Prospect has an interesting interview with uber-hawk, Paul Wolfowitz. He makes some curious remarks. Go have a look.
Archive for the ‘US-EU Relations’ Category
Radek Sikorski interviews Paul Wolfowitz
Sunday, November 21st, 2004Nato is a threat to Europe and must be disbanded
Tuesday, November 16th, 2004Jonathan Steele argues for the disbandment of NATO:
We must go all the way, up to the termination of Nato. An alliance which should have wound up when the Soviet Union collapsed now serves almost entirely as a device for giving the US an unfair and unreciprocated droit de regard over European foreign policy.
As long as we are officially embedded as America’s allies, the default option is that we have to support America and respect its “leadership”. This makes it harder for European governments to break ranks, for fear of being attacked as disloyal. The default option should be that we, like they, have our interests. Sometimes they will coincide. Sometimes they will differ. But that is normal.
But is this kind of disengagement from the US a positive thing? Will not European and US interests collide, leading to further fragmentation of relations?
What is this ‘European Union’?
Saturday, November 6th, 2004Anne-Marie Slaughter in the IHT, with a piece on the EU. She cites the number of times both George Bush and John Kerry have referred to the European Union – and it’s not often. This bit is good:
Suppose the citizens of Ohio or Oregon or Alabama understood that the EU has a larger population and gross domestic product than the United States. That English is widely and increasingly spoken as a second language. That most of the students who are either no longer applying to American schools or unable to enter the United States for a lack of a visa are choosing European universities instead. And that EU representatives are thick on the ground in many developing countries, both trolling for business and doling out aid and advice.
Suppose further that at a time when one of the most important issues in the U.S. election is which candidate is better placed to “win the peace” in Iraq and Afghanistan, American voters knew something about the EU model of building democracy – through assistance, admonition and accession negotiations. Americans would not likely believe that the prospect of EU membership, even if such a thing were possible, would have convinced the Taliban or Saddam Hussein to lay down their arms. But they might think that after the first flush of military victory the EU could teach America quite a lot about the exercise of civilian rather than military power.
EU citizens may be dubious about the EU’s effectiveness, particularly in political and military affairs. They may be unhappy about the democracy deficit. And they may be skeptical about their new constitution. But they know that the EU is an entity distinct from “Europe,” a rising entity of their own creation that is not simply an imitation of the United States. As a result, American voters are genuinely living in a different world from their European counterparts.
This trans-Atlantic divide results not from policies but from the most basic perceptions of relevant political actors in the international system. It should worry us all, well beyond the election.
Would Turkey split the EU and the U.S. ?
Thursday, October 21st, 2004Would it? Ian Bremmer in the IHT seems to think Turkey might split the EU and the US.
Letter to Europe: Philip Gordon
Thursday, July 22nd, 2004Philip Gordon has an article in this months edition of Prospect that is well worth reading. Say thank you Gavin for finding the free version (PDF) on the Brookings Institution website.
Gordon is senior fellow in foreign policy studies and director of the Centre on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution.
A response to this letter is written by Timothy Garton Ash, and follows the Gordon piece.
Curiously Gordon makes some remarks regarding the future of US-EU relations such as:
We could be in the process of creating a new world order in which the very concept of the “west” will no longer exist. I am not saying that Europe and America will end up in a military stand-off like that between east and west during the cold war. But if current trends are not reversed, you can be sure we will see growing domestic pressure on both sides for confrontation rather than co-operation. This will lead to the effective end of Nato, and political rivalry in the middle east, Africa and Asia.
I tend to agree, thought Gordon later argues that this scenario is unlikely to unfold. I think it is much more likely than he makes out. Which reminds me that I must buy The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century by Charles A. Kupchan
The EU’s foolish idea of selling arms to China
Wednesday, July 14th, 2004Reginald Dale, editor of the policy quarterly European Affairs, and a media fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University has a curious piece in today’s IHT.
In it he criticises the EU for considering reopening arms trade with China. He warns that if the EU takes such a course, it could lead to a serious rift with the US.
He concludes:
But the Atlantic alliance will once again be severely strained if an out-of-its-depth Europe kowtows to China’s demands to win favor in Beijing. Legislation is already making its way through the U.S. Congress restricting transfers of U.S. military technology to European countries selling arms to China and banning Pentagon purchases from European companies that do so.
It would help prevent Beijing from splitting the two sides of the Atlantic – and gaining a major victory for its shabby human rights policies – if EU leaders started practicing what they have so often preached over the past year. They should refrain from dangerous unilateral initiatives and conduct serious consultations on a joint strategic approach to China with the United States.
Trading arms with China serves what purpose exactly? Closer ties are good how? Maybe if China became a reasonable, representative society that respected human rights then such deals could be justified.
Europe and indeed France are deluding themselves, Dale mentions :
But the broader and equally controversial background to the Franco-German initiative is the EU’s drive to forge a strategic relationship with China, independently from Europe’s links to the United States…
This effort, several years in the making, has been warmly, if conditionally, welcomed in Beijing. It reflects the desires of both France and China to create a multipolar world, in which the United States would be no more than one of several global power centers.
And multipolarity sounds distinctly like Europe in 1914.
