BERLIN/MUMBAI–The announcement last week that India was entering into exclusive negotiations with Dassault for its Rafale fighter jet represents a major coup for the French defense contractor and for Nicolas Sarkozy. The embattled French president was evidently relieved by the prospect of the Rafale’s first ever foreign sale in a deal worth over US$10 billion, telling reporters, “we have been waiting for this day for 30 years.” The announcement is also a blow for the Eurofighter consortium, consisting of the leading aerospace manufacturers in Germany, Britain, Italy, and Spain, whose Typhoon had been the Rafale’s chief competitor. Two other recent decisions have gone against the Eurofighter group, with Switzerland opting instead for Saab’s Gripen and Japan for Lockheed Martin’s F-35. However, Eurofighter had thought itself better positioned in the Indian competition. It believed it was offering the technically superior aircraft and, indeed, the Typhoon had performed better in competitive trials in 2010.

Of course, defense sales are about much more than technical specifications, with considerations related to costs, technological transfers, joint production opportunities, and political relations playing vitally important roles. Indian observers had long discussed the higher up-front costs of the Eurofighter, but calculated over the total life cycle, the relative differences would not have been too significant. Cost is therefore unlikely to have been the sole rationale for the decision. One can only imagine that Dassault’s offers on technology transfers and joint production must have been generous. Yet Cassidian, the EADS subsidiary that led on the Eurofighter bid, had only last year signaled its commitment to India by opening the country’s first foreign-operated defense-oriented engineering center. Politically, the prospect of a sole partner in France should have been outweighed by relations with the four Eurofighter partner nations, although Indian officials may have calculated that a single partner would be easier to hold accountable than a coalition.

Where there was a real difference between the Dassault and Eurofighter bids was in the nature and scale of political support each received. The French government is comfortable with providing support for its arms export industries in ways that Germany—the lead nation on this Eurofighter bid—is not. In Germany, the idea of coordinating one’s defense, finance, and foreign ministries to support a major defense bid through the establishment of a “war room,” as Sarkozy did, is simply unimaginable. If nothing else, such top-down political support makes it easier to bundle incentives. The sale was also a clear priority for the French president, and given the Rafale’s non-existent record of exports and uncertain future, finding a foreign buyer for the aircraft had become a declared world-wide mission for Sarkozy.

These are trying times for Europe’s defense aerospace companies, with European spending on defense falling by about €24 billion in the past three years alone whilst the global marketplace is also becoming increasingly crowded. The sight of Eurofighter and Dassault competing for overseas sales is a further reminder of the complexities surrounding the ongoing attempt to pool and share Europe’s defense-industrial capabilities, efforts that should be finding new momentum in these times of austerity. Europe’s governments and industries know that between the Rafale, Typhoon, and Gripen, they have produced two more variants of fighter aircraft than they actually need. Such legacy programs  place a further  unnecessary burden on Europe’s shrinking defense budgets and constrain European militaries from effectively configuring their resources to meet evolving requirements. Worse, it is entirely unclear whether any lessons have been learned. The same national imperatives and industrial concerns are now in danger of driving the expensive development of two medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles (MALE UAVs), Talarion and Telemos. The development of unmanned capabilities may well be the future for defense aerospace, but few in Europe think that two versions of a MALE UAV are really necessary. Fewer still think that Europe won’t end up with two anyway.

Sarah Raine is a non-resident fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) in Berlin and a consulting research fellow with IISS. Dhruva Jaishankar is a program officer with GMF’s Asia Program in Washington.

WARSAW / WASHINGTON – For hundreds of years, Poland suffered from an overbearing Germany that trampled on the rights of the Polish nation, occupied the country, and, at times, worked to extinguish the Polish nation-state entirely. No wonder that there is a residue of skepticism and caution in Poland when it comes to relations with its big neighbor to the west. A healthy distance and dose of hedging have long been the default position of the country’s foreign policy. Poland’s accession to the European Union has changed all that. Nearly eight years on, Poland is rephrasing its German question, and in a baffling way: how close is too close?

