The Future of Transatlantic Cooperation: Analysis and Perspectives || Transatlantic Community in the New International System

Transatlantic Community in the New International SystemAuthor(s): Laurence MartinSource: Amerikastudien / American Studies, Vol. 42, No. 1, The Future of TransatlanticCooperation: Analysis and Perspectives (1997), pp. 15-23Published by: Universitätsverlag WINTER GmbhStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41157234 .

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Transatlantic Community in the New International System

Laurence Martin

ABSTRACT

Laurence Martin examines "the nature and role of the transatlantic community" within the present international system of states. Since the end of the Cold War there has not been a return to the power politics of previous centuries, nor has there been a large-scale harmonization of conflicting interests. Whereas in the Atlantic hemisphere the use of force in politics has been discredited for moral reasons and as a result of a pragmatic cost-benefit analysis, it continues to play a problematic role elsewhere. Thus an important aspect of future discussions must be the extent to which it might be possible to enlarge the western "security community." As long as the U.S. nurtures the wish to determine the shape of global politics, Europe will continue to be of importance for U. S. policymakers even in the absence of a direct threat to American interests. However, there now exists a "new insecurity" about the true extent of American interest in Europe. The future cohesion of the transatlantic community is largely dependent on forthcoming developments in Russia. A renaissance of Russian hostility to the west could lead to a revival of the "old alliance spirit," or to a termination of the alliance on account of conflicting European and American perceptions of possible threats. The alliance could be threatened both by a "Gaul- list" solution to European security policy, and, conversely, by an erosion of political cohesion within the EU. Since the end of the Cold War certain aspects of security policy have no longer been at the top of the agenda. However, this area is of very great importance when attempting to forge a "special Atlantic relationship."

The outbreak of widespread ethnic and religious violence in the aftermath of the Cold War has encouraged a certain polarization of expectations about the future of international relations. Optimists can perceive all the seeds of prosperous harmony in the promise of modern technology and the speed of democracy. Pessimists can point to the unrest that has appeared since the stabilizing influence of a bipolar tension was re- moved, and to the serious problems of economic adjustment that arise from the intensi- fying disparity between the mobility of labor and of other production factors. Despite the recent success in GATT negotiations, conflicts over "competitiveness" could still generate serious economic tensions. Three very large powers, China, India, and Russia, are engaged in a process of economic liberalization and international "reemergence," the outcome of which is still unpredictable. Any one of these is sufficiently huge for a failure (leading either to disintegration or external aggressiveness) to possibly domi- nate the entire atmosphere of international relations.

In the light of these complex conflicting trends, some seem to envisage a drift back to an almost eighteenth-century power politics, others the increasing realization of a harmony of interests. As so often, the probable future will fall somewhere between the two. The classic interstate system was one full of conflict, motivated chiefly by mercantilist conceptions of economic interest, dynastic and later nationalist eagerness for glory and status, and, above all, by the anxiety to provide against falling prey to the exercise of military power by others seeking the economic and political goals. This



16 Laurence Martin

"security dilemma," aggravated periodically by the appearance of genuinely hegemonial ambitions, raised military considerations to the highest pinnacle of motives, so that the ultimate means also frequently became the supreme end. As A. J.P. Taylor put it, the dominant question in European politics became: "Who shall be Master?" and the answer was often sought by military means.1

Today, investment, training and trade are universally seen as the road to prosperity, with political control of overseas areas considered as a method only in regard to oil supply, and even that is a largely discredited notion. Residual doubts about free trade and national competitiveness perpetuate some potential for economic issues to breed disputes and conflict, but the penalty for pursuing such antiquated economic notions is more likely to be mutual inefficiency than war - though such disputes may, of course, encourage an atmosphere unfavorable to settling other disagreements peace- ably.

