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the past week, George W. Bush has subjected himself to diplomatic
catcalls in each of the EU's 11 official languages. The specific flash
points were Mr. Bush's endorsement of a national missile shield and
his rejection of the Kyoto protocol on global warming. Yet for all
the Eurofuss, the substance of the disagreement on these two issues
is lighter than it appears.
Though the
Kyoto protocol was drafted four years ago, it has not been ratified
by a single member of the EU. Few, if any, European nations have
any chance or evident intention of meeting Kyoto's ambitious targets
for the reduction of greenhouse has emissions. Officials from several
European nations have also discretely expressed interest in working
with the United States on some kind of missile-shield project. In
truth, the arguments traded between Mr. Bush and his European Union
hosts were more symbolic than real proxies for a larger fight
about how world affairs should be conducted. Among EU heads of state,
the doctrine of multilateralism has attained the status of unshakable
truth. It is Mr. Bush's threat to this dogma that is the real source
of transatlantic friction.
To what does
multilateralism owe its revered status in Europe? The answer takes
us to the end of the Cold War and the beginning of what Mr. Bush's
father dubbed the New World Order. In 1989, just as the Soviet Union
was crumbling, a U.S. State Department official named Francis Fukuyama
wrote his influential essay, "The End of History." With
the eclipse of Soviet Communism, he argued, mankind's ideological
evolution was at an end; Western economic and political liberalism
had become the "final form of human government." In the
decade that followed, the broad sweep of world events seemed to
bear out the thesis. The Berlin Wall fell. China increasingly stroked
the black cat of capitalism. Democracy swept away despots in Latin
America, East Asia, and Africa. The word on everyone's lips was
globalization. Chinese peasants were drinking Pepsi. Arab accountants
were using Windows. With the exception of Iraq, the former Yugoslavia,
and other backwaters, the world was becoming a smaller, gentler
place.
There was a
feeling that the nations of the world were moving toward a single,
democratic, globalized ideal that animated the flurry of international
agreements and initiatives springing up during the 90s. Before that
time, multilateral bodies had narrowly defined goals. NATO was pledged
to defending Western Europe from Russian tanks. And no one was protesting
the World Trade Organization meetings because the World Trade Organization
didn't exist. All of this changed when globalization replaced the
Cold War as the dominant foreign-affairs paradigm. In the 80s, formerly
obscure bodies like the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund began taking an active role in the management of an increasingly
interconnected global economy. In the 90s, the UN and NATO no longer
confined themselves to stopping war between sovereign countries.
Peacekeeping, peacemaking, and nation-building within war-torn nations
Bosnia, Indonesia, Angola, and Congo, for instance was now on
the agenda. The belief also spread that murderous historical rivalries
would fall victim to the warm and fuzzy political spirit that accompanied
globalization. The Northern Ireland Good Friday agreement was signed
in 1998. The first Oslo agreement was signed in 1993. Peaceniks
mused that Israel might someday join the Arab League.
This utopian
brand of multilateralism created a utopian brand of leader. Globalization
was always dear to the hearts of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. The
idea that the whole world was gradually embracing the same values
was consistent with the sunny, inclusive Third Way attitude they
sought to project. The hyper-rational Al Gore was a huge fan. He
put global warming on the American agenda and championed the Kyoto
protocol.
Where free
trade and military adventurism are concerned, the Americans have
led the multilateral charge. But despite Clinton-Gore boosterism,
there arose a growing gulf between the European and American approaches
on every other issue. Aside from the Kyoto Protocol, the second
half of the 90s brought us the 1998 Rome Treaty on the International
Criminal Court, the 1997 Land Mine Treaty and the 1996 Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty. In every case, the pattern was the same: The European
nations piled in enthusiastically, while the Americans kept their
distance.
The message
from the United States always has been clear. In October 1999, the
Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which has been
ratified by every other member of NATO, by a solid margin of 19
votes. In 1997, the Senate voted 95-0 against any global-warming
resolution that, like the Kyoto protocol, bound industrialized countries
but not developing nations. On December 31, 2000, President Clinton
put America's signature on the International Criminal Court as an
11th-hour gesture of multilateralist goodwill, but said that the
treaty had "significant flaws," and that, "I will
not, and do not recommend that my successor submit the Treaty to
the Senate for [ratification] until our fundamental concerns are
satisfied."
To hear European
critics explain it, however, the United States has gotten drunk
on its own superpower now that it doesn't have to share the bottle
with Soviet Russia. But that's empirically wrong. Every one of the
so-called U.S. "rebuffs" has clearly or at least very
arguably been in the American national interest. According to
the projections of the United States Energy Information Administration,
the strictures imposed by the Kyoto Protocol would lop as much as
US$500-billion off of the GDP in 2010. Land mines help protect the
37,000 American soldiers stationed in South Korea from North Korean
attack. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would tie American hands
without establishing adequate provisions to keep tabs on rogue states.
And the International Criminal Court would subject G.I. Joe to the
jurisprudential whimsy of human-rights lawyers.
Why do Europe
and the United States see things so differently? There are two main
reasons. The first is perspective. With the creation of the EU,
the whole structure of Europe itself became multilateral. And it
is natural for member countries to see multilateralism in positive
terms. Over a broad range of issues such as capital punishment,
on which Mr. Bush took considerable hammering during his European
trip there is very little substantive disagreement on the continent.
European leaders seem to have internalized the view that every disagreement
can be settled through rational discussion. It is telling that when
Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, the leaders of France and
Germany respectively, met with Mr. Bush on Wednesday, they argued
that the threat from rogue nations should be settled with "diplomacy"
instead of anti-ballistic missiles. To Americans, the belief that
the plots of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il can be defused with
talk and good intentions is laughable. They are the ones who get
their embassies blown up, and they do a lot more dangerous mucking
about in the world's dark corners than the French or Germans.
The second
reason has to do with national goals. The United States has rejected
multilateral initiatives and instruments because they are inconsistent
with American foreign-policy objectives. But in Europe, creating
a multilateralist bulwark to American "hyperpower" isn't
just consistent with foreign-policy objectives, it is a foreign-policy
objective. For this, blame lies mostly with France. It was French
Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine who coined the term hyperpuissance
and it is France that has most explicitly embraced the goal of planting
in European soil a second Western pole of global power.
Obviously,
George W. Bush and European leaders hold very different views on
issues such as the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Kyoto
protocol on global warming. But the squabbling on those subjects
is also a proxy struggle for a larger ideological battle about multilateralism
and all signs indicate this fight will still be with us long after
Kyoto and the ABM fall off the agenda.
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