News Release
Chris Patten
No. 19/04
February 17, 2004
PATTEN PONDERS THE FUTURE OF THE TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONSHIP
Chris Patten,
EU Commissioner for
External Relations gave a wide-ranging speech on the state of
transatlantic relations at Oxford University. According to Commissioner
Patten, who will be in Washington March 1, neither America nor Europe can go it
alone in dealing with global challenges like
terrorism. Both sides need to resist the caricatures and clichés that surfaced
during the debate about Iraq
and must work to make a partnership that has proved its worth and necessity more
effective.
Commissioner Patten’s speech
is available online at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/news/patten/sp04_77.htm
Europe and the US: Cousins and Strangers
“There was never a golden
age in Trans-Atlantic relations when all Europeans took their hats off to the
super-power that defended our freedom…The notion that the relationship has changed,
is changing or ought to change claims varied paternity. There are those who argue
that the hour of Europe's and America's triumph, the fall of the Berlin Wall and
the rapid disintegration of Russia's European empire, marked the moment when Europe
no longer mattered so much geo-strategically to the USA. The rise of Asia—the pumping, thumping economies of
China,
Japan, South Korea and now India—drew America's attention to its west
and our east. Above all, it is suggested that the growing disproportion in the
military might of Europe and America reflects a fundamental difference of view
between the continents. Europe's will to use force in order to safeguard freedom has been
sapped by too much past experience of the calamitous results of interstate violence
and too much recent experience of comfortable prosperity. Militarily weaker by
choice and by taxpayer demand, we Europeans recoil from using arms to solve problems
except as a last resort. Our appetite for negotiation, for soft not hard power,
and our contention that this approach is morally superior to the American, is
a flight from responsibility, only available as a political option because we
can always count on Uncle Sam to keep us safe and to bear the civilised world's
burden. In short, as the neo-conservative Robert Kagan argued, Europe
is Venus and America Mars.”
Critical Allies Nevertheless…
“The Bush administration's
policies, too, have touched and turned opinion in Europe and beyond. This is hardly
surprising after all, they are plainly controversial in America, polarising opinion
there, so why should the same not be true here?…But whatever the decibel level
of the criticism, whatever the quantity of genetically
modified tomatoes with which Europe and the United States pelt one another,
politicians often take a break from the fun to remind people that "there
is so much more that unites than divides us." It is a truism: the stuff of
a thousand unread communiqués. But like many truisms, it also happens to be true.
For the United States
and Europe are indeed more than close allies. We have common roots in the European
enlightenment and share the body of ideas which emerged from that period of emancipation
from received authority. We made common sacrifice of blood and treasure in defence
of freedom in two World Wars. We were together on Golgotha, "citizens of death's grey land/Drawing no dividend from time's tomorrow."
The Fruits of Indispensable
Partnership
“Our economic interdependence
is such that the whole world has a large stake in our success, just as we have
a stake in each other's. Taken together our Gross Domestic Product pretty evenly
divided adds up to about 20 trillion dollars, just over 40 percent of the world's
total; our combined share of world trade is only a little less. For all the talk
about the importance of NAFTA and Asian tigers, American investment in the pretty
small Netherlands over the last 8 years was twice as great as in Mexico
and 10 times as large as in China. Europe accounts for half of the total global
earnings of US companies and Europe has more investment in Texas
than America has in Japan. So the relationship can be counted in jobs, growth
and living standards, not only on either side of the Atlantic but far beyond.
We should build on that mutual strength by building an ever deeper commercial
relationship and we should work together to ensure a successful outcome to the
WTO's Doha Development Round.”
Where Do We Go From Here?
"The bald question I wish to answer is this: Has the relationship served
its purpose? Has success rendered it passé? Can we all in Europe, America,
the world do without it? Is it just temporarily under the weather, and if so how
can we nurse it back to robust health?
"The rows do not seem
to have persuaded either party to call it a day. According to the latest Trans-Atlantic
trends survey of the German Marshall Fund published in September
2003, 'the Trans-Atlantic split over war in Iraq has undermined America's standing
with Europeans.' Also, 'the Iraq
war appears to have unleashed a stronger backlash effect on European views of
the United States than the other way around.' But the survey goes on to note that
a key message is that 'allies can feel estranged and share foreign policy interests
that lead them to work together.' Perhaps surprisingly 'a majority of Americans
want to see the European Union become a superpower capable of sharing global responsibilities
with the US.
When the 37% who favoured the EU as a superpower were asked if this would still
be the case if the EU sometimes opposed US policies, 83% of them said "yes"…
A majority of Europeans appear to want an Atlanticist EU serving as a partner
to the US. Americans remain multilateralists and fear the consequences of unilateral
policies.' There is, additionally, 'an overwhelming consensus across the Atlantic
that the EU's soft (non-military) power has a role to play. Moreover, both Europeans
and Americans want to strengthen the UN although a majority of Americans support
by-passing the world organisation 'if vital interests are at stake.'"
Terrorism
“The terrible events of September
11th 2001 initially drew Europe and America more closely together.
But more recent events seem to have driven us apart, with Europe not perhaps fully
appreciating the extent of the US
trauma the sense of violation. The subsequent "war on terrorism" has
been understood in Europe as a metaphor: a phrase to describe the myriad responses
required of the civilized world to address problems that do not admit of definitive
solutions, let alone of military ones. America, by contrast, has really felt itself
to be at war, and it is a war that ratcheted up patriotic sentiment to unparalleled
heights.
"Terrorism is abhorred
in Europe. We have every reason to hate it. Look at ETA in Spain.
