taking steps to advance their agendas on an experimental basis—to see whether anyone stops them. It is not clear whether fear of EU responses restrains any revisionists, but the evident failure of the EU to take effective action against certain irredentists (for example, Serbia) seems to encourage others to pursue their objectives. 7 Crémieux, Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront, p. 116.
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In the meantime, the Schengen accords begin to break down, with a decline in mutual confidence, increased trafficking in arms and drugs, and a prolifera- tion of counterfeit currency and passports.8 Entrepreneurs make a fortune with a ‘Eurogame’ computer program to simulate crises and mini-wars among Euro- pean countries, but a Dutch pacifist organization gets its sale prohibited in the Netherlands. The new pope (John Paul II retires for health reasons) begins ‘to pray for peace, like his predecessors in July 1914, August 1939, and even 1993 for Yugoslavia … This is never a very good sign.’9 The Aix-la-Chapelle conference, convened on 31 March 2001 to establish a post-NATO security order for Europe, fails to achieve useful results. While several EU members share anxieties about ‘the East’ (Russia and certain other former Soviet states) or ‘the South’ (particularly the Muslim world), only Greece fears Turkey. The EU members cannot agree on security issues: whether the EU will seek denuclearization, with or without Russia, or become a nuclear weapons power; whether the EU will undertake interventions abroad riskier than peacekeeping; whether the EU will accept responsibility for defending overseas possessions such as the Falklands, French Guyana, and Ceuta and Melilla; and so on. With the conference’s failure, cartoonists depict the Vatican giving the last rites to a moribund Europe. As the disputes and confrontations mount, various pro-EU and pro-peace forces rally. King Juan Carlos disassociates himself from his prime minister’s blockade of Gibraltar by expressing faith in the EU’s potential; student demon- strators in Spain adopt two slogans: ‘Long live the King’ and ‘Long live Europe.’10 Two 20-year-old youths, a German and a Frenchman, make a ‘march for peace’ from their homes to Strasbourg, where they publicly immolate themselves. The message they leave on the internet, that they would ‘prefer to die today by their own choice than tomorrow in a new European war’,11 helps women’s move- ments organize massive anti-war demonstrations across Europe. It is in these circumstances that the EU’s leading powers convene a conference in October 2001 in the old NATO headquarters in Brussels. President Chirac and Prime Minister Jospin represent France, and Prime Minister Blair brings the leader of the Conservative Party with him; but Faust alone acts for Germany. Thanks in part to the German chancellor’s leadership, the conference agrees to the Treaty of Evere, officially called the European Security and Defence Treaty. The Treaty of Evere unites all the countries of Europe, except those in the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Asian part of Turkey, with collec- tive defence commitments (with respect to external adversaries) and collective
8 Schengen is the name of the town in Luxembourg where in 1985 the first agreements were signed to eliminate internal borders and to establish and enforce common rules on visas, asylum rights and customs checks at external borders. The Schengen area includes all EU members except Ireland and the United Kingdom. The Schengen Information System linking all police stations and customs and consular agencies in the Schengen area member states functions as a barrier to the unauthorized movement of people and goods into the EU. 9 Crémieux, Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront, p. 134. 10 Ibid., pp. 155–6. 11 Ibid., p. 172.
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security obligations (with respect to each other). ‘Recourse to war among the signatory countries is definitively ruled out. The term “perpetual peace” was used.’12 The participating nations agree to form a professional European army (each nation contributing 3 per cent of its GNP), to honour the security treaties that Britain and France have concluded with former colonies around the world, to consider the British and French overseas territories part of Europe, to integrate the British and French nuclear forces, and to appoint a European armaments minister as part of a new central government for Europe. Faust resigns his post as chancellor in Berlin to become the ‘formateur’ of the new central European government based in Brussels. Ratification of the Treaty of Evere is imminent when, according to the last entry in the diary, an announce- ment is heard on the radio: ‘Chancellor Faust has been assassinated.’13
A Faustian interpretation A first interpretation of the novel turns on the fact that the German chancellor is named Faust. According to the traditional legend (putting aside the variations devised by Goethe and others), Faust made a pact with the Devil for a fixed period of time (24 years in Christopher Marlowe’s Dr Faustus). In return for the Devil’s help during that time in achieving certain worldly ends, such as know- ledge and sensual pleasures and magical powers, Faust signed over his soul— which the Devil ultimately claimed. Faust was thus damned and carried off to hell. Despite the claims of some of his fans, Goethe’s version of the story has not displaced the traditional legend and its moral—namely, that one will be punished for a ‘Faustian bargain’, any attempt to make a deal with the Devil to escape the universal moral rules established by God. Similarly, to substitute one’s own will for God’s will, to make oneself one’s own god, or to take upon oneself the prerogatives of God (such as creating life) will lead to retribution.14 The name Faust has many potent associations. At a minimum, it implies that the character may be prepared to make a deal with the Devil to get what he wants. It is noteworthy, however, that the Faust figures in legend and literature have generally not been interested in political power. This may not appear to be the case in the following declaration by Marlowe’s Dr Faustus:
Had I as many souls as there be stars I’d give them all for Mephastophilis. By him I’ll be great emperor of the world, And make a bridge through the moving air To pass the ocean with a band of men; I’ll join the hills that bind the Afric shore,
12 Ibid., p. 191. 13 Ibid., p. 193. 14 For example, in Dorothy Sayers’s 1939 play The Devil to Pay, ‘Faust’s worst crime is having tried to play god.’ See Stuart Atkins, ‘Motif in literature: the Faust theme’, in Philip P. Wiener, ed., Dictionary of the history of ideas (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), vol. 3, p. 251.
