BRUSSELS — A specter is starting to haunt wider Europe — those countries located between the EU and NATO on one hand and Russia on the other.     That specter is “Finlandization.”   The return of this Cold War phrase reveals much about the changing spirit of the times and geopolitics of European security today. “Finlandization” refers to the policy imposed   on Finland after World War II to pursue a foreign policy of neutrality that took the strategic interests and demands of the Soviet Union into account while preserving a democratic political system and avoiding the adoption of a communist system or becoming a satellite state, as was the case in Central and Eastern Europe.  

While the term is often used in a pejorative fashion, it is historically unfair to Finland itself, a small Nordic country that fought the Red Army to a draw in order to guard its independence and then managed to preserve it for 40 years.   As communism and the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of the Cold War, Helsinki used this new window of opportunity to move westward: it swiftly joined the European Union and created the option to join NATO by meeting all of the Alliance’s criteria in advance, an option it has heretofore chosen not to implement but could do so expeditiously if political currents changed.  

But the phrase is slipping back into modern usage–as a potential future option for those countries in wider Europe.   It is a shorthand way to describe a Russian policy that seeks to limit the foreign policy choices and sovereignty of countries on its borders and preclude their joining NATO or seeking a westward course in what Moscow sees as its sphere of privileged interest.   Moscow has been engaged in a political offensive on this front since the 2008 Russia-Georgia war.   It has recently been focusing on using soft power to tie a country like Ukraine more closely to it and to deny Kiev a Western option.

Moscow is not only seeking assurances from these countries that they will not seek to join the West.   It is also seeking assurances from Western nations that they recognize this alleged sphere of special interest — and potentially give their tacit agreement to such new notions of limited sovereignty.   That is one of the main issues embedded   in a series of Russian policy pronouncements and the European security proposal of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. While no Western leader has yet endorsed this idea as official policy, one doesn’t have to travel very far in the diplomatic corridors before running across diplomats who are asking out loud whether some new and modern version of “Finlandization” might become an acceptable policy for countries whose prospects for Western integration seem to be sinking.    

What has brought this idea back from its Cold War grave?   One factor is the perception that the historic opportunity for democratic enlargement that opened after 1989 is slowly closing. The United States’ preoccupation with the major challenges it currently faces in southwest Asia and the wider Middle East has, rightly or wrongly, contributed to the sense that American diplomacy and power is no longer available to help extend the vision of a Europe whole and free deeper into the post-Soviet space.    Enlargement fatigue, growing Russian opposition, the more complicated nature of some of the candidates — and now the Euro crisis — have all moved enlargement   off the front burner of Western policy priorities.   The combination of Russian assertiveness, European weakness, and American distraction has helped to spawn the view that the historical window for democratic enlargement may be coming to a close and that the West   needs a new, pragmatic compromise with Russia on wider Europe.

There is a problem, however.   A return to Finlandization — or some other form of limited sovereignty under a different name — would mark an historical setback.   It would be a direct refutation of some of the founding principles of the Charter of Paris from November 1990 — the document that was supposed to be the cornerstone and a kind of bill of rights of a new post-Cold War European cooperative security architecture.   That document — along with its successors — explicitly  guarantees the right of a country to be able to choose its own domestic and foreign policy path.     It would be the end of a vision that three U.S. presidents have been committed to and worked for since 1989 — the belief in a new cooperative European security structure that abolishes previous concepts of a balance of power, sphere of influence, and limited sovereignty.

Moscow today seeks to halt the further enlargement of Western institutions closer to its borders through a new version of Finlandization.   But what is also clear is that the West no longer has a clear consensus or strategy for what we seek to achieve today with these countries.   We affirm our commitment to the old principles but are unsure how to pursue or operationalize them in a changed political and strategic context.   If we want to ensure that Finlandization remains a historical phrase and not a current one, we need a new strategy of enlargement. As the American saying goes: you can’t beat something with nothing.  