US, EU reach final accord in satellites row
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2004
The United States and the European Union have reached a final accord on resolving a transatlantic row over rival satellite positioning systems and will seal the deal at the US-EU summit this week in Ireland, officials from both sides said Monday.
At one point, Washington suggested that the Galileo was an unnecessary rival to GPS that merely duplicated the US system.
Despite the US reservations, Europe forged ahead with the project and Galileo is set to be operational by 2008 with 30 satellites encircling the globe in medium orbit.
Late last year, the Europeans agreed to modify the modulation of Galileo signals intended for government use so they would not disrupt encrypted GPS signals to be used by the US military and NATO.
Under the terms of the agreement, the two sides agreed on key points including:
- a common signal structure for so-called “open” services, and a suitable signal structure for the Galileo Public Regulated Service (PRS).
- a process allowing improvements, either jointly or individually, of the baseline signal structures in order to further improve performances.
- confirmation of inter-operable time and standards to facilitate the joint use of GPS and Galileo.
Ugly Americans: Europe cannot blame it all on Bush
Monday, June 7th, 2004Pierre Lellouche with yet another analysis of transatlantic relations, he notes:
I can remember U.S. presidents who were derided for being ignorant (Reagan), incompetent (Carter), or bumbling (Ford). But never have I such a rejection, bordering on hatred, as I see today for Bush.
He dislikes the anti-Bush line, but would like to see something more constructive:
Anti-Americanism and European weakness are the two sides of a coin. It is time both sides try to find the path towards constructive dialogue, without which neither will be able to face up to the dangerous world of the 21st century.
US and France: We still need each other: Felix G. Rohatyn
Sunday, June 6th, 2004Felix G. Rohatyn, United States ambassador to France from 1997 to 2001, has another piece in the IHT on transatlantic relations. Another appropriate piece to be reading on a day like today…
I have seen France at its most tragic in 1940, and I have seen it at its best in later years. Although there will still be differences about Iraq and other issues, I know that France and America need each other strategically, economically, culturally.
And beyond that, there is the history buried in the cemetery of Omaha Beach. We need a relationship built on mutual respect as well as mutual interest. Perhaps it will be rekindled on Omaha Beach.
D-Day and anti-Americanism: It’s hard to love a savior
Sunday, June 6th, 2004Josef Joffe, editor of Die Zeit, has written a piece in today’s IHT. He decries the levels of anti-americanism prevalent in Europe today, while hoping for an improvement in transatlantic relations. I agree with his criticisms of anti-americanism:
Perusing the European media from Madrid to Munich in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, one might think America is Darth Vader and Adolf Hitler rolled into one. On the 60th anniversary of D-Day, Europe is awash in a tsunami of anti-Americanism that is light-years removed from a rationally argued critique of U.S. behavior in Iraq.
Why are the second and third post-D-Day generations so obsessed with America that they will stop at nothing to discredit and dehumanize the country?
He rightly nails some hypocritical views Europeans have of America:
And then there is Temptress America, a culture that radiates outward and pulls inward. Europe eats, listens, dances and dresses American, and if the lure of low culture weren’t enough, there is the glamour of U.S. universities that makes the worst anti-American diatribe usually end with: “Can you help get my daughter into Harvard?”
Will this, too, have passed by the time we mark D-Day 2014? It might, but only on two conditions. Europe will have to shed the arrogance of weakness, and the United States the arrogance of power. Watch George W. Bush on D-Day ’04 for signs of a kinder and gentler America. The United States is still the greatest power in history, but it has learned the hard way in Falluja and Abu Ghraib that even giants can’t go it alone.
Indeed it can’t, but can it go the right way?
On Europe’s streets: America the unloved
Thursday, May 27th, 2004Richard Reeves thinks that Bush and Blair have about 100 days left to prove what they did in Iraq was the “right thing to do”. Interesting piece.
Europe’s gamble: Waiting for Kerry
Wednesday, May 26th, 2004As ever I love the subject of transatlantic relations, this article is a few days old but I’ll stick it up anyway.
Will Europeans be happier if Kerry is elected? And will it improve relations?
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EU expansion a yawn in U.S: Roger Cohen
Thursday, April 29th, 2004One of the most interesting pieces I’ve read on the subject this year – the apparent lack of interest in the US at the EU’s impending expansion.
It is a significant development in global affairs – the EU will be a bloc with a population of almost half a billion people, bordering countries such as Ukraine, Belarus and more importantly Russia, for the first time.
It is curious that Americans can’t understand why we have not let in Turkey yet – it is something of an inevitable fact that someday soon Turkey will have to join, as far as I can see any form of European growth could not be sustained without the workers needed from such a populous country as Turkey.
Here’s the full text:
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Europe and the US are now adrift: Martin Jacques
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2004Martin Jacques with an interesting take on the trans-atlantic relationship. Best question:
For over three centuries the world was hugely Euro-centric. The cold war may have granted a 50-year extension on its lease, but 9/11 finally marked closure. How does a relatively small continent, which has played such a humungous global role for so long, adapt to tumultuous and troubling changes that require it to assume a very different place in the world? That is now the European story, and will be for a long time to come.
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Europe’s debt to Rumsfeld: Mark Leonard
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2004Mark Leonard, of the Foreign Policy Center in the Uk, believes that Europe should thank Rumsfeld for his attempts at disaggregation of East and West Europe.