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And make that land continent to Spain, And both contributory to my crown. The emperor shall not live but by my leave, Nor any potentate of Germany.15
In practice, however, Dr Faustus pursued no political ambitions. He made himself invisible to call on the pope and played pranks on him like a poltergeist. To impress the Holy Roman Emperor and thereby win a reward, Dr Faustus called up the spirits of Alexander the Great and his paramour. To amaze the Duke and Duchess of Vanholt, he provided fresh grapes in January. Having called up the spirit of Helen of Troy, Dr Faustus asked,
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?16
He nonetheless chose not to launch any ships himself, and followed no grand political design. One of the innovations in Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront is to link the Faust legend with high politics—the future of war and peace in Europe. If one thinks of a deal-maker with the Devil interested in amassing political power, one is led inevitably to stories of the Antichrist. One of the Devil’s temp- tations to Christ was, after all, to offer him great political power.17 Since the advent of Christianity, the term ‘Antichrist’ has been applied to the notion of an outwardly charismatic but inwardly evil leader bringing temporal ‘progress’ and material benefits to his followers or to most of humanity prior to the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world. Prophecies and stories regarding this general pattern of events preceded Christianity, however, and were current in ancient Babylon and among the Jews. The parallel with the essence of the Faust legend is apparent. Someone named Faust who is portrayed as the peacemaker of Europe, the almost-messianic unifier of the continent, might be seen as an Antichrist figure, a Faust who has made a deal with the Devil to gain secular power and prominence and to receive worship and adulation.18 Some elements of Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront support this interpretation— for example, the events that cause the United States to withdraw its forces and
15 Christopher Marlowe, Dr Faustus, ed. Roma Gill (London: A. & C. Black, 1968), 2nd edn, based on the A text, first published in 1604, scene 3, lines 103–12. 16 Ibid., scene 12, lines 81–2. 17 Matt. 4: 8–10. 18 In contrast with the archetypical Faust, Chancellor Faust is not portrayed as an immoral (or amoral) person dedicated to selfish ends, a Machiavellian in political terms, but as someone whose declared political agenda seems to be derived from Kantian ideals. Paradoxically, however, publicly professing dedication to such higher and nobler purposes would be pro forma hypocrisy for an Antichrist-like Faust. By the same token, Chancellor Faust's reference at one point to Europe's ‘Christian’ character, provoking the Vatican to note that some European nations have long had large Muslim minorities (p. 97), may have been calculated to achieve some political advantage. The novel furnishes no information about Chancellor Faust’s inner life, and it is unclear whether his professed aims are sincerely held or merely instrumental.
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security commitments from Europe, thereby putting stability and order into question and giving Chancellor Faust an opportunity to demonstrate his political skills. The terrorists, members of a fanatical religious sect, are inspired by apocaly- ptic beliefs: ‘All the actors in the drama were followers of a sect established in North Dakota that not only, like many others, foresaw the end of the world at the turn of the third millennium but also intended to contribute to it to the full measure of its capacities.’19 The terrorists, in other words, believe that the Antichrist is at hand, because such a figure has been prophesied as one of the signs of the end of the world. Chancellor Faust’s East German origins and his participation in communist youth movements might be interpreted as references to an atheistic ideology that was man-centred rather than God-centred and that foresaw progress and secular salvation in this world rather than redemption in the next. Chancellor Faust is presented as a gifted and persuasive politician. The diarist is obviously impressed: ‘He speaks French perfectly and addressed the National Assembly for forty-five minutes. A very European speech, very pleasant, much- applauded but also very pessimistic. He reviewed the dangers lying in wait for the continent and had no trouble making a long list of them.’20 Perhaps Faust emphasizes the number and gravity of the perils to magnify his triumph in bringing peace to Europe. Chancellor Faust rejects the treaty of Vaduz uniting Austria, Germany and Switzerland, apparently not only because his foreign minister signed it without consulting him, but also because the treaty represented a return to competitive alliances, while Faust has a larger unity of Europe in mind. The chancellor is so isolated within his own government that he is unable to persuade any of his ministers to accompany him to Paris for the commemoration of de Gaulle’s appeal to the French people on 18 June 1940 to resist the Nazi conquest. Such details may be intended to underscore that Faust’s achievement in bringing peace to Europe is his alone, and owes nothing to any assistance from colleagues in the German government.21 The clearest link between Chancellor Faust and the Faust legend comes when other national leaders, including Chirac and Jospin, are distraught and unsure what to do. ‘Their foreign counterparts are, moreover, no more brilliant, with the notable exception of Chancellor Faust, who maintains his calm, his presence of mind, his wit for repartee, and his political sense. He even indulged in the luxury, alone among the European “premiers”, of taking two weeks of vacation in Austria by the Klagenfurt lake. Sailing and water-skiing as if nothing was amiss!’ ‘This man fascinates me,’ the diarist gushes; ‘I hope that Mephisto is not involved.’22
19 Crémieux, Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront, pp. 48–9. 20 Ibid., p. 29. 21 Such details are, however, among the least believable in the narrative. In Germany’s Kanzlerdemokratie, the chancellor’s decision-making authority is such that it is unimaginable that the foreign minister would sign a treaty without the chancellor’s concurrence. Nor could the chancellor be so isolated. 22 Crémieux, Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront, p. 169.
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What, then, is the significance of Chancellor Faust’s assassination? Did this Faust get his retribution, assassinated at the instigation of supernatural powers as a means of removing him from this world and carrying him off to the next? Is the reader to assume that his work in setting up the Treaty of Evere was in vain? Or is one supposed to presume that the new security system will function suc- cessfully, despite the death of the ‘formateur’ of the pan-European government?
An interpretation raising questions about international political order The conclusion of Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront appears deliberately ambiguous and open-ended. Some works of literature are purposely indefinite and leave it up to the reader to supply the ending or contemplate alternative outcomes, with examples ranging from Frank Stockton’s ingenious story ‘The Lady or the Tiger?’ to J. B. Priestley’s play Dangerous Corner. An abrupt and inconclusive ending is fitting in this novel, because the future of peace in Europe depends on choices that have yet to be made. Whatever their current plans, people can change their minds and pursue alternative options. As the novelist puts it, in a paradoxical affirmation of free will, ‘economics has laws but men do not.’23 This novel raises, among other questions, the following: To what extent does peace in Europe depend on US security commitments, made manifest by mili- tary force deployments? Could the European powers maintain peace among themselves and protect their interests against external security threats without the United States? What challenges would they face if they had to ensure their security without any help from America? To what extent have the Europeans overcome their old ‘demons’ (distrust, power rivalry, etc.), notably through the European Union? The novel’s title may well allude to a song popular in the late 1960s, shortly after de Gaulle withdrew France from the alliance’s integrated military structure and demanded the removal of US and most other foreign military forces (and NATO’s political and military headquarters) from French soil. The Americans (les Américains) had long been known, dismissively or affectionately, as ‘les Ricains’, and the words of Michel Sardou’s song reminded the French,
Si les Ricains n’étaient pas là Vous seriez tous en Germanie A parler de je ne sais quoi A saluer je ne sais qui.24
The novel’s epigraph is a quotation from Anne Frank’s diary concerning D-Day, 6 June 1944. The narrator recalls in his diary, ‘I remember the enthusiasm in June 1944 (I was eight years old) when “the Americans have landed.” We didn’t 23 Ibid., p. 20. 24 ‘If the Yanks had not come/You would all be in Germany/Talking about I don’t know what/Saluting I don’t know who.’ The complete lyrics to Sardou’s 1967 song ‘Les Ricains’ are available at http://www.sardou.com/discographie/paroles/index.htm.
