THE TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONSHIP AND THE FUTURE GLOBAL GOVERNANCE ISSN 2281-5252 WORKING PAPER 41 | OCTOBER 2014 Historically, the system designed to ensure largely as a consequence of Europe’s modest international security has its roots in the evo- hard power and lack of strategic cohesion. On lution of the European-centred the contrary, if centripetal dynamics balance of power into the prevail, the Europeans can make transatlantic-promoted use not only of their indi- liberal order. Because vidual assets to address the liberal order functional threats is so depend- such as terrorism ent on Western and regional crises (US) power, but also exploit the emerging Transatlantic Relations the soft power multipolar- potential of the ity undeni- and Security Governance EU, whereby ably poses a US power gains challenge to greater out- it. Yet, even reach and im- the most res- pact. Because US tive among power is still so the non-West- Riccardo Alcaro and strong and the US- ern powers such European partnership as China and Rus- Ondrej Ditrych still enduring, the capac- sia have a stake in its ity of transatlantic relations endurance, meaning that to shape security governance multipolarity is not intrinsically in- has not vanished. Multipolarity has compatible with the liberal order. If centrifu- made the use of that capacity a more compli- gal dynamics prevail, the transatlantic ability cated exercise, but not necessarily a less effec- to shape security governance will diminish, tive one. THIS PROJECT HAS RECEIVED FUNDING FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION’S SEVENTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME FOR RESEARCH, TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT AND DEMONSTRATION UNDER GRANT AGREEMENT NO 612782 Transatlantic Relations and Security Governance Riccardo Alcaro and Ondrej Ditrych* EU US Governance International security Multipolarity Introduction “Governance” is a term of recent conceptualisation. Partly because of that, it is not entirely free of indeterminacy. The term refers to a complex web of political interactions unfolding on multiple levels – institutionalised and informal, governmental and non-governmental, global and regional, public and private, etc. – and displaying both fragmenting and centralising dynamics (Peterson and Müftüler-Baç 2014). The co-existence of these conflicting trends derives from the fact that governance is a system of rules and practices which is as much characterised by the absence of a formal hierarchy as it is by the interdependence of the interacting units. In keeping with this broad formal definition, a study of a system of governance is primarily concerned with detailing and illustrating the various mechanisms set up by the units to organise collective action and address systemic problems. This is however only a first step. A study of a governance system cannot but extend to analysing the specific kind of interaction in which the units are involved, whereby the position occupied by the units in the system, as well as the degree to which they depend on one another to make the system work, emerge as fundamental research questions. This is particularly the case when the object of the analysis is the governance of international security, a dimension in which the extreme differentiation of the units in terms of preferences and resources is in itself a systemic problem. It follows that an analysis of international security governance is first and foremost an analysis of how the interacting units manage their own relations – governance mechanisms look quite different if such relations are based on cooperation or on competition. Competition or cooperation patterns are structurally linked to the converging or diverging preferences of the units as well as to the capacity of the units to satisfy those preferences. Each unit occupies a structurally different position in the security system because preferences and capacities of the units vary in the most extreme fashion. Hence, the system emerges from the interaction not so much of all units but of its most resourceful or, to use a term more in line with security studies, most powerful ones. * Riccardo Alcaro is Senior Fellow at IAI’s Transatlantic Programme and Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution of Washington. Ondrej Ditrych is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague and assistant professor at Charles University in Prague. Mr. Alcaro has co-authored the introduction and authored sections 2-4 and the conclusions. Prof. Ditrych has co-authored the introduction and authored section 1. 2 WORKING PAPER 41 Since the middle of the last century, and especially following the end of the Cold War, the United States (US) has been at the epicentre of international security – its vast political, economic and military resources (still) unmatched. Hence, the set-up of today’s security governance reflects to a great extent US preferences as well as its relations with those countries that possess resources large enough to impact its action. These other countries include rivals but also partners and allies, through which US power expands and endures. Thus far, no partnership has been more important for the US than the one with European countries, whereby today’s security governance complex is largely a result of transatlantic cooperation. Illustrating how this relationship has played out historically and analysing how it can continue to shape security governance in a world in which non-Western powers are on the rise is the goal of this paper. The paper is divided into four sections. We first provide a historical account of how institutions in the transatlantic area and its parts (Europe) evolved from mechanisms of conflict management, against the background of the emergence of the modern state, to regimes with globalising ambitions taking the form of international organisation. In the second part, we turn to strategies pursued by the US and Europe – in cooperation with one another or independently – to shape regional and global security governance after the end of the Cold War. We identify prevalent patterns of multilateral or unilateral and formal or informal solutions to security problems, and attempt to trace them back to their strategic and normative premises. In the third part, we identify the elements of tension, emanating from the transatlantic partners themselves as well as from rising non-Western powers, which threaten the functioning of today’s security governance. In the fourth section, we finally attempt to determine how the transatlantic relationship can still contribute to security governance in the changed circumstances brought about by the incipient multipolarity. 1. From Continental Balance of Power to a Threshold of Global Hegemony From the advent of modernity until the 20th century when, in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s words, Europe changed from subject to object of global international relations (Brzezinski 1997:5), European powers imposed a “diagram” on world politics as a certain form of knowledge that made exercise of their power both intelligible and possible. German philosopher Carl Schmitt famously conceptualised this diagram as a nomos, a territorial order in which the “new world” (i.e., non-European) was rendered a space where brutal wars for control over land could take place, but in Europe, where war also remained an important instrument of change, it would be a “bracketed” war. In other words, recognising that war was inevitable, its bracketing under what Schmitt describes – and certainly to some extent idealises (Koskenniemi 2004) – as jus publicum Europeanum rationalised the war by limiting the legitimate authority that could wage it to the state (Schmitt 2003, Odysseos and Petito 2007). It was this basic norm that had conditioned the emergence and functioning of a balance of power, the “best and most solid foundation of a neutral friendship,” in the words of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) that contributed to ending the War of the Spanish Succession. A metaphor borrowed from statics and accounting, balance of power made a discursive entrée in the late 15th century with regard to Italian city states, and soon developed into a regulative ideal that sought not to prevent war, but to protect sovereignty and political survival of the recognised European powers (Haslam 2002). The balance of power at this time, therefore, stood for an informal configuration regulating interactions in the multipolar regional (continental) environment, even as war among European powers was steadily becoming more frequent, lasted longer, involved more men and gained a global dimension (Parker 2005). Needless to say, the protection of sovereignty that the balance of powers was meant 3 WORKING PAPER 41 to guarantee would only be extended to selected actors, the great powers. The regulative ideal of the balance of power would remain internalised in European powers’ foreign policies until the latter part of the 19th century when the continental map was redrawn following in particular the unification of Germany. The main exception to this state of play was Napoleon’s bid for hegemony. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars (1803-1815), European powers attempted to institutionalise the balance of power in terms of a cooperative great power condominium (“concert”) with the added element of solidarity in preserving their regimes’ internal stability.1 For a (short) while, the idea of the concert of powers seemed to enjoy support from all the great powers; however, after the demise of Lord Castlereagh (1822), the main supporter of the concert of power in the British government,