Why Europe Needs Britain

THE TRANSATLANTIC ALLIANCE -- the springboard of America's global involvement, in Zbigniew Brzezinsky's words -- will change dramatically in the first decade of this century. Americans would be prudent to prepare for the possibility of estrangement in the relationship, stemming not just from differences in economic outlook between a given U.S. administration and the leading European governments of the day, but also from a secular desire by some in Europe to vie for global political leadership. It should hardly need mentioning that such an outcome would have adverse consequences for the way the United States projects its power throughout the globe; we would have to learn, for one thing, to do without our European partner. But none of this needs to happen. The United States and Europe could develop an even deeper alliance as better-defined common interests draw us closer together -- perhaps a happier result. In between these two outcomes falls a range of possibilities, largely unforeseeable in their particulars. What be foreseen -- about the only certainty we have -- is that the European Union will have played the key role in the result, whatever it is. If the United States wants to have influence over the direction the alliance ultimately takes, it cannot ignore the EU as a principal interlocutor. Indeed, one thing that became clear during the first year of the new administration in Washington is that attempts to bypass the EU by President George W Bush's policy advisors -- or by executives of private companies, for that matter -- paid fewer dividends than at first thought. More often it would have been better to pave the way for initiatives by gaining allies who agreed with policy positions or investment decisions. This was the case in a variety of issues, from scrapping the Kyoto protocol on climate change to the failed GE/Honeywell merger the lost seat at the U.N. Human Rights Commission, and missile defense. To make this observation is hardly to call for a mushy multilateralism. GE and Honeywell could have flouted EU Commissioner Mario Monti's decision and gone ahead with their merger, but decided to abide by it because the price -- leaving Europe -- was higher. In other words, this is the way the world works. As far as the Bush administration is concerned, it was obvious even before the election that the Old Continent was not high on the agenda of its potential senior officials. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice gave every indication that she had a healthy respect for giants such as Russia and China -- powers which, in her apposite words, can ruin your whole day. For Secretary of State Colin Powell, the accent from the start was on the Middle East, the region where he earned his spurs as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, and where the new administration was most in need of making a visible departure from the direction of the previous one. For Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the emphasis was on Asia and on space; in fact, he voiced a desire to withdraw troops from Europe. For Bush himself, Mexico and the rest of Latin America seemed to take first place; thus his bold call for a Western hemispheric trade bloc at Quebec and the exchange of visits with President Vicente Fox. All these are areas worthy of attention. But the trouble with an insufficient focus on Europe is that it leaves the transatlantic relationship adrift, vulnerable to the vagaries of day-to-day events, to the ad-hoc management of disputes over trade, the environment, Airbus subsidies, and such. The only European vision would then come from the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue. And in Congress these days, most of the people thinking about the EU at all either are resolute about the fact that they don't like what they see (the Republicans) or want to find support in Europe for opposition to Bush administration initiatives (the Democrats). The latter is perhaps unavoidable, given the nature of partisan opposition. …

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