Ronald D. Asmus is Executive Director of the Brussels-based Transatlantic Center and is responsible for strategic planning at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Share/Bookmark

BRUSSELS — Earlier this week, a Group of Experts appointed by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and headed by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented their  report on what a new alliance strategic concept should look like to the North Atlantic Council in Brussels. The group had been tasked to lay the groundwork for a new strategic doctrine at a time when the alliance appears more divided and fragile than at any time in recent memory.

The report describes the alliance as “as an essential source of stability in an uncertain and unpredictable World” in which the alliance will be tested by new dangers and complex operations in an era where rapid responses are vital, versatility critical, and resources tight. While the report covers much ground and offers a wide spectrum of new proposals and analysis, its key focus is on offering compromise formulas to bridge the gap on three key divisions in alliance ranks.

Russia is the first of these. The report tries to reassure those allies who are nervous about the credibility of Article 5 in the face of Russian political and military intimidation while also accommodating others who want a robust outreach to Moscow. The group strongly affirms the centrality of Article 5 of the 1949 Washington Treaty, which promises that the alliance will defend a member state whose territory is under attack. Yet it also reaches into the alliance’s own history and the 1967 Harmel Report, which called for a dual track approach to overcome an earlier political split in the alliance on how to deal with the Soviet Union. Using a similar approach, the Group of Experts calls for a strategy that today would couple strategic reassurance for Central and Eastern Europe with a policy of reengagement with Moscow. That means finally making good on an early unfulfilled promise to new member states, and taking prudent military steps to reassure them, like contingency planning, exercises, and defense infrastructure–in the hope that this will allow the alliance to generate a more solid consensus for engaging Moscow as well.   Those measures would also be integrated into a modernized crisis management system that enhances NATO’s ability to identify, assess, and respond to new crises beyond its borders more generally.

The second area where the report identifies new ground for an alliance compromise is the balance between home and away missions. The alliance is divided over whether an expeditionary mission like Afghanistan should be viewed as a one-time event or as a key part of the alliance’s future operations. The report seeks to address this question in several ways.  It notes that an Article 5 threat to the territorial integrity of a member state can emanate from inside or outside of Europe–and thus an expeditionary mission can be a response to an Article 5 threat.   It also notes the importance of global lifelines of trade and energy that sustain modern societies and North Atlantic security.   Such language suggests that NATO will continue to be active beyond the continent. However, the report also suggests guidelines for when expeditionary missions should be undertaken–implying that NATO will be selective in engaging in such missions. The report emphasizes that NATO is a regional rather than a global institution; and it stresses that the decision to undertake a military mission requires an imminent danger to alliance members, as well the willingness and ability of NATO members and their publics to support the missions and provide the resources required. The message is clear: expeditionary missions are part of NATO’s future but they will be undertaken very selectively and only when NATO feels it has both the support and the resources to succeed.

Finally, the experts’ report calls on NATO to upgrade the alliance’s partnerships with non-member countries and declares these relationships to be a core task in the next strategic concept. Whereas earlier partnerships focused on preparing candidates for membership, or on generating troop contributions for NATO missions, this report calls for upgrading NATO’s partnerships with institutions like the EU, with the OSCE and the UN, and with key  countries such as Russia. It also lays out new ways in which partnerships can and should become less Europe-centric and tied to membership and more of a two-way street that recognizes not just the needs of NATO, but also those of the interests and needs of partners such that partnerships can be tailored to the specific needs of individual countries. At the same time, it avoids suggesting that NATO is or should go global or becoming a”Globo-cop.”

Thew views presented by the Group of Experts are of course just that–ideas and suggestions. It is now up to the NATO Secretary General and the North Atlantic Council to take them and to turn them into solid compromises in the final version of the strategic concept that would allow the alliance to move beyond these past divisions.       Should it do so, this report will have helped NATO make real progress in overcoming some key internal divisions.

Ron Asmus is Executive Director of the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Center in Brussels and is responsible for strategic planning at GMF. He also served as an informal advisor to the Group of Experts. The views expressed here are his own.