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ask if there were Englishmen, Canadians or some Frenchmen with them. We knew well that they were the Liberation!’25 With America’s disengagement, the diary-keeper sees ‘once again old Europe alone with its genius and its demons, and everyone knows to what extent these demons can be frighteningly effective’.26 For over fifty years, the Europeans ‘had relied on the Americans to ensure peace on this side of the Atlantic. It was con- venient, cheap, and effective.’27 The smaller countries ‘preferred the American peace to the European war which broke out every twenty or thirty years and which, with two or three great powers fighting, struck the smallest at random’. For the British, America provided ‘an unhoped-for “ersatz” for their centuries- old tradition of making sure there was never too strong a power on the contin- ent’. It was understandable that the Germans, ‘after having twice tried to become this strong power, were satisfied with a situation for which they had at any rate no alternative’. Only France ‘suffered in the straitjacket imposed upon it by Europeans and Americans leagued against its dreams of grandeur’.28 Yet, the diarist reflects, it is hard to understand how ‘diplomats and peoples could have imagined that the unnatural situation bequeathed to them by the war could be eternal. Someday something had to happen so that the situation would return to normal. That is, a situation in which four hundred million Europeans no longer relied for their defence on three hundred million Americans, who no longer had to defend them against two hundred million Russians who had no wish to attack them.’29 In these circumstances, the diarist writes, ‘The General must be laughing, up there (or down there, but that is another story).’30 De Gaulle expressed doubts about America’s reliability and perseverance as a security guarantor on various occasions. In justifying a tous azimuts (all points of the compass) military strategy for France, emphasizing its independent nuclear deterrent, de Gaulle even sug- gested a possibility vaguely comparable to this novel’s plot: ‘Some day or another, fantastic events, incredible reversals, could happen. So many have happened in history! America could explode because of terrorism or racism, what do I know, and become a threat to peace.’31 In view of his convictions about US unreli- ability and the risks of US–Soviet conflict or collusion, de Gaulle prescribed greater self-reliance: ‘This is why, while remaining the allies of the Americans, we want to stop leaving it [our defence] up to them.’32
25 Crémieux, Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront, p. 140. 26 Ibid., p. 141. 27 Ibid., p. 87. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid., pp. 87–8. 30 Ibid., p. 70. 31 De Gaulle, statement on 9 May 1962, quoted in Alain Peyrefitte, C’était de Gaulle (Paris: Editions de Fallois/Fayard, 1994), vol. 1, p. 290: ‘Un jour ou l’autre, il peut se produire des événements fabuleux, des retournements incroyables. Il s’en est produit tellement dans l’Histoire! L’Amérique peut exploser du fait du terrorisme, ou du racisme, que sais-je, et devenir une menace pour la paix.’ 32 Ibid.: ‘Voilà pourquoi, tout en demeurant les alliés des Américains, nous voulons cesser de nous en remettre à eux.’
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Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront suggests that US disengagement and the end of NATO could lead to the breakdown of the Schengen accords and other elements of the European Union, that various border and ethnic conflicts could reappear, and that national rivalries could be reborn: ‘There are as many Europes as prob- lems, and the American abdication has brought forth again contradictions with- out any solution … Everyone has a vision of the present, the past and the future and these contradictory visions do not permit any synthesis. Everyone considers himself a lodger or co-owner in the “Europe House” but everyone looks at the external world from a different window and therefore sees a different panorama which inspires in him personal thoughts irreconcilable with those of his neighbor.’33 While a number of specific details in the novel are plausible, as is the general thesis that US disengagement might have centrifugal and discordant effects on international politics in Europe, the overall scenario stretches one’s credulity. The rapid accumulation of antagonistic events in the months after America’s disengagement seems excessive, and the phrase ‘worst case’ comes to mind.34 In contrast with the novel’s scenario, for example, it is conceivable that enforce- ment of the Schengen accords might be strengthened in the uncertainty and possible turbulence following a US disengagement. The overall scenario is, moreover, hugely artificial because bringing about the collapse of NATO would be entirely contrary to US interests. Indeed, such an extreme scenario is most improbable because of the continuing interest of all the allies, including the United States, in sustaining NATO and adapting it to meet new security requirements. The United States will remain committed to NATO, and not only because it remains the main institution through which America can exert influence in European security affairs. Simply on geostrategic grounds, without considering shared values and other factors, America’s military presence in Europe is essential to defend US and Western economic and security interests in the Middle East and beyond. Examining an extreme scenario—US disengagement and the end of NATO—can nonetheless remind us of the enduring foundations of political order in Europe, including US engagement in the alliance. The scenario of Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront is, to be sure, also implausible with regard to certain details of Chancellor Faust’s triumph, the Treaty of Evere. It is difficult to imagine US disengagement alone convincing Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Spain and other European governments virtually to double their current level of defence spending to reach 3 per cent of GNP. Only a major new external threat (greater than the strategic-scale terrorism of 11 September 2001) might have that effect. It is also hard to conceive of Britain and France integrating
33 Crémieux, Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront, p. 117. 34 Excess is, of course, characteristic of dystopian novels; and this helps to account for their enduring interest. If Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront were a formal analysis, rather than a novel, it might also be accused of reductionism—that is, focusing on a single determinant of events (the imagined end of America's protective and ‘pacifying’ role in European security) instead of examining in more depth the potential interactions of a complex array of factors, including changes in European societies and politics since the Second World War.
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their nuclear forces under a European decision-making mechanism in the fluid circumstances following a hypothetical US disengagement. London and Paris would be more likely to retain these forces under national control, perhaps increasing their investments in them, even if they were prepared to make vague declarations about their relevance to the security of their European allies and partners. Similarly, it would be surprising to find the other European states pre- pared to assume responsibility for the British and French security commitments to overseas territories and former colonies. Indeed, the overall scenario appears implausible even on its own terms. Thanks to the efforts of Chancellor Faust, the anti-war demonstrators and others, the US disengagement that seemed to reawaken old antagonisms in Europe becomes irrelevant rather abruptly. The Europeans seemingly discover almost overnight that they can solve their military security problems and overcome their political differences through the Treaty of Evere. The reader is left to wonder: Will Chancellor Faust’s death therefore prove immaterial, because the Europeans do not need such a political master now that they have the Treaty of Evere, built on all the acquis communautaires of the Euro- pean Union? Or will Faust’s death rupture the bubble of hope and open the way to a new ‘struggle for mastery’ among the major European states?35 Will Faust’s death prove that the Europeans cannot aspire to enduring peace without significant US engagement?