Force as a tool of policy is discredited on both moral and practical grounds as a positive instrument of interstate relations in large areas of the world and is - generally and almost certainly correctly - ruled out as a method ever likely to be employed again within the sphere of North America and Western Europe. How far the boundaries of this "security community" extend or can be enlarged is, of course, an important topic for debate, and the answer could significantly affect the identity of the Atlantic Community.2 How far, for instance, can the zone of mutual confidence in Europe be extended eastward and, above all, can it embrace the former Soviet Union?

This eschewal of force between "Western" nations is based on a perception of its disproportionate costs when related to conceivable benefits; a calculation one side of which is generally believed to reach an indisputable near infinity when nuclear weapons appear in the equation. It also derives from the extension to international politics of the social "welfarism" generated by modern democracies in their domestic social policy. This welfarism induces a "squeamishness" made up of altruistic morality and a more selfish sense of what a prosperous community has to lose in war. The complex debate, not merely about suffering but also about inflicting even small casualties in peacekeeping operations, is a specific current example of this, and such sentiments are almost certainly more powerful forces excluding war as a likely feature of intra-West- ern relations than the institution-building often given the credit by admirers of the goals - in their time very reasonable - of Monnet and Schuman. Preventing war between the Western nations can no longer be regarded as very important among the reasons to favor maintaining and elaborating international institutions.

Outside this Western grouping, however, force is still in play; in some areas such as Africa, limited chiefly, perhaps only, by an inadequacy of means and competence, in others such as the Balkans and sections of the former Soviet Union, also by embry- onic forms of Western inhibitions, and by calculations about the possible intervention of more powerful actors. Great and important uncertainties attend the future of these practices and limitations, which will deeply condition the neighborhood in which the

1 A. J.P.Taylor, The Struggle of Mastery in Europe, 1898-1918 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1954) 157. 2 Two good brief discussions of this issue are Heinrich Vogel, "Partnership with Russia: Some

Lessons from Chechenya," World Today (April 1995): 64-67, and Jane Sharp, "Tasks for NATO: Move East and Revise the CFE," World Today (April 1995): 67-70.



Transatlantic Community in the New International System 17

Atlantic nations live. An even more important uncertainty surrounds the question of whether Russia will fall into the habit of using force externally, particularly against the Atlantic world, of which Western Europe forms a part.

For the moment, there is no question of the kind of attack NATO once feared. The weakness of Russia, its retirement from immediate juxtaposition with Western Europe, the residual NATO framework, and still, above all, the existence of nuclear weapons preclude that - even if a Russian regime were to come to power which shared none of the Western moral inhibitions and enlightened concepts of self-interest. What does have to be feared, at least to the extent of considering what prophylactic policies should be adopted is, first, whether the exercise of limited force by Russia under the banner of peacekeeping and perhaps, soon, of the extended self-defense of Russian interests and Russians abroad, will cast an ever more fearful shadow conditioning the politics of the area between Russia and the existing European Union. Later, perhaps, and not merely in Europe, we may have to consider whether war might return on a larger scale, as the confidence that nuclear weapons are controlled relaxes the inhibitions of terror. This prospect could appear either in a world where nuclear disarmament had proceeded far - "making the world safe for conventional war" - or, even worse, where a degree of proliferation had occurred and there was some question about whether nuclear weapons themselves were in fact wholly unusable.

If this sketch of a world in which force is greatly diminished as a tool or problem for the West but by no means abolished or irrelevant has any plausibility, it remains to ask what the nature and role of the trans-Atlantic community within it will be. To ask this question is already, of course, somehow to beg it, and to reveal how conditioned one is by recent history. The Atlantic world is an area of common culture spread by migration. That migration was, however, largely undertaken to shake off old-world links, not to preserve them, and the creation of the United States was consciously de- signed to break the trans- Atlantic political bond. These origins became the roots of highly principled isolationism.3 As a coherent factor in world politics, the Atlantic alliance is therefore only a recent product of the challenges by Hitler and Stalin to the European balance of power. As a politico-military device, it has depended upon American conceptions of the US national interest, by which dominance of Europe by a major power was thought to be sufficiently dangerous to justify unprecedented military guarantees and considerable political, economic and military effort. The idea that a hostile military power could mount a direct threat to the United States was always far-fetched until the ICBM, in making it possible, also rendered European territory irrelevant to the threat or defense against it. This, however, did not prevent political leaders suggesting that such a threat was plausible.4 In any case, Europe was very relevant to the American concept of a tolerable world order and the single most valu- able prize and auxiliary in the global political contest with Russian Communism.