Share/Bookmark

BRUSSELS — To many people outside of Brussels, the process that resulted in the selection of Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy as President of the European Council and Catherine Ashton to the dual-hatted position as High Representative for External Affairs and Vice President of the European Commission was a bit like waiting for the white smoke to come out of the Vatican.     To an American residing in Europe’s equivalent of the Beltway, however, the political logic that led to these decisions was pretty straightforward.   The European center-right grouping got first choice on one position, so the other had to be a candidate of the center-left. One went to the leader of a small country, so the other had to go to a figure from a larger member.   Diversity and gender was also a consideration.   Such political balancing acts happen all the time in American politics — it’s how U.S. presidential candidates choose their running mates and presidents pick their cabinets.

Nor is it so hard to imagine that Van Rompuy and Ashton might be rather useful in their new posts. Surely there is no better schooling for managing EU leaders than the cockpit of Belgian coalition politics, where Houdini-like skills are required for success.     And anyone who dealt with Lady Ashton when she was EU Trade Commissioner knows she is tough, effective, and not to be underestimated.

At the same time, I certainly was not the only one in Brussels who fielded one call after another of incomprehension and disappointment about these choices.   After all, it was French President Nicolas Sarkozy who suggested Tony Blair for the Presidency of the European Council, and U.K. Foreign Minister David Miliband who said the new High Representative should be able to stop traffic in Moscow or Beijing.   Having set the bar that high, it is not surprising that Van Rompuy and Ashton hardly were greeted with universal acclamation.   It may not not difficult to see the Van Rompuy-Ashton team working together effectively to create consensus on foreign policy issues within the EU — at least in cases where one or a group of nation-states does not have a strong national preference. But can they really crack heads and force agreement when that task must be done?   And can they represent the EU in the corridors of power in Washington, go toe-to-toe with the leaders in the Kremlin on energy, hammer out new trade or financial agreements with Beijing or face down the mullahs in Tehran on nuclear issues? What can one conclude other than Europe’s leaders opted to keep control of issues such as these largely to themselves?

Elsewhere, too, there is a palpable sense of a lost opportunity for Europe. Many of Europe’s partners today urgently want the EU to assume a more global role and responsibility; nowhere is this more true than in Washington.   America’s own Euroskeptics, once a formidable intellectual and political force, have ridden off into the sunset.   Washington is more open to a new global partnership with the EU than at any time in the last forty years.   But the appointments last week of two individuals most Americans have never heard of have not made it easier to argue for upgrading U.S.-EU cooperation on global foreign policy challenges.

Predictions of Europe’s geopolitical slide into irrelevance are nevertheless premature. The EU is simply too big and important to ignore.   And the United States today is becoming more rather than less dependent on cooperation with the EU if it wants to pursue its own interests across a wide variety of areas.   So at the end of the day we have little choice but to go back and try to make this relationship work better with what we have.   The real question is whether an EU led by this new team will be able to punch above or below its weight in international affairs. Let’s hope they pleasantly surprise us.

Ronald D. Asmus is Executive Director of the Transatlantic Center and of Strategic Planning for the German Marshall Fund in Brussels.

Share/Bookmark

BRUSSELS — President Obama’s shelving of the Bush administration’s missile defense plans makes sense in addressing the immediate Iranian threat. It has nevertheless created a crisis of confidence in Central and Eastern Europe.   The crisis’ roots lie in policy mistakes made over the course of the past decade. One was assuming that the issue of whether these countries belonged in the West would be resolved when these countries joined NATO and the EU. We assumed that Russia would accept that they were gone from its shrinking sphere of influence and stop interfering in the region.   But it hasn’t.   It has merely changed tactics, and is now recycling the idea of a Russian “sphere of influence” in Eastern Europe under the new label of “zone of special interest” €“ which of course also means lesser security.

Another mistake was not fulfilling our pledges on Article 5 of the NATO Treaty.   I sat at the table in the mid-1990s as Washington promised Warsaw that NATO would have a corps-size reinforcement capability to provide for its security. That never materialized. Attempts to develop contingency plans have also been blocked.   In fact, the Alliance has decayed in its role as the key crisis manager in Europe €“ as became evident during the Russo-Georgian war in August of 2008.     In private, Central and East European leaders are no longer certain that NATO would be capable of coming to their rescue if there were a crisis involving Russia.