Last week, Poland consented to a European agreement that it did not like in the interest of keeping the continent together. European leaders had agreed on a fiscal compact, a treaty aimed at strengthening the fiscal discipline in the EU countries that choose to sign it, and set governing rules for the eurozone. Prime Minister Donald Tusk faced an uncomfortable choice. On one hand, Poland has declared itself a staunchly pro-European country. In his now-famous Berlin speech last year, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski spoke of the need for a strong, united, and even federal union. On the other hand, the eurozone was potentially moving ahead without Poland. The plan shaping up ahead of the summit called for meetings of the 17 eurozone countries, excluding Poland from what is seen in Warsaw as a vital decision-making body of a changing EU. Consequently, Tusk threatened Poland might not sign the treaty if this mechanism was not changed.

In Warsaw, eurozone summits are not simply seen as a crisis management mechanism for the euro, but as a nucleus of a smaller club in which most of the key decisions for the EU are made, some in areas beyond the single currency. France is the most active proponent of eurozone-only solutions, and a zero-sum game between France and Poland has developed around the question of a two-speed Europe. Warsaw fears that France wants to undo the EU’s eastern enlargement. Seen from Warsaw, inclusion is a core national interest; Poland did not join the European Union only to find itself sidelined.

The other eurozone members faced a dilemma of their own. No democratic theory stipulates that nonmembers ought to have voting rights in membership organizations. Since voting rights for nonmembers are out of the question, the group considered the PNV principle — “participate, not vote.” But even speaking rights would give nonmembers the opportunity to influence, and maybe even undermine, goals that member states deem essential to sustaining their common currency. Nonmembers should not benefit from the currency union while not contributing to it, and nonmembers should have an incentive to join. But strict exclusion of nonmembers is in nobody’s interest. Some nonmembers are really “not-yet-members.” They are, like Poland, candidate countries working to qualify and waiting for the right moment to join. They have a right to know what’s going on in the club they are aspiring to join. The more the eurozone coordinates to save its currency, the more it will make decisions that affect all 27 EU members. They might pertain to competitiveness, social systems, and taxes.

Keeping Poland in the cold is least of all in Germany’s interest. Poland is the most pro-European country outside the eurozone. Why alienate it? Last weekend, Germany got a taste of what that might mean when Sikorski warned that Germany should not even try to aspire to be a benevolent hegemon. Poland is Germany’s crucial ally for a more federal Europe and a power to help balance the less ambitious Brits and the more confederate French. Poland is essential in order to lead Central and Eastern Europe towards the eurozone and prevent Europe from splitting in two. It has rarely had a more central role in Europe and has never been a more pivotal partner of Germany.

In true European fashion, this led to a compromise, albeit an ugly one. The agreement allows non-eurozone countries to take part in the eurozone summits at least once a year, and whenever issues of competitiveness or the architecture of the eurozone are discussed. Additionally, Herman Van Rompoy, president of the European Council, assured that any summit of the euro 17 will be preceded by a meeting of all EU 27 member states.

An unhappy Tusk contends the agreement still establishes a decision-making format in which Poland does not have a vote, and frequently will not even be present at the deliberations. Nonetheless, Poland decided to join the other 24 signatories (the U.K. and the Czech Republic were the holdouts), marking yet another time that Poland chose “more Europe” when presented with a choice. The Europe Poland is choosing is less and less to its liking, but it is easier to influence the club from the inside than from the outside.

Despite a building relationship with Germany, Warsaw’s support of Berlin’s leadership in Europe is anything but unconditional: “Provided you [Germany] will include us in decision-making, Poland will support you,” Sikorski emphasized in his Berlin speech. Poland knows that it cannot always count on the unwavering support from its western neighbor, especially if Germany had to choose between Poland and France. Tusk’s goal now is to broaden Poland’s alliances within the eurozone, starting with Spain and Italy. Germany will have to earn Poland’s support.

Michal Baranowski  is the Senior Program Officer for Foreign Policy and Civil Society in the German Marshall Fund’s Warsaw office. Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff is a Senior Fellow and Senior Director for Strategy at GMF’s Washington, DC office.

PARIS–President Barack Obama’s announcement last June of an accelerated U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan reopened debates in many European countries over when their soldiers should return from that unpopular war. French President Nicolas Sarkozy followed a few days later with an announcement that French troops would be reduced “in a proportional manner and in a calendar comparable to the withdrawal of American reinforcements.” Now, the tables have turned. With last week’s announcement, it was France that reset the transition calendar, arguing that progress in the transition allowed for the withdrawal of 1,000 French troops by the end of 2012. Although many U.S., Afghan, and NATO observers were initially critical, the Obama administration announced only a few days later that the United States also planned to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by mid-2013 and shift primarily to advising Afghan forces.