Various theoretical responses What would happen in the event of an actual US disengagement obviously cannot be forecast with any precision. Without going into the speculative detail of Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront, some observers have argued that old fears, rivalries and antagonisms could re-emerge in some situations, despite all the positive developments in western Europe since the Second World War. In 1983, Hedley Bull, an Australian then occupying the Montague Burton Chair of International Relations at Oxford University, wrote that ‘Even the idea that Western Euro- pean nations constitute a “security community” or area of peace is mere wishful thinking, if it means that war between them could not happen again, and not simply that it has not happened in recent decades and would not make sense.’36 Such views have become increasingly rare, however, at least in public forums. The overwhelmingly predominant judgement is that peace among the member nations of the European Union has been firmly established, and the debate has concerned which explanations to favour. Indeed, as far as relations
35 The phrase was made famous by A. J. P. Taylor, The struggle for mastery in Europe 1848–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954). 36 Hedley Bull, ‘Civilian power Europe: a contradiction in terms?’, in Loukas Tsoukalis, ed., The European Community: past, present and future (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), p. 163. Karl Deutsch was among the first to articulate the idea of a west European ‘security community’ committed to the peaceful resolution of interstate disputes. See Karl W. Deutsch et al., Political community and the North Atlantic area (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957).
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among the EU countries are concerned, the novel’s implicit references to collective security theory seem anachronistic. The terms of the Treaty of Evere make it a collective security pact along the classical lines associated with the names of the most famous proponents of this approach to international peace— Immanuel Kant and Woodrow Wilson. The participating states formally rule out war among themselves, as with the Covenant of the League of Nations.37 The collective security tradition encompasses many admirable aspirations— above all, the notion of putting an end to fear and power competitions by build- ing a comprehensive international consensus on shared responsibilities in main- taining peace and security. However, historical attempts to implement the Kantian and Wilsonian approach—to make reciprocal and comprehensive collective security commitments the principal basis of a system of order among autonomous states—have generally been unsuccessful. As Martin Wight, the great British historian of international relations, pointed out, the fourth-century BC league of the Hellenes, the Greek states, was ‘entirely ineffective, as every system of collective security has been’.38 In 1917 Woodrow Wilson declared:
The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for a new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.39
In an essay published in 1966, Wight contended that Wilson presented a false alternative to the balance of power. Unless Wilson’s ‘community of power’ signifies a federation, Wight argued, ‘it is a chimera.’
International politics have never revealed, nor do they today, a habitual recognition among states of a community of interest overriding their separate interest, comparable to that which normally binds individuals within the state. And where conflicts of interest between organized groups are insurmountable, the only principle of order is to try to maintain, at the price of perpetual vigilance, an even distribution of power. The alternatives are either universal anarchy, or universal dominion.40
37 The novel alludes indirectly to the Covenant that Wilson championed by mentioning the Treaty of Versailles, which included the Covenant. Kant, the author of an imaginary treaty of ‘perpetual peace’, is invoked twice. In one case, Chancellor Faust notes that neither Kant nor Königsberg was Polish, subtly reminding his listeners that both were German; he adds, however, that Germany has no intention of returning to its ‘Teufel’ (devil) of the past, and intends to maintain a responsible international policy. Crémieux, Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront, p. 108. 38 Martin Wight, Systems of states, ed. Hedley Bull (London: Leicester University Press, 1977), p. 62. 39 Woodrow Wilson, ‘An address to the Senate’, 22 Jan. 1917, in Arthur S. Link, ed., The papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 40 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 535–6. 40 Martin Wight, ‘The balance of power’, in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, eds, Diplomatic investigations: essays in the theory of international politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 174–5.
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Is the European Union so far along the road to federation that Wight’s inter- pretation of international politics no longer applies to relations among its mem- ber states?41 In 2000 Roger Morgan suggested that
Perhaps we could locate three different systems (imagined ‘ideal-types’) along a scale or continuum: at one extreme a situation in which Europe’s major states are actually at war with one another (as they have been for a tenth of the twentieth century) … ; second, at some distance from this end of the scale, the international society which Wight would normally have had in mind, and which lasted basically from 1815 to 1914, with a resur- gence during the ‘twenty years’ crisis’ between the wars—a most anarchical society, sometimes stable, sometimes desperately unstable; and finally, … quite a long way past this second scenario again, the European society of today’s EU. This is a society in which the member states are bound fairly solidly together by the network of common interests they have cultivated, and by common rules and institutions which they have voluntarily created and sustained: a society in which conflicts between member states, although certainly still endemic, are resolved, or managed, by peaceful procedures.42
What are the foundations of peace in the new ‘European society of today’s EU’? Theorists have identified an array of explanations. Within the EU, various analysts have argued, the Europeans have overcome their past differences owing to a multiplicity of overlapping and mutually rein- forcing factors: increasingly profound economic interdependence; the acquis of the European Union (institutions and habits of shared decision-making and per- manent cooperation, transfers of sovereignty to central bodies regarding certain state functions, and assumptions of a community of interests); and shifts in mentalities with generational change (with high levels of self-identification as Europeans in some countries, notably Germany, and a widespread conviction that war among EU states is unthinkable and that Europe’s twentieth-century wars were shameful and constitute a standing warning against folly). The list is sometimes extended to include, among other hypotheses, democratic peace theory (genuine democracies do not fight each other, and can cooperate more comprehensively than non- democratic regimes, with greater mutual confidence); neofunctionalist theory (key constituencies push for further integration to gain greater economic benefits, with ‘spillover’ effects favourable to political cohesion); and demographic trend theories (ageing bourgeois societies with small families accord highest priority to social welfare and economic well-being, and are reluctant to take risks involving military operations, and a fortiori to resort to war as an instrument of policy).
41 In one of the last works Wight prepared for publication before his death in 1972, he described international order as then governed ‘by the balance between the two dominant Powers’, the Soviet Union and the United States, adding that ‘the United States has a superiority of military power and resources over her allies different in kind from anything that Britain ever dreamed of.’ Martin Wight, ‘The balance of power and international order’, in Alan James, ed., The bases of international order: essays in honour of C. A. W. Manning (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 114. 42 Roger Morgan, ‘A European “society of states”—but only states of mind?’, International Affairs 76: 3, July 2000, p. 574. The phrase for the interwar period has become permanently associated with Edward Hallett Carr, The twenty years' crisis 1919–1939: an introduction to the study of international relations (London: Macmillan, 1939).
