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May
31, 2002 9:00 a.m.
The
European Question and the Right
No
time to disengage.
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resident Bush's
trip to Europe took place amid growing European surliness about our power,
and American surliness about that surliness. The tone of the commentary
from American conservatives, in particular, ranges these days from annoyance
to hostility. Sentiment appears to be growing for going our separate ways.
Even Jeffrey Gedmin, who used to run an outfit devoted to better transatlantic
relations, sounded such notes in a recent Washington Post op-ed.
But disengagement
from Europe is not a sensible option. And conservatives, of all people,
should know that. It is they who, for the last decade and a half, have
been sounding the alarm about the rise of the European Union and its likely
negative consequences for the United States, and they who have been urging
a shift in American policy to reverse trends in Europe. Yet conservatives
appear to be forgetting that analysis at the very moment it is being massively
vindicated.
A certain amount
of transatlantic tension was to be expected after the Cold War ended.
The Western alliance no longer had a common enemy; differences of political
philosophy between Europe and America seemed larger once the alternative
of communism was gone; and those differences actually increased in response
to the widening power gap between them.
But European integration
was bound to make those tensions much worse, conservatives argued. A European
superpower would be contrary to American interests both because of the
logic of its position as a rival and because of its dirigiste ideological
tendencies. And while in a divided Europe some nations — Britain
above all — could be counted on to have more of an "American"
than a "European" outlook, to the extent the unification project
succeeded those nations would be absorbed into a pan-European state.
By 1989, it was already
clear from the controversy over American exports over hormone-treated
beef that European leaders saw a trade fight with America as a means of
centralizing their power within Europe. Now EU official Chris Patten,
discussing steel tariffs, has explicitly said as much. Nor is it hard
to find statements from other European leaders to the effect that resentment
of American power will serve as the sentimental basis of the European
project. In a largely unipolar world, how could it be otherwise?
The rise of Le Pen-style
nationalism is another vindication for conservatives: European integration
was supposed to be the antidote to such outbreaks, but it has instead
turned out to be their cause.
The logical conclusion
from that analysis is not that America should disengage from Europe or
be hostile to it. Seething from the sidelines would only help the Euro-nationalists.
Still less is it that America should continue to express support
for European integration, as President Bush did in Berlin on this trip.
It is rather that
we should engage Europe more vigorously. We should encourage European
nations to make a larger military contribution to NATO and to abandon
a European defense force, in return for our taking their military views
more seriously. When the time comes to attack Iraq — as it probably
will, the doubters notwithstanding — President Bush should convene
a summit including the leaders of those European countries who are making
an actual military contribution to the campaign, and excluding officials
of lesser European countries and of the EU itself. On the economic front,
we should work toward a transatlantic free trade zone including pro-American
regimes on Europe's periphery including Turkey and perhaps Russia. (Speaking
of Turkey, a nice first step would be to stop leaning on it to provide
facilities for the European defense force.) And in general, we should
side with those Europeans who favor a larger, freer, more open and Atlanticist
Europe.
That would be good
for America, for global stability, and for ordinary Europeans — who,
let's not forget, have shown much less enthusiasm for a European superstate
than their rulers have.
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