3 Among many treatments of this theme in America foreign policy, one of the best is R. W. Tucker and D. C. Hendrickson, The Fall of the First British Empire: Origins of the War of Ameri- can Independence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1982). 4 For evidence of this now archaic view, see Nicholas J. Spykman, The Origins of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, 1944).



18 Laurence Martin

Even in the absence of such a contest, Europe will clearly remain important to the United States so long as it has aspirations to manage world politics, retains a residual wish to hedge against Russian recidivism, and values Europe, like Japan, as a major trading partner. The question is what policies this importance will or ought to inspire. Here, the United States now enjoys considerable freedom of action. There has always been and there remains an asymmetry in Euro- American relations. The uniting issue has been a direct threat to European security, but the supposed threat to America has always been a secondary derivative from an American decision to treat Europe as vi- tal to its own interest. Europe could not and cannot escape European problems; the United States could and can, if it chose so to interpret the situation, though it might not be wise to do so. Moreover today, a new uncertainty has arisen as to the boundaries of the Europe in which the United States should be interested.

To the East, the opening up of the Soviet area, exemplified by the bizarre inclusion of Kazakhstan in the NACC and of Sakhalin in the Partnership for Peace, compels a major rethinking of spheres of interest. To the West, the long-established American al- ternative interest in the Pacific and Far East, dramatized in the need to set strategic priorities in World War II, has been reinforced by Asian economic development and symbolized by the Japanese entry into the G 7 and acceptance as honorary "Western- ers" for many purposes.

As a result of all this, the extent to which an Atlantic Community and the NATO alliance, through which it currently finds its most concrete expression, will play a major part in world politics and remain the chief force for stability in Europe depends more on Washington than on European capitals. The future coherence of the Atlantic formula also depends very much on the evolution of Russia: renewed Russian hostility and aggressive assertiveness could revive the old spirit in the Western Alliance but might as easily destroy it by opening up new differences between a nervous Europe and a United States no longer perceiving such high stakes, now that Russia, if not definitely and forever devoid of a global hegemonial ambition, at least lacks its old ideological imperative and, for the moment, the physical means to pursue it. As a more conventional great power, Russia also offers the United States an unprecedented chance to handle its problem by doing deals with Russia rather than contain- ing it; some such pattern has already been suspected by the more nervous European observers of American deference to Russia with regard to the extension of NATO. For its part, the European Union could also refuse the Atlantic option by developing its own security policy along the line of self-assertive independence, once supposed to characterize "Gaullism" or, on the contrary, by losing, perhaps as a result of "widen- ing," even the minimal coherence necessary to constitute a viable partner.

If these are some of the broadest trends likely to condition the future of the Atlan- tic Community as a meaningful entity, there are several more specific and immediate issues to consider. To do so compels making some necessarily arbitrary assumptions about the future.

The first is that, despite the fact that security issues now take and hopefully will continue to take a lower priority than in the Cold War, it is still in this sphere that a special Atlantic relationship has most meaning. Admittedly there may be important international economic issues that will loom larger in the post-Cold-War climate, but few of these are easily confined to or best handled in an Atlantic framework, though there




may be a case to match such groupings as NAFTA and APEC with an Atlantic Free Trade Area.5 The United States and the European Union, when on their better behavior at least, share common constructive approaches to such questions, but the basis for mutually supportive action that those provide is best and indeed necessarily exploited in wider fora ranging from the G 7 - soon to be 8 or 9? - to GATT. Similarly, the range of affairs where domestic and social issues are merging with those that are international and diplomatic needs to be tackled in global and regional contexts of which the North Atlantic is at most only one and rarely the most appropriate, given the tendency of such problems to transcend boundaries and assume global proportions.