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Robert Cooper has suggested that the EU forms part of a ‘postmodern’ world with the following characteristics:
• the breaking down of the distinction between domestic and foreign affairs • mutual interference in (traditional) domestic affairs and mutual surveillance • the rejection of force for resolving disputes and the consequent codification of rules of behaviour … • the growing irrelevance of borders … • security … based on transparency, mutual openness, interdependence and mutual vulnerability.43 Within the postmodern world, there are no security threats in the traditional sense; that is to say its members do not consider invading each other. The ‘interests’ that are debated with the European Union are essentially matters of policy preference and burden- sharing.44
Cooper’s analysis has the merit of recognizing that, ‘Although these post- modern characteristics apply among the states of the EU, they do not necessarily apply between them and other states: if Argentina chooses to operate according to the rules of Clausewitz rather than those of Kant, Britain may have to respond on the same level.’45 Indeed, Cooper wisely avoids any Hegelian ‘end of history’ triumphalism about the apparent progress achieved by the EU: ‘there is nothing inevitable about the survival of the postmodern state, in what remains a difficult [international] environment.’46 Cooper’s study suggests, in other words, that the external circumstances must also be considered, and these are among the key questions raised by Crémieux’s novel. To what extent was the initial development of the European integration process dependent on the circumstances of the Cold War, and to what extent has the ‘EU peace’ continued to hinge on favourable conditions, including US security commitments? In other words, even if one grants what cannot be defin- itively proven—that at least some theories purporting to explain the peaceful relations among the EU countries are well-founded to a greater or lesser degree— the continuing and potentially vital importance of America’s role as a security guarantor cannot be excluded. When the EU’s potential fragility in the face of challenging external circumstances is considered,47 Wight’s analysis of inter- national politics in Europe does not appear to have been so entirely overtaken by events as Morgan implied. The EU has developed under relatively benign conditions, with most EU members explicitly under NATO’s collective defence protection and with the
43 Robert Cooper, The post-modern state and the world order, 2nd edn (London: Demos/Foreign Policy Centre, 2000), pp. 19–20. 44 Ibid., p. 26. 45 Ibid., p. 27. 46 Ibid., p. 42. 47 The potential impact of a depression or severe economic recession on the EU’s political cohesion also deserves consideration, since some member states could be more gravely affected than others. The risk of significantly different consequences for specific states within the EU could be raised with its enlargement.
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United States not only providing leadership in the alliance but also playing the dominant role in the defence of Western economic and security interests in the Middle East/Persian Gulf region and beyond. Critical tests of the EU’s political cohesion would therefore come in circumstances outside the US-dominated external security framework. How effectively could the Union deal with risks and threats to the east and the south? To what extent could it maintain cohesion and resist aggression or coercion by an external power against a member state, contain and resolve external conflicts affecting EU interests, and defend the Union’s economic and security interests beyond Europe? Without US leader- ship in NATO, to what extent would the EU states coordinate their foreign and security policies and take action? Paralysis owing to deficiencies in capabilities or a lack of consensus might in some circumstances be less likely than disjointed action, with some EU capitals (London and Paris, perhaps Berlin and Rome) trying to exert leadership, with uneven results and some discord, if not actual divisions. If the EU could maintain cohesion, it might be on a directoire rather than a communautaire basis. Outcomes in specific cases would no doubt be scenario-dependent, but the precedents in the Balkans (e.g. Bosnia in 1992–5, Albania in 1997, and Kosovo in 1998–9) are not encouraging. In each of these cases, marked differences in policy preferences emerged among EU members. While an Italian-led ‘coalition of the willing’ eventually took action regarding Albania, the Western European Union did not endorse ‘Operation Alba’, and Britain and Germany declined to participate in the intervention. With regard to Bosnia and Kosovo, it was US leadership in NATO that ultimately made effective interventions possible. More cohesive EU outcomes are nonetheless theoretically possible. In circum- stances like the Crémieux scenario (that is, US disengagement, for whatever reasons), if the EU faced a grave external threat or large-scale disorders within Europe, the Union’s political leaders might show Churchillian determination in dealing with the challenges. From this perspective, grim necessity and the lack of prudent alternatives could make Chancellor Faust and his Treaty of Evere ‘a redundant hypothesis’.48 In these conjectured circumstances, with NATO gone, the EU might become the dominant multinational security institution in Europe, and its effectiveness might make EU membership even more desirable for other European states, particularly in central and eastern Europe. However, thought- ful Europeans would prefer not to wager that this outcome would be the most probable consequence of US disengagement, given the uncertainties associated with this hypothesis and the enduring advantages of maintaining NATO.49
48 Author’s interview with a British observer, 22 Jan. 2002. 49 A wide consensus in Europe supports NATO secretary-general Lord Robertson’s view that ‘there is no other organisation which can provide stability and security in the Euro-Atlantic area and prevent the danger of renationalising defence in Europe.’ Robertson, speech in Munich, 3 Feb. 2002, available at http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/2002/s020203a.htm. Josef Joffe once expressed a related view in blunter terms: ‘Costly as it is, America's European investment has yielded enormous profits—notably decades of tranquility on a Continent whose strategic importance in this century has been dwarfed only by its inability to manage its own security affairs when left alone.’ Joffe, ‘Europe's American pacifier’, Foreign Policy 54 (Spring 1984), p. 82.
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The EU’s efforts to devise a European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) have to date been noteworthy in high-profile organizational and declaratory terms, rather than in terms of generating additional military capabilities and taking action. It should be recalled that, despite its name, the EU’s ESDP is not intended to provide for ‘defence’ in the sense of collective defence (for the EU members in NATO, this remains an alliance responsibility), but for an ability to perform the ‘Petersberg tasks’—that is, ‘humanitarian and rescue tasks; peace- keeping tasks; [and] tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking’.50
America’s long-standing role in ensuring peace in Europe As Uwe Nerlich pointed out in 1979, the United States has served not only as ‘the protector’ but also as ‘the pacifier … of those parts of Europe that had not fallen under Soviet dominance’.51 America has functioned as ‘the pacifier’ because its preponderance in organizing and leading the alliance superseded the old competi- tion for primacy among the major European states. In the late 1980s Josef Joffe observed that, by extending protection to western Europe against the Soviet Union,
the United States embedded still another girder into the postwar order. The lasting integration of the United States into Europe’s state system dispatched the prime struc- tural cause of conflict among its nations—the search for an autonomous defence policy. … [T]he United States swept aside the rules of the self-help game that had governed and regularly brought grief to Europe in centuries past. … Once the problem of security was dispatched, collective gain could overwhelm the zero-sum logic of rivalry and relative gain.52
The United States, by many accounts, played a decisive role during the Cold War in eliminating mutual fear from security relations among the states of NATO Europe and thereby making possible the European integration movement.53 In other words, NATO can be seen as the framework within which certain previously intractable problems of power in European international politics have been successfully addressed.54 NATO has furnished western Europe with a security framework of reassurance within which the participating European states
50 Western European Union, Council of Ministers, Bonn, 19 June 1992, ‘Petersberg Declaration’, para. 4 of part II, ‘On strengthening WEU’s operational role’. This wording was adopted by the EU in the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997 (in force since 1999) and repeated in the Nice Treaty in 2000 as an integral element of the EU’s policies and responsibilities. 51 Uwe Nerlich, ‘Western Europe’s relations with the United States’, Daedalus 108, Winter 1979, p. 88. 52 Josef Joffe, The limited partnership: Europe, the United States, and the burdens of alliance (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1987), pp. 178, 183, 184. 53 For an imaginative and thoughtful account of what post-Second World War Europe’s history might have been without the US engagement, see Lawrence S. Kaplan, ‘NATO: a counterfactual history’, in Lawrence S. Kaplan, The long entanglement: NATO’s first fifty years (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), pp. 221–37. 54 Some of these points are also discussed in David S. Yost, NATO transformed: the alliance’s new roles in international security (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1998), pp. 50–72, with regard to the alliance’s functions.