Enter missile defense.   The Poles and Czechs bought into George W. Bush’s plans for missile defense because they were seeking additional security through an American military presence on their soil: in other words, insurance. That is why the plans assumed so much political significance in the region €“ and why abandoning them creates a crisis.

There is a fix to the problem.   Address the region’s concerns through the front door of NATO and not the back door of missile defense. We need a package of political, economic and defense measures that provide strategic reassurance. If we get that right, we can get this relationship back on track. If we don’t, the crisis of confidence in the region will deepen.

Share/Bookmark

BRUSSELS — In his column entitled “What Did We Expect?” in the New York Times of August 20, 2008, Tom Freidman argues that the recent conflict in Georgia proves that Nato enlargement in the 1990s was a strategic mistake and helped create the kind of Russia that would attack Georgia. Mr. Friedman has, of course, been arguing against Nato enlargement for a very long time. But I felt the need to explain why, in my view, he is wrong .

If any strategic decision of the 1990s has stood the test of time, it is the decision to enlarge NATO to Central and Eastern Europe. Those suggesting that this decision is the cause of the current crisis with Russia are turning history on its head. Had we not enlarged NATO, the U.S. today would be worse off strategically with more problems and fewer allies.

For starts, let’s just imagine what Europe would look like. The fact that core Europe today is more secure, democratic and free than at any time in recent history is not an accident. NATO enlargement provided the shield behind which EU enlargement became possible and secured the eastern half of the continent. Had we not acted, Europe today might again look like it did in the 1920s and 1930s – torn by rising nationalism and geopolitical completion in the heart of the continent. Russia’s relations with Poland and the Baltics might look a bit like those between Moscow and Georgia or Ukraine today. Polish-German relations would have long collapsed in acrimony. Such instability could have spilled over into the Western half of the continent and made it even more inward-looking. We could forget about European allies supporting us in the Middle East or Afghanistan as they would be too absorbed in managing their continent’s own instability.

And what would Russia look like? I don’t believe that Russia would look that much different than it does. Russia’s failure to make the transition to a more democratic future and its fall back into an atavistic nationalism is not a consequence of Western foreign policy decision but Russia’s own internal dynamics and the leadership of Vladimir Putin. We should not buy into the kind of cheap revisionism that pins the blame for this turn of event s on the West. The West went to remarkable lengths to try to bring Russia into the West in the 1990s. That policy may have failed, but not for lack of Western trying.

Friedman asks: what did we expect? The answer is simple. We thought Russia was capable of moving beyond its imperial past. We expected Moscow to behave like a normal and modern European country — and to abide by the commitments and agreements it had signed up to. Those commitments included abandoning such things as spheres of influence or the use of force against its neighbors and instead recognizing the rights of all European countries, big and small, to choose their own destiny and to join whatever alliance they liked. NATO enlargement did not create any new threat on Russia western border. That border is the most peaceful, safe and secure border Russia has anywhere.

In his time, Boris Yeltsin understood this. In conversations with President Clinton a decade ago, he admitted that NATO enlargement did not pose a strategic threat, although he did worry that his political enemies could use the issue against him at home. At heart he was an anti-imperialist and the leader who had let much of the old Soviet empire go. He wanted Russia to go west, too, which is why he felt he could not deny Moscow’s neighbors that right. In return for his acquiescence, we pledged to enlarge NATO in a way that did not create any military threat and to build up in parallel expanded institutional relationships between Moscow and NATO and the EU. That is why Yeltsin was willing to sign on to the NATO-Russia deal in the late 1990s.