Both Sarkozy’s and Obama’s calls for a speedier NATO exit from Afghanistan reflect the depth of war fatigue in the West, the unpopularity of the Afghan war, and the relentless budgetary and political pressures leaders face to bring their troops home early. As Obama put it in his June 2011 speech on Afghanistan, “it is time to focus on nation building here at home,” a sentiment shared by many in Europe. The French military engagement in Afghanistan has always been perceived in France as a “war of solidarity” without clearly defined strategic objectives, aimed at repairing U.S.-French relations after France’s refusal to participate in the coalition against Iraq in 2003. Coming just three months before the election, Sarkozy’s announcement reflects a compromise between the Lisbon NATO consensus and his presidential campaign rival Francois Hollande’s promise of ending the French military presence in Afghanistan by the end of 2012. But in fact, both dates are unrealistic considering the unpreparedness of the Afghan security forces to lead coalition forces and the overreliance of the Afghan government on external assistance.

Indeed, the argument that progress has been made in Afghanistan is disputable. Today, in the province of Kapisa, Afghan representatives recognize that their security forces are not ready to assume the responsibilities of the coalition. Growing anti-Western sentiments, stemming from a serious trust deficit between Afghans and coalition forces and combined with the operational unpreparedness of Afghan forces, a weak central government, and the Taliban’s high morale, raise serious questions about the post-2014 role of the United States and its allies. A series of recent incidents in which Afghan troops have turned on their Western allies confirms the failure of the counterinsurgency and “winning hearts and minds” tactics deployed in Afghanistan over the last few years, as well as the flaws in the training mission in the absence of a legitimate central authority.

The coalition’s decade of military engagement in Afghanistan is a story of constant oscillation between three strategies that were never really connected. After a phase of “Americanization” of the Afghan war through the surge, and a phase of “internationalization” with the increase in coalition members’ contributions and assistance, “Afghanization” or the “transition” phase involving the training of local security forces has become the central pillar of the coalition’s exit strategy. But when the strategy becomes about exiting, the strategy of the weak prevails in setting the international calendar and the narrative. In fact, as both the French and American decisions illustrate, the gradual foreign troop reductions have mostly been in response to forces other than security progress in Afghanistan.

Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer is Director of the Paris office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. 

WASHINGTON–Mitt Romney, one of the leading Republican U.S. Presidential candidates, has informed his countrymen over the past few weeks that U.S. President Barack Obama is working to turn the United States into Europe. This, one might think, is good news. Presumably it suggests that a unified “West” is closer to becoming a reality. The president, someone in Washington D.C., is working for ever greater convergence in the world’s greatest alliance. After decades of unabashed Americanization of Europe, it seems, the tables are turning. In due time, the need for transatlantic learning and knowledge transfer between friends and partners will be obsolete. We will all be one happy family.

Indeed, from the perspective of a Republican presidential candidate there is much to like about Europe these days. After all, Europe is largely run by fellow conservatives. They preach and (increasingly) practice fiscal responsibility and structural reform to fix the ills of the continent — a strategy candidate Romney calls on President Obama to embrace.

Let’s pause right here and stop fantasizing. The reality is quite different. Yes, Mitt Romney sees the United States as being transformed into another version of Europe. But in Romney’s eyes that’s no compliment, rather it’s an insult. Romney contends that under Obama, a “European-style welfare state” is America’s destiny. Or, in another version of this horrific vision that permeates most of the candidate’s campaign speeches, “a European-style entitlement society.” Obama, according to Romney, “takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe; we look to the cities and small towns of America.” Learning from Europe seems to “poison the very spirit of America.” Fellow Republican candidate Rick Santorum agrees, claiming that Obama is “trying to impose some sort of European socialism on the United States.” Not to be outdone, candidate Newt Gingrich, in his South Carolina victory speech on Saturday night, detected the emergence of a “brand new, secular European-style bureaucratic socialism” in America.

