Holing Up Inside Fortress Europe by Fareed Zakaria

June 18, 2001, U.S. Edition

Holing Up Inside Fortress Europe
The problem with the Atlantic alliance isn't our swagger. It's their self-absorption.
By Fareed Zakaria

There's trouble across the Atlantic. The New York Times reported from London that the president's "criticism of America's allies stirred bewilderment and bitterness in European capitals today with the sharpest reaction coming from France." The Christian Science Monitor has noted the rise of anti-Americanism in Europe, "the subject of a major conference held in Berlin by the Aspen Institute with West German, American, British, Dutch, French, and Swedish participants." Another Times article datelined Paris points out that Europeans "who see the United States as an unreliable, bellicose, immoral ally have found seemingly perfect justification." Is this a new low in our relations with Europe?

Well, compared with when? March 16, 1974, when the first article I quoted was published? Or July 15, 1981, the date of the second? Or October 30, 1983, when the third appeared? The Atlantic alliance has produced anguished hand-wringing since its inception. With a new administration in Washington comes a new season of lament. The Aspen Institute is holding a conference this summer on, what else, the troubled European-American relationship. (Hey, I'm not complaining. I'll be there.)

Actually, this time there are reasons to worry. For one, life just isn't the same without a common enemy to unite us. A deeper shift is that Europeans and Americans have increasingly different attitudes on all kinds of fundamental issues, from globalization to the environment to technology. And the Bush administration has been needlessly provocative in its first months in office. But the greatest threat to the Atlantic alliance today comes not from American unilateralism but rather European disarray and resentment.

American foreign policy has always been somewhat unilateral. (It is part of the reality of being a global superpower.) And Europe's outrage over policies like the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, the Reagan buildup, Grenada and Nicaragua make present complaints seem trivial. But what's new is that over the past decade Europe has been coming together in union. This process--important and heroic on its own terms--has been a disaster for its foreign policy, particularly its relations with America.

Ironically, while European nations criticize America for isolationism, they have become entirely absorbed in their own affairs over the past decade. Where their leaders once strode comfortably on the world stage--think of Adenauer, De Gaulle, Schmidt, Kohl and Thatcher--they have been replaced by men and women with narrow horizons. Their foreign ministers spend most of their working hours pouring over the minutia of new EU initiatives.

Consider defense policy. Having pledged to strengthen its forces and create a new all-European Rapid Reaction Force, European governments continue to slash spending, now spiraling down at a rate of 5 percent a year. In America this ornithological combination is called a chicken-hawk.

Europe often criticizes the United States for shooting from the hip. But what to make of the EU's recent mission to North Korea, undertaken without consultations with Washington and designed solely to embarrass it? When we do it, it's unilateralism. When they do it, it's diplomacy.

Usually bad diplomacy. The search for a common foreign policy means that most of the time you get paralysis coupled with copious expressions of banality. Former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who is deeply pro-European, describes his utter frustration in dealing with the European Union. "There are meetings, 10 hours long, about where the next meeting should be. There is ceaseless competition between dozens of agencies... The noble idealism of the architects of a united Europe has turned into the triumph of bureaucrats."

Just linger (if you can stand it) over a photo op of European diplomacy to understand Holbrooke's point. The EU is usually represented by its commissioner for External Relations, its high representative for Common Security and Foreign Policy, another relevant EU official (Trade, Agriculture, whatever), the current president of the EU and often the past or future presidents as well--since they change every six months! It must be like negotiating on a merry-go-round.

The greatest danger to Atlantic relations, however, is not that of European incompetence. It is of a default anti-Americanism. To the extent that Europe does widen its horizons and play a world role, it is increasingly defining its foreign policy simply by being different from--and opposed to--America. On issue after issue it seems to search for a way that it can differentiate itself from Washington rather than recognize the vast similarities in interests and outlook.

If this tendency were to continue unabated, it could mean the end of the Atlantic alliance. It would also be tragic for Europe if its nations could find common ground only in their shared resentment about living in an American-dominated world. It is an ambition unworthy of a great continent, a great culture, and a still-vital partner of the United States.