In contrast, there are several reasons why the Atlantic community can be regarded as retaining considerable advantages as a collaborative framework for security issues. To begin with, the members of NATO share a uniquely established and competent agency through which to work. So long as uncertainties about future Russian behavior persist, NATO naturally retains its qualities as a specialized organization developed to handle precisely that problem. As a result, it also possesses a unique magnetism for all those who harbor residual anxieties about Russia including, of course, those who recently suffered Russian domination within the Warsaw Pact or the Soviet Union itself. Given the real hope, however, that the Russian threat will not reappear, that Russia will become a democratic and peaceable neighbor, NATO also retains some of its tra- ditional, paradoxical role of reassuring the Russians that potentially hostile forces - or rather, forces perceived as potentially hostile such as originally Germany, but now other nations relieved from direct Russian control - are safely bound up in a collaborative decision-making process controlled by the United States.

The instability that has struck former Yugoslavia and parts of the former Soviet Union has also suggested areas where NATO could make itself useful. In the former, it has already cautiously done so. These are not, of course, areas with which NATO is formally concerned and within which the mandatory clauses of the Treaty apply. Nev- ertheless, as long as NATO exists and has to be paid for, sections of public opinion would clearly like it to make itself useful.

In the Atlantic context, the United States retains at least two plausible motives to persist with NATO and continue to play a part on the European security scene. First, without accepting some current crude characterizations of the emerging international system as a simple reversion to nineteenth-century concepts of power, the United States may well wish to keep much of Europe free of Russian influence. This could be regarded as partly a precautionary, residual part of the Cold War American strategy of containment and partly the requisite basis for stable relations with Russia. Secondly, the European members of NATO are the most promising partners for the United States in efforts to preserve a world order both in and beyond the Atlantic area. Euro- peans share American concepts of law and order and the American interest in a stable context for trade and investment. Moreover, Britain and France, in particular, are the best equipped and most ready of all United States allies to take military action.

5 See Henry Kissinger's proposal reflected in his article "America's New Special Relationship," Times [London] 30 March 1995: 18.



20 Laurence Martin

Such a partnership is not, however, without its risks. There can be no doubt that there are serious threats to a secure environment on both the eastern and southern margins of Europe and that they are more likely to break into open conflict now that the stable framework provided by the Cold War confrontation has collapsed. That, in itself, however, greatly increases the domestic political risks of involvement.

The dangers today lie in local conflicts which, if less serious than the former possi- bility of all-out warfare between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, are much more prone to generating acute crises and, as we have seen, open warfare. They are therefore more likely to call for quick, positive action, possibly including military intervention. Even during the Cold War, solidarity between the Western allies, typically between the United States and one or more leading European states, was frequently strained over "out of area" issues: witness Suez, Indo-China, Vietnam and Algeria. That was partly the result of divergent national interests in less than central issues and partly because of genuine intellectual differences over what would be best to do. Moreover, where the action called for is direct and immediate, as in political and military interventions, rather than the kind of symbolic or long-term, frequently untestable procurement de- cisions entailed in a policy of deterrence, success or failure are rapidly apparent. If actual fighting ensues, the currency of "burden sharing" can be blood rather than money, thus greatly raising the political stakes.

Nevertheless, using the Atlantic framework to shrink from all response to challenges and opportunities would soon lead to the impression of irrelevance and atro- phy, for public opinion is highly unlikely to support long-term investment in armed forces - and, where the United States is concerned, a substantial overseas garrison in Europe - merely to insure against the unlikely reappearance of "Article V" threats from Russia.

The immediate health of the Atlantic Alliance is therefore likely to depend on NATO's success in dealing with crises quite different from those envisaged by those who wrote the Treaty. On the other hand, the problem of establishing a stable strategic relationship with Russia remains the most important reason why the Europeans should want the Americans to stay engaged in Europe, and the chief motive for them to do so. NATO is seen as a key factor by all members of the former military blocs. Not surprisingly, there are complex differences of opinion as to the role NATO should play.