So, why are the Republican presidential candidates running against Europe rather than against each other? Why is Europe a dirty word in this campaign? First of all, the vilification of Europe is not a new phenomenon in U.S. politics. Remember the “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”? That epithet, common during the debate about the intervention in Iraq in 2003, referred to the French, for whom the worst abuse is traditionally reserved. The French, often linked with the Germans to form an alliance of “Euroweenies,” chose to sit out the war against Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and were thus scolded for having lost their “moral compass.” That incident happened barely ten years ago, but one might go back hundreds of years and still detect the same type of argument about Europe. As Princeton historian Linda Colley has pointed out, Americans have traditionally understood their history, culture, and identity in contrast to Europe’s. The United States was founded as the antidote to Europe. The old continent was “the other,” against which to define oneself. The history of immigration helped to entrench the view that one side of the Atlantic was intrinsically better and more blessed than the other. European decadence was replaced by “authentic Americanism.” Europe, as described by the novels of Henry James, was both corrupt and corrupting. “America was a country of innocence, virtue, happiness, and liberty as against a Europe of vice, ignorance, misery, and tyranny,” writes historian C. Vann Woodward. Thus, it was anti-Europeanism that reinforced the new idea of U.S. exceptionalism.

Initially, Anti-Europeanism has risen in combination with an inferiority complex vis-a-vis the supposedly culturally superior Europeans. Certainly, World War II and Europe’s inability to solve its own problems at that time cured Americans of any sense of humility. Since the Cold War, anti-Europeanism has by no means been a U.S. obsession. It has come and gone in waves and has only established itself as a staple of the intellectual life of one wing of U.S. conservatism, just as its sibling, European anti-Americanism, found its home mostly on the political left. The Eurobashers on the U.S. right use a few standard leitmotifs to make their case against the “EU-nuchs” whose “values and spines have dissolved in a lukewarm bath of multilateral, transnational, secular, and postmodern fudge,” to quote the ironic characterization of writer Timothy Garton Ash. At times, anti-Europeanism can be quite funny, especially when skillfully expressed by George W. Bush who famously said: “The problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur.”

The question is how seriously to take all of this Eurobaloney? In this Republican presidential primary campaign, Europe has been nothing but a foil. Anti-Europeanism has been a code word for anti-liberalism.  At the same time, Americans have long appealed to European politicians not to pander to the anti-American segments of the European public, fearing that fleeting prejudice could turn into lasting chauvinism. Gerhard Schroeder, then-German Chancellor, earned condemnation in the United States when he played to the pacifist anti-Americanism of his electorate to gain re-election in 2002. Should Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and the rest of the Republican candidates really be held to a different standard?

Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff is a Senior Fellow and Senior Director for Strategy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States 

Fewer than 30 days into the new year, the foreign policy agenda for Europe and North America has already become crowded.  North Korea, Iran, Syria, potential breakthroughs in Burma, and the still roiling revolutionary fervor in the Middle East are but a few of the issues facing transatlantic policymakers.  Iraq, facing renewed violence in the wake of Coalition troop withdrawals, and Afghanistan, where France just lost more soldiers and ambivalence reigns on negotiating with the Taliban, have not gone away.

Add to this volatile mix national elections in the United States, France, and elsewhere and it is easy to forget one of the landmark events of 2011:  the July 9^th independence of South Sudan.  Moreover, although remembrance of the new nation’s founding is appropriate, what is more critical is that Europe and North America sustain the generally positive and optimistic dynamics of South Sudan’s birth.

These dynamics came into focus for me when I attended the recent International Engagement Conference on South Sudan, organized by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington.  The two-day session, addressed by the first President of South Sudan, the Honorable Salva Kiir Mayardit, saw presentations by World Bank President Zoellick, United Nations Development Programme Administrator Clark, senior European Union officials, and numerous ministerial level representatives from Sudan, Europe and North America, including U.S. Secretary of State Clinton.  The conference list of co-sponsors boded well for continued world engagement with South Sudan:  The UN; the World Bank, including the International Finance Corporation; the African Union; the European Union; the governments of Norway, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States; the NGO coalition InterAction; and the Corporate Council for Africa.

And well should these international heavyweights be interested.  Not only does South Sudan possess very large – how large is yet to be fully determined – petroleum reserves, but the White Nile and other resources could be world-class sources of renewable energy.  Some of us are old enough to remember when the southern reaches of Sudan were heralded as Africa’s “breadbasket,” and the combination of vast, fertile, and well-watered lands has re-awakened interest in South Sudan’s food-producing potential.  Although its internal population is under ten million, South Sudan is at the center of a regional market containing 250 million.  And, politically, a stable South Sudan could be a bulwark against trans-national violence in a Great Lakes region that has hovered on the edge of chaos for decades.