But we also knew that not all future Russian leaders would necessarily think like Yeltsin. That is why NATO enlargement was also a political hedge against a Russia that, down the road, might again become a bully or threat. Yeltsin’s appointed successor Vladimir Putin initiated the change in Russian thinking and policy that has become just that. Putin is someone who laments the collapse of the old USSR, who apparently is prepared to abandon Russia’s past commitments on the game rules of post Cold War European security and is determined to restore Russian power and hegemony its neighbors. But let’s not pretend that it was NATO enlargement created Vladimir Putin or his outlook. The evoking of the enemy at the gate is an old ruse that many Russian leaders have used to consolidate their rule and to justify tough policies for their own reasons €“even if that enemy does not exist and NATO had never enlarged.

There was a historic window to enlarge NATO and we used it. Thank God we did. As a result, the U.S. President today does not have to worry about instability and war in the heart of Europe. If we had not enlarged, we would in all likelihood still face an aggressive Russia but have to do so from a weaker position, with greater European instability and fewer allies around the world to help out with other crises. But there is something even more disturbing about the argument s of these who now resurrect old arguments against NATO enlargement and blame it for today’s Georgian crisis. It is their inability to understand that enlargement’s very success in Central and Eastern Europe helped inspire many Georgians and Ukrainians to think that they, too, could perhaps go West and transform their countries into societies like ours. It is the implication that such aspirations — the desire of these countries to enjoy the kind of freedom, sovereignty, and security that we so often take for granted — are somehow misguided, unwelcome, and should not be encouraged. That would be the worst misreading of history of all.

Ronald D. Asmus was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State from 1997-2000 and is the author of Opening Nato’s Door, a history of Nato enlargement.

Share/Bookmark

BRUSSELS — The current war in Georgia has taken much of the world by surprise. However, for those of us working on Georgia and traveling to that country, including the separatist provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it was a conflict that was both predictable and avoidable. The tragedy is that no one was willing to take the steps that could have headed off this conflict at key points along the path that led to war August 8th.

The signs were there. As I look back at the five op-eds I have written on Georgia since the beginning of the year, I feel like I am reading the script to a movie where I know the ending, but can no longer stop or change it. In November 2007, I published an op-ed in the Financial Times, after having led a study group to Georgia in the immediate aftermath of the declaration of a state of emergency. In concluding that op-ed, I wrote that the West needed to embrace Georgia in two ways. Tbilisi needs tough love to ensure it stays on a democratic path. But it also needed to be shielded from Moscow’s growing pressure.”Many in the west continue to ignore or play down this threat,” I wrote. “As one European official put it, if he told his home capital what the Russians were up to in Georgia no one would believe him. Standing up for democratic values cannot only mean criticizing Mr. Saakashvili. It also means standing up for Georgian independence and its territorial integrity.”

Following the NATO Bucharest Summit, I wrote another article in the leading German daily the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung where I analyzed the rift between Washington and Berlin over MAP for Gerogia and Ukraine and suggested that, instead of creative ambiguity, the compromise NATO had reached could be destructive and seen as weakness, thus encouraging rather than discourage Russian aggression.

In early June I published another op-ed in the Financial Times, this time with Mark Leonard from the ECFR, entitled”Get involved over Georgia or invite a war,” in which we warned that passivity was a recipe for disaster and that the West was sleepwalking into a war in Georgia unless it took steps to change the dynamics on the ground.

After a rather dramatic lunch with President Saakashvilii at a conference in Yalta in early July, I warned in a piece in the Washington Post entitled,”A War the West Must Stop,” that the West needed to draw a clear red line and tell Moscow that there would be real consequences in its relations if it did not stop its aggressive course on Georgia if we hoped to prevent a war. Meeting with Congressional staff shortly thereafter, I predicted the war would start in mid-August. I was off by a week.

As I argue today with Richard C Holbrooke in the Washington Post, the war in Gerogia is indeed a watershed — and a failure for Western diplomacy. It could have been different if we had heeded the warning signs and acted.

Share/Bookmark

Much of the commentary on the recent trip by Senator Barack Obama to Europe has–understandably–focused on what his trip means for U.S. presidential politics.   But one can also ask about what it tells us about future transatlantic relations.   It is of course eye-opening and refreshing to see 200,000 Germans demonstrating in favor of an American leader as opposed to against one.   Apart from producing some remarkable TV footage, what does this trip tell us about the prospects of moving beyond the estrangement and transatlantic hostility of recent years under a new U.S. president, regardless of who it is?