The most fundamental question concerns the fate of Central and Eastern Europe, once an area of complete Soviet domination, now clearly a politically contested zone between the NATO powers - for many purposes also the European Union - and Rus- sia. However this question may be wrapped up, it comes down to whether a line should be drawn clearly setting Russia off from the European Union and whether some of the countries in between the two would then also have to be excluded in deference to Russian security concerns. Closely related, but hopefully separable is the question of whether this task of demarcation will be conducted in a spirit of cooperation or neo-containment.

No sensible person is going to choose containment if cooperation is available. But to shrink from the task of differentiating Europe from Russia would, at the most, make much of Europe hostage to Russian wishes and even, at best, impose considerable delays on progress that otherwise might be made in constructing a European sys-




tem. In terms of trans-Atlantic relations, the sheer size and geographical extent of Russia, irrespective of its internal political nature, surely makes it incompatible with any grouping deserving the designation Atlantic' A Europe embracing Russia would be so Eastward-centered and so extensive in its interests that the Atlantic bonds would surely snap. The most one could hope for would be reasonably amicable relations with the United States in global fora.

In practice, however, we must recognize that the internal nature of Russia is likely to make it an unacceptable fellow in any really intimate political union, for many years to come, even if we may hope that it will prove a tolerable neighbor. Moreover, to return to the important matter of time, whichever future Russia chooses for itself - and at present there are many conceivable models, ranging from democratic peaceable market economy to authoritarian but conservative and cautious great power, assertive nationalistic autocracy, or even fragmentation - it is certain that we will not be sure of the outcome for several, perhaps many, years.

That being so, the extension of the collective self-defense system already existing in Western Europe and its association - as long as possible - with the United States, should not be sacrificed to inhibitions about defining borders. Indeed, that may be a prerequisite for, rather than an obstacle to, good relations with Russia, for a state un- certain of its identity may be drawn into assertiveness by vacuums on its borders.6

It must be admitted that this approach arrives at a dilemma with regard to the so- called 'near-abroad' of Russia. Poland, we would and must agree, is a part of Europe, and it virtually has pledges of ultimate entry to both the European Union and, to fol- low President Clinton, NATO. Ukraine and Beloruss are a different matter, and it seems plausible to argue that, while Western diplomacy should try to bolster their independence, this can only be in close association with Russia and cannot be as part of any tight European political, still less military, architecture. Geopolitics compels such a conclusion, and the domestic prospects of Ukraine and Beloruss also suggest separa- tion from the European Union.

This brings us to the old but now more pressing question of how the developing European security entity envisaged at Maastricht, which is now commonly called the European Defence Identity, is to develop within the Atlantic dimension. Are we at last about to see the two-pillar Atlantic security structure erected?

While recognizing all the residual difficulties, the wise course now must be to try to make this happen. The difficulties are indeed considerable. American unease about the prospect seems to have been moderated for the moment, with President Clinton's rhetoric much more tolerant than that which George Bush espoused, for instance, at the Rome NATO Summit a couple of years ago.7 This new American goodwill has, of course, yet to stand the test of time and practical application. The tolerance may be born of apathy rather than enthusiasm or of a perception that the Europeans themselves seem less sure how far they want to go than two or three years ago and are

(л Trevor Taylor, European Security and the Former Soviet Union (London: RIIA, 1994). 7 Cf. "NATO Summit Communiqué, November 1991," NATO Review (December 1991): 19-20, asserting that "development of a European security identity and defense role, reflected in the further strengthening of the European pillar within the alliance, will reinforce the integrity and effectiveness of the Atlantic Alliance."