Or the cold-blooded murder of Stephen Saunders, the British Defence Attaché, by
the 17 November Movement in Greece 3 years ago. I have witnessed at first hand
the bloody consequences of Irish terrorism. I have also had reason to resent past
indulgence by some Americans of its champions and paymasters on the other side
of the Atlantic.
"So we hate terrorism.
But we are also uncomfortable with the one-dimensional nature of the debate in
some quarters, the unwillingness to accept that terrorists might, on occasion,
be using abhorrent means to pursue ends that we may or may not agree with, but
which are susceptible to reason, and whose causes can be addressed without a war.
It is as if any discussion of the causes of alienation and hatred was evidence
of appeasement. The idea of a world divided between good and evil between us and
them sits uncomfortably with most Europeans. Throughout recorded time, asymmetric
threats have been the weapon of the weak against the strong and we find them sanctioned
by history when the cause is just, the means proportionate and the outcome good.
The morality is not always clear.
"Do not misunderstand
me. I am not in any sense seeking to excuse or even to explain the outrage of
9/11. The cause was unjust. The means abominable. But these issues cannot be placed
beyond rational discussion. Nor, in my view, can terrorism ever be eradicated
from the face of the earth. Complete elimination of the threat could only be achieved
in an Orwellian police state that denied individual freedom. That would negate
the values for which the US and EU stand. Paradoxically, it would also demand
of good men the sort of just resistance and potentially violent resistance that
it was seeking to eliminate. I have no doubt that the most important way that
we Europeans can act as allies of the United States is by convincing them of the
complexities and subtleties of the war against terrorism, pursuing it effectively
on the basis of international law and with the authority of a more effective UN
and discouraging America from taking Machiavelli's advice that 'it is better to
be feared than loved.' For the world's only super-power that is very bad advice.”
What Europe Needs to
Do
"To be more effective
partners, we in Europe have to make clear that we are not rivals, defining our European-ness
in terms of hostility to America.
Those countries of Central and Eastern Europe who will be joining
the European Union in May have plainly made an existential choice. It is a
European choice. But that does not make it an anti-American choice. More Europe
in the world would not necessarily mean less America
though I suspect that a lot of Americans wish that it did.
"We have to be better
at managing the partnership, a proposition that goes for both sides. We should
try not to surprise each other and should recognise that democratic pressures
can bend and twist rhetoric and decisions from Kansas to Cologne.
"Europeans will be taken
as more serious partners if we can rid ourselves of the slightly unfair reputation
of being 'free riders,' unprepared to pay more for our own
security so long as we can depend on America's shield.
Our military contribution, for example to peace-keeping, is constantly under-estimated,
but while we clearly pull our weight in the exercise of 'soft power' (development
assistance and so on), it is difficult to argue the same for the harder sort.
I do not myself believe that we can, or should try to, close the gap significantly
between American and European military spending. Europe's contribution whether
measured in billions of dollars or in percentage of GDP is about half that of
America. We should try to spend rather more, but more significantly we should
spend better. Too much of our commitment is designed to fight the last war that
never was, and we lack even basic modern equipment like air-lift capacity. The
ability to add more relevant military capacity to our other instruments for preventing
crises, and coping with them when they turn into conflict, would make us more
valued interlocutors and partners in the American-led fight against terrorism.”
What America Needs To Do
“A sensible American strategy
towards Europe will recognise the power of her values and ideas, for us as
well as others in the world, in underpinning her global leadership. It should
also comprehend that it would be a terrible mistake to reverse 50 years of American
policy and to countenance the disaggregation rather than the integration of
Europe. Europe will be
for a time a weaker partner if the United States
chooses to drive wedges between member states issue by issue. This is not a policy
likely to prosper for long; the disciplines of willingly shared sovereignty are
likely to prevail. But it would leave behind a lot of bad feeling. An effective
and coherent Europe is a better
partner in the Magreb, the Mashraq and the Wider Middle
East, a better partner in the world's other hot spots.
"If America recognises
that mighty as she is, she cannot cope alone with the threats to her prosperity
and security drugs, organised crime, terrorism, epidemic disease, terror technology,
collapsing and already failed states, dispossession and alienation then it should
be pretty clear that Europe is the best partner in fashioning responses to these
threats, not least through the United Nations. The most neophyte of neo-conservatives
should surely by now understand that America cannot think first of itself and
only if strictly necessary of others. As President Kennedy once argued, 'The United
States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient… there cannot be an American solution
to every world problem.'
"It may be, as President
Bush said in his State of the Union Address last year, that 'the course of this
nation does not depend on the decisions of others.' But the course of America
can certainly be helped and eased by the decisions and sympathy of others.
"Most of what I have
said, while critical of neo-conservative strategic thinking and concerned lest
Europe should turn into a less successful if more vainglorious partner, assumes
that behind the bitchiness and the frayed tempers of the last couple of years
most of the fundamentals of a necessarily intense and comprehensive relationship
are still in place. The only issue that gives me reason for any real doubt is
the question of 'preventive' or 'pre-emptive' war which lies at the heart of the
US National Security Strategy published in 2002. This does represent a clear break
with American policy since President Truman who argued in his Memoirs,
'You don't "prevent" anything by war except peace.' It seems to me likely
that at the very least the controversy surrounding the causes and pretexts of
the invasion of Iraq, and in particular the doubts raised about the extent to
which intelligence can prove mortal necessity rather than political choice, will
encourage further debate about pre-emption and greater interest in maximising
the legitimisation and credibility of the use of force to deal with possible threats.
But to be sure that this happens, and that there is a sensible outcome, Europe
will have to get its act together and do more than offer bromides and cop-outs
about when armed force can be justified, and when the threat of force can support
our wider aims.”