We know that the Bush years have been a uniquely difficult phase in transatlantic relations.   GMF’s own Transatlantic Trends public opinion polls have shown the dramatic drop in European public support for U.S. leadership and the cooling in feelings toward the United States on multiple fronts.   That collapse started   early, accelerated around the Iraq war and has now bottomed out.   Bush’s charm offensive during his second term notwithstanding, European public opinion has essentially not budged one iota over the last four years.

For several years now, the transatlantic community has been debating what went wrong and why.   Was this breakup the result of bad strategic choices and personalities–or the product of growing structural differences in values, power, and strategic culture?     Was the role of individuals–be they President Bush or former French President Chirac or former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder–central or marginal?   This is not just an academic or historical issue.   How one interprets the past touches on the issue of whether the United States and Europe can come back together or whether we are going our separate ways strategically.

On one side of the debate are those who argue that it is time to stop pretending that Americans and Europeans will ever again be the kind of close strategic partners that we were in the past.   It was Bob Kagan who first argued that the Cold War had masked the gulf between an American martial foreign policy tradition dating back to our founding fathers and a post-modern Europe that eschewed the use of military power and force after centuries of bloody conflict.   After the Cold War, so Kagan argued, it was natural that such differences had emerged as each side of the Atlantic reverted back to their own strategic inclinations.   While Bush may have accelerated that process, he was not the cause and thus his stepping down from the stage will not, in all likelihood, change these underlying differences.   That thesis has evoked passionate agreement and opposition on both sides of the Atlantic.

On the other side of the debate are those–including myself–who argue that the relationship can be put back together again.       While I admire Kagan’s intellect and consider him a friend, I have never been convinced of the view that there are some new tectonic plates driving the United States and Europe apart today and rendering us strategically incompatible.   Instead, I have often felt that our differences today are often  no greater than they were during the Cold War and that this breakup was largely the result of bad policy.   And what bad policy had created good policy can presumably reverse and repair.     Looking at Transatlantic Trends data, I conclude that there are no fundamental differences in how Americans and Europeans see future threats.

Obviously Americans and Europeans have different impulses on how to address these challenges, especially when it comes to the use of force.   But what is new about that?   It did not prevent us from winning the Cold War.     Going to war is or should be a small part of diplomacy and what transatlantic cooperation is all about.   Rebuilding this relationship will certainly not be easy, but arguably there is no shortage of issues and challenges where such cooperation is needed.   The fact that the United States and Europe are destined to constitute a shrinking percentage of the world population and political and economic strength in the future is, if anything, an argument to deepen our relations.   A multipolar world requires more–not less–transatlantic cooperation.  

Proponents of the first school tend to believe that transatlantic relations are unlikely to improve dramatically under the next President–irrespective of who wins the U.S. election.   We can do a better job in managing this relationship, but the differences in world view and instincts are real and won’t be overcome.     They consider the heyday of transatlantic cooperation to basically be over.   The second school tends to believe that there is a chance for a real comeback or renaissance under the next President.   They also believe in the potential for a real bounce or positive uptick in relations and in European public attitudes toward the United States.

A great deal of ink has been spilled–and red wine and single malt scotch poured–in arguing over these issues in recent years.     As someone who has lived in Europe since President Bush’s re-election, I have felt and seen the evidence marshalled to support both viewpoints.   I have always tended to be more in the second school than the first.     In the last few years, I have felt that Europeans had become increasingly uncomfortable with their bad relationship with the United States, that they understand the need to work with the United States, and that there was a growing yearning for better relations with Washington.   If the unilateralist moment is over in Washington, the counterweight movement is also dead in Europe. In my view, many European leaders were looking for an excuse or reason to jettison that anti-Americanism of past year and reposition themselves closer to the United States.   There is a new hunger emerging for a better relationship with Washington, as reflected in the extraordinary level interest in the current U.S. presidential campaign.  