Looked at through a slightly different lens, the risks of the transatlantic community not focusing on this fragile, newborn state are high.  South Sudan lies in a rough, violent neighborhood, bordering on regions of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and northern Uganda notorious for fragile governance and violent atrocities.  South Sudan remains one of the most underdeveloped regions of the world (there exist fewer than 200 kilometers of paved roads in a nation-state the size of France), and underinvestment in the country’s optimistic, rapidly growing population runs the risk of spawning a crisis of rising, but unfulfilled, expectations.  Despite the generally cordial breakup of Sudan last July, the specter of continued instability haunts the Sudan-South Sudan border, with the risks of violence and human displacement ever present.  USAID reports that the U.S. government alone spent nearly $10 billion in primarily humanitarian aid in the six years prior to independence alone, a level of resources from donor nations that must now be shifted to the long-term development account, if the promise of independence is to be fulfilled.  Foreign investment, on which the new government in the capital of Juba is relying heavily, comes at this point primarily from Asia, with Chinese investment in petroleum exploration prominent.  Personally, I harbor no antipathy to Chinese investment in Africa, but – a little competition being a healthy thing – business people from the transatlantic nations should be on the ground, as well.

The International Engagement Conference on South Sudan provided a useful venue to focus on the new state’s potential.  The challenge for Europe and North America, going forward, will be to maintain, amid a daunting foreign policy agenda, the sustained focus required to fulfill the promise of a successful South Sudan, and avoid the substantial risks of under-investing in the world’s newest country.

James Kunder is a non-resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, DC.

WASHINGTON–A year ago, during his State of the Union address, U.S. President Barack Obama set a goal for a national high-speed rail (HSR) network: 85 percent of the country’s population would have access to HSR within 25 years. One year later, that goal seems wildly optimistic.

Within a month of Obama’s speech, Florida Governor Rick Scott joined the governors of Ohio and Wisconsin (all Republicans) in rejecting HSR funds that had been targeted for his state. He, like many critics of HSR, argued that the project was too costly during a time of economic crisis and the risks would outweigh the benefits. Then, earlier this month, California’s HSR effort appeared to run out of steam. The California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group, an independent body created by the California High-Speed Rail Authority to advise on the proposed system, released a report that detailed numerous concerns about the project’s overall funding plan and the lack of a fully vetted business plan. In the end, the report concludes that too many flaws and financial unknowns exist in the plans, representing “an immense financial risk” to the state of California. The report might well kill the prospects for a true HSR project in the United States for the foreseeable future.

So, why did Obama’s signature infrastructure project meet such a quick demise? While each project has its own reasons for failure, the Obama administration also made a critical tactical error in the way it awarded funds. Instead of identifying and investing in one promising project, the administration allocated $10 billion ($8 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and $2 billion from appropriations) to 13 HSR projects in 31 states to foster the development of a national HSR network all at once. Additional federal funds for the network (approximately $43 billion according to Obama’s plan) were to be secured through the annual appropriations processes. The administration’s strategy appears to have been to hope the initial federal investments would spur even more substantial state and local investments in HSR, especially in a number of swing states, leading to the creation of a national network. At current estimates, a national HSR network could cost hundreds of billions of dollars — the California system alone is projected at $98 billion. With dramatic budget cuts looming, a slow economic recovery, and a toxic political environment, this strategy is not viable.

The lack of significant progress on HSR is unfortunate. A well-planned and smartly operated HSR system can be transformational for cities, helping them to maintain or improve quality of life and enhance economic competitiveness in the global economy. At one level, HSR facilitates intercity travel, fosters regionalism, and can enhance regional economic viability. At another level, as populations and densities are projected to rise in America’s large urban regions, new and better mobility alternatives will be imperative to meet a host of associated challenges. When integrated intelligently with other modes of transportation into the urban fabric, HSR can help stimulate the development of economically vibrant corridors and station stops.

A better approach to start up a national HSR network in the United States can be found in Spain. Over the past two decades, Spain has created the longest HSR network in Europe. However, AVE, the Spanish network, began with a single project, the Madrid-Seville line, which proved itself for more than 10 years before significant expansion occurred. The line, averaging 185 mph, cut the 300-mile trip time by more than half between the two cities, significantly decreasing the automobile and air travel between them but increasing the number of individual trips. Equally compelling, existing businesses near AVE stations have reported significant benefits from the investments in infrastructure. None of this is to say that Spanish HSR has been perfect — the Spanish government ultimately may have over-invested. But if the Obama administration chooses to revisit HSR, a more effective strategy would be to start small, be focused, invest smartly, and allow HSR to prove itself, which could put aspirations for a national HSR rail network back on track.