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have been able to pursue political and economic integration in the institutions, beginning in 1951 with the European Coal and Steel Community, that have led to the European Union. Solving the security dilemma in west European interstate relations has facilitated the pursuit of economic and political cooper- ation—a process that was deliberately urged and sponsored by the United States, building on the thought and work of Jean Monnet and other European advocates of such cooperation. In the words of Michael Rühle and Nick Williams, who are, respectively, German and British, ‘It is only the anchoring of the United States in Europe that has nurtured the hope of escaping the past patterns of insecurity for good.’55 According to retired British diplomat Rodric Braithwaite, ‘Greece and Turkey have more than once been on the verge of war. They were prevented from going over the edge not by their common membership of NATO, but by US pressure unilaterally applied.’56 Although Greece is a member of the EU, the Union and other groups of European nations have not had as much influ- ence as the United States in efforts to manage Greek–Turkish disputes. The alliance has enabled Germany to reassure its neighbours and allies that it is committed to forming its national defence policies in a multilateral alliance framework, and that its power potential is balanced by that of the United States. According to a formula often attributed to NATO’s first secretary-general, Lord Hastings Ismay, ‘NATO was designed to keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down.’57 Rather than keeping the Germans ‘down’, how- ever, it would be more accurate to say that NATO has enabled Germany to demonstrate to its allies and to others that it is ‘in convoy’ as a reliable and trustworthy partner. NATO furnished, for example, part of the framework within which the French were led to accept the establishment of West German armed forces. It should be recalled that the European Defence Community (EDC) episode during 1950–4 stemmed from France’s determination to place constraints on the estab- lishment of West German armed forces through the creation of a unified Euro- pean army. Though France’s EDC proposal led to a signed treaty in 1952, it failed to win ratification in the French National Assembly in August 1954. The solution that enabled the Federal Republic of Germany to join NATO was not limited to Bonn’s political commitment not to manufacture nuclear, chemical or biological weapons on its soil and to accept constraints supervised by the Western European Union on its conventional armaments. From a French per- spective, the decisive factor consisted of pledges by Britain and the United States to maintain forces on the continent. According to a history of the EDC
55 Michael Rühle and Nick Williams, ‘Why NATO will survive’, Comparative Strategy 16, Jan.–March 1997, p. 113. 56 Rodric Braithwaite, ‘Bringing Russia in’, Prospect, June 1997, p. 36. 57 Ismay, cited in Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s name: Germany and the divided continent (London: Vintage, 1994), p. 389. According to a British scholar interviewed by the author in June 1997, Ismay made the statement to backbench Conservative MPs in 1951, long before the Federal Republic of Germany joined NATO in 1955 and even before he served as NATO’s first secretary-general in 1952–7.
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affair, the effect of the British and US pledges in September 1954 was ‘imme- diate—and profound. M. Rothschild well remembers M. René Massigli, the French Ambassador, unashamedly weeping and saying that “for fifty years— ever since 1905—French public opinion has waited for this announcement: and at last we have it!”’58 NATO, the institutional mechanism for US and British military commit- ment on the continent, provided reassurance that West Germany would move ‘in convoy’ with the other main Western states and that its power would be balanced by that of other major allies, particularly the United States. Many Germans—and other Europeans—have considered NATO crucial, partly because it provides reassurance that Germany will neither pursue an autonomous security policy nor perceive any need to seek military power commensurate with its economic strength. Several European analyses of post-Cold War pros- pects for security and stability on the continent have advanced the proposition that one of NATO’s main continuing purposes should be to furnish a solution to the potential problem of German power, so that Germany does not seek a special relationship with Russia or a level of military power (perhaps including nuclear weapons) that its neighbours would find threatening.59 The United States, as a superpower counterbalance for Germany from across the Atlantic, reassures Europeans in a way that no local power or coalition could; and NATO is the vehicle for US engagement in European security affairs. This view is widely shared among German experts in international security affairs. In the words of Christoph Bertram, a former director of the Inter- national Institute for Strategic Studies who now serves as director of Germany’s Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, ‘For Germany, the alliance has had, and continues to have, a special function, namely that of making German power controllable and hence acceptable to allies and political adversaries alike.’60 Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher has argued that NATO is essential to ensure US engagement and balanced relations with Germany within the Alliance: ‘Only the military and political engagement of the United States in Europe and close relations between the other two strongest sovereign states in Europe—Britain and France—are sufficient to balance German power; and nothing of the sort would be possible within a European super-state.’61 Thatcher’s concerns about Germany’s potential power are consistent with the observations offered by Helmut Kohl in 1993, when he was German chancellor:
58 Edward Fursdon, The European Defence Community: a history (London: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 321–2. 59 This ‘German question’ rationale for maintaining NATO was articulated, along with two others—the residual Russian uncertainties and the combination of risks of religious fanaticism, political and economic instability, and the proliferation of missiles and weapons of mass destruction in the Muslim world on Europe’s southern and eastern periphery—in Brian Beedham’s survey, ‘Defence: As the tanks rumble away’, The Economist, 1 Sept. 1990. 60 Christoph Bertram, ‘Visions of leadership: Germany’, in Steven Muller and Gebhard Schweigler, eds, From occupation to cooperation: the United States and united Germany in a changing world order (New York: Norton, 1992), p. 61. 61 Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street years (London: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 791. See also ibid., pp. 792–9 and 813–15.