But I have also always felt the need to be careful in differentiating between analysis and wishful thinking.   In our heart of hearts, we have all known that the real experiment and test of these different views will take place when the next President takes office and we see what happens.     This is where the trip of Senator Obama to Europe comes in.   For the proponents of the bounce theory, it offers tantalizing evidence that Europeans are eager for a different relationship with the United States and that Obama’s candidacy might give them that opportunity to come back to Mother America.     Many commentators, especially in Germany, have already declared the end of anti-Americanism there.   Watching the press conference between Senator Obama and President Sarkozy, one could not help but be struck by the enthusiasm for a new beginning and different relationship that the French President conveyed.    

But before we make this political and analytical jump, however, let’s go back to that crowd of 200,000-plus Germans at his speech before the Victory Column and ask ourselves a few questions.   It is clear that Senator Obama has fueled Europe’s political curiosity and imagination about America in a way that seemed inconceivable a few years ago.   But I also suspect that in that crowd–and across Europe–there are two very different kinds of Obama supporters.   One is essentially the estranged Atlanticist, the former friend of the United States whom Bush lost and who is open and to, and  in some cases even eager to, come back under a new and different U.S. president.   This is also someone who is willing to actually support his or her government doing things together with the United States down the road.   These are the Germans who, in principle,  would be willing to do more with the United States in a reframed relationship, including on the tough challenges like Afghanistan, Iran, or Russia.   But I also suspect there was also a second kind of Obama supporter at that rally who is embracing the Senator as the anti-Bush, who hopes for or sees in Obama some ideological compatibility but who basically remains skeptical or hostile to the United States on many policy issues.   These are the Obama supporters who may support him now but might prove unwilling to do the things a potential Obama administration might ask of Europe down the road.  

How many of the former and latter there were in attendance at the Victory Column?   I do not know.   But it is an important question.   I for one look forward to GMF’s release of this year’s Transatlantic Trends survey in early September, as it will also provide another data point in terms of European and American attitudes.   So in the grand debate over strategic compatibility or incompatibility, and whether there can be a positive bounce in U.S.-European relations under the next president, I see this trip as scoring a point for the advocates of the compatibility thesis.   But this debate is far from over.   Let’s realize that what we saw was an opening, and the potential for positive change in relations across the Atlantic.   There remains a lot of hard work to be done if we want to turn this into reality.    

Share/Bookmark

The beginning of the 21st century has been bad for transatlantic relations.   The past seven years have been among the worst  since World War II.     Yet, there are now signs that this time of troubles may be drawing to a close.   The wheels of history are again opening a window of opportunity that could bring the U.S. and Europe closer together.  

What has changed?   The first and most obvious is the changing of the guard taking place in Europe.   The key European leaders involved in the Iraq debacle are now gone.   The first to depart was German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. It is hard to find anyone who really misses him. While  the former   Chancellor enjoys  his lucrative lobbyist salary from a Gazprom subsidiary, Chancellor Merkel and her diplomats are still contending with the consequences of his policies.    

But now she is no longer alone in trying to rebuild bridges across the Atlantic. Nicolas Sarkozy’s electoral victory  portends a fresh start for both Europe and the transatlantic relationship as well.   For the first time in decades, we have  a French President who has a normal and non-ideological view of the United States.   Sarkozy’s decision to appoint Bernard Kouchner €“ perhaps the closest thing in France to a liberal hawk €“ as Foreign Minister is a bold one.

The chance to remake the U.S.-French relationship is real     Some of us remember Jacques Chirac’s short-lived flirt with Washington in the mid-1990s, which came within one sentence of bringing Paris back fully to NATO.   To be sure, that one sentence masked some important differences.   No one knows this better than Chirac’s then negotiator, Jean-David Levitte, who has returned to Paris from his ambassador post in Washington to head a newly created National Security Council. Nonetheless, rarely have the stars been in a better alignment for relations to improve between Washington and Paris.