Brent Riddle is a Senior Program Officer in the German Marshall Fund’s Urban and Regional Program.

BRATISLAVA—“Freedom House got it wrong!” We can expect to hear this message from an angry official in Budapest after the release on Thursday of the Freedom in the World Report 2012. Hungary has the unfortunate distinction of being the only Western democracy in which governance and civic liberties declined over the last year. Just earlier this week, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban was grilled in the European Parliament for his government’s recent policies, including some seemingly draconian legislative steps that have brought an unexpected number of protesters to the squares and streets of Budapest. Compared to other democratically-elected leaders in post-communist countries who departed from their countries’ democratic trajectories, Orban is younger, more talented, better educated, and has a superior understanding of Western politics. But following the constitutional and political reforms of the last year — which have given him wide-ranging and centralized authority over many areas of governance and society — Orban’s furious critics at home took to calling him “Viktator.”

Like many such leaders before him, Orban has used a tried and true formula to justify or defend his actions: a political mandate, appeals to nationalism, and a sense of crisis. Orban and his followers in the Fidesz party — which won a two-thirds or constitutional majority in the 2010 elections — like reminding their critics of their popular mandate. They argue that they are simply carrying out the wishes of the people, in line with Hungary’s democracy. Secondly, Orban’s followers make appeals to the greatness and historical exclusivity of a suffering nation, defending their actions as being in the spirit of the country’s founding fathers while redressing past mistakes. Finally, they imply that the country is embroiled in a serious economic and moral crisis and that Orban is the only person capable of saving it.

Following multiple demarches by Brussels and Washington, popular domestic criticism led by prominent Hungarian intellectuals and activists, and worrisome economic trends being highlighted by credit-ratings agencies, one might expect Orban to modify his course. But it does not appear that the politically skillful Orban is about to reset his policies any time soon. In fact, rather paradoxically, the ongoing economic and political crises in the European Union and the United States have allowed Orban to advance his own assertive political rhetoric. He can also, for the time being, capitalize upon the weaknesses of a fragmented domestic political opposition, a controlled media, a scared business community, and a civil society, academia, and church that have been silenced. He is also capable of deftly tackling criticism from European technocrats by pretending to fix things around the margins.

At the same time, Orban should be aware that his country, hit hard by the economic recession, cannot survive long in isolation. Nor can he continue bluffing the United States and European Union forever. His neighbors, many of whom have sizable ethnic Hungarian minorities, will not let him freely continue making grand and bizarre gestures and statements featuring obsolete Great Hungary tones. Most of all, Orban should be aware of his own people’s power and keep in mind the fates of other seemingly omnipotent leaders in his immediate neighborhood and beyond.

Over the last two decades, countries in post-communist Europe produced various forms of government, ranging from Western-style liberal democracies to authoritarian rule. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall, it was generally assumed that those countries that graduated from the pre-accession process and entered the European Union would become immune to authoritarian practices. Hungary single-handedly overturns this assumption. Orban’s willingness to ignore criticism of his country’s departure from shared European values amid the gradual destruction of checks and balances has created headaches in many EU capitals. In that sense, Hungary’s future is deeply intertwined with that of the European Union and what it stands for: cohesion, good governance, and respect for state sovereignty. 

Pavol Demes is Senior Fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Bratislava. 

BRUSSELS—Full details of the Obama administration’s new look in defense spending, force posture, and strategy are not yet out. But enough has been revealed  to venture some thoughts on the logic of the new approach and the longer-term implications for the United States and transatlantic partners.

The shift to a “one war, spoil and manage” strategy contrasts sharply with a decade of costly and inconclusive engagement in irregular warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq. Enormous efforts were undertaken to adapt the U.S. way of war and to focus it on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, with the unfortunate effect of eroding the United States’ capacity to address more serious and potentially more demanding long-term challenges, above all in Asia. Today, much of the U.S. strategic community has come to believe that a disproportionate amount of effort has been devoted to meeting nonexistential threats to the national interest and international security. A strategy re-emphasizing core risks, and conventional rather than irregular warfare, simply makes sense against a backdrop of stark resource constraints.