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‘No one should be under the illusion that the spectre of European nationalism has been finally laid to rest, or that this ugly apparition is confined only to the Balkans … Even Western Europe is not immune to such [nationalist] tempta- tions.’ Kohl added an ominous warning: ‘I feel myself carried back to an ill- fated past when I hear some people stirring up public sentiment with the argument that Germany has become too large and too powerful, and therefore needs to be “contained” by means of coalitions. It is a cruel irony that this kind of talk plays into the hands of precisely those forces, not least in Germany, which propagate old-style nationalism.’62 Contemporary works other than Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront have vividly evoked the fear that ‘old-style nationalism’ could return, even in western Europe. In mid-2001 Sebastian Wood, a British analyst, raised the same question as that posed in Crémieux’s novel: How would the member states of the EU deal with their international security problems without the United States? In Wood’s analysis, the US withdrawal from European security commitments would be prompted not by terrorist attacks, but by an American preoccupation with China. Beyond the shortcomings in the European Union’s military capabilities, owing in part to NATO Europe’s long-standing dependence on the United States in collective defence and other external security matters, the more crucial questions would be political:
[W]ould the member states of the EU, deprived of American leadership in Europe, be able to agree what to do with their forces? Would the EU be politically capable of taking military action to halt and contain conflicts in East and Southeast Europe; or even of responding militarily to aggression against one of its own members? … The likelihood of increasingly divergent security perspectives and policies among the main EU players is really part of a wider and deeper risk which would arise if American military power in Europe were to be withdrawn: the risk of the progressive renationalisation of defence policies and the undermining of political cohesion among the states of the EU … [I]t would be foolhardy to assume that, without continued American leadership of security policy in Europe, the momentum of political integration could be maintained, or even that its existing achievements could not be undone … Without the American security blanket, Germany and Russia, as Henry Kissinger has observed, would be likely over time to fixate on each other … In particular, if Germany felt sufficiently threatened by Russia, it would be forced to examine from first principles how much reliance it could afford to place on the French and British nuclear deterrents as protection from Russian nuclear blackmail, and whether its security interests did not demand that Germany should have its own nuclear deterrent.63
It is noteworthy in this regard that during the dissuasion concertée episode in 1995–7, as with previous French suggestions about a nuclear dialogue among
62 Helmut Kohl, ‘An anchor in an unstable Europe’, Financial Times, 4 Jan. 1993, p. 52. 63 Sebastian Wood, Transatlantic security and the Taiwan Straits (Cambridge, MA: Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, June 2001), pp. 35, 37, 39, 40; emphasis in original. The reference concerns Henry A. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), ch. 31.
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the European allies, German leaders made clear their view that such a dialogue could not replace US nuclear commitments through NATO.64 Aside from the high value attached to restraint in acquiring and employing military power in Germany’s prevailing ‘strategic culture’, German convictions about the limited utility of France’s nuclear forces are such that only a sharp upheaval in the inter- national security environment (such as a withdrawal of US nuclear guarantees) could cause Germans to question the long-established advantages of retaining non-nuclear-weapon-state status.65 Any such questioning would undoubtedly involve great reluctance, for reasons beyond legal and political factors.66 It nonetheless remains unclear whether and how the EU could devise an ESDP providing credible nuclear protection via the British and French forces for all members of the Union and thereby substituting for US nuclear commitments via the Alliance, at least for the European NATO members in the Union. Wood does not exclude the long-term possibility ‘that a mature European super- power can take full responsibility for the security of its own continent’. He con- cludes, however, that ‘that goal, realistically, is still decades away.’67 That goal has, of course, not been explicitly adopted by the EU. Many Europeans would have multiple reservations about it, if the question of whether to pursue it were explicitly raised, particularly as long as NATO can be sustained as a credible alternative.68 One of the obstacles to pursuing such a goal remains the reluctance of many Europeans to accept any European state as the obvious leader in security matters. In 1999 Pieter Cobelens wrote, ‘Within Europe there is no country which will be accepted as a natural leader concerning security issues. The USA will still be dominant in the European security policy and in this respect you might even say “the most prominent EU member”.’69 As Rob de Wijk, another Dutch expert, put it in 2000, ‘both NATO’s internal pacifying function and heavy crisis response operations require leadership. At present there is no alternative to US leadership. The major European powers are too divided to play the role of lead nation and too weak to play the role of pacifier.’70
64 For details, see David S. Yost, The US and nuclear deterrence in Europe, Adelphi Paper no. 326 (London: Oxford University Press/International Institute for Strategic Studies, March 1999), pp. 35–41. 65 See the comments by Elizabeth Pond about German views on France’s nuclear investments in International Security 19, Summer 1994, pp. 197–8. 66 As part of the unification process, the Federal Republic of Germany supplemented the 1954 political commitment not to manufacture nuclear weapons on its soil and the pledge not to seek such weapons under the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) with the legally binding ‘renunciation of the manufacture and possession of and control over nuclear, biological and chemical weapons’ in the 1990 Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (the so-called 2+4 treaty). 67 Wood, Transatlantic security, p. 41. 68 Ten EU members are linked by mutual defence obligations in the 1948 Treaty of Brussels. Of the remaining five, Denmark is a member of NATO, and Austria, Finland, Ireland, and Sweden have in recent decades pursued variously defined ‘neutral’ security policies. 69 Pieter Cobelens, ‘De NAVO vergelijkenderwijs’, Militaire Spectator, April 1999, pp. 198–205 (in Dutch). The translation of this passage is by Colonel Cobelens. 70 Rob de Wijk, ‘What Is NATO?’, in Rob de Wijk, Bram Boxhoorn and Niklaas Hoekstra, eds, NATO after Kosovo (The Hague: Netherlands Atlantic Association, Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’, and the Royal Netherlands Military Academy, 2000), pp. 3–4.
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The alliance’s new tasks Given the enduring importance of NATO and US military forces and commit- ments for peace and security in Europe, the NATO allies, including the United States, must address the tasks at hand to sustain the relevance of their alliance. In contrast with the domestic terrorist attacks at the beginning of Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront, the foreign-based terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 Septem- ber 2001 led the allies to invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the mutual defence pledge, for the first time. America’s commitment to its European allies did not waver in the face of terrorism, in contrast to the scenario imagined by the novelist and de Gaulle. However, many Europeans have formed the im- pression that US interest in NATO has declined since the 11 September attacks, despite the invocation of Article 5, because America has not made the alliance its primary vehicle for pursuing the campaign against terrorism. Indeed, while specific allies (notably the United Kingdom) have played noteworthy combat roles, some alliance contributions have been portrayed as relatively symbolic— for instance, the deployment of NATO AWACS aircraft to the United States. The limited character of NATO European contributions to combat opera- tions (as opposed to peacekeeping and humanitarian relief) reflects more than American dissatisfaction with the alliance’s decision-making process during the air operations in the Kosovo conflict in 1999. It also reflects the limitations of European military capabilities.71 The military capabilities gap is becoming wider and reducing the chances of the allies being able to conduct combined multi- national operations.72 The scope for combined operations involving US and European forces in major combat contingencies is diminishing, because most European governments (within and outside NATO and the EU) are reluctant to increase defence spending and/or to take on the political and bureaucratic obstacles to spending more efficiently.73 European nations must build up their military capabilities to increase their political leverage and to ensure the relevance of NATO and, in the longer run, the European Union to the management of security challenges. As Lord Robertson, the NATO secretary-general, has noted,
71 Some European observers have identified yet another factor. In their view, even when European allies offered militarily relevant capabilities in support of the campaign against the Taliban government and the Al Qa’ida terrorists in Afghanistan, the United States was cautious and selective in accepting their assistance because of political and strategic incentives to achieve positive results promptly, without the complications of coordinating unneeded contributions from allies and other countries. In other words, it seems to some European experts that, if the United States could effectively conduct combat operations without allied assistance, the Americans responsible for these operations preferred this course of action, despite its implications for transatlantic relations. 72 For an exetnsive discussion, see David S. Yost, ‘The NATO capabilities gap and the European Union’, Survival 42, Winter 2000–1. 73 Entrenched inefficiencies limit the practical utility of many European military investments. For an incisive analysis, see Michael Alexander and Timothy Garden, ‘The arithmetic of defence policy’, International Affairs 77: 3, July 2001.