Then there is Tony Blair’s departure in London and the onset of Gordon Brown. Many believe that Brown will try to distance himself from the United States.     In reality, Brown’s arrival may also end up being good news for trans-Atlantic relations — if for no other reason than Tony Blair had     become a spent force.   Brown is even more knowledgeable about the United States and knows that a close relationship with Washington is compulsory for any British Prime Minister.   And while the need to show he is different than Blair is real, it would be folly for Brown to distance himself from Washington precisely as Paris moves closer and the Bush era draws to a close.   Brown also knows that he will gain little with Democrats in the U.S. if he distances himself at this juncture.   So his own interest lies in reviving the trans-Atlantic relationship, not walking away from it.

Beyond these leadership changes, there are additional forces nudging America and Europe back together.   The world is becoming a more dangerous place.   Wherever one looks, the West €“ if one dares to still use that old-fashioned word €“  seems to be on its heels or losing ground.   In Iraq, the United States is fighting what often seems like a losing battle.   In Afghanistan, NATO appears caught in a stalemate.   Barring a pleasant surprise, it is doubtful our current course on Iran will prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. The rise of a authoritarian and assertive Russia pursing its own version of democratic rollback along its borders, backed up by its energy clout, threatens Western interest on Europe’s periphery.   On each of these issues, the lack of a unified West able to bring its weight to bear in a positive fashion is hurting the U.S. and Europe.

There is  also a growing awkwardness about our public estrangement on both sides of the Atlantic.   America and Europe are like the couple who, having had a tremendous row, both wake up a bit embarrassed about their behavior and look for ways to make amends without admitting fault.   In the United States, nearly all the Presidential candidates for 2008 are campaigning on the need to better relations with allies and improve America’s image abroad.   In private, many European leaders admit that relations have been on the mend during President Bush’s second term. But thus  no one in Europe €“ with the partial exception of Merkel — has to reassociate him or herself  with an American President whose standing continues to slide to historic lows.

All eyes are on Washington, where the final and most important leadership change is now on the horizon.   Many Europeans €“ as well as Americans — undoubtedly wish that the U.S. elections were this year and not next year. It is still 18 months until November 2008 and two years until a new president and his or her team is actually in place in the spring of 2009.   Can the West afford to wait that long? Is this president and Administration capable, in its last 18 months in office, of using this new lineup in Europe to begin  to lay the foundation for a new relationship for his successor?  

Love is not about to break out across the Atlantic.   But the wheels of history are turning, and a new window of opportunity is beginning to open.   It is time to start laying the groundwork for a new start in transatlantic relations that will exploit that window.   The Bush Administration needs to decide whether it wants to use its remaining time in office to be part of that trend or run the risk of becoming less and less relevant.

Share/Bookmark

On January 25, 2007, GMF’s Brussels office hosted   a seminar on the role and contribution that Central Europe can make in shaping the future Eastern policy of the European Union.   The public seminar was opened by Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg and followed by a panel discussion with the directors of several leading Visegrad think tanks —   former EU  Commissioner Péter Balázs (Director, Center for EU Enlargement Studies – CENS, Budapest), Eugeniusz Smolar (President, Center for International Relations – CIR, Warsaw), and Jiří Schneider (Program Director, Prague Security Studies Institute €“ PSSI) — who presented the initial findings of a joint   research project entitled “Strategic Framework for EU’s Eastern Policy.”   The public presentation and discussion was followed by a smaller off-the-record dinner with leading representatives if both the Commission and Council as well as other Brussels-based think tanks representatives.

Both discussions highlighted the opportunities as well as hurdles facing new EU members as they seek to figure out how to contribute to and impact on EU Eastern policy. It is clear that these countries would like the EU to make Eastern policy a higher priority as well as to strengthen the emphasis on promoting democratic development on the Union’s borders. These are objectives broadly shared in the region and even outside actors such as the United States are broadly sympathetic and hoping that Central Europe can and will assume such a role.      

So how easy or hard is it for central Europe?   The discussions showed how these new EU members, in pursuing that quest,     have several opportunities but also run up against real hurdles.