The need to meet serious conventional contingencies with smaller ground forces could spell a renaissance in nuclear strategy. There are precedents for this in the Cold War experience, when the expense and difficulty of forward defense in Europe compelled a reliance on nuclear forces and nuclear deterrence to fill the gap at reasonable cost. Of course, we are unlikely to see a return to a doctrine of massive retaliation to meet security challenges in Asia, a more competitive relationship with Russia, or an aggressive Iran. But the mix of conventional and nuclear deterrence in U.S. strategy could well change as forces are realigned and forward-deployed forces, in particular, become more exposed to ballistic missile attack, perhaps nuclear-armed. Under these conditions, planners may be tempted to reinforce the nuclear dimension. Not quite a trip-wire strategy, but perhaps a bit closer than many U.S. allies would prefer.

Many will be tempted to interpret the Obama administration’s new strategy as a shift away from European defense—and perhaps more important, European defense partnerships—in the face of more pressing challenges in Asia. This interpretation is too dramatic. In reality, the shift away from European defense per se has been underway for two decades. This is not just a question of land forces. The U.S. Sixth Fleet has not kept an aircraft carrier battle group in the Mediterranean for many years. Residual U.S. forces in and around Europe are kept there to enable the United States to meet contingencies elsewhere, across the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the Middle East. Maintaining a capacity to reinforce Europe’s crisis response capabilities on the European periphery, as in Libya, will continue to depend, above all, on mainly bilateral base access and over-flight arrangements. If anything, transatlantic partners will now have an even greater stake in solidifying these strategic ties. The locus of strategic risk may be shifting; the logic of cooperation endures.

Dr. Ian O. Lesser is the Executive Director of the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Center in Brussels.

BERLIN — When President Barack Obama unveiled a new national defense strategy last week, which confirmed the United States’ intent to play a sustained role in shaping a rising Asia, he noted that “the tide of war is receding.” This observation will have done little to reassure a skeptical Beijing that the strategy is aimed at managing, as opposed to containing, the rise of China. Beijing will note with ire its bracketing, in one part of the strategic review, with Iran: a country with whom the United States has had no diplomatic relations for three decades and with whom the risk of conflict (even if by proxy), remains all too real. Nor will it be pleased by the U.S. commitment to “invest in a long-term strategic partnership with India,” a country whose potential Beijing would prefer to see checked. Seen from Beijing, the administration’s repeated assurances that the United States does not view China as an adversary will be even harder to believe now.

Nevertheless, as Beijing waits to discover the full details of the U.S. realignment and to calibrate its reaction accordingly, a few ironies are already clear. Firstly, despite the fanfare with which the announcement was made, it should be no surprise that Washington plans to pay close attention to Asia. In fact, the realignment reinforces an underlying trend of increased U.S. engagement with the Asia-Pacific region, which has been quietly gathering momentum since the 1990s. The wars that followed the 9/11 attacks may have constrained some of this focus, but the ultimate direction of U.S. defense policy has been clear for a while. Likewise, the intention to cultivate India as a long-term strategic partner has roots stretching back across administrations long before Obama’s tenure.

Secondly, the perception of increasingly “assertive” behavior by China in recent years has played its part in crystallizing a stronger U.S. response. The danger is that this in turn bolsters the position of hard-liners in Beijing, including elements of the military, thereby further increasing their influence in foreign and security policymaking. Thirdly, China’s bracketing with Iran as nations pursuing asymmetric means to counter U.S. power projection capabilities is likely to encourage Beijing to mistakenly identify common cause with Tehran. Indeed, a Global Times editorial the day after Obama’s announcement argued, “The U.S. strategic adjustment highlights Iran’s importance to China. Iran’s existence and its stance form a strong check against the U.S.” And finally, as Washington complains about the pursuit of these asymmetric measures, its increased presence in the region is likely to make such activities even more attractive. China will continue to pour resources into access denial, focus on the development of longer-range capabilities, and continue their advances in electronic and cyber warfare.

Yet, for the United States to retain its primacy in Asia whilst ensuring the rise of China within a rules-based international environment, there is no alternative other than pouring more resources into Asia. Ultimately, anyone judging China’s strategic intentions purely by observing the nature of its military build-up would not likely be persuaded by Beijing’s commitment to rise peacefully. For the many U.S. allies and partners in Asia struggling to manage the security implications of their burgeoning trade relations with China, this demonstration of U.S. commitment to the region provides significant reassurance. At the same time, the strategy will also generate tensions with U.S. partners in Asia. More will be demanded of them, which will have financial implications and might require deft political handling domestically. Equally, as South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo has been quick to point out, the United States’ decreased appetite for boots on the ground does not sit easily with a military strategy that presently envisions the deployment of 690,000 American soldiers on the Korean Peninsula in the event of war.