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For all the political energy expended in NATO to implement the Defence Capabilities Initiative, and in the EU to push ahead with the complementary Headline Goal process, the truth is that mighty Europe remains a military pygmy … [T]he reality is that we are hard pressed to maintain about 50,000 European [peacekeeping] troops in the Balkans … If Europe is to play its proper part in NATO and more widely, and if we are to ensure that the US moves neither towards unilateralism nor isolationism, all European countries must show a new willingness to develop effective crisis management capabilities … Unless the Europeans do better militarily in NATO and the EU, their influence in the Euro-Atlantic area and more widely will remain limited.74 As Robertson’s comments suggest, no risk of US disengagement is at hand, but the widening gap between US and European military capabilities constrains the scope for effective cooperation. With the principal exceptions of the British and the French, the Europeans have in recent years focused on the less demanding ‘Petersberg tasks’ such as peacekeeping, while the Americans have concentrated on improving their ability to conduct the full spectrum of potential military operations, including high-intensity combat waged at intercontinental ranges. The capabilities gap and interpretations of NATO’s Kosovo experience in 1999 have contributed to the policy articulated by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: ‘[W]ars can benefit from coalitions of the willing, to be sure. But they should not be fought by committee. The mission must determine the coali- tion, and the coalition must not determine the mission. If it does, the mission will be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, and we can’t afford that.’75 The less the United States can count on its European allies to participate in demanding military operations, owing to their deficiencies in capabilities and their reluctance even to endorse certain actions, the more the United States may be inclined to rely on its own national capabilities. The impression that their capabilities are not wanted or needed may then lead Europeans to choose not to invest in major capability improvements. The negative consequences of the growing transatlantic imbalance in capabi- lities could be exacerbated by an expanding divergence in threat assessments and definitions of the scope of the alliance’s security tasks. Disagreements have emerged among the allies about the next steps in the campaign against terror- ism, notably since President Bush named Iran, Iraq and North Korea an ‘axis of evil’ in his January 2002 State of the Union address. Aside from the immediate ‘next steps’ issue, the allies have yet to reach a consensus endorsing with specifi- city the ‘job description’ for NATO outlined by US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz: ‘Fighting terrorism, which has been so clearly linked to weapons of mass destruction, is part of NATO’s basic job description: Collec- tive Defense … Article 5 threats can come from anywhere, in many forms.’76
74 Secretary-General Lord Robertson, speech in London, 24 Jan. 2002, available at http://www.nato.int/ docu/speech/2002/s020124a.htm. 75 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, remarks at National Defense University, Washington, DC, 31 Jan. 2002, available at http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2002/s20020131-secdef.html. 76 Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, speech in Munich, 2 Feb. 2002, as prepared, available at http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2002/s20020202-depsecdef1.html.
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Some Americans have suspected the Europeans of not accepting certain threat assessments and ‘job descriptions’ for NATO because of a lack of military means and an unwillingness to spend on improved capabilities and/or to undertake risky operations, while some Europeans have accused the Americans of reckless unilateralism and excessive confidence in their military superiority. The capability and threat assessment differences could compound each other, with highly damaging results. If NATO European forces failed to participate significantly in a US response to a threat to Western interests by a WMD-armed proliferant, the impression of European free-riding could further undermine NATO’s stand- ing in the United States. It is incumbent upon the allies, on both sides of the Atlantic, to adapt NATO (once again) to new security requirements. While the United States has expressed a willingness to engage in more extensive transfers of military technology to its NATO allies, such transfers will be irrelevant unless the European allies are prepared to invest more in improving their military capabilities and to accept a more comprehensive definition of the alliance’s security tasks. As one of America’s strongest champions of NATO, Senator Richard Lugar, pointed out in January 2002, ‘To leave NATO focused solely on defending the peace in Europe from the old threats would be to reduce it to sort of a housekeeping role in an increasingly secure continent. To do so at a time when we face a new existential threat posed by terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will condemn it to a marginal role in meeting the major challenge of our time.’77 The adaptation task is imperative because NATO remains the pre-eminent security institution and the most promising means of sustaining peace and developing more constructive security relations throughout the Euro-Atlantic region, including Russia and Ukraine. The asymmetrical warfare capabilities of Al-Qa’ida and other terrorist networks, with extensive activities on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, have in fact underscored the security interdepend- ence of the European and North American allies. The unanticipated gravity of this terrorist threat, in conjunction with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and associated delivery means, has led to the intensified cultivation of many forms of transatlantic security cooperation. This has included police and intelligence activities in which Europeans have made major contributions.78
Envoi In Quand les ‘Ricains’ repartiront the novelist has placed his finger on core issues concerning the future of peace in Europe, notably the extent to which it may continue to depend on US engagement. He has raised several difficult questions
77 Senator Richard G. Lugar (R-Indiana), speech in Brussels, 18 Jan. 2002, available at http://www.senate.gov/~lugar/011702.html. 78 With regard to certain aspects of the campaign against terrorism (police, customs, export controls, financial surveillance, etc.), the European Union may be better equipped than NATO to serve as a vehicle for cooperation with the United States.
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that the EU member states would have to face about collective defence and collective security in the absence of NATO and US security commitments. To determine whether the US ‘pacifying’ and protective role has in fact become irrelevant, thanks in large part to the EU, would require a risky experiment— actually removing US military forces and commitments. The consequences could range from the novelist’s Treaty of Evere, an autonomous European security order, to a return to Europe’s old ‘demons’ of rivalry and war. As Pierre Hassner pointed out long ago, in the interests of peace and stability, ‘Some multilateral framework, some collective arrangement committing stronger states to the pro- tection and restraint of smaller ones must be an essential part of any European system.’79 The Atlantic alliance, reconfigured during the 1990s to meet new security challenges, remains the firmest and most reliable such ‘collective arrange- ment’ available, largely because it binds the United States to Europe. The crucial task now at hand is to adapt NATO to play a stronger role in the campaigns against terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Despite recurring transatlantic debates about US unilateralist tendencies (including in the operations since October 2001 in Afghanistan) or a possible shift of America’s focus to Asia, the shared values and security interests of the allies remain their strongest bonds. As in the past, building on the North Atlan- tic Treaty remains a wiser and more prudent bet than trying to make an imaginary Treaty of Evere work.
79 Pierre Hassner, Change and security in Europe, part II: in search of a system, Adelphi Paper no. 49 (London: Institute for Strategic Studies, 1968), p. 21.
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