22 Laurence Martin

therefore unlikely to make rapid progress. But objective considerations would seem to support an American welcome for a more coherent and self-reliant partner in the new, post-Cold War circumstances. For if Europe succeeds in the enterprise, then the United States gains a more competent ally, should relations with Russia develop badly, and a more adequate forward screen should things go well enough to permit some further American strategic disengagement.8

Today, the difficulties facing the two-pillar enterprise are indeed greater at the European end. One issue has already been raised - the question of how far to widen the defense identity. At present, there is a very untidy mismatch between the political and military entities emerging in Europe. As about to be expanded, the Union will contain members enjoying very different degrees of security guarantee, with the ones most exposed to Russian power having the least assurance. Nor is it wholly clear who wants what. Some Nordic voices have recently - perhaps only to facilitate the refer- enda on entry to the Community - suggested that, as it is now set out in the Maas- tricht Treaty, the common security policy will not necessarily lead to a common defense and that consequently, not all vestiges of neutrality need be abandoned. Fur- thermore, the security concerns of those Europeans whose fears are directed to the East and those whose fears are directed to the South are diverging. Indeed, one of the reasons for believing in the value of the American connection is that their view of European security is in some respects more comprehensive than that of any single European state; certainly the American concern with Mediterranean issues is much greater than that of the Nordic nations, while there is not much Spanish interest in Karelia.

Nevertheless, in the interest both of regional security and European political harmony, the effort to give more coherence to European security and defense policy needs to be made. Defense is a peculiarly difficult issue because it is the essence of statehood. Thus the European Union is condemned to inadequacy as a political construct if it cannot embrace the function, yet for exactly the same reason it is one of the last things most existing states will surrender. Much is at stake. On the one hand, we badly need more united action in actual crises and operations. Unless we achieve that, we are unlikely to make much progress on some of the other integration processes affecting effi- ciency and cost effectiveness, more needed than ever in today's fiscal climate.

This suggests that the key to real progress is increased agreement on what armed forces are for and what they should actually do, rather than elaborated institutional arrangements. If that is so, it can be argued that the way forward lies at the intergov- ernmental level rather than that of the community. Otherwise there is a danger that the common security policy will fall into the hands of a bureaucracy that does what it can, rather than what is needed. If the need is to hammer out a common line on an increasing range of important security problems, a line which may ultimately require the commitment of armed forces that will for some years remain national, then the best hope lies in strengthening the process embodied in the European Union's "Politi-

8 See Laurence Martin and John Roper, eds., Towards a Common Defence Policy, European Strategy Group and WEU Institute for Security Studies (Paris: WEU Institute for Security Studies, 1995); Laurence Martin, "Bei der gemeinsamen Außenpolitik der Europäischen Union ...," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 30 November 1994: 12.




cal Committee," where Foreign Ministers served by high-ranking national officials meet regularly for intense discussion of problem areas. This is all the more true because so much depends on consensus among the larger, militarily effective nations and may frequently require answers of the so-called "variable geometry" type. From an Atlantic perspective, this has the added advantage of being fully compatible with the "separable but not separate" formula already adopted in NATO for joint task forces.9

No one really knows what that formula will mean in practice as time goes by, but it has obvious potential. To succeed, it needs leadership and one of the dilemmas of the two-pillar exercise is that European incoherence has typically been resolved in the past by American leadership. What is required is the continuance of such leadership in directions that do not inhibit or attempt to inhibit the evolution of European identity. This has been said often before. It may be just possible that the new circumstances in which the contingencies to be handled do not involve an immense potential war - which only American forces and nuclear weapons could avert or win - now provides the basis for more equality. But if that is to be so, then the Europeans must exert themselves more to meet the arising challenges and nurture leadership qualities themselves. This calls for qualities that are unfortunately not very visible at present. In the late Forties, a few West European statesmen - Adenauer, Bevin, Schumann - made efforts that seemed worthy of American as well as European support and thereby evoked policies on both sides of the Atlantic that served Europe well. Whether or not such men or women appear now, the precedent does suggest that it is by energetically tackling our problems and not by waiting on others, that Europe best contributes to the Atlantic relationship.

9 See "NATO Summit Communiqué, January 1994," NATO Review (February 1994): 30-33.



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The Future of Transatlantic Cooperation: Analysis and Perspectives || Transatlantic Community in the New International System