In the struggle to manage the consequences of China’s rise, U.S. military might and strategy will be crucial, but these will not be the only tools required. While a more coherent diplomatic strategy for Asia appears to be emerging with, for example, U.S. participation in the East Asian Summit, U.S. trade policy in Asia remains woefully underdeveloped, the administration’s recent push on the Trans-Pacific Partnership notwithstanding. Ultimately, as intriguing as the consequences of this strategy may be for the broader region, for the moment at least, the Pentagon review remains just a paper. Even once key details are made clear, a lot can happen on the road between intent and reality.

Sarah Raine is a Non-Resident Transatlantic Fellow with the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Berlin

PARIS—The Obama administration’s new defense strategy should come as no surprise to observers in France and across Europe. The question of rebalancing American military involvement between Europe and the Asia-Pacific has been a recurring theme of transatlantic relations and of U.S. policy debates since at least the 1950s. In large part, it reflects the historical evolution of U.S. perceptions of the transatlantic relationship, from what the United States should do for Europe to what it should do with Europe. In the context of economic austerity, this evolution assumes an even more urgent quality.

There are certainly legitimate reasons for concern. The stationing of U.S. troops in Europe is not only a key component of deterring potential aggression against U.S. allies, it also significantly enhances its power projection capabilities by locating U.S. forces closer to hotspots in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe’s eastern periphery. A recessed U.S. posture in Europe will have direct implications for the military’s ability to respond to future conflicts or strategic surprises. In the lead-up to intervening in Libya, confusion related to the United States’ role illustrated the increasing and dangerous ambiguity that underscores U.S.-European strategic relations. Whereas the United States “transferred” the command and control of the Libya mission to its European allies, Europeans had been counting on U.S. leadership to conduct the military operations.

At the same time, closer strategic cooperation between the United States and Europe has become even more vital in an unpredictable environment being transformed by the emergence of new powers and threats. In Obama’s words, U.S. rebalancing should “create new opportunities for burden-sharing.” Indeed, the key questions induced by an increasingly Asia-oriented U.S. foreign policy do not concern the United States’ military posture in Europe itself, but rather whether Europe is ready to take responsibility for hard security matters in and around Europe, and across the world. France’s chief of the defense staff, Admiral Edouard Guillaud, recently noted that while “Europe is disarming, the world is rearming,” a trend that could impact Europe’s future in terms of its power projection and influence in world politics.

Burden sharing need not entail a geographical division of labor between Americans and Europeans, whereby the United States focuses on Asia and the Middle East, while Europeans concentrate on their near and Mediterranean neighborhoods. Under certain circumstances, the United States will need European support, as in Afghanistan or sub-Saharan Africa. In others, the EU will need U.S. support and unique capabilities, as in Libya. Defining clear modalities of transatlantic cooperation would help avoid future Libya-like scenarios.

It is as yet unclear whether Europe is ready for all this. While the United States would wish for Europe to develop a more coherent military capacity, Europe is actually evolving in the opposite direction. At the present juncture, virtually no European country has the will or the means to assume these responsibilities. European decision-makers may have welcomed Obama’s commitment to draw to a close the perceived over-militarization of the post-9/11 era, but the Libyan campaign showed that hard power still matters in the 21^st century. Ad hoc coalitions are a short-term solution, Franco-British defense cooperation suffers from ideological divergences, and Germany is occupied dealing with the Euro crisis. NATO can therefore be expected to continue to enhance interoperability and coalition building, rather than acting as the core transatlantic security alliance.

What may appear a pragmatic and natural shift in U.S. geostrategic priorities to Asia and the Middle East means fewer resources for the traditional transatlantic alliance. But this does not entail a post-American Europe or less U.S. interest in the transatlantic partnership. On the contrary, the Obama administration has, in a way, renewed its defense commitments to Europe and acknowledged the continuing strategic importance of Europe in terms of ongoing security challenges and unresolved conflicts.

Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer is Director of the German Marshall Fund’s Paris office.